{"id":4555,"date":"2019-02-17T19:49:26","date_gmt":"2019-02-18T01:49:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2019-02-18T00:14:02","modified_gmt":"2019-02-18T06:14:02","slug":"ronin-diaries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/?p=4555","title":{"rendered":"Ronin Diaries"},"content":{"rendered":"

If y’all have been closely reading my posts over the past 3 years, you probably know that after I quit Adventure Time, I got pretty heavy into a midlife crisis\/jiu jitsu obsession.<\/p>\n

I was biking down Sunset Blvd in August of 2015, when I saw two dudes grappling in the window of a boxing gym. I popped in and met a guy named Arun who would initially be my coach and then my super tight martial arts bro till death do us part XXOOXXOO.<\/p>\n

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(Arun on the left, my brojo buddy Walter and his coach Russ Muira on the right)<\/p><\/div>\n

As he’s helped me become a fiercer, more courageous and physical person, I think I’ve helped him navigate his alienation, and increase his compassion for the people who reflect his own perceived weaknesses.<\/p>\n

Arun started a small, unofficial gym in the basement of an art gallery in Chinatown where myself and a few others trained like sweaty hogs for about a year.
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By the end of a year, the landlord kicked us out, so we had nowhere to train. I didn’t really know the LA jiu jitsu scene so I left it to Arun to find us a new spot. Right at that time, a place opened up called Villains which was run by two (then) brown belts Jason and Nathan.<\/p>\n

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This is where I settled in for the next 2+ years. I became extremely comfortable here, and learned a shit ton of techniques. While I was unemployed I would sometimes come in during the week and stay from 3-8:30 drilling and rolling. One time after a marathon training session I threw up from exhaustion in a grocery store supplement isle.<\/p>\n

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I don’t know how interested in my grappling life y’all are but I felt like I needed to get some thoughts about my current martial arts phase. So keep reading if this isn’t dumb meat-head shit to you \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

So recently there was a split between my two coaches. Jason left the gym and I don’t believe he is allowed to teach nearby due to a no-compete clause in his contract. The two guys just stopped getting along, in what seems to me like an inevitable clash of personalities: Jason is a chill posi-stoner, Nathan is kind of high strung and ocd. This kind of thing is an extremely common occurrence in every kind of martial arts dojo. I have buddies who’ve been through multiple dojo fallouts.<\/p>\n

I’ve known about their friction for months, but was keeping as tight lipped as I could, since ultimately it was up to them to tell their students. When it finally all blew up I was still kind of shocked and unsure of what to do about it.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The other night I had a dream I was in high school again. I was re-living my fallout with my best friend Nate. He wouldn’t talk to me and I was boiling with anger over the course of a semester until I finally freaked out and flipped a lunch table. All of his new friends were laughing at me and he kept receding into the shadows of the cafeteria until I called him out to fight me on the lawn. As we were walking outside to fight I woke up from the stress. In that moment of waking I felt a deep connection between this dream and the situation at Villains.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

So I decided to quit and find a new place to train by visiting every dojo that interested me. I thought it might be nice to keep a record of my tour of jiu jitsu clubs around town. It’s an opportunity to learn what the spread of teaching quality is in one of the hotbeds of jiu jitsu.<\/p>\n

I guess you could see it like I’m going around New York doing pizza reviews.<\/p>\n

——-<\/p>\n

This past Saturday I visited an open mat at Cosmic Training Center in Alhambra; about a 1\/2 hour outside of LA. I went there because an old buddy Winston who I knew from the Chinatown spot had made a home there and seemed to really dig it.<\/p>\n

Going to an open mat usually means that outsiders can come to a gym and spar. It’s a good way to get different looks from people who aren’t accustomed to your personal game. It’s a little stressful, and sometimes can be dangerous if you walk into an unfriendly spot where they’re going to want to prove they can smash you. Similarly it can be dangerous for the gym if outsiders come in with the intent to smash. This kind of thing was called “dojo storming” back in the early 90’s I guess (or so I’ve heard). We like to joke about dojo storming but that shit is obviously not cool. I’ve only gone to a couple open mats, but I try to be as respectful as I can, and grateful that the gym owners let me step on their mats.<\/p>\n

So in an open mat there’s a bit of a feeling out. You don’t want to roll to hard out of respect, but you also don’t want to misrepresent where you are in your jiu jitsu journey. It’s kind of a tricky balance.<\/p>\n

Anyway I showed up at Cosmic which boasts an Olympic Judo champion as one of their coaches. I was greeted by Winston who I hadn’t seen in 2 or so years. It was awesome to see him. He’d vastly improved since the early days and we had a great roll. I rolled with several other folks, as well as one of the black belts. Also if any of you know the UFC fighter Ovince St Preux, he was there training wrestling.<\/p>\n

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That’s him sitting down there in the picture. I was a little star stuck I guess.<\/p>\n

My rolls were pretty light. I couldn’t\u00a0 really get a good read on everyone’s technique since no one was wearing belts. Personally I guess I felt pretty affirmed about how much I gained from training at Villains and from my extra-curricular training in my backyard brojo. I was able to pull off a lot of shit. Anyway. I’m going to check out one of their classes next week. Maybe Wednesday, but my takeaway thoughts so far were this:<\/p>\n

– Great, friendly family vibe.<\/p>\n

– Probably too far from my house.<\/p>\n

– As soon as I put Winston in a leg entanglement he tapped out, which tells me they probably don’t really train leg locks here. I’ve been digging deep into leg locks this year, and having that as part of my curriculum is a must for me.<\/p>\n

-I’m still going to drop by a class because I want to observe as many teaching styles as I can, so I really get to know what I want and don’t want from a coach.<\/p>\n

Tonight I’m going to meet up with some other people who’ve defected from Villains to see what they plan on doing.<\/p>\n

Also FYI I was working on Forming for several hours today.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If y’all have been closely reading my posts over the past 3 years, you probably know that after I quit Adventure Time, I got pretty heavy into a midlife crisis\/jiu jitsu obsession. I was biking down Sunset Blvd in August of 2015, when I saw two dudes grappling in the window of a boxing gym. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4555"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4564,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4555\/revisions\/4564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessemoynihan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}