Excerpt from, "Not Exactly Don Juan...and The Liberated Woman"

"...Why I competed against men in ground fighting...???
I had no choice for the better part of my grappling training. And in the beginning of my first competition the guys at my level were closer to my 105/106 than the women. To get more "practice" in (started fighting just before age forty-eight, and that type of ground training just before age forty-seven),
In competition I grappled men up to 160 pounds. And women upto 180 pounds, when I was a novice I competed against women all the way up through expert.
My coach noticed my game improved the more pressure anyone put on me, my form improved almost magically. The men in the gym who I typically grappled "live" with were over 150lbs, average 168lbs, worked "Live" as heavy at 278lbs.
Drilled with men upto 320lbs in training. I'm by no means great. Coach Phil Dunlap calls me "The Little Engine That Could". It's just about effort and throwing away the EGO.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072HN2GFV/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_bibl_vppi_i1

Comments

It Follows Me...

One may wonder what would inspire someone to work hard labor voluntarily. For me it’s the love of many things. It’s the passion that won’t be broken. Because there are so many aspects to such service for me, that it may seem beyond comprehension. I’d compare it to my youthful desire to enter the military as a young child. Then for a multitude of reasons only to follow through thirteen years later at age eighteen entering the Marines. There were things that followed me throughout my life. Sometimes they were questions of how I ever gave up my over decade’s life dream to become a New Jersey State Trooper. My childhood desire to never wed—to never have any serious relationships with another human being. I desired only service in military and law enforcement nearly my whole childhood. Too the extent that even one of my Marine Corps superiors expressed to me last July, “I never thought you’d ever get married. It just wasn’t who you were. You were always a loner.” I replied, “Yeah. I know.

Sledging the Hammer

"You could have a steam trainIf you'd just lay down your tracks..."---Peter Gabriel's 'Sledgehammer' lyrics. This is not the tune that lay in my mind this morning as I reminisced about yesterday's volunteers to help on trail crew. However, as I looked up the proper definition of sledging that song popped up. I say sledging, which is my own take on swinging a hammer that we call a "Double Jack". The Single Jack is six pounds. I know that because our regular crew of five including me and one staff supervisor are handling Harriman State Park Trails, and have to carry about four of those, two shaping hammers, along with a hoist, belay bag with heavy equipment, first aid kit, double Jack, three 18lb rock bars, a lopper, three buckets, three eye to eyes, two burlap straps, two green wrapping straps, two pick Mattox, a roe hoe or two, a bar for either the two ton or one ton hoist, the feathers with pegs for splitting rocks that we drill... s

Death in the Distant Future...

Death in the Distant Future… Or at least that is what its supposed to be. We don’t suppose people should die at a certain age. We will witness suffering; but we know it gets better. So, we’ve been told. Or so, we have hope that it will. There are instances of mass tragedy. Sometimes we call that war—maybe insanity—perhaps terrorism… We have names for it, that type of death. Then there are the terminals. Things we think we can control—once we know the enemy within. Or things we follow, pray for, aim for. We hold hands for it. Or we choose to suffer with the suffering because it matters. And it doesn’t matter how it matters. Then there is some form of Universal Order. A tainted weird line of fate. Perhaps mathematically calculated in everyone’s existence. No matter how great, how menial a life on earth may appear there’s a geometric wave—a pattern. We can involve other mathematical ideologies—Fibonacci, perhaps. And each of our lives are formulas. Formulas appearing misundersto

Writing Reality

Search This Blog