For a while now, one of Luis’ favorite phrases has been “it’s not FAIR!”. This gets brought out to protest against anything from having to wash his hair to not being allowed to put toast into the video recorder.

But a lot of the time, I have to agree with him - it’s probably not fair. As every parent seems to find themselves saying sooner or later, life’s not fair. It’s full of minor injustices and irritations. So much so, that if you focus on all of them, it’s possible to spend your entire life basically complaining “it’s not fair”. But the trouble is, that becomes incredibly stressful.

In his excellent book On killing, Dave Grossman explains “It is not fear of death and injury from disease or accident but rather acts of personal depredation and domination by our fellow human beings that strike terror and loathing in our hearts”.

“The potential of close-up, inescapable, interpersonal hatred and aggression is more effective and has a greater impact on the morale of the soldier than the presence of inescapable impersonal death and destruction”.

On the one hand, this probably goes some way towards explaining why many people are more worried about the prospect of being attacked by someone else than about the damage they’re busy doing to their own body.

At the same time, it suggests that the most stressful situations we have to deal with are generally not those which arise as a result of accident, illness or acts of god. Most stress in everyday life arises from conflict with another human being. When a setback occurs out of pure bad luck, I’ll shrug my shoulders and get on with sorting it out. When there’s a person causing the trouble, on the other hand, I’ll seethe.

And it doesn’t have to be an earth shattering injustice… even stuff that really isn’t important in the grand scheme of things - a bad driver, or a frustrating conversation with a customer service department - can have a massively disproportional effect on my state of mind.

Sometimes I think we feel like we have to do something in order to prevent the offender “getting away with it”. It’s not the thing itself that’s important, it’s that our sense of justice has been offended - and that can’t be allowed to happen. I know I’ve on occasion devoted far too much time, energy and emotional resources in a (usually fruitless) attempt to set things straight.

So my latest resolution is to strictly ration the things that I’m prepared to get wound up about and save my energy for the ones that actually matter. I’m still finding it difficult to leave well alone sometimes. In fact, I’m half considering carrying some cards printed with ”you’re not important enough to get stressed about”, though I guess that might turn out to be counterproductive…  

A question I get asked a fair bit is “so, who do you want to fight?”. An honest answer right now might be “whoever I can get”. But if I were writing my Christmas list to Santa, here’s who’d be on it.

They’re all women I have bucket loads of respect for as fighters. The first two I’ve met, and they’re also fantastic people. So why do I want to fight them? Because I want to push myself, to see how good I can be. To do that, I need a challenge to rise to. And because I think there’s the potential there for some great fights. Any takers?

Megumi Fujii

In Josh Barnett’s words, Mega Megu ”could be the best fighter, male or female in the world”.

Tara LaRosa

Hard as nails, top ranked 135 lber, but has been known to fight at 125 on occasion. I don’t know whether this is likely to happen, but I do know it would be a damn good fight if it did.

Takayo Hashi

Coming off a recent decision win against Amanda Buckner, Hashi was ranked at #4 in a recent pound-for-pound female ranking.

So there you have it. It isn’t a comprehensive list. There are other fights I’d like, but I’m not sure whether the weight classes would work out… so far I’ve stuck to women I know have fought at or close to 125 lbs in the past. I’m hoping that at least one of these might come together in the not-too-distant-future, but we will just have to see…

I spent the weekend at SENI with my sponsors, PhD Nutrition. They put together this highlight clip of me.

On the whole, it was a great weekend. I got to meet the rest of the PhD team, who are all a great bunch of guys and we had a lot of fun.

I also managed to catch up with lots of people who I’ve not seen in a while, and pick up some nice gear. The BJJ competition was well supported, and it would have been great if there had been more space for spectators since it seemed to generate a lot of interest. It’s a shame that not all the referees seemed quite as keen to watch the action as the people crowding round the barriers, but there you go.

I didn’t get to see a lot of the other things going on, but everyone seemed to be having a good time, especially the Chinese dragons, which were apparently being a bit frisky. And you thought Jack Russells were bad…

OK, I’ll admit it. I can be a teeny bit competitive at times. I hate losing. I hate not being the best at something. I hate tapping, even in training. So shoot me! That’s been giving me some headaches recently, because a lot of my training partners are damn good. Even leaving aside the ones with a sizeable weight advantage, a lot of the time I find myself struggling.

Maybe I’m the only person to feel like this, and you’re all wondering what I’m talking about, but I suspect not. I know there are some enlightened folk who seem serenely unbothered by about such ultimately unimportant things as making a mistake and getting choked in sparring, and I salute them. At the same time, I don’t think competitiveness is necessarily a bad thing. As with certain other things in life, “it’s what you do with it that counts”.

A trap I see a lot of people fall into is the “big fish in a small pond syndrome”. I may even be guilty of it myself now and then, until I catch myself doing it. It’s nice to be the biggest fish around, and an easy way of doing this is to shrink the size of your pond. The easiest way to do this is to surround yourself by people you know you can beat. If I’m being given a hard time by one of my training partners, I could massage my ego by torturing a few white belts. I can decide to only ever play my A-game, and stay away from areas I’m less good at. To ensure that the other fish in the pond don’t get too big, I might try to keep all “my” secrets to myself. I could keep things back from someone I’m coaching… little tricks that might give me an edge. Then with a bit of smoke and a few mirrors, I can convince myself that I’m even bigger than I am, and that my little neighbourhood of pondweed is representative of the whole world. 

The thing about big fish in small ponds though, is that they tend to get eaten pretty quickly if someone takes them and drops them in a larger pond where there’s some real competition.

The only way to get really good is to surround yourself by other big fish. That element of healthy competition drives a competitor to develop and improve in a way that being able to casually annihilate everyone s/he trains with never would. Homo Sapiens evolved in a hostile environment amongst a bunch of other species who wanted to eat us, and may have seemed to have all the obvious advantages… size, speed, strength and really big teeth.

It’s not all about competition though… it’s about collaboration too. What you want is a whole group of big fish together in the same place, all sharing their ideas and growing together. The bigger the other fish get, the more I can learn from them. While it might be hard work keeping up, and tough on the ol’ ego at times, it’s also the perfect environment for getting seriously good.

Now I’m off to bed before I mix any more metaphors…

mmm… ice cream!

Luis was three last week. I can’t believe how time has flown. He’s such an individual - always has been. Anyway, rather than doing my proud parent thing and going on about how he’s the cleverest, cutest, cuddlyest three year old the world has ever known (and definitely the most energetic and best at winding his parents up)…. I’ll just stick some recent pictures up. You’ll find more here.

It’s SNOWING!

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Jammin’

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Yuk! I don’t want to watch mum and dad kissing!

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Can’t I just get some peace and quiet to read my book?

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I want to be a fireman when I grow up

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Or maybe a chef…

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Or perhaps I’ll just play about in the gym like mum and dad!

I cornered my first fight on Saturday. Sure, I’ve been ringside with a few of our guys on occasion, but this was the first time I’ve been let loose on my own with a fighter. Originally Karl wasn’t going to be able to make it, so I jumped at the chance to get some experience. In the end, he did go, but it was agreed that I should still work the corner with Gaz, and he’d take a back seat and observe.

I’ve always known that cornering a fighter, done properly, is an art in itself. I’ve been lucky enough to have an excellent coach myself, and I know how much he puts into it. But until I did it for myself, I don’t think I realised just how challenging the job is.

As a fighter, I have a relatively straightforward job to do. It’s never easy - but the only thing to focus on is getting in there and doing what I do every day of the week in the gym. I can just let the adrenaline wash over me, safe in the knowledge that someone else is taking care of all the details.  

In the corner, on the other hand, I still have the adrenaline to deal with. I’m nervous for the guy who’s in there (also a first timer). I’m wondering whether I’ve got everything right, whether there’s anything I’ve missed, how long we’ve got to go, double checking we’ve got everything - water, gumshield, vaseline, stopwatch, shit where’s that tape for the gloves gone? - whether I’ve got his warm-up right - I don’t want to burn him out, but neither can I afford to make the all too common mistake of sending him in cold.

At the same time, I have to give the impression of being calm, and having everything together and projecting confidence. I can’t let my own anxiety show in front of my fighter. I need him to trust me, even when I’m doubting myself. I’m sure there are people who would argue that I shouldn’t be doubting myself, that I should just be supremely confident that I’m doing a good job. My experience tells me though that that’s when I’m most likely to screw up. The self doubt is what keeps me alert, motivated, always looking for something I can improve or a better way to do things.

Our sponsors, PhD nutrition have a tagline which says “demand perfection”. This fits Karl down to the ground. When working with his fighters, he’ll pick up on every little detail. Any mistakes, however minor, and he’ll pull you on it. Because, as he says, it could be the one thing that gets you caught when you’re in there.

With my coaching, he’s no less demanding. Both in the build up to the fight, and at the event itself, every so often he’ll pull me to one side and ask “have you done…?” or “be careful of that, because….” or “what fight are they on? do you know how long he’s got?” just to check if I’m on the ball. The message is clear - doing an ok job just isn’t good enough. It’s got to be right. His perfectionism is contagious, and it keeps me on my toes in just the right way, and I know that if nothing else, I’m learning from one of the best.

I have another guy from the gym with me, Griff, who’s doing a great job of running around, working the warm up with Gaz and generally helping me out. He’s a team mate and regular training partner of mine, and I worry that I’m coming across as a bit rude as I send him off on yet another errand. He’s great about it, though, and I know I’d have been struggling a lot more without him there.

Walking out to the ring, I feel nervous in a way that I usually only get when I’m fighting. For a brief moment, I wish the responsibility belonged to someone else, as I pray that everything goes to plan. I’ve done everything I can, and now it’s down to Gaz to do his thing. As it happens, it’s over quickly as he chokes his opponent in under two minutes of the first round. A great first fight for each of us. It’s a fantastic feeling, I’m so proud of him… and just glad that I could be a part of that.

Yesterday, I was tired, sore and had a headache all day. Basically, I was in caffine withdrawal. It’s my own fault.

Last week I was tired and struggling to get through training so a few days in a row, I found myself using PhD’s “wired” before the session. That not only has caffine in, but also a bunch of other stimulants - taurine, tyrosine, and some other good stuff. Trouble is, it always makes me feel invincible. I might start out the session feeling lethargic and apathetic but by twenty minutes in, I think I can do anything. Kettlebells? Pah, give me the 20kgs. I’ll show the lot of you.  

Of course, it never seems like such a good idea the next morning when Luis is bouncing up and down on my bed at 7am and I’m feeling like i’ve been repeatedly rolled down a hill in a barrel. Then of course, I have to take a load more of the stuff just to get through that day’s training. Repeat several times, then cap it all off with three days studying osteopathy in Oxford which - between the driving, the early starts and the lectures - usually involves several bucketfuls of coffee.

The trouble is, using stimulants amounts to borrowing from the future. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, and the way the human brain is wired, these things tend to balance out over time. Any drug that gives you a high also comes with a corresponding low.

I could just carry on using them. That would make me feel better right now, for sure. But when you do that, it’s like living off your credit cards. You don’t have any more money, you just end up paying a lot of interest.

Caffine is a potent drug. It’s easy to forget that, because so many people use it routinely and become tolerant to it. Used sparingly, though, it’s great for getting through a tough few days, when I need a kick start, or even (within drug testing limits) for competition.

The difficult bit is remembering to pay the borrowing back. After a few days of overdoing it, I have to force myself come off the caffine, and get some real honest rest to get body and mind back to normal. I spent most of the afternoon curled up asleep in a corner of the gym yesterday. With that, and ten hours sleep last night, I feel half human again. Which is about as close as I get…  

I dislocated a toe a few weeks ago. I was just grappling, going for a guard retrieval when I got my foot caught and heard something snap. Didn’t hurt at all, until I looked at it and my toe was sticking out at an angle that toes aren’t supposed to stick out at. I just lay on my back and looked at it for a minute, while everyone else went “urgh!”. Karl put it back in for me, and THEN it really started hurting.

It’s not the worst I’ve seen. I know a couple of instances where people have practically torn their big toe off by getting it caught in gaps in the mat - now they were nasty. It’s not even a particularly important toe - just one of those ones in the middle that are there to make up the numbers. But it’s bloody annoying just the same. It’s amazing how a little thing like that can get in the way of just about every aspect of training.

Fingers and toes are a grappler’s nightmare. Judoka and gi-BJJ players often seem to have hands or feet that are mostly held together by tape. Wrestling boots can prevent injury, but a lot of  grapplers (including me) dislike wearing them because of the loss of sensitivity.

From a sports therapist’s point of view, fingers and toes pose a tricky problem too. Because of the limited blood flow to the area, they can stay swollen and painful for a long time. Not much thought is generally given to rehabilitating a damaged toe, but left to itself it may remain painful and stiff, sometimes for years. When it comes to treating injuries, I learn most from personal experience. I think knowing how something feels first hand, and having worked on my own injuries gives an edge that you can’t get from books, courses, or even working on other people.  So this gave me a good opportunity to give some thought to what is often a neglected area.

So, here’s what I’m doing with mine. Some things just take time, but it’s usually possible to give them a nudge in the right direction.

Immediately after the injury: 

• RICE - rest, ice, compression, elevation. In particular, get ice on it in the first few minutes after the accident to reduce the swelling in the area. Keep icing it every few hours for the first 2-3 days.
• Strap it up to protect it initially, but don’t leave it strapped up. Every few hours, take all the strapping off and give the toe a gentle stretch to maintain range of movement.   

During the healing process (after 72 hours):

• Contrast bathing - alternating ice pack with warm water to increase blood flow to the area. This is one of the best ways to speed up healing in a damaged extremity.
• Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize - make sure you keep things moving gently.
• Dont’ leave it taped up if you don’t need to. One of the most common mistakes with an injured digit is to leave tape on constantly. This allows the scar tissue to stiffen up and you may lose range of movement.  (Of course, if it is fractured then you may have to immobilize it for protection. But that’s a different story). If you are going to tape it to protect it while training, then make sure you take the tape off when you finish to allow it to move normally.
• Anti-inflammatories. It’s important to be careful with these, as the potential side-effects can be very nasty indeed. Not being a medical doctor, I also can’t advise anyone else to take them. But that said, they can be damn good at getting a finger or toe that looks like a balloon back down to a sensible size.
• Ice after training, to take care of any excessive inflammation that may have been triggered off, and to reduce soreness the next day.
• Protection - look at methods of taping, or consider wearing wrestling boots.
• Rehabilitation - treat it like any other joint. Once the inflammation subsides, start working the muscles around the joint. With a finger or toe, start with gentle flexion / extension movements, at first with no resistance, and then just against a small amount of pressure.

So, in the last two weeks I’ve broken my mobile phone, and hastily replaced it with a new one that I hate; had my beloved satnav randomly die on me; had someone break into my house, smashing a window and stealing my new laptop that I’d just painstakingly finished setting up, and had in it the software and data cable for the new phone….. Then yesterday, I managed to fry my external hard drive by plugging it into the wrong charger. Oh, and my shower has somehow started leaking through the ceiling downstairs.

I think the universe is trying to tell me something, but I’m not sure what because my celestial wi-fi is down.

Thank God (or another deity of your choice) for insurance and guarantees, but the various telephone “helplines” that you have to go through to get hold of it are definitely the work of him downstairs.  

Some are better than others, it has to be said. PC World have been pretty helpful - as you’d expect, considering I’ve paid them for two identical laptops in as many weeks - and even made a token attempt at sorting out my hard drive problem. They failed, and told me I’d have to come back in a week when their data retrieval guy is back from holiday, but they took long enough to come to this conclusion that I had plenty of time to buy several other items from them.

Orange, on the other hand, are* *in my opinion; metaphorically speaking; exceptions apply; time spent reading this is non-refundable and subject to 18 month contract a bunch of theiving, lying, incompetent bastards. LG Phones were even worse, not even managing to convey the impression that they were trying to help. They must recruit the most characteristically unhelpful people they can find, and then give them extra training in how to be deliberately obstructive. Just mastering that tone of voice that so exquisitely combines forced politeness with boredom and scarcely concealed contempt must take many months of work. “How many customers did you offend today?” “Thirty-seven. It would have been thirty-eight, but I slipped up one time and accidentally said something useful. Won’t happen again, boss.” “Good stuff. Keep it up and we’ll be looking at you for a promotion”.  

Currys digital were ok, on the whole. TomTom I’ve been impressed with, so far. My own insurance brokers convey the impression of really trying hard to do their best for me, while remorsefully blaming anything they can’t do on “The Insurers”. The police have been sympathetic, but slow and bureaucratic. The double glazing company were almost falling over themselves to be helpful - and why not? They get a nice reliable job, with probably a bit of exaggeration on how much work actually needs doing, but they can bill the insurance company directly so nobody really cares.  

And so on and so on. Naturally, a pattern emerges. People are most helpful when you’re either giving them money, or there’s a strong possibility that you might give them more money in the future. Once you’ve signed up for an eighteen month phone contract, though, the network doesn’t care about being nice to you, because you can’t go anywhere for a good long while, and most people have short memories. You can almost hear them sniggering behind their hands and going “ha ha, so what are you going to do about it then? Loser.”

The silver lining in all this though, is that although my life is absolute chaos at the moment, I’m now motivated by necessity to do something about it. Eventually, I should have a nice, streamlined system for all my electronics, data, files, organizers and various bits and bobs. My usual MO is to have a hastily cobbled together collection of incompatible devices and software that never seems to be able to do quite what I want it to. I’ve often envied people who seem to have everything set up so that it’s nice and easy to use, and they don’t have to spend half their lives wrestling with technology. Maybe when I’ve sorted this all out I’ll be one of them. Hey, I can dream….

I looked out of the window this morning to find that everything was white. There’s nothing quite like snow to turn me right back into a big kid again. However hard I try to be grown up and cynical (”Oh, it’s snowing. What a dreadful inconvenience”) there’s something about it that makes me want to run outside, build a snowman and throw snowballs at random passers by.

It was also Luis’ first proper experience of real live snow. He’s read lots of stories about it, and seen little bits, but never more than a few muddy lumps of it here and there. When he looked out of the window and saw it this morning, he spent about five minutes just staring at it in wonder and amazement. And then bouncing up and down on the bed excitedly.

It was all gone by lunchtime, but not before Luis got to throw some snowballs at mum and dad and have a go at building a snowman “like the boy in the video”. And then home for the old easter tradition of making oneself sick by eating too much chocolate.