{"id":209,"date":"2011-03-03T08:46:55","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T14:46:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/?p=209"},"modified":"2011-03-03T15:18:19","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T21:18:19","slug":"no-more-pretending-no-more-lies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/2011\/03\/03\/no-more-pretending-no-more-lies\/","title":{"rendered":"No more pretending! No more lies!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So&#8230;.I have a little secret, and I&#8217;ve decided to come clean.<\/p>\n<p>As many of you know, I prefer grappling over striking.<br \/>\nI tell everyone that.  That&#8217;s actually putting it politically correctly.<\/p>\n<p>Actually&#8230;I hate striking.  I HATE IT.  I&#8217;ve disliked it since high school, when I stopped Tae Kwon Do and started Judo!  That&#8217;s why I did Judo in the first place.  It&#8217;s the &#8216;gentle way.&#8217;  But I&#8217;ve always forced myself to do it, tried to enjoy it&#8230; But you know, I can&#8217;t say I hate it, because then I would never get good at it.  Like math.  As soon as I admitted that I couldn&#8217;t do it, I couldn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>So I worked at it and worked at it.  I&#8217;m a professional and beating people up is part of my job, so I have to do it and get good at it.  I&#8217;ve gotten better in practice, but only show a fraction of that in an actual fight.  Why.  WHY?  I&#8217;m tearing my hair out&#8230;why not??  I&#8217;m crying into the night.  WHY NOT?  <\/p>\n<p>So I put in MORE time. I FOCUSED my entire training around striking.  Ever since the Sarah Kaufman fight, I&#8217;ve been doing like 60% striking and had felt deprived of grappling to some degree!  And I never enjoyed it&#8230;not really.  I worked SO so hard and I got a little good&#8230; but let&#8217;s face it.  I&#8217;m not going to become super kickboxing woman because I HATE striking.  And I have to pretend I don&#8217;t and make the best of it. And be positive and Happy Warrior-ish.<\/p>\n<p>So I thought.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#8217;m going to stop kidding around with the &#8220;I&#8217;m going to knock you out&#8221; stuff.  It&#8217;s like&#8230;I have a sword.  It&#8217;s pretty sharp on one end.  But other people are fighting with a double-ended spear, so I tried sharpening the other end of my sword. Except it&#8217;s not metal, so I end up just poking people with it, and then flipping it around and using the sharp end after all.<\/p>\n<p>So, I&#8217;ve decided to embrace how I really feel.  To all my opponents out there&#8230;I don&#8217;t want to smash your face in.   I&#8217;m going to grab you and twist you into a tight little pretzel and then choke the life and spirit out of you until YOU TAP THE HELL OUT.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t get me wrong.  I can strike!  It&#8217;s not beautiful.  I will hit you, but you may not lose conciousness over it.<\/p>\n<p>This is beautiful.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/roxy-trying-armlock.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/roxy-trying-armlock.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"roxy trying armlock\" width=\"511\" height=\"345\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-210\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nThis.  I think this is freaking great.  This is art.  This is control, this is power, this is skill.   Oh so beautiful.  I love it. The flowing, the transitions, the technique!  I can&#8217;t get enough!  Sense the energy, sense the intention, bait them, trap them, bring them to the edge of breaking but don&#8217;t.  Because you have enough skill not to. And I love MMA as a whole, and I love ground and pound.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/omoplatasetup.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/03\/omoplatasetup.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"omoplatasetup\" width=\"600\" height=\"399\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-211\" \/><\/a><br \/>\nAnd I realized something&#8230;I had known, but it just never sunk in, you know?  Whenever I grapple a lot, I sleep well.  Like a log.  Whenever I take days off from grappling, or I only do striking, I can&#8217;t sleep well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So&#8230;.I have a little secret, and I&#8217;ve decided to come clean. As many of you know, I prefer grappling over striking. I tell everyone that. That&#8217;s actually putting it politically correctly. Actually&#8230;I hate striking. I HATE IT. I&#8217;ve disliked it since high school, when I stopped Tae Kwon Do and started Judo! That&#8217;s why I&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fight","category-7","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/roxannemodafferi.net\/RBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}