Are my comrades watching the BJJ slop on YouTube? B-Team Jiu Jitsu is streaming the CJI invitational which is submission grappling for millions of dollars.

The UFC is a fair bit different than the grappling than I do and is worthy of its own considerations. The idea that the person who’s “supposed” to win (with the big important belt and their big important job) isn’t necessarily the person who does is a parallel theme that helped me fall in love with combat sports in the first place. But you don’t have to compete which was the focus of FitAoL, there is plenty of space to be filled outside of winners and losers. I would wax poetic about the meaning of judo and jiu jitsu for hours if you wanted it.

I felt a wave of relief feeling like I now have an answer to the general malaise that I’ve been plagued by lately.

I think it’s entirely plausible that they weren’t being obtuse. It’s hard to interrupt a conversation with words. Also, especially in a work environment, the lull in the conversation might be coupled with people taking a breath, dissociating, and thinking about some task looming over them.

You know how it’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it? Body language and the like? If people are having a conversation that I need to break into to ask something, I’d make sure that it’s something that’s jovial or at least less pressing than my problem and physically be seen and touch their shoulder to get their attention. I’d straight up think of interruption as a melee skill as opposed to a magic spell like speaking over them. If not physical touch, I’d take my elbow at least 5cm away from my ribs and wave my hand.

I think it’s a quirk of feeling ignored that makes you so receptive to others who want to be heard. It’s like how broken people smile the hardest.

Subspace is that light floaty feeling caused by the endorphins and adrenaline that we induce through play and intense situations. The main cause of sub drop is the physical and emotional reaction to the withdrawal of those hormones. It can make you feel depressed, sad, frustrated and bring on flu-like symptoms. The real range of symptoms is vast and personal. While most of it is physical in nature, there are emotional side effects as well. In this article, we’ll try to cover the physical as well as the emotional struggle we can put ourselves through recovering from play.[1]

If adrenaline and endorphin pump through the body to make you feel good, why does sub drop happen?

When your play session ends, those chemicals sometimes quickly leave your body. What was once a euphoric perfect experience can suddenly feel painful and embarrassing – even if it didn’t feel that way at the time. This moment where the chemicals are no longer working for you, and you’re left to your own negative emotions is when sub drop kicks in. [2]

We get a high from the interaction, the intense intimacy, the flood of fun all-natural drugs… but there’s a teensy eensy problem with it. See, on a normal day your body is dripping those chemicals out at a super low rate, and you may get small dumps during exercise (yay!), but during a scene it can flood you with them and your body/brain can only replace them at the normal rate. There’s no magical way to speed up the creation of all those happy chemicals, and it takes time to rebuild your store of them. If you’ve used a LOT of those chemicals, that’s when sub drop can come in. It’s kind of like all-natural withdrawal from drugs, with all the nasty consequences. [3]

That absolutely sounds plausible to me. What a funny way to figure it out. When I think about the ways I’ve switched up my training lately I compare it to the way Luffy powers up in the more recent episodes of One Piece. When it gets clarified like this, it really is comparable to the way he gets tired afterwards .

Working up a bunch of adrenaline (replete with pumping ourselves up with shouts and short breaths), feeling unsure about getting thrown more, and doing it with increased frequency has no doubt asked my body to create more of the dank shit. I may have had a stent as a blue belt trying to spam classes, but 1) they were only BJJ classes (and shorter) 2) the talent pool was a little more shallow, 3) the big guys weren’t using their best, and 4) it wasn’t right before bed.

This also fits exactly with my sleeping habits lately as well. I was staying up later and sleeping in late (my body naturally trying to burn off the adrenaline), but I was displeased by that so I started going to bed earlier. I started having trouble getting a full night’s sleep. So I decided to take melatonin, read instead of having screen time, and modify my diet so I’m not having a full meal right before bed. It ended up unsuccessful in moving the needle. If I spike and dump a bunch of adrenaline in the preceding few hours before bed over and over then no wonder I can’t sleep right at the tail of my fight or flight response.

You’ve helped me connect the lines and I’m incredibly thankful, comrade.

[1] https://www.submissiveguide.com/fundamentals/articles/some-of-the-best-kept-secrets-to-sub-drop-recovery

[2] https://www.modernintimacy.com/understanding-addressing-sub-drop/

[3] https://jenniferbene.com/2016/12/ask-me-anything-what-is-sub-drop/

Reminds me of that one chess edit

I think it’s a contributing factor, but that doesn’t explain all of it. Though I’m doing better now, there were a couple times in the past month where I’m straight up crying on the way home. It’s not because of any distinct and stand out emotion or pain. When I took a week off it went away and now that I’m hammering away again it’s back.

I think it’s worth noting that my experience and strength causes people to bring out their best, so a full hour’s sparring becomes that much more difficult and therefore taxing.

The problem is that, in order to get to principled play, you have to blunder a lot of queens to bishops that are across the board that you forgot were there. Then you look at elite level play and realize their machinations are measured in centuries compared to you who can barely fathom that your opponent likes to play moves as well.

“The ability to play chess is the sign of a gentleman. The ability to play chess well is the sign of a wasted life.”

There should be a consolidated self-defense/martial arts system made into a FOS book of the communist vanguard party and it should be a collection of martial arts moves that I think are sick

It’s a little different than being sore. There’s this feeling like I’ve been roughed up and all my movement is haggard. It’s like a cardio exhaustion after being put through the spin cycle in the dryer.

The coach was like “do we do another round or do we call it a night?” so I had to do another round because someone else wanted to and I had an insatiable battle lust.

I had 88% accuracy in my chess game for the win. I knew what I was doing.

I’ve been getting better at doing principled play