BTG 94 - Getting Older

Hello and welcome to the Breaking the Guard podcast. I'm going to keep today's episode short, unlike and I I'll stick to it because last time I said I was going to keep it short and I ran for over 30 minutes. All right. Uh today is my birthday. It's July 7th, Sunday. Um turning 43 today. I feel pretty good. I say pretty good because I have some nagging injuries that uh I just accumulated uh over the past week, mainly from deadlifting. Uh but other than that, feeling pretty good. We're walking around around 191 193 pounds now. Uh that seems to have somewhat stabilized. Um and I'm pretty happy with that weight. I feel that's a under 195 is a good effective weight for me. Um what have I learned new this year uh being 43? Uh quite a bit. I am still and this seems to be the the trend is that you're learning new limits about your physical capabilities every year that passes. Uh for example, after this past week, I probably not going to do deadlifts anymore. Uh it's just the juice is not worth the squeeze. You know, I actually had gone maybe three or so months without doing deadlifts just because I was focusing on different lifts in its place. Uh I had a hamstring that I kind of pulled a little bit on my right side and like some front hip flexor stiffness and I felt that was in part because of the deadlifting. It just when I go heavy on it, it becomes an issue. And uh that was starting to interfere with everything else. And as I've said many times before, personally, I'm not trying to be a strong man or anything as far as like a weightlifter. I just want to be strong for martial arts. So I laid off it for a few months and hamstring felt better, hips felt better. And I was still lifting, just doing other lifts besides a deadlift. And this past week, I just said I'm like, "Hey, let me try adding deadlifts and go light on them." And even going lighter than I normally do, I still like tweaked those same two areas, you know? So, um, is there a technique issue? Possibly. I don't think so. But I mean I I wouldn't rule it out, but it just feels like for me the riskreward is not paying off there, you know. So, and I was I went to Arizona this week, which was fun. And we were doing a little bit of hiking there. And uh I was feeling that the results of that the whole time. And that's no fun, you know. So, I'll probably just stick to what I've been doing more of, which was like bent over rows and uh lat pull downs, you know, other exercises to work the upper back and uh I feel like I can get all the hamstring and hip extension from my from squats, which don't give me any issues anymore. So, uh I mean there's that, you know, uh from the jiu-jitsu side, still learning things. Um, it's funny because I've been training now with Jake Shields for at least a few years. I think pretty much since the COVID times when I started going to Extreme and he plays a very similar game uh well he plays a very similar strategy all the time which is very effective for him. a lot of pressure in his passing and be being on the receiving side of this and learning how to defend it. I've done well with it, but honestly, I never really picked it up myself. And my passing style has always been different in that I'm a more of a loose and fast guard passer, you know, um or I use my submission attacks to create my guard passes, notably kimors, but gildings and front headlocks and stuff I use as well. Um, so I'd like to threaten the submission to get position uh quite often, but uh just over the past couple weeks, it finally snapped. You know, everything clicked into place and I picked up two of uh Jake's like trademark techniques that he does all the time. and I finally understood them. And what I mean by finally understood them, I've seen him do it. I know how it looks like. I could perhaps tell you how to mimic it, but I never really clicked with me. I don't know why. It's just one of those things like I always say, it's like repetition, you know. And he was teaching over the past couple weeks and I training with him and attending his classes and teaching something he's taught so many times. I finally got it. Like I'm like I had that light bulb moment where like ah this is uh what makes this really work. This is the strategy behind it. This is the most efficient lever to utilize this technique for two of his main moves. And you know like I said now I'm like what 28 years into training martial arts and I'm still picking things up. And even in this little subset of training with the same training partner for a few years now on a regular basis and I'm finally picking up some of the strong moves that he has. Uh I think it just goes to show that this is a game that takes time, right? And the more time like I talked about in the last thing, the more time you can put on the mats, the more you're going to get out of it, you know? So um unfortunately you know I'm not able to get as much Matt time as I would like simply just because I'm physically not capable of it but making the most use of the time that you do have is still very fruitful here. And uh I find that I'm still taking notes uh after I I would be lying if I said I took notes after every class I've taken. Uh but at least the I would say the pivotal classes I'm definitely taking notes on and I do want to take notes on every class I take. I do journal every day now. Uh so I mean I have been for years. So I sometimes forget on classes and I don't like that because there's a good chance I'm going to forget that class as well and the techniques in it. So, I think being strict with the note-taking is going to help you retain knowledge. At the very least, you can look back. And I used to do this with pen and paper back in the day. Now, I do it on the computer. I think there's some lost benefits. I think when you write things down by hand, there's more memory retention just because of the writing aspect of it. Although, for me, writing is a bit tedious. My handwriting sucks to begin with and just since I'm not used to writing anymore because we never have to write uh I'll probably fatigue faster for the amount of notes I want to take and two on a computer I can go very fast in typing. Uh I can also search and I think that's the big one because right now I have a journal that's like maybe 8 900 pages long. So if I was going to try to find something in particular that'd be tricky. But since I can search it, I can just type in uh you know, Kimura and it'll show me all the places where there's Kimura and I could jump in there, you know. Uh so I think that's a big advantage to uh using a computer to write. I'm sure you could do the they have technology now where you can write with uh like a digital pen and then it transcribes it so you get the best of both worlds. that would probably be the best option, but um probably not going to do that still just because I'm so used to the computer at this point. Uh it works pretty well for me, so that works. But anyhow, in any if any kind of journaling, I think it's going to be useful. And I always put in how I'm feeling, how my sleep's working, how energy, you know, all those things. So I can see dayto day if I start really taking a a big spill uh I can then start looking back to see when it started and then like figure out oh you know what on that day I did this and that's probably what happened right uh so uh yeah those are the notables that I've kind of picked up on uh as far as from a sports aspect one that just that continu continuing, although slowing. I mean, I'm in better shape now than I was last year at this time. As far as being lean and fit, I've now been doing carnivore for 4 months, three or four months, somewhere around there, and very sustainable. I'm not even uh taking any supplements at this point. I used to be doing the hydration package. I'm not really doing them anymore. I I found that since uh I've been using like mineralized salts like uh not I used to use kosher salt for years because when I first started looking up you know dry brining and cooking meats all the chefs seem to favor using kosher salt because it dissolves easier into the meat because of the big flakes and all that. But from a nutritional aspect, kosher salt is not great. is just um it's just sodium chloride, right? So, it doesn't have any other beneficial nutrients and especially when for myself as I commented before doing corner war, you need all those electrolytes and you're not getting them from just regular kosher salt or table salt. I started getting uh different types of salt like I got the real salt uh brand which is good but it's a little bit light as well in nutrients even though it's like pink sea salt whatever I found one that's like I think Baja Gold that my friend Jason Sel recommended and that one is like a very uh nutrient-rich one it's I think only 89% sodium chloride and then you got u other sorts of salts in there that I forget off the top of my head right now. But since I've been doing that and also incorporating dairy into the diet, I'm not having those u hydration issues anymore. And um I'm not really finding that I'm using the electrolytes as much. I won't say I'm not using them at all. Maybe a couple times a week, but not as a daily morning ritual anymore. So that's nice. All right. And uh been easy just eating meat, you know, and eggs, cheese, and I've been doing homemade ice cream now, which has been wonderful. I just get cream, milk, eggs, honey, and salt. And whatever type of flavoring agent I get, get like organic vanilla, cinnamon. Um I've done chocolate, which I get organic chocolate. It's dark chocolate 70% plus and make it that way. And flavors are amazing. I got the texture down really good. So, it satisfies all the sweet cravings I could ever want. And it still fills a good gap in my diet, which is adding uh some carbs from the honey and also a lot of fat, which I don't have in spades because I'm eating a lot of bison. It's very lean. Uh, so the extra fat I'm getting from my dessert, which has been very useful. And despite having ice cream practically every day, I'm leaning out. I'm getting a bit leaner now. Um, so it makes it pretty easy. So, I got that part of my diet pretty dialed in now, I think. Although, I'm sure it's going to tweak a little bit by the the next year. Like, everything I've been doing has always been changing, right? I think that's just part for the course that nothing has stayed the same. You know, everything's always moving in one direction or the other. Although, I like the direction going in now. And uh yeah, I think that's about it. And I said I was going to keep it short, so I'll stop here. Uh I won't review any events because I didn't tune into them. Like I said, I was in Arizona. I went hiking. Uh we went actually to a place called Williams, Arizona, uh which is an hour from the Grand Canyon. So we got to go to the Grand Canyon hike, which is really cool. There was also like a safari zoo type thing in called Barizona, uh which was really fun to do. We did like a little backstage VIP thing and you get to see the animals, how they train them, and get pretty up close. And uh my wife and I always really enjoy that. And there was also like a deer farm nearby where you could hand feed the deer and they had like reindeer and there's elk there and porcupines, all sorts of little critters that was really cool to do. So I kind of uh wasn't watching anything uh online. The only thing I did see was that Tyrotolo won a decision against Joseph Chen. I watched that at like 200% speed and it looked pretty even match besides the fact that um Tai got a takedown and that was about the only real edge. They both went for leg locks that weren't really in, you know, so I wouldn't really count that towards either guy. And Tai was really aggressive on top from what I saw. a lot of aggressive passing attempts that weren't really that fruitful. Joseph's guard was very good where used to seeing him play a lot of top and he played bottom quite well. Didn't give Tai any good openings. Uh so he did win in my opinion. Now it wasn't a blowout. You know, it would have been a two in just about any other rule set. So that bodess very well for for Joseph and they're both in the same bracket at the Craig Jones Invitational which is on the under 80 kill division has completely closed up now. I think the last guy was um Mihaj Gorilla Hands. So again I feel that's a pretty solid bracket. There's two ADCC champions in there. uh couple medalists and a lot of uh guys who I think if they were 80cc might be meddling that this year. So that's going to be a hell of a a bracket. But um yeah, that's all I got for you guys. So we'll keep it I said trying to keep myself on the schedule. So we'll keep it short. I'm going to go and enjoy the rest of my day and I hope you guys do as well. I will see you all next week.