Choking Fabio

Aaron, the boys, and I met up with my parents and my visiting brother for dinner tonight. I wove my way through the folks seated on the patio of our favorite Mexican joint, and as I approached my mother I declared, "I should write a blog entry about choking Fabio". So inspired, I decided to do just that.

I suppose the place to begin would be to explain just who Fabio is. Don't be fooled by his name. There's no long, luscious locks on this guy. This particular Fabio happens to be Brazilian, speaks very little English, and works at our Ju-Jitsu place. I confess, when he introduced himself to me on Monday, he had to do it three times because I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

Anyway, this guy is a really patient teacher. I'm a total newbie to this Brazilian Ju-Jitsu (BJJ for short...typing Ju-Jitsu is a pain) and I need a lot more instruction than the others. We always being with a grueling 15 minute warm-up. as a class. Don't be fooled by the fifteen minutes -you try doing two sets of 50 jumping jacks, 2 sets of 50 crunches, and 20 push-ups, and that's not even the whole thing. Afterwards, Serge, the head instructor, demonstrates a new technique for everyone to practice. Guys then pair up and practice for a bit before we fight. During the practice time, it's become a bit of a pattern for Fabio to work with me. He's not too dissimilar in size to me, so we are a good match. The language barrier gets funny, occasionally. BJJ is definitely an activity where you really need to know the difference between "push" and "pull". I have found myself slipping into some of the communication patterns I adopted in Japan while we work together, and have on more than one occasion come very close to blurting something out in Japanese.

Today, we learned four new chokes. So, I grabbed hold of my friend Fabio over and over again, working on how to choke him. Then, just for fun, he showed me how to modify one of the chokes I had just learned and taught me a fifth choke. I think he was quite proud of himself, because he kept jabbering away in Portuguese to Serge and another Brazilian fighter, saying something about "five". The he would scoot himself back towards me so I could attach myself to his back ("like a backpack," Serge kept saying. "So I'm a backpack?" I asked. "Yes!" he exclaimed excitedly. "You stay close...go where he goes." Gotcha). Then Fabio would tell me, "number five!" I obediently wrapped my arm around the front of his neck, gripped his collar tightly, reached with my other hand for his pants leg, and threw myself backward. This inevitably resulted in one arm choking him while his body was being twisted sideways. With a quick tap on my arm, he signaled that I needed to release him, and he would then grin widely and say something that probably translated to, "See what I taught her? Isn't that cool?" as he rubbed his throat and coughed a little bit.

As we finished up that part of our lesson, he gestured to Aaron, telling him that Aaron had better not mess with me now. I love Ju-Jitsu!