Tonight was my 6th class. Every class I'm feeling better and better - not only is my conditioning improving a bit since I started regular exercise a few weeks ago, but I'm getting the hang of picking up the techniques. Of course they're all basic moves, but I'm getting the concept of the leverage need to pull off the moves. It makes it easier than just trying to copy exactly what the instructor shows us if you can think of how it works.

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Just got home from my 5th class, the start of my third week of training. Had a long talk with one of my buddies I'm training with tonight and I thought I'd write a bit about our thought processes regarding why we decided to train, and some disagreements we had about our perspectives.

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Guess I'll start posting my BJJ training here. I'm new, only been training for two weeks, but here's my prognosis so far; BJJ is hard.

So far I'm absolutely in love with Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I found, by an amazing stroke of luck, a legit black belt here in Naples, Italy. His name is Marco Galzenati, and it sure seems like he's at least a competition bad ass. He won his division in the 2007 European BJJ Championships, and that's way better than I would have expected to find in Naples. This place is the man's hairy ‘anoose’ of Europe.

At any rate, here is what I know of BJJ so far; my wisdom truncated here for you in precious few words: It f*cking HURTS. Granted, I'm 31 and, uh, not-so-in-shape, but still. I got muscles that are hurting that I have not been heretofore aware of. I got bruises all up and down my arm because my fellow white belts do not understand the concept of not grabbing me with the claws of death when trying to learn a new technique. I keep politely saying "Hey man, I'm not sure, but....I think we're supposed to be using technique, not strength." It doesn't seem to matter. And two of the white belts who started training on the same day as me are enamored with trying to resist each other to death on every single technique, even though a) they don't know the technique yet, and b) they don't even know what realistic resistance is yet, since they haven't rolled.

The instructor has a rule that we need gi’s first (I just got mine), and then we need to roll with him so he can ensure that we're not going to injure someone. I'm not so sure that all of the other dudes that are new are going to be able to roll any time soon, and I offer the huge bruises on my upper arm as exhibit A.

So, I've had 4 classes. We have class on the military base here twice a week, Tuesday and Thursday. I'm considering changing my membership to his gym, where I can train Mon, Wed and Friday, which would be better. My goal is to compete; I really don't care too much about self-defense. I'm 31 and haven't been in a fight yet in my adult life - I mostly stay at home with my family playing video games, and rarely drink to excess, so I doubt if I'll need to whip out my sweet BJJ skillz to save my ass anytime soon. I also want to give a shout out (gayest sentence ever) to Luke Thomas, who took time out to give me advice before I began training. So far his advice has been spot on, and I'm glad I didn't order the nicest gi I could find - I was going to until Luke dropped a truth bomb on my head. He said to not be the guy in the class with the nicest gi who sucks all kinds of ass. Well, I suck all kinds of ass, but the nicest gi I do not have.

Mark