Schrodinger's Pussy

Yesterday, as a struggled to cope with a rather horrid case of jet lag achieved by flying from London to Melbourne, my host was talking to me and some other guests about his ability to “read” people. He was hailed as being spot on in his assessments by the people present so I asked him if he could give me one sentence about me that didn’t come from something I’d already told him.

After a few seconds he said:

“I think you’re scared”.

I nodded in agreement and replied that I had indeed been scared for about the last week, specifically about coming back to Australia to finish GIC part 2 for Krav Maga.

After a pause he then added, “I don’t mean just that, I mean about everything.”

I asked him to elaborate and he said that I live my life like Schrodinger’s Cat. When I required further clarification he told me:

“You are scared so, like Schrodinger’s cat, you don’t know what a situation will bring so you guess. But instead of finding out what the result would have been by opening the box you go with that guess as if it’s the final answer”.

And….he was right.

I’ve kind of known this for a long time but to have someone else see it is scary. I’ve lived most of my life scared of something or other and my paranoia and insecurity have reigned over huge chunks of my existence in the last few decades.

To put it in perspective.

In April of this year I successfully completed part 1 of the General Instructor’s Course for Krav Maga Global. This is the backbone of any and all Krav teaching for the organisation I belong to, with the exception of the KIC/ Kids Instructor Course, which I already hold.

Part 1 was very hard and I was physically and mentally drained by the end of it. We broke up for nearly 3 months before part 2 was to begin and in that time I was in England and Greece, keeping fit and trying to retain some Kravvyness and not just let all that awesome training fade away.

For the last week I’ve spent most of that time SERIOUSLY contemplating not coming back to complete part 2. I had a multitude of reasons to justify this feeling.

1. It’s expensive and I’m almost at the end of my savings now.

2. It’s a 28 hour journey door to door and my jet lag will undoubtedly be horrendous **

3. If I lose my passport my insurance will pay not only for that but also for the return flight of £682 that I can’t claim back or cancel through conventional means.

4. I can do GIC 2 anywhere in the world so if part 3 happens then I can use that money to take it somewhere like London or Rome which are slightly nearer than Melbourne.

I fretted and fussed and stressed and bit my nails over this for days, locking the cat in the box and was 90% certain I WASN’T going to go back when a friend in England said, “This is just self doubt”.

And she was 100% right.

I have spent most of my adult life locking the cat in the box with the canister of poisoned gas, but only guessing at to whether it was still alive or not. I didn’t want to be proved one way or the other and by just guessing as to the outcome of a situation, I could forever live in a blissful state of calm ignorance, unhampered by the nasty intrusion of reality.

As THIS STORY shows. My reluctance to not only open the box but to even acknowledge its presence made me a bit of a Schrodinger’s pussy. And with that story, the outcome, when I did finally open the box by getting back in touch with the woman involved….nearly 9 years later...was that the cat was not only alive but very pleased to hear from me again.

GIC 1 cured my fear of sparring, an irrational fear that I’ve had ever since I was 4 years old. I know what created this fear but I was unable to move past it until Rune Lind of KMG Global Team made me and the other 14 guys fight for what seemed forever*** on day 11 of a 12 day course.

I never considered myself a coward in the conventional sense of the word. I would stand my ground and even get a kicking to prove I wasn’t scared (retrospectively not a sensible or clever stance to take). However the things that REALLY mattered to me were the ones I shied away from and just guessed the outcome of. Never knowing if the gas had killed the cat or not.

I couldn’t tell the woman I loved (and still love) that I loved her, because I was afraid of the result of doing so. I locked the cat in the box and never opened it. Believing it was better to never find out than to discover that the cat had died. Once I finally opened it with trembling fingers 8+ years later the results were beyond what my dreams were made of. The cat was far from dead. The cat leapt out and wanted to play, bearing no grudges at its 8 years long isolation from my life.

When I told the woman from this story that it was better to never have known how she felt than to discover she hated me or had forgotten me she shook her head, smiled and went “You’re silly”.

Similarly with Krav Maga I have returned to a world that is going to be 12 more days of intense activity and even pain. However, pass or fail I now have the desire to shut the cat in the box only long enough to see whether it is alive or dead by the end of the experiment. If I pass I will feel like a king. If I fail I will be dissapointed but I will know that I flew back 10,500+ miles to do this and can retest at any time in the future.

It was only when I actually saw my checked baggage fuck off on the conveyor belt at Heathrow terminal 4 that I finally realised I was definitely going back for GIC 2. 7 hours to Adu Dhabi. 2 hour stopover. 12 hours to Melbourne.

When I got to Southern Cross station at 5.30am and it was 2 degrees centigrade I was laughing my head off. Amazed at my own audacity to treat a journey around the world like a trip to visit friends in the next town. I’d finally stopped being Schrodinger’s pussy.

The fears we don’t face become our limits.

Nuff said.

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** It was.
*** Actually 25 minutues.

Getting Ready

So I’ve been away from Krav Maga General Instructors Course for nearly 3 months. We completed part 1 in April and a week later I flew back to England and from there to Crete.

In that time I have spent many hours keeping fit.

My cardio levels were piss poor during part 1, even though my general fitness was OK. The 12 day, 8 hours per day, gruel fest was something that taxed the limits of my stamina.

So for part 2 I’ve been doing some serious work.

In Crete I would go running, usually twice a day. In the morning I’d do the “long” run of about 3 miles and then get home, get a 3 or 4 egg omelette and a filter coffee after a quick shower.

Later I’d do the joy that is “Bring Sally Up” (leg raise version) and later still the utterly enjoyable and not at all horrid AC/DC “Thunderstruck” punch bag workout.

I’d also mix in some Yoga now and then and make certain that I ate shed loads of protein each day. Something I read in a Jack Reacher novel that turned out to be true, is that if you drink at least 5 litres of mineral water per day, you can basically do what the fuck you want.

So...pissing like a racehorse (my first, morning tinkle lasted a good couple of minutes each time) I spent a week getting my body flushed free of toxins and then had the joyous experience of being able to get shitfaced of an evening and then go running with little or no hangover the next morning.

I couldn’t get a punchbag in Crete (my father, who I was visiting, lives in a fishing village) so I improvised. I went to the local DIY shop and got a couple of rough sacks, filled them with old clothes and strung them from the beams on the balcony with some rope. Not the most sturdy of contraptions but it meant I could at least do technique work albeit not any heavy punching.

I found a cheap fitness tracker watch on Ebay and got that shipped over so I could monitor heart rate, calories burned and steps taken each day.

I would do inclinded push up on the benches along the sea front on my 2^nd daily run.

I got back in touch with Krav Maga Chania, the nearest club to Dad’s village and hired a 125cc motor scooter to travel out the 4 times on a Friday to train and teach with them. 

Dimitris the club owner was very welcoming, translating my lessons to Greek for his students and welcoming my input each time. The trip was 60 miles each way and I only did this on the same night once, where I crawled into bed at 11pm shivering and feeling very sorry for myself after 2 hours facing what looked like the time vortex from the intro credits of Doctor Who (darkness and motorbikes are not nice for a novice rider).

I practiced Krav Maga on the roof of Dad’s apartment (only space big enough, wasn’t just to pose) and made sure I did at least 2 sets of 40 push ups per day.

My appetite was huge and my energy levels were high.

I kept this pace, knowing that on 29^th June I fly back to Melbourne to complete the GIC.

I’m ready.

See you in a few days.  

Making It Work

When I completed the General Instructors Course (part 1) in April I had a week or so making my way 1000 miles south from Gold Coast to Melbourne before flying back to the UK. After a few days there I headed over to Crete where I now reside with my awesome Dad in his flat overlooking the beaches and village of Plakias. 

Now...

With GIC's that run in Europe, you usually get about 1 to 3 weeks between the first and second parts. In Australia, presumably because Oz is so flabbergastingly vast, you get a whopping THREE MONTHS between the two chunks of training. 

Of the 15 of us who took the 12 days from April 3rd to 15th under the tuition of E4 instructor Rune Lind, I am the only one to reside outside of Australasia.
To keep your skills and fitness sharp, you are advised to keep training regularly between 1 and 2, and to teach if at all possible, preferably at your own club under the supervision of your existing instructors.

I know that most if not all of the other guys are doing this, both those in Australia and those who came from New Zealand. 

Now...

I'm in a place which is 57 miles from the nearest KMG-affiliated club. While I have the DVDs for P4 and P5, I'm currently missing P1 to 3 and also G1.

I'm also living in a sun kissed paradise of sand, sea, surf and cold beers. so it would be very easy to simply kick back and spend my time drinking, eating and shagging.

However...

I went into GIC with a mindset of wanting to achieve something I've not achieved before. That was/ is to push beyond my pain barriers and get into a state of fitness that would leave me ready to do, as Rune put it "everyday tasks without problems".

My fitness for GIC 1 was just about enough. I was in a lot of pain throughout but carried on and joy of joys, my phobia of fighting was cured on day 11 of the course, after 42 years (stemming from THIS childhood incident).

But now in Europe in a lovey Cretan fishing village...what to do?

Regular training was out of the question due to the 114 mile round trip to get to Krav Maga Chania to train with Dimitris and his students. 

Nobody in Plakias is into Krav so I would need to practice on my own...meaning no one there to correct any mistakes I make. 

I had to think of ways around this.

So I did.

The closest thing to a sports shop in this village is the beach ball section at the local supermarket so a punch bag was out of the question. I took a trip to the local DIY store on the outskirts, and bought 2 rough sacks and a length of rope. Then I scrounged a load of old clothes from friends and out of my own luggage, two old pillows and stuffed hey presto! A makeshift punchbag**

Then I decided to get fit enough to come home from part 2 without limping onto the plane. I go running twice a day, morning and afternoon. I do the Moby "Bring Sally Up" leg raise thingy nearly every day. I do the "punch, punch, sprawl" that is AC/DC's 'Thunderstruck' workout on my homemade punchbag. I do yoga for my lower back once per day. 

My fitness, after 3.5 weeks of this regime, is now pretty good.

On the roof of the building I'm living in is a nice, big, flat space where I can roll out my yoga mat and practice the basic moves of Krav Maga.

But how to train and teach?

The first week I hired a car. A friend was meant to be sharing the cost but bailed at the 11th hour. Despite the rental being relatively cheap, it still cost me 55 Euros including the petrol, which isn't peanuts if you're living on savings. 

So the following week I took the bus. Not too brilliant either as it's 2 buses there and 2 buses back and I need to stay overnight due to training finishing at 10pm.

So...24 Euros for the transport, 14 for the hostel and about 5 for food. 43 Euros...better than the car but still not great.

Then I hit on the best option. A scooter hire place down the road rented me an older 125cc bike for 200 Euros for a month. That works out at 8 Euros a day and the petrol to travel the 114 miles is about 7. 

Awesome!

So now I can go and train Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the club and it will cost me 15 Euros per day.

A friend who is an existing instructor in the UK had recently posted me the DVDs for P1 to G1 so I can practice what I need to do before I get to Oz again. 
As the postal service here sucks, it will take a week but it means I will have the curriculum to practice with on the roof with my laptop and yoga mat.

My appetite has obviously spiked since I started working out and protein is high on that list. The beauty of having the scooter is that I can stop off at the only Lidl in 40 miles...halfway between here and Chania..and stock up on oodles of cheap tinned tuna and meatballs. 

I've also found a place where snails are hiding and despite the yuck factor, cooking them with rice is a great way to bulk up for free, even though you have to hang them in nets for a week to purge them of the toxic crap they've been munching on.***

Overall, I'm not as confident as if I was training with a club a mile or two down the road where the students spoke the same language as me. BUT....Dimitris from Krav Maga Chania is a great guy who lets me teach while he translates into Greek and gives me both feedback on my teaching AND private one-on-one lessons before the group arrives.

This feels good because I'm making a situation work that was initially hard to solve.

The future's bright. The future's solvable.

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** I killed it the first time I used it. Had to revisit my knot tying training from Scouts way back in the early 1980s.

*** Last year I didn't purge them and I had the shits so bad the next day that I set the smoke alarms off in the taverna toilets.