ChrisWrestling's blog

So, if you have read some of my more personal blogs you will already be somewhat familiar with my history. Like many I think a minor interest in wrestling started in Jr. High but I was busy with swim team and music and drama. In high school I really doubled down on theatre and music rather than sports. My college was an arts college that didn't have sports and the Kings Wrestling Club in Seattle had already closed down. Honestly my identifying as straight at the time and discomfort with my sexuality, despite having discovered BGEast, I hadn't really thought to start wrestling til I was in college and my opportunities had dried up.

I contented myself with rolling with people off of headlock which became globalfight before gruntsNgroans came out, then takedown, and now meetfighters. 20 years is a longass time. Anyway, my husband got me a month of BJJ training for my birthday about 11 years ago and I got hooked. I've always loved BJJ but despite being blessed with really open and welcoming schools I never really felt like I fit in. Still don't to this day, maybe more now than back then as I have been really struggling with aging and not having any endurance to speak of. I feel like more of a burden to my school than a student that brings his A game every time. I want to tough it out but I also don't want to associate BJJ with nausea.

This last fall I went down to visit my friend, Grant, and he's involved with the organization of the Sin City Classic and he was really badgering me to compete in Freestyle even though I had 0 training in any pin style. Reluctantly I signed up, hired a personal trainer to try to get my endurance up (it didn't actually help) and I started watching videos on youtube and reading every book I had on it and none of that really mattered. What did help is that I put myself on a training diet and stopped drinking for 4 months leading up to it.

Now, I have severe competition anxiety that's downright debilitating. My gut goes wild and I almost got disqualified at a tournament for being in the bathroom when I got called 2 hours earlier than expected. I was fairly miserable when I got to Vegas. The Horseshoe is a horrible hotel, I don't care for gambling and it's predatory nature, everything smells like tobacco and bad cologne and I knew virtually no one when I got there. It was so bad I almost spent the whole time in my hotel room but I decided to go to the welcome dinner but because I didn't know anyone and wasn't on facebook anymore I had no idea who I was looking for so I leaned on Grant way too much and he wasn't even going to dinner. When I finally got to the group the only seat left was behind a bigass column so I couldn't see anyone except the guy sitting next to me who wasn't even competing. The gaggle of cougars that sat down to my left didn't help things.

Then the training day came and I got pounced on by some of the guys I spoke to online and a couple others and so many people were trying to make me feel welcome that I actually started to relax. This was just the training day so I didn't need the high anxiety. Once warmups started I fell into my routine despite being in a singlet. It helped that I wasn't the only one. At this point I got so excited to finally, after over 20 years of wanting to do folk/freestyle I finally got my first lesson and I would have stayed there all day if my body would have let me. This was also the first time I finished a training session and really felt like a man. I felt unusually masculine and not in a toxic way.

For the tournament itself my nerves were at less than 10% of what they usually were. After all I had my new friends to keep me company and it was so much fun watching the other guys compete. I did my first match and won pretty quickly and felt pretty good about myself. I found that my opponent was not feeling that great about it so I sat down with him and watched the match with him to see if we could use it as a learning experience and that seemed to really help him. My second match didn't go so well as my opponent got badly injured. I spent the next hour watching the video over and over again to confirm that I did nothing wrong, that he threw me and landed on his arm and it broke and that really is what happened. I still carry some guilt with me but I was happy to hear today that he is doing what he can to be involved in his training even though he can't really train himself for a while. Having being benched myself for 3 years I know how rough that can be. The people there were really supportive about the incident and I realized that despite training BJJ with mostly the same people for 10 years I really didn't feel like one of them. In Vegas I was surrounded by people who loved training and rolling and were openly gay and the catharsis of it all relaxed me. I was with my people.

It really isn't enough to go to this once a year. 3 days out of the year being where I love doing what I love just isn't enough. I want to train BJJ with my people. I want to train folk/freestyle with my people. Nothing against the straights but this is the community I need for myself. I want to start a club here but I don't want it to be watch a youtube video and train sort of thing, I want a passionate coach who knows how to develop wrestlers. I want to train seriously like a D1 college athlete even at 40 years old.

Honestly, I've developed a fantasy of being a wrestling object/slave. I don't get to choose what I eat, when I eat, I get up way too early to get my cardio in, get back and fuel up before class/drilling. Fuel up, go do my workout. Just really be a machine. This is my addiction, my midlife crisis, this is who I am.