On fighting hurt

This post was written on Friday, September 9, but will not be published until a later date, for reasons that are about to be obvious. I've mentally committed to myself that I will hit the publish button on this post whether I win or lose this fight, and regardless of whether or not it happens.

Friday, September 9:

On Wednesday - two days ago - I sprained my ankle in practice. It was an unlucky accident. My partner and I were doing fairly light wrestling drills with only 50% resistance. He attempted a takedown and I stumbled backwards and just fell with all of my weight on my bad ankle.

An "unlucky" injury

I've been forced to pull out of my September 11 fight due to an injury.

There are so many thoughts that go through your head when you have an injury right at the end of training camp. The most tempting, the most pernicious, is "fuck, what bad luck."

It's a dangerous thought because it's partly true. You do need some luck to survive a training camp without a major injury.

Poker players know that losers blame bad luck when they lose, and call themselves geniuses when they win.

Winners know that while you can't control the luck, you can do everything possible to stack the odds in your favour.

MMA training camps are hard things. The best way to train for a fight is to simulate a fight. A fight is a mess of fists, feet, knees, elbows flying all over the place while two guys tangle themselves up in a struggle to control the other guy's arms, legs, heads, and spines. And the best way to train for a fight is to find people who are as good or better than you at all the chaotic punching, kicking, and limb-tangling, and try to fight off their attacks.

If you don't train hard, you don't get better. If you train too hard, you get hurt. It's a hard tightrope to walk. Athletes and coaches always want to do more. The great sprinting coach Charlie Francis always said that he spends 90% of his time holding athletes back and only 10% of his time pushing them to do more. Balancing overtraining and undertraining is a hard task; there's no magic test or formula that tells you what to do.

It really sucks to pull out of a fight two weeks before it, right as training should be tapering off. I was very much dedicated to this training camp. I invested hours and hours into my mental and physical training and I felt like this was going to be the best iteration of me in the cage, ever. And now I don't get to prove that to myself. It's rough.

You'll notice I haven't talked about the details of how I got hurt. That's because it doesn't matter. I could blame this, that, or the other, but the blame lies with me. Maybe it was because I didn't warm up properly. Maybe it was because I hadn't rested and recovered enough for that session. Maybe it was because I didn't have the mental focus in that moment. Maybe I should have asked the training partner to take down the intensity. But the bottom line is that I have to look in the mirror and say that I'm injured because of me, because of decisions that I made. It's my body, it's my athletic career, and at the end of the day, I have to take responsibility.

Why fight? Part 1: The Investment

People I know from the poker world, or from regular society -- or from any place other than the inside of an MMA gym, really -- often think I'm crazy for being willing to get in a cage and endanger myself by fighting another man until one man quits or is rendered helpless against the assault of the other.

The truth is, however, that fighting itself is not the crazy thing.

The crazy thing is what fighters do in order to fight.

For the last five weeks (and the next two), I have faithfully shown up the at the gym to take my daily beating. I have done this voluntarily and in full control of my own faculties. I do this without being bound to any contract, and without any financial incentive.

For these weeks I have felt exhausted throughout most of the day. I have woken up many mornings feeling like I have been hit by a car. I'm a morning person and yet I am often forced to train past 10pm, eat dinner around 11 and fall asleep well after midnight. But since I seem to have developed the lark chronotype, I have trouble sleeping past 5am.

Though I haven't tested them, I am sure my cortisol is elevated and my testosterone is lowered. In health terms, those are bad things -- they lead to increase in fat, decrease in muscle, decrease in sex drive, insulin resistance, cravings, bone loss, and illness.

Indeed, being a competitive athlete is not nearly as healthy as most people think that it is. Of course, it is better than being sedentary. But too far in the other extreme can be unhealthy as well. Being a serious competitive athlete means doing a lot of things that trade health in favour of performance. The athlete trains hard and risks injury and overtraining. All athletes train while injured; the only difference between athletes is how injured is too injured, necessitating a missed practice or competition. Virtually every serious athlete practices and competes through minor injuries, and many (most?) compete through more serious injuries. A typical training camp always involves a handful of small injuries. No one ever enters a fight at 100%.

Combat sports are worse than most in terms of training through injury, stress, and fatigue. Part of it is the inherently macho aspect of the sport itself. But some of it is simply the incentive/disincentive mechanism. The boxer, wrestler, or MMA fighter considers a day off of training to be a day that his opponent is gaining an advantage on him. And there are real consequences to being less trained than your opponent. The athlete who loses at a big swim meet or baseball game surely feels bad about his performance, and wishes he trained harder or better. The unprepared fighter, on the other hand, can find himself dominated, brutalized, and concussed. The soccer player misses out on a trophy. The fighter can end up in the hospital. This is not to put fighting on a pedestal or claim it is a more noble or tougher sport; it is just reality.

Thus overtraining and injury are too often ignored. It is a rare day that the fighter is seen outside the gym during fight camp. Fighting is not a sport for to dabble in. It's all-in, or fold.

And yet, injury is the most fearful part of a training camp. I know that every day I show up, I have a small percentage chance of suffering an injury which will prevent me from fighting on May 30. That percentage on any given day might be just 2-3%, but still with 8-10 sessions left, these odds might be as high as 1-0.97^10 = 26%, still nearly a 1-in-4 chance I won't get to fight.

That's scarily high! It is hard to express how much it means to get through each day without suffering a major injury. Although I know it's not true, I feel like the world would end if I didn't fight on May 30. This is why fighters fight hurt. A fight camp demands so much of the fighter emotionally, psychically, and financially. Fighters spend so much time getting psyched up about the fight. They endure the beatings in the gym knowing that when they leave, they are one day closer to the fight. They sell tickets to their family and friends. They have told everyone around about their fight. To not fight feels like a crushing defeat, far worse than stepping in the ring and coming up short.

When one has a fight lined up, one obsesses about the fight. The fight not only occupies one's thoughts all the time, it also dominates one's activities. I wake up in the morning and do mobility exercises, yoga-like movements that will lower my chances of getting injured, and make me more powerful. Many people are happy to get an hour a day to exercise. I spend at least an hour a day getting ready to exercise.

I run. I lift weights. I'm getting extra private lessons. I bought a Compex stimulator unit and use it daily. I plan all of my meals meticulously and carefully -- protein and fat in the morning, carbs at night. I schedule naps, because as mentioned I only get 5 hours of sleep a night. I watch fight footage and technique videos in my spare time. I stalk my opponent on Facebook and Twitter.

In truth, I become a very boring person while fight camp is going on. I am about fighting, and nothing else. There is very little that I do in any given day that is not related to my goal of winning my upcoming fight. (I do watch a lot of TV, and read a lot. That is because those are things I can do with minimal effort, either physical or mental. Most of my day, I am conserving energy.)

The time that I am not spending on the fight, I try to use to take care of personal relationships. I began writing this post on Mother's Day, and I did my best to make my mom feel special that day. My girlfriend has been tremendously supportive of me through this fight camp, putting up with both my moodiness and low energy levels, and so I do my best to take care of her in turn. But personal relationships are surely compromised through a fight camp. I see friends and family much less often than I would otherwise. In truth, I see a lot less of anyone other than my training partners and my physiotherapist.

Fighting is pretty much a financial net negative for anyone but the top 1% of pros. Fighters not in that 1% would make far more money working in a trade. I have spent money on this camp on physiotherapy, acupuncture, medical tests, private training, equipment, high-quality food, and supplements. I am very fortunate that I am not under financial pressure and that I get to pursue my passion fully. For me, the opportunity cost is more significant than the actual expenses. I have passed up on money-making opportunities (consulting jobs, poker, DFS) because of a lack of time and energy to spend on them.

This is what choosing to fight really is, beyond what you see in the cage on the night of the fight. It is angst and difficulty.

If that's the case, why does anyone do it? I'll talk more about that in my next post.

Bigger, Faster, Stronger - why I no longer believe in banning steroids in sport

Over the weekend, I watched and quite enjoyed the 2008 documentary  Bigger Stronger Faster* on Netflix. I found it an honest assessment and good treatment regarding the controversy of steroids in professional and amateur sports, and enjoyed the combination of the director's personal anecdotes and paneling of relevant experts. I recommend watching it regardless of what side of the steroid debate you are on.

My own opinion on steroids in sport has changed significantly in the last couple of years. Not long ago, I was staunchly against steroid users. I thought all users were cheaters, that enforcement needed to be stepped up, and punishment needed to be harsher. I read the book Numbers Rule Your World, which included a chapter on how it was probable that the vast majority of steroid users are not caught, because Type 1 errors (false positives) are far more rare than Type 2 errors (false negatives). In a nutshell, the author argued that almost no one claiming innocence after testing positive is actually innocent, and that there are numerous athletes who are not testing positive but really are on the juice.

At some point, I started to change my mind on the issue. My position just didn't continue to make logical sense to me. It is definitely clear that steroid usage is in fact "cheating" in the sense that it is against the rules. But it's clear that not all forms of cheating are treated the same by sports fans. A basketball player who pushes the bounds of contact with his opponent but doesn't get whistled for a foul is not considered a cheater, he's considered a good defensive player. We have a culture of "it ain't cheating if you don't get caught", especially if you happen to be a fan of the individual committing the foul. And so it is with steroids. The most successful steroid users are those who are able to cycle off steroids in time, so that they don't get caught. What effectively is happening at this point with respect to steroids is that only the dumb, poor, or overly aggressive users are getting caught.

Difficulty in catching steroid users is not itself sufficient to argue that steroids should be legal, of course. Just because something is difficult to enforce does not mean you stop enforcing it, if it is deemed beneficial to do so.

The problem is that I no longer believe that it is beneficial to continue to try to ban steroids. The argument against steroids usually goes something like this:

• Steroids create an unfair playing field between users and non-users.
• As such, non-users would feel at a disadvantage; everyone would have to use, or risk being at a competitive disadvantage.
• Steroids are dangerous/have dangerous side effects. If athletes feel compelled to use steroids, then you are encouraging these athletes to harm themselves.
• Legalization would encourage children/teens to use them, since their idols would be known to use them.

The Unfair Playing Field

This argument is probably the most common, but the easiest to take apart. The playing field is not fair. Never has been, never will be. Some people were born with better genetics. Some people were born into a better socioeconomic path to athletic stardom. We like to think that with hard work, anyone can become a world champion in any sport, but the hard truth is it's bullshit. If you're not from a village in Kenya or Ethiopia, you're probably not going to be the best long distance runner in the world. Conversely if you *are* from a poor village in Africa, I don't much care for your chances of winning the America's Cup or the PGA Championship.

I find it hard to believe that there are still reasonable people who think that it's totally fair if you're genetically predisposed to having higher testosterone, red blood cell count, bone density, better body composition, and so on, but arbitrarily draw an ethical line at using technology to improve any of the above.

Additionally, I think it's worthwhile to explore the effects of non-steroid enhancement. No one thinks laser vision correction, or surgery to repair injured body parts is cheating.  Nick Diaz, an MMA fighter known for great striking but also famous for always getting cut (a marked disadvantage in a sport where a doctor can stop a fight if he thinks the cut is dangerous), had surgery to shave down some of his facial bones, making it less likely for him to get cut in the future. Absolutely no one in the MMA community thinks this is cheating, at least certainly not on the level that anabolic steroid usage is considered to be.

Even if we're just worried about hormone levels, there are many different ways to increase testosterone. Getting more sleep increases testosterone. Lifting weights increases testosterone. Having sex increases testosterone. Supplementing with Vitamin D increases testosterone. Same with creatine, zinc, and anecdotally, taking cold showers. And some people have genetics that lead to them having higher testosterone. You can't realistically ban these things, and you also can't provide universal access to these things.

It's Dangerous, So It's Unethical To Make People Feel Like They Have To Do It

I think this is the stronger argument. The side effects of anabolic steroid abuse are pretty well known, and they are real. What I find unfortunate about steroid education are the exaggerations and misinformation spread about it. I've never done steroids (nor even been tempted to), but from everything I understand, it's not like users immediately grow hair everywhere, get massive roid rage, grow breasts and have their testicles shrink. I think it's far more likely that if used under proper supervision from a qualified and ethical endocrinologist, steroids probably enhance performance with a small, but significant, amount of side effects.

Like we've seen with criminalization of other drugs like marijuana, exaggerating effects and providing misinformation about steroids inhibits what society really needs -- an open dialogue about the matter. "Bigger, Stronger, Faster" draws a parallel to "Reefer Madness", an absurd 1930s propaganda film which claimed that marijuana would turn users into violent sociopaths (as opposed to useless, lazy stoners). While there is likely more truth in claims of steroid damage, the point remains that providing exaggerations and misinformation prevents a useful dialogue.

Suppose that a given person has decided that he or she will use steroids, and you cannot talk him or her out of it. This person is committed to being the best football player, track and field competitor, powerlifter, bodybuilder, fighter, golfer, or whatever. This person rejects the idea that he cannot be the best, and is willing to go to whatever means necessary to do this. While we wouldn't want our son or daughter to be this person, what is the best situation for this person? The status quo, where this person orders a bunch of steroids over the internet, or perhaps makes a trip to Mexico to get it from a veterinarian? Or one where he or she can have an open dialogue with someone qualified to dispense the steroid; someone who can provide good, honest, ethical advice?

Elite Level Sports Performance Itself Is (Probably) Inherently Unhealthy

To get to an elite level in professional sports, you have to be willing to sacrifice your health. I think this statement comes as a surprise to people, because there is often an association between health and fitness. These two are not the same thing, even though they are so often used together. Elite level professional athletes are almost always very fit. They are stronger, faster, more flexible, and have better endurance than most people. But that does not mean they are healthy.

Elite professional athletes play through pain, injury, and illness. Those are bad things to do. The training required to reach the elite level in most pro sports is unhealthy, or at the very least, it is far from optimizing health. Optimal health for humans probably looks something like: walk a few miles every day, get some more intense exercise 3-4 times a week, and eat regularly while fasting intermittently. But elite level athletes train at a high intensity 5-6 days a week, often two or three times a day. They constantly eat a tremendous amount of calories to fuel that training, and when they are not training they are most likely sleeping, because they are exhausted. The level of fatigue and strain accumulated on an elite level athlete is hard for the average person to fathom, and it likely goes well beyond what is actually healthy in most circumstances. When you think of that way, it's very little wonder why so many athletes die prematurely.

The Maude Flanders Argument

 (I'll take any excuse to use this image.)

Even if it's not expressly stated, a lot of people feel that it's important to villify steroid users because if we don't, we are implicitly saying to children that it's okay to use them. We want our kids to eat their vegetables, so Popeye gulps down a canful of spinach; he doesn't jab a needleful of Winstrol in his ass.

And no, I don't think kids should be using steroids for athletic performance enhancement. But here again, I think it's far better to be able to have a healthy dialogue about steroids than it is to misrepresent and scare children and teenagers. Kids aren't stupid. If you treat them like intelligent, autonomous beings capable of making reasonable decisions, they're actually less likely to abuse drugs and alcohol. I see no reason that steroids wouldn't be different.

In "Bigger, Stronger, Faster", one of the protagonists is a steroid user as well as a high school football coach. The coach has clearly lied to his teenaged students about the fact that he uses. You're left to wonder what those kids are supposed to think if they ever get their hands on the documentary that they appear in.

If Steroids Are So Great, Why Don't You Do Them?

Well, quite simply, I don't want to.

I don't want to use steroids simply because of the cost-benefit analysis. From a legal perspective, I'm unwilling to get arrested or otherwise get in trouble with the law to get the performance gains that steroids could potentially provide me.  From a health perspective, I'm not sufficiently knowledgeable about them to feel like I can use them correctly without screwing up my health. I also feel there is a lack of long-term evidence that anabolic steroids can be used safely without significant negative consequences. I'd like to have kids one day, and have no desire to risk infertility. In summary, I don't care so much about being elite that I'm willing to risk the associated health and legal issues.

Every serious athlete has to, at some point, make a choice about how far they are willing to go. Usually, the ones who make it to the top 0.001% of their sport are the ones that are willing to risk everything. They risk concussions, spinal cord injuries, knee surgeries, heart attacks, and more. That elite level athletes are willing to do damage to their bodies is nothing new to sports, but while we lionize the athlete who risks his brain, neck, back, or knees for his sport, we demonize the athlete who risks his endocrine system. This is not logically consistent.

The fact is, I'll never be an elite level athlete in my chosen sport. But I like watching sports, and I'll continue to watch elite level athletes do amazing things. I'll know the lengths they have gone to do these amazing things. They will have likely trained since a very young age, possibly being pressured or even abused by a parent or coach. They will likely have sacrificed academic pursuits in favour of time in the gym or on the field. They will sacrifice time with friends, staying out late, or their favourite foods. They will have pushed their bodies to the limit of failure in both training and competition. They will train and compete through cuts, bruises, aches, sprains, broken bones, and concussions. And I realize that quite possibly, they will have used exogenous hormones to get through all of these things.

Would it be cooler if I knew for certain that those athletes were able to do these things solely through their genetically-granted gifts and their hard work and discipline? Perhaps. To be sure, I think as long as steroids continue to be against the rules, sports organizations should continue to seek out and punish those who use them. But as a society, it grows increasingly hypocritical to demand that our athletes sacrifice their brains, bones, and joints while simultaneously demanding that they keep off the steroids that so many of their rivals are using.

one week post cataract surgery

Six days after my first cataract surgery and ... wow. I'm really surprised by how much better I can see out of my right eye already. There are still some weird halos, flickering lights, shimmering, and other annoyances but at virtually every distance other than extremely close, my vision has improved dramatically. It's accentuated by the fact that my left eye is still uncorrected, so I often do things like cover up my right eye just to remind myself of how absolutely awful the left eye is. I joked yesterday that I wish I could screenshot what I'm seeing so the typical non-affected person would know. I found this picture online which kinda sorta gives you an idea, but in truth it's much worse:

Another way of illustrating the difference between my left uncorrected eye and my right eye, six days after treatment, is to show you the level of zoom I would have to use with each one.

Level of zoom on my monitor needed last week:

Level of zoom on my monitor needed today:

My intermediate (1-5 feet) vision has improved dramatically, but my distance vision is amazing. I have a nice Strip view from my apartment and I'm now reading signs that I wasn't even aware existed, much less could read.

Of course, it's driving me insane that I'm not allowed to have any exercise at all this week (nor do anything at all that potentially pushes blood to my head). I feel cooped up, like I'm under home (or office) arrest. And as masochistic as this sounds, I won't be totally happy until I take a few hard punches or kicks to the face without suffering any ill effects to the eye. But sadly, that's a long ways away.

I have a weekly check-in with my ophthalmologist (still can't spell that without auto-correct) tomorrow. If all goes well I'll get the left eye done a week from tomorrow. And then the countdown to my comeback begins...

Cataract surgery, day 1

I'm currently 16 hours post-op on my right eye. The procedure itself was quite painless. A very lengthy period of waiting, some rather anxious moments as they literally taped my eyelids open and stuck pieces of paper under them to prevent me from blinking, but a relatively quick and well-sedated procedure.

This morning my right eye is a bit of a paradox. The vision in that eye is at times exceptionally sharp. I'll look at an object in the right light, at the right angle and think "wow,it's been years since I saw an image that sharp". But then I'll look at my phone and won't be able to make anything out at all (if you know me personally, don't bother texting me today - just call). My guess is that my brain is still adjusting to the new lens and it will take some time to figure out how to deal with an artificial lens that simply doesn't adjust as well as the one nature gave me.

There are also certain things that catch the light just right seem to have a halo or shadow. It's almost like using a really really low-dose of a psychedelic drug. It's kind of a novelty right now, but definitely hoping that goes away with time.

The eyes have it -- my early-age, rapid-onset cataracts

In my most recent blog post, I wrote about my disdain for my aging body, after a routine grappling session resulted in a nasty ankle sprain (which still has me limping slightly, three weeks later). Little would i know that only two days later, I would be lamenting the failure of something all the way at the complete opposite end of my body -- my eyes.

For reasons not totally clear to me, I have developed cataracts, in both eyes, very quickly, over the last 6 months. I only started noticing that things were getting a bit blurry around November of last year, so I went in for an eye exam. I was told I had cataracts, but that they weren't terrible. It's extremely uncommon for such a healthy, non-diabetic person in his 30s to get cataracts, and especially uncommon for them to get very worse very quickly. So I was given a prescription for a small amount of astigmatism and hyperopia and told to come back in six months for a follow-up.

I was a bit disappointed that the glasses didn't help much. My very first night with the glasses, I was asked by Ultimate Poker to host the UFC Hall of Fame Poker Game. I was MCing the event, giving away tickets, making jokes for the crowd, but most obviously, calling the action. I had the best seat in the house -- standing right behind the dealer -- but even with my brand-new glasses, I was having trouble seeing the bet sizes and reading the board.

If that was bad, I was totally unprepared for the next 4 months. My vision is getting worse on almost a week-to-week basis. It might be a rare, 3-sigma bad beat that my eyes were getting this bad, this fast, and for no apparent reason, but that didn't change the reality that it was happening to me.

The last straw came a couple weeks ago when I misread the board and made a huge mistake in a 50k pot during the LA Poker Classic. I was nearly inconsolable after that. My ankle had already taken kickboxing, grappling and MMA away from me; and now my eyes were taking the rest of my life.

I immediately called up the ophthalmologist office for an appointment. They confirmed that my vision had gotten substantially worse since my appointment just four months earlier. I would definitely need the surgery; the only question was when. The one thing holding me back was that I was told it would be 3-6 months after the surgery before I could resume training and taking strikes to the face. I hated the idea of conceivably not being able to train or fight until November. I thought about postponing the surgery and fighting in May, then having the surgery, but with the status of my ankle unknown, I finally relented and committed to getting the surgery done now.

So that's the situation. Next Tuesday, I'm scheduled to go under the knife for the first operation, with the other eye scheduled for two weeks after that. I'll be able to return to work and inactive activities the next day, regular-people exercise a week after the second surgery, grappling by mid-May, and kickboxing/boxing/MMA 3-6 months later, as mentioned. That means that in all likelihood, 2014 will mark a second consecutive year of absence from the MMA cage. I was really hoping to break my inactive streak by fighting for the TuffNUff organization on April 11, but I would consider myself fortunate now if I can even get back in action on November 11.

On the bright side, my quality of life should dramatically improve right away, I won't be a risk to myself or the other drivers on the roads of Las Vegas. I'll be able to participate in the WSOP without pissing money away, I'll no longer trip over random things that I completely didn't see, I'll be able to recognize faces from more than 20 feet away, and I won't have to blow documents up to 200-300% of their original size to be able to read them (yes, I actually have to do that, even with glasses).

I suppose that's worth not being able to be on the mats or in the rings for six months. I hope so, anyway. But it won't make it any easier.

Injured - a fighter's lament

Injuries happen. Anyone who participates in any sport -- forget fighting -- realizes it. Everyone has teammates, and knows how those teammates feel when they get injured. But all that experience doesn't make it any easier when it happens.

Before last night, I'd gone over a full year without a serious injury. I'll define a serious injury as one that keeps me off the mats for more than a month. I considered myself very lucky, but I also attributed my relative durability to some lifestyle changes: 1) focusing more on conditioning while trading off live sparring; 2) resting or doing lower-intensity training when sore or fatigued; 3) better nutrition (eating cartilage, marrow, bone broth, etc).

For most of the last year I've also been tied up with Ultimate Poker/Ultimate Casino stuff, so I've also been to fewer MMA, BJJ and boxing classes in the last year than I had previously. I kept up my conditioning though, and the last month or so as things slowed down a bit at work, I've started to get back in a decent groove and had plans on making a comeback for the Vegas-based TuffNUff organization in April.

Unfortunately that balloon was popped along with each audible pop of my ankle last night. The accident itself was pretty freakish. No one was trying to attack my limbs. I was caught in what grapplers know as a de la Riva position, a bit like this:

I was the guy on top, but my legs were stretched wider. As I started to lose my balance, my body rotated but my foot got stuck on the mat, so my body turned independent of my foot, which blew up my ankle. It was a freak accident, just "one of those things".

I yelled in pain, and I knew immediately it was going to be bad. Ten minutes later I was calling for my roommate Chris to take me to the ER. X-rays confirmed no bone break, but they did send me home in a cast, crutches, and lots of painkillers.

As mentioned, the timing is awful. I finally started to get a decent handle on my work schedule, the WSOP is still a few months away, and I was finally starting to put in some good work lacing up the boxing gloves and MMA shorts on a regular basis. I mentioned to Chris that I would happily pay very good money to instead have this injury the day before the WSOP instead of 6 weeks from a (albeit still theoretical) fight.

So, I'm depressed -- at 33, I'm no spring chicken any more, and while I know these things are only more likely to happen and taken even longer to recover from, the competitive fire in me is still burning. It's not that I won't get to fight in April, it's that after that will be WSOP, then who knows how busy work will get. Months continue to fly off the calendar as I struggle to keep this body healthy like a poor college student tries to keep a run-down vehicle road-worthy.

All I want to do is sit at home, eat chocolate, and mope. What I will actually probably do is work from home, elevate my foot, and eat some high-collagen, high-gelatin bone broth. I may be getting older, but I'm getting smarter too.

Eight days from a fight and raring to go

What was probably my last sparring class is now in the books for this training camp, meaning that barring a tremendous freak accident, I have survived. Just surviving is huge. Most people think that getting into a cage and fighting another trained man until one of you quits or needs to be rescued by the referee is a dangerous thing. And it is. But the potential for injury is so much higher in training. Even though training is controlled and you are never trying to hurt your partner, it is intense. Even toned down versions of a fight, once repeated for multiple rounds a night, four nights a week for eight weeks, is likely to lead to injury. Long time readers will recall last year that I suffered a serious rib injury just 17 days before the fight. The injury was so severe that if I had taken a good shot to that side on fight day I surely would have lost.

This time around though, there are no significant injuries. Not only am I uninjured, I am in probably the best shape I have ever been for a fight. Not only am I in the best shape I've ever been for a fight, I am in the best mental place I have ever been in for a fight. The guys on my team at Universal MMA have been in fight camp mode since I finished with the WSOP, as there were two fight cards back in September and two again here in November. When I got back from the WSOP to train with the guys I was slow, out of shape and just generally shitty at fighting. But for the last four months I have taken my lumps, gotten totally dialed in on my health and nutrition and couldn't feel better. I train with a diverse group of fighters who all bring different things to the table, so even if I don't know much about my opponent -- I don't even know if I am fighting a left or right handed guy -- I feel as though I am prepared for anything.

I feel sharp. I feel I am as good a fighter as I have ever been, and I am going into this fight with very bad intentions.  I think anyone who knows me knows that I am not the cliché of a chest-beating, trash-talking, overconfident fighter. Thirteen years of poker have taught me about variance and that just about anything can happen in a chaotic world. And I know that every fight and every fighter is dangerous. And still I cannot picture in my head any outcome other than me walking into the Battlefield cage next Saturday and winning in an overwhelmingly dominant fashion. In eight days, I will think about every punch I've eaten, every kick I've absorbed, every takedown that's slammed me on my back, and every time I've tapped to a submission. And I will take them all out on this man by delivering him a hellacious beating. I can picture no other result.

The correlation of KOs suffered and age amongst UFC fighters

Cage Potato has an article up entitled The Price of Wisdom: Age and Knockouts in MMA. I'm actually off to the gym myself shortly and I haven't had a chance to go through this entire article carefully, but it seems fascinating so far. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the author finds that the older fighters get, the more likely they are to lose by knockout.

But is this because older fighters actually have worse chins, or simply because they get outstruck more frequently as they age and slow down? After compiling some data, the author writes:

[T]he basic trend is clear that it takes fewer and fewer head strikes to knock down older fighters. When it comes to standup striking, it takes half as many landed strikes to knock down a fighter approaching 40, than it did when he was in his early 20?s.

Here is the link again. Some food for thought as this 31-year-old prepares to leave the house to get hit by a bunch of dudes wearing small gloves. :)

What I believe (or rather, don't believe), human body edition

I'm impressed with what seems like increased interest in health and fitness in the poker community in the past couple of years. It seems that a lot of poker pros are realizing that the lifestyle they lead is not the healthiest, and are looking to better themselves. As kind of a health/fitness nut myself, I applaud this! However, it seems that there are still a ton of beliefs out there among the general populace over what to do and when/how to do it, and unfortunately a lot of these beliefs are way off.

The following is a nowhere-near-exhaustive list of things that most people believe but I believe are wrong. And to be truthful, I previously believed almost all of them at some point! Generally, the below statements are simply asserted and accepted as fact regardless of the evidence. In response, I will do the same and assert that the opposite of these statements is true without bothering with the pesky evidence. :) I am by no means an expert, but I read an awful lot. Sometimes I even read those boring medical studies that no one reads.

Anyhow, I have only included the most ubiquitous of beliefs. I have only included statements where you took a random sample of people in first-world, Westernized countries, I bet you would find that over 50% of people would agree with the following statements. But I now agree with none of them.

The List of Lies

• Saturated fats are bad for you
• Vegetable/canola oils and other polyunsaturated oils are better to cook with than butter or lard
• Low-fat yogurt is better for you than full-fat (you may replace "yogurt" with virtually every dairy product)
• For a healthier meal, trim the fat from your meat
• You should limit fat consumption to 20-30% of total calories
• Whole grains are good for you
• Brown rice is better for you than white rice
• Chicken is better for you than beef (or other red meats)
• Eating 5-6 small meals a day and snacking frequently is better than eating 2-3 large meals a day
• Skipping breakfast is bad for you
• Eating a big dinner at night is bad for you 
• To fight a cold/bolster your immune system, you should take lots of Vitamin C 
• You should eat lots of "antioxidant" foods 
• Wear lots of sunscreen to avoid harmful UV rays
• Get a good stretch before you work out
• If you want to lose weight, just do more cardio
• People who run should get shock-absorbing shoes to minimize damage
• You shouldn't work out on an empty stomach

I feel like I'm still missing a number of things, but I suppose these are the big ones. Of course, you should not just assume that I am right and popular opinion is wrong just because you're reading my blog. Do your own research. I'm just putting this out there as something to consider the next time you get some diet/exercise/lifestyle advice.

Making a groove out of a rut

I'm in a bit of a rut.

I've had a few minor injuries that have prevented me from training as much I've I'd like to this week, which has in turn pushed me into this minor rut. When I'm training hard, twice a day, I feel great. I feel purpose-driven, I am chock full of good hormones, food tastes great, and I sleep like a baby. When I'm not training, I am stir-crazy, bored, and don't really know what to do with myself. I mostly read books, play video games and mess around a bunch online, all while wishing I were training. This has been one of those weeks.

Fight addiction > gambling addiction

Last week, I was chatting with my cousin Calvin, who is one of the people responsible for getting me into the sport. He is turning 35 in July and has unfortunately had to scale back a lot of his training (especially standup) due to injuries. I mentioned that when I am his age (I'm 31) I might be done with this fighting stuff. In his words, "you won't [be]. Unless you have some medical issue. It's like crack."

I thought that was an overstatement (well, I suppose the crack part actually is), but then I was kept off the mats for a few days and I fell right into this rut. Also, when I have too much time on my hands, I tend to get way too introspective and spend too much time wondering what I'm doing with my life.

I have scarcely played any poker since coming back from the Aussie Millions. I haven't been motivated to grind online cash and I've never been one for online tourneys (and all the good ones start at terrible hours here in Hong Kong anyway). I'm still beating online cash and when I play I still feel like I play well, and I want to stay sharp with the WSOP around the corner, but I often just can't be bothered. I'll play for an hour and be bored out of my mind. It just seems like menial, boring work now. I do still enjoy playing live tournaments. There is that great vibe, there is the thrill of competition, there's the social interaction, and there is a start and a finish. Is it strange that as a young poker player I was a Joey Knish and now, into my thirties, I am more Mike McD?

The Macau Poker Cup is going on this weekend. It's a large-field, medium buy-in (US ~$1100) tournament that's just an hour ferry ride away from me, so it should have been a slam dunk for me. But I skipped it, because the tournament organizers changed the Day 1 start time to 8pm which means play wouldn't wrap up until 4am. In my prime poker days, I wouldn't have batted an eye at that, but lately I have optimized nearly my entire life around my physical health and fitness. In the past that just meant exercise and nutrition being dialed in, but the more I read the more I realize that sleep quality plays a huge role in both health and sports performance. So I skipped a high-ev tournament right in my backyard that many of my friends were attending.

This would be a reasonable thing to do if I were a professional athlete, but as we know, I'm just a scrub. Since Black Friday, I've basically just been spending money and living off of savings and investments. Mostly the former because other than real estate, I don't have much of the latter. Financially, I am still in very good shape, but eventually I will have to do something for money -- and to keep myself sane. There's zero chance I will fight for a living, and even doing something like coaching is a long way off given my current skill level.

Options, options

One possibility I've been considering is getting into the finance world. It's not one that remotely interested me at all when I was a young adult, even as someone who graduated with a business degree and enjoyed the requisite undergrad finance courses. But I've been reading some interesting books and some of it seems kind of fun. Everyone says that being a poker player is great prep for being a trader (and vice versa), and that the markets are just like a big casino. Yet I feel like I would nevertheless be starting at a knowledge deficit. I honestly know so little about this world. I don't know how it is that individual people or even small firms can beat the market when there are these giant firms with their supercomputers and tremendous access to information.

On top of that, I wouldn't know where to begin. I've never been a person who was really capable of learning anything in any sort of traditional path. Despite being a reasonably smart person, I was a below-average elementary and high school student, a so-so university student, and I've definitely improved slower than average at MMA, so typical learning environments clearly aren't my thing. Besides, I've always felt that typical learning begets typical results, and I have no desire for that. Luckily I do have friends who are smart in such things -- my smart friends are the only reason I have ever been successful at poker -- and so I do have a valuable resource if I choose to go down that road.

That's just a sidebar to my life at this time, though. MMA is still my priority, and despite my bitching, I still love the training and the sport. If I can stay healthy, I think I can stay happy.

Coming Up

APPT Seoul March 7-11. This is an exciting one for me for a number of reasons. I've never been to Korea, and I've always wanted to go. That's a big one. But I also found out that there is are MMA tryouts (link in Korean) in Suncheon, Korea, the same day as the APPT final table. The winners get to compete in the "Young Guns" portion of a future Road FC card, which is the biggest MMA promotion in Korea. It wouldn't be ideal from a preparation standpoint, but if I were to bust Day 1A of the APPT main event, I would have enough time to cut weight, take a 4.5 hour bus ride from Seoul to Suncheon and compete in the tryouts.

Alternatively (or additionally), there is also an amateur MMA event in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on March 31. It is "D-class", meaning really watered-down MMA rules, but the idea is that you win your way up to C-class, B-class and A-class where the rules are progressively less restrictive. I wish they had stuff like that in Hong Kong, or even Vancouver, but Taiwan is only a 1.5 hour flight away, so it's not unreasonable.

On the non-poker, non-MMA front, I have a number of friends either visiting or possibly visiting Hong Kong within the next month or so. Having some real-world interaction with people I like always makes me happy, and so even if I am not at the gym twice daily, I should manage to keep the ennui at bay.

a funny hand history / wrapping up in Phuket; Australia soon

So, this was fun:

Starting Game #46658088-2182
gtownhustla22 is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
TerrenceChan posted Small Blind $2
Albuquerquefreakout posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (Ks,Kd)
ghstface1 folds
Cogitus folds
gtownhustla22 raised to $113 (wtf?)
TerrenceChan is All In
Albuquerquefreakout folds
gtownhustla22 calls $396.39
gtownhustla22 shows (Qd,Qh)
TerrenceChan shows (Ks,Kd)
Dealing Flop (8h,Ac,8d)
Dealing Turn (5c)
Dealing River (Ad)
TerrenceChan wins $794.28 from Pot 1 with : Two Pair Aces and Kings
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2183
TerrenceChan is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
Albuquerquefreakout posted Small Blind $2
ghstface1 posted Big Blind $4
gtownhustla22> website is such a jjoike
You Were Dealt (Qh,Th)
Cogitus folds
gtownhustla22> \CHEATING ***** SLANTY EYD ****
gtownhustla22> HONG KONG USELES FU CK
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan raised to $10.66
Albuquerquefreakout folds
gtownhustla22> did we drop a few bombs on you
ghstface1 folds
TerrenceChan wins $16.66 from Pot 1
TerrenceChan mucks
gtownhustla22> piece of sh it
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2184
Albuquerquefreakout is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
ghstface1 posted Small Blind $2
Cogitus posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (6c,2s)
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan folds
Albuquerquefreakout folds
TerrenceChan> sorry, no speak english
ghstface1 calls $4
Cogitus checks
Dealing Flop (6h,3h,4d)
ghstface1 checks
Cogitus bets $8
ghstface1 folds
Cogitus wins $15.10 from Pot 1
Cogitus mucks
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2185
ghstface1 is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
Cogitus posted Small Blind $2
BumHunter357 posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (5c,Qh)
gtownhustla22> shu t th e fuc k up u idiot
gtownhustla22 folds
TerrenceChan> only speak us dollar
TerrenceChan folds
Albuquerquefreakout folds
ghstface1 raised to $8
gtownhustla22> only speak my co ck in your girl s as s
Cogitus folds
BumHunter357 folds
ghstface1 wins $14 from Pot 1
gtownhustla22> ****
ghstface1 mucks
--------------------------------------
Starting Game #46658088-2186
Cogitus is the Dealer
Shuffling Cards
gtownhustla22> G O O K
BumHunter357 posted Small Blind $2
gtownhustla22 posted Big Blind $4
You Were Dealt (Qs,9s)
TerrenceChan> sorry no understan, you have more us dollar or no more?
TerrenceChan folds

****

(He would go on to busto his remaining $50 or so shortly after, then quit.)

I've been playing poker for so many years and yet I still never tire of this type of amazing immaturity. Suppose that doesn't make me too much more mature than them.

I have less than 48 hours left in Thailand. It's been fairly good, my standup has improved, my cardio has improved. But the last 10 days were a total write-off. I went to the beach for New Year's Eve on December 30-January 1, and that's when my first symptoms of a mystery illness showed up. On the evening of January 1, I suddenly got really bad chills; bundling up under the covers in a hoodie and sweatpants in 31-degree heat kinda bad. I had the hotel call me a doctor who in all honesty was probably pretty terrible. He diagnosed me with gastroenteritis and prescribed antibiotics. He actually didn't give me the standard spiel about taking the whole course of antibiotics, which I found odd. Anyway, I took the first one without thinking about it, then realized that antibiotics for a stomach flu is a terrible idea and decided not to take any more. I continued on acetaminophen instead.

On January 3, I felt okay enough to train, but hurt my ankle slightly. The next day instead of training I went swimming in the pool. I'm a terrible swimmer (which means I drink a lot of water) and the pool is not well-maintained here, so I suspect that I got sick from the pool water. I had a fever ranging from a mild 38 to a nasty 38.7 at its peak from the 4th-7th. Today, the 10th, was my first day back at training.

It sucks that I've been sick in Thailand twice in my three trips here, because it's such a great place for high-quality training at a very low price. My immune system is very robust when I'm in either Hong Kong or Vancouver but it seems to have trouble keeping up here in Thailand, whether it's from bug bites, pool water, food poisoning, heatstroke, or whatever. The veterans say basically everyone gets sick here, so I guess it's just something you have to deal with.

As somewhat of an aside, a follower on Twitter directed me to this excellent read about training Muay Thai in Thailand. I felt that while the tone of the author was startlingly negative and fatalistic that it still captured a lot of what it's like to be here.

****

So, in a couple days time I'll be back in Hong Kong for a week, then off to Melbourne for the Aussie Millions, one of my favourite poker destinations. After that ... who knows? Maybe I'll even be right back here, punching and kicking stuff under a corrugated roof now shielding against an even hotter southern Thailand sun.