Sunday, April 19, 2009

One Tough Grappling Girl…

This past Saturday my girlfriend Patricia went to a local jiu-jitsu grappling tournament here in town. It was only a small turn out and unfortunately she was the only girl who showed up to fight. But being a very competitive athlete, she wasn't going to let this stop her from competing because she went ahead and entered in the men's division to fight!

Now granted she did lose on points to the much bigger competitors, but it wasn't due to lack of effort on her part. Here is a pic from the open class competition where Patricia was going for an arm bar on a guy who outweighed her by over 80 pounds.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Patricia
    I also use to partake in the martial arts when I was younger. I went from style to style looking for the right one for me. I did some SHOTOKAN KARATE, Isshinryu KARATE in which they use an inverted type punching style. AKIDO in which you use your opponents weight against them which would enable a smaller person to defeat a much larger person without forceful moves, But this style is very hard to learn. In the beginning we would start off by learning how to land, tumble, hit the ground in case you were thrown. I use to leave the dojo sometime with headaches, but you get use to it once you learn how to land. It takes 5 years to get your black belt if your good! There are no belts in between. You go from white to black, but you do earn some wooden plaques with your name written in Japanese whenever you pass a test. Finally I ended up studying the ( Sosei Masutatsu Oyama (1923 - 1994) Kyokushinkai Karate ) style. The legend behind Mas Oyama as I like to call him is that he use to kill bulls with his bare hands. I use to go to one of his dojos on west 14 St. in Manhattan. Don't know if its still there. The discipline in that school was extremely high standard. After class the sensei would line us up on our knees and have us crawl backwards one row behind the other with a wet sponge in our hands to make sure the floor was clean before we left. One day while I was still a white belt. Teacher had me spar with a brown belt female. I had developed a blocking technique with my legs in which I was able to block kicks that were not above the waist. She threw a kick and I block it with my leg.... Her shin bone hit mine, and I could see in her face the agony she was in. I felt no pain, but she was pissed and kick me on the neck. that's when I dropped to one knee and everything went black for a second or two. She was about 5'2, I'm 5'7. I out weighed her by about 70 lbs. She was grounded for the remainder of the class, and I was never allowed to block in that form again. Teacher told me this is not THAI BOXING. Patricia... You went up against an opponent who was much larger then you without fear, and that alone makes you a winner for trying. You'll take him down next time. Just use a different approach. Good job! WELL DONE CHAMP!
    Robert Valdes

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