The operation to get the screws removed went without a hitch! Everything is all healed up, I've been moderating my eating habits, found new ways to cook the quinoa, learned other cooking methods for chicken other than frying and may have even lost some weight!
As far as training, I've cut out a lot of free weight workouts in favor of using body weight. I've gone from 1 pull up to 5 in 3 weeks and will hopefully hit 7 in the next week or so. My son and I have been working on some basic BJJ techniques such as using closed/open guard, simple sweeps, the good ol upa and different techniques on breaking closed guard. Nothing fancy, just stuff that will hopefully help me out when I make it back to class.
Just this past weekend, Claudio Franca held a Jiu-jitsu by the Sea and two of my nephews competed. one took home a Gold and the other took home a Silver! Good job kids!!!
My replacement Padilla & Son's Gold Weave came in a couple of weeks ago! Just from rolling on the mats in the garage, this is a great Gi! It's lightweight, soft but at the same time it feels kind of...tankish? It's got a thick collar and even when soaked it still feels pretty light, unlike the Fuji one I have which, I swear, adds on 5lbs when wet.
Everything sounds all good right? Well, it was until a few days ago.
My wife got laid off from work. There are plenty of worries I can list but I'm just gonna list the ones concerning my training.
With me as a contractor I don't have health benefits and I don't know how I feel about rolling without health coverage. I've read on a couple of different blogs about injuries which required hospital visits to deal with them. I've never NOT had health insurance and don't know what I would do if I came down with even a moderate injury, where would I go?! FML.
The Academy I go to isn't the cheapest in the area but the instruction is great and the people are friendly as hell! I've only got good things to say about the people who attend but now I really can't afford it and if I want to continue training I've got to change schools - that and have top ramen for lunch every day :). I do know of a few other gyms in my area Alan "Gumby" Marques opened up Heroes and Claudio Franca's San Jose location is roughly the same distance from home as Heroes. Both are about the same price and I've only heard good things about their instructors. I'm leaning towards Heroes cause if Alan is anything like his brother, who I contracted with at Electronic Arts, I know I'll have a good time. Sometime next week I'm going to make plans on checking out their free trial class.
My other option for training is to just do what I'm doing currently which is; learning from online sources/books and have the occasional $20 lesson with my buddy who is a black belt in Brazillian Traditional Jiu Jitsu. This for sure is the more cost effective option and one that I should consider but I would be missing out on the comraderie that is formed when rolling with a nice group of people. Then again these lessons are at my cousin's house and we have beers after training...hmmm.
Got a lot to think about now. Oh the Opression!!!!
Thursday, July 1, 2010
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I feel you. My husband was laid off in March. But going uninsured has a lot more risks to it than just training without coverage. It can make it a LOT harder to get coverage again when she is employed, if you go a certain (short) time period without insurance. And you can be injured or get sick regardless of training BJJ or not.
ReplyDeleteYou should consider talking to your instructor about a reduced price perhaps in exchange for cleaning the academy bathroom, washing loaner gis, or what have you. Definitely I don't think that training at home with videos and assistance from someone who does not practice the same art (what is Brazilian Traditional Jiu Jitsu anyway? never heard of it... do you mean Japanese Jiu Jitsu?) is the same.
Good luck to you and yours!
Thanks Georgette, good luck to your husband on landing another job! In the mean time I hope you're both enjoying his vacation! :)
ReplyDeleteI'll talk to the instructor but I don't think I'll have much success as the gym has a lot of employees already and I'm a white belt so I couldn't even help with the kids classes. That is great advice though and I will talk to the instructor to see what I can workout.
Brazilian Traditional Jiu Jitsu is still BJJ and I haven't gone into him as to why he adds the Traditional part to it but I found a link with some information if you'd like to check it out. I had to translate it using Google as I don't know how to speak Portuguese :)
http://www.jiujitsutradicional.org.br/saude.php
Oh, thanks! I'm not sure how to do translation on google though.. any hints?
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