GRAPPLING COMPETITION WRITE UP: STEPPING UP TO WHITE BELT

Once again, I found myself bringing home some hardware from a grappling competition, despite the fact that I haven’t trained grappling in around 18 years and the last time I grappled was…the last time I won a competition, which was back in Dec.  Since that last one was a novice competition, I felt it was right for me to “step up” to the level of white belt, which sounds funny, but when you technically don’t hold ANY sort of rank in any grappling martial art, white belt is definitely the “next level”.  Additionally, my previous competition was as a “Masters” athlete, which was technically already me playing with the younger crowd (at 38, I’m a Masters II), but there were NO geezers to be found this day, so I ended up competing in the 18+ category.  This was a fairly exciting development for me: I’d REALLY have a chance to test myself.  I managed to walk away with 3rd place out of 4 competitors, losing my first match and winning my second, and I got to learn some more and push myself, which was really my goal. With that, allow me to discuss how I got here.

I can't tell if my face or my shorts are the most wrinkled parts of this photo

 

BACKGROUND AND TRAINING

 

A barbarian explaining to a fighter how training is a form of cheating

Once again, I signed up for this competition completely on a whim.  I was (and actually still am) training for a strongman competition at the time when this showed up in my e-mail as an opportunity, and I figured that the kind of strength and conditioning that would support strongman should play well into grappling again.  Last time I grappled, I was following “Chaos is the Plan”, and this time I was STILL doing my own approach to training, which I had titled “Phyrexian Dreadnought”, which, yes, IS the name of a card from “Magic the Gathering” and I’m totally ok with that.  I may do a write up of that sometime, but it was a multi-phased competition prep approach with an early emphasis on conditioning, middle emphasis on generate strength, and later phases focused on strongman comp specific stuff.  I did some sort of lifting 3 days a week (MWF), limiting the mainwork to 30 minutes and doing whatever I needed for assistance work afterwards, and would then include 1 day of weighted vest walking and 1 day of events type work (carries, prowler and throws).  I’d do 1 set of ROM progression pulls on Saturday, and either get in long walks on Sat and Sun or get in some sort of short intense conditioning.  The strongman competition I was training for was scheduled for Jul, and ended up getting canceled, with me signing up for another one in Sep (14 Sep: look for that write up) that had very similar events…so I just kept on training.

 

Probably the thing I did in this training that was closest to grappling applicable was max distance 200lb sandbag carries.  If I could mandhandle that bag, I could handle a human no issues.  Especially since I was going to be competing in the 171-185lb class.  I had just come off a run of DoggCrapp prior to all of this, and was walking around at 185 on my heaviest days, but averaging about 182.  But, getting into MORE stupid details here, these were post workout weights rather than first thing in the morning weights, and given how hot my garage gets, I knew I was losing a lot of sweat before the weigh ins…so I had a priority for this training cycle to drop my bodyweight a touch so that I’d have no issue making the 185 class for the grappling comp and the 181 class for the strongman comp.  What was awesome about this was, it meant I got to spend the week of the competition eating UP to gain weight.  Anyone who has ever done a combat sport realizes what an inside boon that is, compared to starving yourself and sweating out all your water to make weight.  I got to feel STRONG.

 

Dropping the weight was no issue whatsoever: took a break from Feast/Famine/Ferocity and instead went back to Apex Predator, which has always been awesome for getting stupidly lean.   And that’s exactly what happened, which was kind of nice for the summer: I started walking around at 175, had all my abs in, veins popping out, etc.  BUT, unlike last summer, I managed to hold onto a fair bit of strength for my squats and deadlifts, actually watching both of those grow with a combination of Zeno squats and DoggCrapp stuff for the squat and ROM progression pulls for the deadlifts.  My press strength dipped a bit, as is what tends to happen with my bodyweight, but I was able to hold on as much as I could.  This boded well for my goals of being competitive in grappling, considering I had no skills to bring to the fight, so all I could rely on what strength and conditioning.

 

MORNING OF

 

Folger's is for chumps: wake up to THIS!

I more than made my weight class goals, wake up and seeing 80.6kg on the scale (for some reason, my bathroom scale has defaulted to metric and I can’t reset it), so I engaged in my traditional pre-comp breakfast of “steak and eggs”, but REALLY turned it up a notch: 4 pastured eggs, a sirloin cap from Costco, a grassfed New York Strip from piedmontese, all swimming in grassfed ghee.  I LOVE this fuel for comp, because it doesn’t sit heavy in my guts, doesn’t slosh, and gives me VERY stable and sustainable energy compared to a bunch of carbs.  Plus, I just feel like a goddamn warrior eating like this.  It’s what Conan would eat before battle…although really, it would be ribs, so you can eat the meat off the bone.

 

It was a 45 minute drive out to the location, during which time I had my morning drink of 12oz of green tea mixed with 20oz of hot water (straight tea upsets my guts a little) and some electrolytes.  I bring that up to demonstrate how fully hydrated I was when I weighed in at 183.0 WITH a full set of sweats.  And since I’m an old man, that full set included compression shorts, then some Cerberus strongman shorts, and THEN my “Sprawl” fight shorts from 2005, because I wanted to REALLY show my age.

 

I only needed to wait about 45 minutes for my first match.  Timing was perfect.  I rolled around on the mat a little to loosen up beforehand, but otherwise had no real warm up.

 

MATCH 1: BLINK AND YOU’LL MISS IT

 

The first dude I got matched up against was a 22 year old that seemed to tower over me.  I knew this dude cut some weight to make 185.  We shook hands, engaged, felt each other out, and I could tell he was a strong kid, which meant that my strategy of outmuscling him was going to be tough.  Thankfully, skill made this a non-issue, as he quickly took me down and got my back, at which point all my wrestling instincts kicked in, I established a great 4 point base…which he immediately recognized and slapped a rear-naked choke on me.  He sunk it in DEEP and I tapped quickly.  The force of the choke was so strong that my jaw STILL hurts 4 days later as I write this.  I take solace in the fact that this dude went on to win our division.  Looking back, I lost my first match on my last competition for something of a similar reason: I need a “break-in” to remember how to grapple.  In this case, I was afforded about 28 seconds to do that.  I COULD have fought that choke a bit smarter, or scrambled better once I hit the floor, but this was a lot of rust showing up.

 

MATCH 2: GOING THE DISTANCE

 

I KNEW that I needed to win A match if I wanted to bring home hardware, since there were 4 competitors today. I didn’t actually get to see the other dude’s match, despite looking for him, as I was hoping to learn SOMETHING about his game before we rolled. But, as soon as I approached him, I looked at him and thought “lunch”. Once again, it’s kinda cool that my killer instinct is actually coming out to play these days, because in my 20s I was too much a “nice guy” and really missed out on a lot of possible Ws.

 

We felt each other out at the start and I quickly realized that I was much stronger than this guy, so I played that to my advantage and broke him down standing as much as I could: fighting off his underhooks, getting better positioning, dragging him where he didn’t want to go. I tried some more aggressive takedowns, and even felt the instinct to go for a double leg at one point, but instead I ended up on my knees with him attempting to get my back. I managed to prevent that and get him onto his back…and that’s where most of the match went.

I am pleased at how I was able to impose my will on him the entire time. He never got to have a say in where we were, what we were doing, or how we were doing it. Occasionally, he’d keep a guard longer than I’d like, or roll out of something, but that was about it. My conditioning was even better than last time, and his was significantly worse than anyone else, so I could feel his strength fading and it just got me to keep pushing even harder.

 

However, it was also blatantly apparent how undangerous I was. I kept going for the handful of subs I knew and none of them landed. I equated it to being like a Terminator robot who never got the combat programming uploaded into their CPU: I was relentless and unstoppable…and ineffective.

I keep my promises

 

BUT, the advantage of that is, when the timer ran out, overtime decision gets to go to the aggressor of the match, and there was no question that it was me. In overtime, both competitors get a chance to escape from the other competitor while they try to submit. I knew the other guy was exhausted, so I chose to be on defense first, knowing I could escape from him. He DID try to get in a choke, but in 22 seconds, I was out.

 

From here, I knew that all I needed to do was hold onto the dude and squeeze the sh*t out of him so that he couldn’t escape in 22 seconds, and that’s exactly what I did. His conditioning fell apart and he had no strength to deal with me, and eventually time ran out for him and I walked away with the win.

 

Some of the things I pulled off that I’m happy with: I actually employed some of my old wrestling tricks here, specifically the cross-face cradle. That was my go to in high school, and it still works to get positioning. I also was fighting for subs the ENTIRE time, up until the last second…to include what I’m pretty sure was a backwards set up for a triangle choke. I also was pretty creative in applying pressure from the top and just plain making the other dude uncomfortable. And again: I’m VERY pleased with how my conditioning held up. I actually felt better this time compared to last, where I was MORE focused on conditioning training. I’m thinking taking this week a little lighter in training may have helped.

 

THE FUTURE

 

At least it would make a good training block

I have that strongman competition coming up on 14 Sep, and I’ve already signed up for another grappling competition on 8 Dec, which is even closer to home for me, so that’s cool.  After the strongman comp, I may keep leaning out for 2 more weeks before jumping on the gain train, because I am tired of not eating, and my birth month is October, followed by Thanksgiving, Christmas and another Disney Cruise, so it’s going to be a GOOD time to gain.  I also suppose I DO have a Tang Soo Do tournament coming up in early Oct, but those are really just for funsies.

 

Even while gaining, I’m not worried about missing the 185 class for that comp on 8 Dec.  I MAY even try to get in some open mat time at a local grappling school between then and now…but at this point, training feels like cheating.