Are Hotboxes Still a Thing?

[Casey A Payne]

Sup guys! I'm coming in hot with my first post!

I'm about to tl;dr so all I'm asking is "What's the alternative to forming a 10th Planet Hotbox? Is there one?"

OK... my backstory...

Saw karate kid when I was like 5 or 6 and was like "I'm gonna grow up and be Mr. Miyagi". So I started with karate, transitioned to Shaolin Kung Fu, decided to become a Taichi Master in 1998 (that's still my aim) and then moved to Taiwan in 2002 and ended up being around right when Andy Wang first came to Taiwan and Taiwan BJJ got setup. BJJ became LIFE for 2 years. I ended up leaving Taiwan in 2007 (lady drama... lol) but before I left I coordinated bringing Pedro Schmall to Taiwan BJJ for 2 months and got to train full time with privates (I was the training dummy!)... was kind of the best two month of my life! :D (I lead a sad sad life... ;) lol)

I've been DYING to train reguarly every since I went back to the US but... it was never in the cards for me. I was too busy being (literally) crazy (was diagnosed with bipolar in '99). I trained here and there, but mostly focused on refining my taichi stuff.

OK... fastfowarding a bit... I moved back to Taiwan at the end of 2016. Sprained my knee my first day trying to train... I'm an old man now... :'( a friend from the US visits and his mother-in-law has this place she doesn't know what to do with and I look at the room above like... there's enough room for mats there... I sign a lease with no idea what I'm doing (it's actually the first lease I've signed in my life! lol) I run into a guy who a Wingchun friend explained to me as "knowing how to do leg locks" (a 10th Planet purplebelt). I tell him about this place I have where I think mats might work. He checks it out. Decides to move in. Finds some mats (which might be from back when I was here the first time! Full circle... lol) and today we picked up some bleach, rags and a mop, cleaned them and drilled a few techniques (I'm not in the photo).

Anyhow... throughout all this he mentioned "hotbox" a few times. I've been familiar with 10th Planet for a long time, but I kind of fell out of the game back in 2007 and have only been casually following the evolution of BJJ (my mind is still spinning from the things he showed me... I didn't even do leg locks in my day! lol) So a couple weeks ago I look it up and find the thread about hot boxes. Then I see that they're maybe not a thing anymore. Something about going straight to "moon" (which I figured means a full gym). Then I thought that maybe because this would be an international location a "hot box" might be appropriate?... I don't know. Whatever happens I'm getting more mats and will be rolling a lot more! lol

I figured I'd jump on and ask on his behalf. He actually went to an open mat right after drilling.

I can't tell you guys how excited I am to start training again! I'm also super excited about all this new stuff! Leg locks weren't even legal back when I was competing.

I submit these two videos as "street cred". :)

Video one is the first video I ever uploaded to YouTube. It was recorded by The Real Geeza (sidenote: He's been my inspiration for BJJ this whole time. He didn't start until he was 40 and he's since done over 101 competition submissions, has his black belt and a school. My goal has always been to get started again before The Real Geeza originally started. :) ) This was from my first competition after training for 2 months (in Manila, Philippines). I didn't know how to sprawl yet. Nicolai laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed at this in a Pizza Hut after the comp was over. I'm the one that gets slammed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ye8_m0XVKgo (I can only have one video so I'm going with the cool one... lol)

Video #2 is this "flying arm bar" of sorts. The back story on this one is that I was obsessing over a Marcelo Garcia arm drag DVD that a friend loaned me. I decided that I would try some of the arm drag stuff in the next competition. I was actually only going for an arm drag to take back but then, in slow motion, I was like "Hey... I have the momentum to throw my leg over is head..." and just rolled with that instead. The second time I tried that in competition I sprained my shoulder... lol


[Here's the full match if someone is curious for some reason]

Well... that's my story and I'm sticking to it!

As another side note, I was on the phone with my brother earlier today and we were reminiscing about the good ol' days when it was all about forums... Forums have a sort of magic that "social media" hasn't really captured... All of my best Taiwan friends I met through a old pre-Facebook forum...