My story and a THANK YOU to some people in 10th Planet!
My personal training story is kind of a sad one. But I got a bit more hope after attending the Great Lakes Camp with my daughter.
I wanted to be a martial artist from very early childhood. Movies like "Karate Kid" really stuck with me and yeah looking back on them some would call them corny but I grew up most of my life in some horrible neighborhoods, and was frequently bullied. (My neighbor's house was a crack house. I was in the white minority in a neighborhood where white kids were frequently targeted for violence.)
We were also incredibly poor. And it broke my mother's heart as she could see my intentions were pure. That I really loved the martial arts and never gave up on it. But the money was never there. Through most of my childhood the family didn't even own a car. There was no way I was going to Karate school. I struggled to get out of the ghetto myself and when I finally did it was always a struggle to stay out. Statistics show that once you are poor you tend to stay that way. I certainly understand why.
It wasn't until recently when I paid my house off that I finally could take a breath. I looked at martial arts again and made some plans. But the situation was different now. Because now I had kids of my own. I remembered a promise I made to myself once when I was a young teen in the ghetto that I was never going to allow my kids to go through what I did growing up. So one day my daughter comes home with an open head wound on her head. Another adult witnessed what happened and apparently a kid had smashed my daughter over the head with a book bag. Living in a civilized country town I figured I could call the police and get that handled right away right? Well the police showed up and hemmed and hawed about how the prosecutor was never going to want to put a kid in the system, etc. I asked the police officer if this meant it was open season from the bus stop to my front door. He of course said no but didn't really have an answer. This was just kind of the pinnacle of what had become the norm. I still shudder when I think of my daughter coming home when she had a broken arm and saying that one of the boys had shoved her down in the snow. (The arm was not broken by that incident, it had been broken before. But still, who the hell shoves a little girl with a broken arm down in the snow???)
My kids were in BJJ the very next week.
At first our goal was just self defense, but one day I was watching a ladies MMA match, and at the time my computer was in the living room. My daughter came in from outside and leaned over my shoulder and was therefore exposed to a match with Miesha Tate owning someone in Strikeforce. The cat was kind of out of the bag at that point, I had not really decided if I was going to allow my kids to watch MMA but I am the kind of parent who tries to be open with them about things. She was very intrigued by it and really wanted to learn more. She asked me how Miesha Tate got so tough and I said as I understood it, she was a wrestler.
About a week after that, my daughter and son came home with a flier from school that a youth wrestling club was starting up. And they really wanted in. So we did that. And they loved it. I had not know anything about wrestling. They had been soccer players before and I hadn't known anything about that either. But because I wanted to be able to appreciate what my kids were doing and understand it I studied it as closely as I could, and read a lot of books.
My kids went from just being interested in the martial arts for self defense to being sincerely interested in competing. My daughter's heroes were people like Sara McMann, Miesha Tate, Jo-Jo Calderwood, etc. My son liked Randy Couture, Connor MacGregor, etc.
I also still had an interest in training, but my physical state was a question. I am overweight, my knees are weak, and my ankles are gummed up with gout. I actually enjoy cardio and sweating but my chronic heel spurs make running impossible. My weight makes using most exercise bikes extremely uncomfortable if not impossible. (My legs will fall asleep sometimes.)
I tried BJJ for a while at the same place my kids were going but it was REALLY expensive. And while everyone treated me well I felt that what I was learning was obviously designed for thin people. The Gi also really annoyed me. Finding one for a big person is EXTREMELY difficult. I had this same problem with Judo. And to be honest the whole time I was rolling around in one, constantly having to put it back together, tieing and re-tieing it you feel like "Who the hell invented this thing? And were they really thinking this was a practical garment for wrestling around?"
We tried a no-gi school and I considered taking the adult class. But then my kids got a new interest in addition to their wrestling, and that was boxing. I found a great gym for them that was very inexpensive, with top quality instruction and the kids loved it. And both of them show natural talent. I read and observed that the people who do grappling first and striking second seem to always fall behind the people who did striking at a young age. The problem is that their boxing goes on the same time as any of the adult classes I might of taken. So then it wasn't just about the money, it was about the TIME.
I weighed very heavily what my options were. And my priorities. My kids were really excelling. They both at least for now claim they want to be professionals one day. My ambitions as a 38 year old man with health problems are more just for myself with no intention to do more then perhaps compete in the low levels of BJJ and Judo. I also was kind of discouraged by the fact that people are generally uncomfortable rolling with bigger people. In Judo they liked practicing throws on me because it made their throws strong and really helped them know if they were doing their leverage correctly. If they could toss a 330 lb guy they certainly could do so on someone their own size. But I spend the whole time worried I am going to fall on someone and hurt them. (And I can tell they are worried too...)
Putting those things together and the fact that my kids had more potential then I am ever going to have in this lifetime I made the decision to put my own training aside, and focus on theirs.
So I took my daughter to the Great Lakes training camp, and watched my daughter really enjoy herself. But I also noticed something else. There were big people like me at the camp too! I talked to a couple of them about where to get rash guards and they gave me some information. The bullshit I went through to get a Judo Gi for someone my size was an absolute nightmare. I ended up ordering one from a company that only makes like six of them a year. Rashguards though were going to be a lot easier.
The other thing that occurred to me was watching the kids in wrestling who were lucky enough to have Dad's who had wrestled and the serious advantage those kids had in coaching instruction. And it occurred to me that rather then paying a lot for private instruction for my kids perhaps it made more sense for me to take instruction myself and augment their classes with my own knowledge. So finally, I came to a point that me training would instead of getting in the way of my children's ambitions could actually HELP them.
I am going to try to make it work this next year. I am also in the middle of a custody battle now so my funds are going to be tighter, but I want to thank the people at the camp for inspiring me to get back on the mat.
