Lazy Goy

Its Thursday and we were scheduled to meet again for Jiu Jitsu practice. My body was not really in a good condition that day since I haven’t had a good night’s sleep for the past 2 days and I was in DMC for my BLS training the whole day. But some other circumstances gave me no choice so I forced myself to play.

The usual people were there - Kim, Marc, and Hamir. There were two other guys who were not there last Tuesday - John and Zandro. I thought the two new guys were also new like Kim and me but it turns out that John had been practicing with Hamir for more than a year already and Zandro was a veteran Judo practitioner so technically me and Kim were still the newbies.

There’s one adjective to describe me that training session - LAZY. Actually, lazy would be an understatement  to describe what I did. From the warm-ups to the drills, I would find ways to not perform or at least minimize my participation in them. It’s easier if Kim’s my partner since he understands my condition but if paired with other people, I would just say, “Ako lng ang uke.” I’m willing to be the practice dummy since a dummy does - nothing!

Thirty minutes before 8 o’clock, the sparring started and thank God I was paired with Kim - battle of the Carabao Jiu Jitsu practitioners. I would have died instantly if it was anybody else. It was a 5 minute match but I think 50% of the time was spent idling. We would “attack” each other but without putting much effort into it so as to save on very precious energy. We do 15 second burst “attacks” then goes back to idling. He gives me time to regain my energy then another 15 second burst “attacks”. This went on until the 5 minutes were up. The last 30 sec however was quite funny. Kim hung on to me like a baby.

I thought that perhaps this is one of Kim’s strategy to let the last 30 sec fly by without excerting much effort so I tried to stand and maintain that pose. But Hamir and the other guys kept on coaching, “goy, shake him off!” or “kim, don’t let go!” I struggled to let Kim fall off but a few seconds before the time, Kim jumped off on his own accord then 5 minutes was up! Nice strategy Kim!

It was a very exhausting day. Good thing though Mishel came to the rescue. She went to the dojo to see how I was doing… and well, given what I have been through, I felt better than I should have been the second she arrived. Thanks Em! ^_^