Fashion Hel(l)p!

Help!

No gi classes have started and I’m in fashion hell. The gi was great. I knew exactly what to wear. But this no gi thing. Ack.

First there’s the pants problem. All the sports shorts I have are too short. They’ll show the curve of my butt cheek as soon as I hit the mat. I have resorted to a couple of old bicycle-style shorts circa 1990. They function well. They don’t ride up. I don’t mind sweating in them because they’re ancient, er, vintage. Apparently they came back in style two years ago ("work, 'em, ladies 'n' gents"!). It seems like that problem is solved. But then you get to the shirt.

If it’s hot, I’d prefer to wear a tank top (sports bra underneath). But when I put on the tank with the bike shorts, I don’t know. . . . I feel too . . . curvy to be getting all hot-and-sweaty grapply with the guys. The gi covered everything and hid my womanhood. (I suppose this is why some people favor uniforms, at school or other places. People can focus on the work instead of the clothes and what’s showing or not. Oh, please, bring back my jiu jitsu uniform! If only it weren’t so goddamned hot!)

In a rare show of modesty, I have resorted to the bike shorts and a handful of tees that have met certain rigorous Shark Girl standards:

1) not too heavyweight;

2) not too large for Shark Girl’s dainty frame;

3) not too stretchy for jiu jitsu.

That’s about three shirts. I suppose I can live with that for now. But in a few weeks I’m going to need some more rotation.

I’ve been trolling on-line for rash guards and shorts. First off, all the rash guards have brand names on them. I can’t do brand names across my chest. (That’s a pet peeve I’ll save for another day.) Second, how about some style? Only two stores seemed to have rashies with style, and all of them were upwards of $50 each. Then I found some cute, fitted, longer yoga shorts that I thought might work well. Again, upwards of $50. If I am going to buy something new, I want it cute, comfortable, and functional. But I also don’t want to feel guilty sweating in it because it cost me half a week’s salary. I do not want to compromise my sons’ Harvard* educations because Mommy had to get the cool jiu jitsu duds. Is that too much for a Shark Girl to ask?

So here’s where you all come in. I know this is a fashion-forward crowd. What do you no gi in?

Much Love,

Shark Girl

*or Yale; I’m not one of those fussy parents.  

My Game is Like the Pythagorean Theorem?

Today I was feeling “The Gentle Art.” I’ve recently discussed at length how I feel (sucky) about being muscled in BJJ. And how perhaps I should be flattered that some big, strong dudes feel adequately threatened by me that they must resort to muscle to contain me.

Shaquille O’Neal once described his game as “ . . . the Pythagorean theorem . .  . there is no answer.” Although there actually is an answer (C^2, dude), musclers make me feel my game is like Shaq’s, and since they can’t come up with C², their only recourse is muscling. If you’ve forgotten your high school geometry, here’s Arnold Schwarzenegger to remind you. 

Actually, if I’m being honest, musclers don’t make me feel good about my game, they make me feel sucky, as I’ve said before, just a few lines ago. But I’m trying to convince myself otherwise. Muscling makes me feel like all my hard work is meaningless. That why the frig am I bothering to roll with them? This is no “Gentle Art.”

But . . . sometimes when I roll, mostly with purple belts and above, I feel the Gentle Art. The movements can be so beautiful and graceful. It’s like dancing. Like my partner is saying, “Here, let me put you down on this mat. Oh, would you mind terribly if I stopped the flow of blood to your head?” Of course, I’m triangled before I can blink. But the beauty and grace is stunning.

I imagine Pythagoras saw the same beauty and grace in his triangles when he realized the connection between their sides. Roughness and brutishness are the domains of the novice; there is art in everything when taken to a certain level.

Estrogen-Induced Injury

   

[Warning: This post talks about “women’s issues” and contains links to scholarly research and potentially heretical satire. Read at your own risk.]

Have you ever had an estrogen induced injury? Well Shark Girl has. I wouldn't have known it was estrogen-induced if I had not gone to my parents’ house this past weekend and read the month-old copy of Women’s World that I found in my old room. Yes, my old room has been invaded by outdated Old Lady Magazines.

Shark Girl Reads

            I was browsing through these OLMs in order to drift off into peaceful sleep. A headline caught my attention: Baby Your Joints! Among gems like, “Raise your seat higher so you put less stress on your knees while standing up,” Shark Girl read something like, “Be careful with your joints before your period—estrogen levels spike making them more vulnerable to injury.” The target audience for this magazine must be a little younger than I thought.

Shark Girl Gets Hurt : (

            The next morning, I was passing guard. I grabbed my partner’s gi with my left hand, four fingers under, thumb up. It was a secure grab, but I didn’t put weight on my thumb. Suddenly, I heard or felt (I can’t remember which) a pop. My thumb ached and I called time. I briefly inspected my thumb. No blood. No acute pain. Fine mobility. There were only a few seconds left in the roll so I did what any good Shark Girl would do. I finished the roll (protecting my thumb, of course). I left with an ice pack and sucked down some ibuprofen. I even stopped in to see an old high school friend on the way home.

Shark Girl Connects the Dots

            I’ve been pregnant twice. Pregnant ladies have lots of estrogen. Pregnant women also have notoriously lax ligaments. Some people think this is because stretchy ligaments help the ladies deliver large-headed babies through seemingly impossible structural drawbacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . This accident came on without warning. No pain indicating overextension. Nothing. It was a puzzler. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . .Was I surging with estrogen? Was I pre-periodal? I stopped keeping track a long time ago. This recently contributed to a pregnancy scare that I would have called the Vatican on. The headlines would have read New Savior Conceived by Shark Girl. In the end, I was just too busy working, raising kids, volunteering for professional organizations, and kicking some jiu-jitsu ass to even realize my period had come and gone . . . twice.

Shark Girl Takes it to the MD

            I know, I know, you are all worried about my poor thumb right now. Sleep tight, I took good care of it. I made a homemade splint out of medical tape and a Popsicle stick. I wore it around for a couple of days (because it looked totally cool) before taking it to the professionals. Nothing showed up on the x-ray. Dr. Ortho thinks I sprained the ligament. The sprain is in a weird place—the first joint down from the nail and on the side of the finger. He gave me four to six weeks for recovery and said my homemade splint was “overkill.” He said if I felt uncomfortable leaving it unprotected, I could just wrap some Coban around it. And, like a good Shark Girl I said, “Is there anything I should wear for jiu jitsu?” I got a nice splint and a funny look.

Apparently Shark Girl needs to get injured to know when the dot is coming.

Oh, and Estrogen-Induced Injuries are for reals.

When I am an Old Woman I Shall Practice Jiu Jitsu

We seem to want to understand our world in binary terms—on/off; heads/tails; good/bad. Although binaries look like opposites, lately I’ve been reflecting on their similarities. If a switch is on, current is flowing. If it is off, current is not flowing. Both describe the state of the current, the state of the appliance. Heads and tails are sides of a coin, and a coin can’t have one without the other. Whether something is good or bad relates to the level of detriment or benefit received from it. As I sit on the grass at my son’s baseball game, I ponder this because it’s way more exciting than the game. That should tell you what a yawn-fest it is watching 9-year olds get walked for two hours.

Binary thinking assumes we can quantify something, that there is no in between. What if it’s neither “good” nor “bad”? What if it’s good  for one person, but bad for another? When we can’t select an option from the drop-down box, what do we do? Check the appropriate box, goddamn-it, or you can’t go to the next page! Our post-modern society often forces us to ignore the complexity of the world and of life.

            I see binary thinking in education. There is more pressure every day for teachers to ask students to check the right box. For a complex task, the answer isn’t necessarily A or B. The student makes a judgment and comes up with a solution. The teacher might anticipate their answer, but it could also be totally original. In a complex task, teacher judgment assesses whether the student was successful.

            Teachers receive soft, but consistent, pressure from parents, students, and administrators to steer away from complex tasks because teacher judgment is continually challenged by students and parents. Teacher judgment is called subjective—and it is, absolutely. Any judgment call is. It’s easier to give a multiple choice question where the answer is right or wrong. No one will question that 2 + 2 is 4. When teachers give a complex task, we sometimes design “fail-proof” rubrics with quantitative rather than qualitative descriptors (e.g., “Has three sources” instead of “Has adequate sources to support research”). No one can accuse us of dreaded subjectivity when, instead of looking for quality, we look for quantity.

            I see binary thinking in the reactions people give when they learn I practice jiu jitsu. “Isn’t that for men?” “You fight? Like UFC?” Jiu jitsu isn’t masculine or feminine—it is jiu jitsu. And I love jiu jitsu because it’s not binary. In jiu jitsu, to make things work well you need pushing and pulling. A push is just a pull, but away from you. Force in the opposite direction. If you don’t have your opponent in the limbo of the push-pull, you will not get the sweep. Notice it is not the push or the pull, but a combination, a meeting in the middle, that gets the job done.

Binary is great for a computer. Not so good for humans. Real life is not black or white—it is black, white, and all the colors in between. So, yes, I’m a (rather old) woman and I practice jiu jitsu. It’s part of the color of my life.

A Kick in the Teeth

The other night I got a kick in the teeth. A couple weeks ago I was dropped on my head. I wouldn’t care too much but afterward, I had to stop sparring. For one I was afraid I had a concussion. For the other, images of a toothless smile were popping into my head. At the end of the month I have an appointment with my dentist for a custom mouth guard. It would be my luck to lose a tooth before then.

            Both of these incidents happened with the same person—a new white belt, about two to three months in. The first time, he lost his balance. It was balance the second time, too. His foot slipped and—crack!—met my tooth. I’m starting to think I shouldn’t roll with him anymore.

            Although he might be a newbie spaz (And really, who isn’t? Certainly not Shark Girl), he has not had similar “accidents” with the other guys. This leads me to believe that I am special. Of course, he felt bad afterward—both times. No one wants to be That Big Guy That Hurts the Tiny Girl in class. But you know what newbie dudes want to be even less? That Guy That Got His Ass Handed to Him by a Hundred Pound Old Lady. That’s what I figure.

I suppose I should be flattered. Does he think if he’s not careful I could school him with my nasty jiu jitsu skills? In situations when my Magic Reguard is about to activate, he desperately flails and loses balance, leaving me as collateral damage. Is he just a newbie spaz?

Ladies, how do you deal with these situations? Guys, help me out here. Is he worried about his manhood? Or are we just a couple of newbie spazzes and this is how we roll?

Much Love,

Shark Girl

Happy Birthday to Me

Shark Girl is officially one year older. One year further into the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages are what drove me to jiu jitsu.

I’m in the stage of life Erik Erikson called Number 7. My time is spent caring for others. During the day I teach the young people. I come home and wipe noses and bottoms, feed and care for my two precious children. (Until recently, 21-Year-Old Cat was among the cared-for in my home. We had to let her go last weekend. RIP.) I spend most of my time worrying about the generation(s) that come after me—being generative. Erikson says that if we are not generative enough, we stagnate and feel no sense of purpose in life. However, if we are too generative, we overextend and lose our sense of self. This is the stage where we can experience the dreaded mid-life crisis.

This is why I started jiu jitsu. I was way too generative. I felt a personal stagnation. Living in suburbia, I feel tremendous pressure to live life through my kids. To sign them up for activities and cart them to classes. To attend school functions and communicate with teachers. To arrange play dates and relay anecdotes that show how charming/smart/perceptive my children are. To sock away money in a 529, to measure my worth in the achievements of my kids. This is a mid-life crisis: to realize that life is half gone and we can either embrace it or let it pass us by as we ride in the slow lane behind a minivan headed for soccer practice.

I love my kids. I am proud of their achievements. However, I am not setting a good example for my kids if I show them that my adult life is meaningless. How can I instill a love of learning in them if I do not continue to stretch my own boundaries?

I was afraid to start BJJ. Twenty years ago, that fear would have kept me from it. As a 41-year old I recognize that this is the fear we experience when we are about to encounter something so foreign, so new to us, that it could challenge and change the way we look at the world. Albert Camus would say this fear makes us “porous,” or completely open to learning.

I read over my Suburban Mom Handbook. There’s plenty in there on packing lunches and picking pre-schools. There’s nothing in there about kicking ass. Jiu jitsu has both challenged and changed me in the short few months that I have practiced it. If this is what the Middle Ages is going to be like, then I say, “Bring it on!” Just hold the chastity belt.

The Stranger Between My Legs*

 Before starting BJJ, many women worry about having a strange man between their legs. Will it feel awkward? Will it feel sexy? Will he get aroused? How can a nice girl put herself in that position with so many different men on one night? And then do it over and over again?

When I tell other people I practice BJJ, the first thing they ask is, “What’s that?” When they find out, they usually screw their face up into a twisted knot. You do what? With whom? Where? It’s like I said that I eat newborn kittens for breakfast. For some reason, putting men between your legs in order to control their bodies and lock their joints is not as socially acceptable as one might think.

I’m not normally shy about my body. Never really was. I’m no exhibitionist, but as a long-time exerciser, I have learned to feel comfortable with the parts I have, to see them as tools. I have two arms, two legs, like most people. I use them to run and cook and do all sorts of neat stuff. I didn’t think I’d have trouble adjusting to The Stranger Between My Legs. But I knew there would be an adjustment period, and worried about how the men would adjust, too.

I looked to the Internet to help me feel more comfortable with this potential awkwardness. In my search, I found this great on-line community of femme fatales. Three bloggers in particular helped me work through this. Leslie helped me feel comfortable being a woman in jiu jitsu. Georgette helped me see that a woman could appreciate the sport. Slideyfoot showed me that guys get over it. They roll with women and take them seriously.

Armed with this assurance, I dove into BJJ. And guess what? For the most part, no awkwardness. In fact, I am surprised at how completely The Stranger Between My Legs becomes just a sparring partner. It’s the closeness of grappling. We are so close to each other’s bodies that our partner’s body feels like an extension of our own.

Sometimes we don’t talk to each other, we just use our bodies. For example, you’re in the heat of grappling, and you get too close to the wall. Does your partner say, “Hey, you’re gonna crack your head. Let’s move!”? Or does he just drag you by the feet away from the wall? When you’re repping a move and you need your partner in your guard, do you say for the 10^th time, “Would you please get in my guard?” Or do you just grab him with your legs and pull him toward you? These are very intimate movements. How quickly our bodies become familiar tools to our partners. How fast is the transition from Stranger to Partner. Socially acceptable? I don’t know. But it sure is a lot of fun.

***

I got some great rolling tonight with another white belt. He’s on the small side so my sweeps actually have a chance of working. Our skill levels are about the same so it’s a real challenge and I actually have a chance of submitting. The New Girls came again. Everything worked out fine. There were only two of them so they partnered up. 

* Wish I could take credit for this phrase, but it's all Georgette. Thanks, gal!