2026 Training Log Part 9

On the Stereo today- Everyone is home for the Easter Holidays, so I am working in silence.

Nice week of training this week

Got some work in and felt good. Focused on getting quality out of my rounds and got a bonus session in too.

Monday

Upper Body Day in the gym.

1. Bench w/u to 5 at 90kgs
2. Seated row 3×15
3. Ring press 3×15
4. Face Pull 3×15
5. Flutter kicks 3×100
6. Bent over raises 3×12
7. Curls 2×15
8. Rolling tricep extensions 3×15

Evening Jiu Jitsu. This session is great because Dani coaches and I just train. Positionals 2x5min. Sparring 4x5min. My goal in the session was “No Bad Position”, which means I play much safer than usual, but am never out of control unless I see a clear and obvious opportunity.

Wednesday

Jiu Jitsu. 5x5min rounds. Had a mad busy day so not my best session but got some time in. You know you’ve had a busy one when you’re thinking about work in the middle of the rounds! Not ideal, but your worst day on the mat is better than your best day on the couch as they say.

Friday

Bonus morning session with Roger. I think overall we did 7 rounds, but chatted and workshopped in between so not high density, but high intensity during the rounds. Good session.

Saturday

NoGi all day. Set the timer and jumped in after a brief warm up. I think we did 11 rounds and I missed out on 1 so I make it 10 for me. I often hear that Gi is better for you as you age, but I don’t know about that. There’s a lot more scrambles but a lot less fatigue on the hands for example. I really enjoyed this session though, regardless of whether it’s hard or easy on my joints.

Training Thoughts of the Week

This week was all about getting back into a rhythm. I think I succeeded. I thought my knee was going to be sore after Friday but a little ice on Friday evening and I was grand. The power of ice is dramtically underestimated. I remember a few years ago there was some talk of a concept that you should let the inflammatory response do its job- it bring healing nutrients to the effected areas, and anti-infammatories and icing might effect that. I don’t know science, but I know ice made my knee better on Friday.

Non-Training Thoughts of the Week

There’s a wider discussion to be had about Jiu Jitsu culture that doesn’t belong here, and probably goes along with the general state of popular culture now. But I spoke about it with a friend last week. We don’t recognise the martial art we started in sometimes. And it can be depressing to see what people are doing, saying, and talking about online about Jiu Jitsu. I meant the people who deliberately act like idiots and create drama for attention. The toxicity of a lot of online discourse can make you hate your own sport in many ways. But then I heard a story last week and it brought me back a bit.

I was listening to Matt Damon talking on the Conan O’Brien podcast. He was speaking about a time he was working with Clint Eastwood, and asked to rewrite some of his character’s lines for a scene. He did several rewrites himself, and then came back in and delivered the lines. Afterwards, Eastwood asked him why he didn’t rewrite any of the dialogue. He said, he did, but when he looked at his final draft, he had just arrived back at the lines as they’d originally been written.

Eastwood said he had a similar experience. He had rewritten a script again and again over a few years, and eventually just made the movie as it had originally been given to him. That script was Unforgiven (which, if you haven’t, you must).

The point was that sometimes you get away from what drew you to something in the first place. From the Jiu Jitsu perspective, we all get so busy thinking about the newest thing, the next technique, your last competition performance, am I doing enough of this or that? We get drawn in to the stupid online dramas even when we don’t want to. So it’s good for me to bring myself back to the source material sometimes.

I started Jiu Jitsu because I was a Bruce Lee, Jeet Kun Do obsessed Taekwondo black belt who knew there was a gap in my martial arts skills. I wanted to be the total martial artist that he spoke about- able to kick and punch, grapple and wrestle. I watched Pride and the UFC and saw the toughest guys being submitted with the coolest moves. I wanted to know those cool moves. I didn’t give a shit if it was in the Gi, in a pair of shorts, or (as it was back then) wearing a surfing rashguard and a pair of Muay Thai shorts. The “culture”, such as it was, was are you trying hard to be better? No one cared about anything else except “does it work?”.

It’s always good to keep that in mind, even if I’m glad we’ve evolved from it, the source is important, or else we’re circling in Yeats’ “widening gyre”.

Or, to put it better, as Bodhi says in Point Break- “it’s the source man”.

See you on the mat,

Barry