grappling

well, today was my first grappling class and its pretty different from muay thai. like muay thai is more of explosive power and grappling, as of now, is more of technical ability.

was damn blur as usual cos its my first lesson so i really didnt know what to do. learnt a few takedowns an locks and holds.

and then came rolling. which is like you start on your knees facing your friend and then you both try to take each other to the ground and submit each other.

was pretty furstrating for me cos i didnt know nuts and people werent really very helpful but i guess the main focus of rolling is to get the natural feel of leverage and all that. besides, nothing teaches better than being owned.

so basically, my grappling class today was pretty small. like only 4 people kinda thing. one skinny guy, one normal sized guy an one big sized mat.

so we took turns rolling with each other. being a greenhorn, i used force as opposed to skill and there was one notable moment when i was wrestling the skinny guy when he moved on top of me and he was actually holding my neck rather loosely. so i bridged and benchpressed him off me and he sorta flew off cos hes so light.

haha than darren looked at me in shock and said "dont do that! if he held tighter your neck could have snapped." oh yea, guess i almost screwed myself eh?

but really, grappling rewards brains and skill , not strength and so i was throughly owned by the mat, who is slightly taller than jianwei and about his size. thats about 80 plus to 90 kilos of meat and when its on top of you and choking you, theres not much you can do but to tap out and be owned.

like, even though hes big, hes fast (relatively) and he knows where to go and how to lever so fair play to him and bad news for me cos of all the times we engaged (about 3 to 4 times) , each time i died like a pig.

then when darren asked if there were any questions at the end of the lesson, i asked him all sorts of questions haha like my kancheong self and then he told me not to rush it and take it slow.

i mean, yea, i did enjoy this lesson, even though i got owned and the biggest lesson i learnt today was that fighting is like 90 % using your head and 10% using your body. if you ever thought fighters were brain dead killing machines you should revise that opinion right now. genius fighters are on the same level as einstein and two great boxers fighting together are like two ballerinas dancing, except that your dance partner is trying his best to kill you. now thats philosophy, if i ever saw it.

anywae, to address the problem of being owned, theres nothing like good ol fashioned practise. the more i get owned, the better you get (assuming you learn from mistakes) so i am going to join my old coach nik at NTU on fridays to roll around and kick some pads. for like 3 hours or so. anyone want to come? it would be a good workout. from 630 to 930 on fridays. good way to learn grappling for, dare i say it, free as well.

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on the way back from being owned and getting lightheaded and neckache, i saw a troupe of guys an girls on the mrt and their t-shirts said something like

"Le Parkour Singapour"

looks like the yamakasi are in town. never knew that singapore had a parkour troop of its own. i wonder how they practise without dying. we dunt exactly have 2 to 3 story buildings littering the place.

for the uninitiated, le parkour is an urban sport that was invented in france by a certain guy called David Belle.basically, he got bored with his surroundings and so the sport involves using the urban environment as a sort of obstacle course and jumping, flipping and bounding your way through it is the name of the game. add gymnastic flips and somersaults for style points and better effect. rinse, wash, repeat.

pretty exciting stuff and if you are the kind of person that likes a cross between gymnastics, rock climbing and ninjitsu, you might want to check this one out.

remember, you read about it here first.