Loserboy's Blog

February 17, 2020	When a friend hangs the towel...	Some thoughts	4 years ago
December 9, 2018	Bed sheet clamps	Some thoughts	5 years ago
June 25, 2018	Wrestling persona	Some thoughts	5 years ago
January 9, 2018	Teachers and wrestlers	Some thoughts	6 years ago
November 16, 2017	To reply or not?	Some thoughts	6 years ago
October 3, 2015	Hope from injuries and understanding the transition from sub to pro	Some thoughts	8 years ago


Monday February 17 2020 - When a friend hangs the towel...	Some thoughts
I had a wrestling friend who is in his mid-40s. Very good shape for his age, he occasionally takes martial arts classes. We used to wrestle about two or three times a year. He told me recently that his wrestling days are finally over. What? He's more active than I am and he's still young. How did it come to this? What happened? Part of the chores required for his daily work consists of lifting boxes and his doctor finally told him that it has taken a very big toll on his body.... especially his back. The doctor also told him that wrestling is also no longer an option. It's incredible how everything can change all of a sudden... in one day, in one week or in one month. Life throws a curve ball at you and suddenly, you need to let go one of your deepest or greatest passions. I told him that we could still meet to perhaps, take it easy, trade light holds... maybe cuddle? We'll see how it goes. I guess the summary of this blog entry is that you should take advantage of life and enjoy wrestling while you still can... Keep your wrestling friends close and keep in touch with them often.
Blog ID 283

Sunday December 9 2018 - Bed sheet clamps	Some thoughts
While I was waiting for a wrestler to show up while I was in Boston, I took a picture of these bed sheet clamps because I want to share a little story about them. They look very simplistic, but they are actually extremely helpful. You could call them straps, grippers, holders with clips, etc. Bah! They have a lot of different names. For us, motel and hotel wrestlers, they are a blessing. Each time I see these clamps, I think of WrestlingCoachSF (id 4731) and his priceless reaction. He came to one of my open rooms a couple of years ago, and he saw that my hotel room mattress was on the floor with a bed sheet on it. He immediately commented: - "Remove that bed sheet. It'll detach from its base midway in a match and it's just going to be in the way while we wrestle." I grinned and replied: - "Don't worry about it, coach. It'll stay in place." - "No, it won't. I wrestled many times before and I'm telling you now: they won't even last a minute." - "Well," I asked, "I'm telling you that they'll last much longer. Wanna wrestle me and test it out?" He took my offer and we tumbled around a little bit. To his surprise, the bed sheets stood in place. - "What's going on here?", he shouted out puzzled. He was doing moves that were strong enough to cause these bed sheets to fly away, but nothing was happening. He even pulled the sheets towards him purposely to remove them, but they still wouldn't budge. What was it? Did I put crazy glue? So, he interrupted the match, hurried and knelt down to the side of the bed, lifted it up and that's where he saw the curious contraption that was holding the bed sheet fixed to the mattress. I couldn't stop laughing. It's like playing a trick on a poor kid... or worse, stealing candy. Anyway, if you are a hotel wrestler like me, don't ever leave home without 4 straps like these. One for each corner of the mattress. They are not invincible though: I tend to bring 5 or 6 instead because if you wiggle a lot or do very fierce movements (mostly in sub), the straps can eventually break. Lucky you, the extra pair you brought will help you replace the broken ones.
Blog ID 213

Monday June 25 2018 - Wrestling persona	Some thoughts
A wrestling persona allows for anyone to have an alter ego or a double life. Most of us are working the typical 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, office environment where we talk politely, hold politically correct conversations or restrain ourselves from being too outgoing. Sometimes, we get frustration about work procedures or principles, we build up stress about deadlines and worries about a project that went wrong... it all seems that at any moment now, you need to explode... but you need to keep it all in. Unless you want to lose that job. We then go home after work and prepare ourselves for a wrestling match, where we can finally unleash our frustration and stress by adopting a character that is all-out, mean, baddie, ready to dish out some damage. It doesn't necessarily mean that you're a heel, you can be a jobber and still have that over-confident wrestling persona, predicting his win, thinking that he can destroy the world, no opponent is too big for you... only to be shown the truth: slammed down into the mats, stretched into submission and pinned out a couple of minutes later. This is just one example or alternative and it expresses mostly a pro angle. As I've discussed previously, wrestling is used by some wrestlers to fight autism, while many others use it as a form of excellent source of exercise. I personally find wrestling a great way to express myself outside of work. Both in pro and sub. In sub form, you get to squeeze, stretch, sometimes punch (if your opponent agrees with you of course), defend and attack almost freely. In pro, I guess I'm often seen as the jobber, but then I also have my inner-heel side when I rack guys around. I get to belch out and roar out a massive sound while I do it... that is the complete opposite of what I am during the day. I guess we could make it similar to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Or even... The Incredible Hulk. The more I watch wrestlers in our community fight, the more I appreciate and understand their wrestling persona, both in pro and sub. It may look unlikely to be used in sub, but I've seen sub wrestlers that act differently once they are in control, taunting you to get out and telling you who's the stronger one. It's one small side, but it still counts. When you are about to make someone tap and insist them to say "I give up, sir.", you're adopting a wrestling persona as well. All right, maybe not as flamboyant and overwhelming as pro-types wrestling personas, but you get the point. The gear aspect in pro adds to that confidence feeling: when you put on those boots and knee pads or elbow pads, you feel protected, you feel stronger. You're ready to take on the world. You do that lock up, you get your opponent in a headlock, you flip them over, you throw them into the turnbuckle or towards the ring post and you slam onto them. That rush, that adrenaline that you've been accumulating, now's the time to show who's in charge. I think I made it clear: wrestling allows us to get out from our daily routine, be somebody else for a little while and having fun doing it. It makes me an extrovert at night when I'm an introvert during the day. Polite and friendly software tester by day, mean and terrifying wrestler by night.
Blog ID 196

Tuesday January 9 2018 - Teachers and wrestlers	Some thoughts
In my travels, I have met quite a few wrestlers that are teachers. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Quite the contrary, being a teacher has its perks. Most of them seem to use the summer term, the 2-3 months of vacation they have for free to go and travel off, meet new guys and wrestle. Sometimes, I wish I was also a teacher so I could roam around for several months at a time, but you know what, being in Information Technology has its own share of perks. There was this one particular teacher I met at one of the wrestling events that told me something that marked me still today. When I asked him if he enjoyed his career, he told me that his profession changed a lot within the years. This guy was teaching at the high school level. He told me that the blame has shifted from the student to the teacher. When a student fails a class, the parents used to say: "What did the student do and what can he do to improve or to pass the course?" Nowadays, the question they ask is: "What did the teacher do and what can he do to help the student pass the course?" He also told me that the kids are aware that a lot of laws are protecting them and many kids no longer show any respect to teachers. He would walk towards a student and that student would tell him out of the blue: "Get the hell out of my face." and there's absolutely nothing the teacher could do. I felt really bad for him. I could see the progression and the shift and change in values, how time transformed a wonderful job into a crappy one because parents put so much love in their kids that they become completely spoiled. And mind you, so many different careers have been transformed over time. It reminds me of one of my exes who had his shining days in the travel agency industry about barely 2-3 decades ago. Nowadays, who uses travel agencies anymore when you have sites like Expedia that do all the work in a fraction of a second? Back on the subject of kids, I'm not saying that these kids need to be slapped or anything, but a lot little less spoiling is a good start and that probably starts at home. One thing for sure, shifting the blame from student to teacher is definitely the wrong way to go. And sometimes, doing the right stuff will prep the kids and put them on the right track. A colleague of mine tells me that the first thing that they teach kids in kindergarten is that parents cannot hurt you in anyway. If they do, you can call the police and your parents will go behind bars. The kids go back to their parents and tell that in their face and the parents are scared and defenseless. My colleague enrolls his kids to take martial arts classes such as karate and the first thing these guys teach them is to respect their parents. On top of that, the kids learn not to use their self-defense skills on each other because they are lethal. They learn to use these skills sporadically and only when their lives are threatened. When I was younger, my mom would use a wooden stick to slap my butt and I would get a couple of slaps with it depending on the severity of my actions. Today, I tell wrestlers not to slap my butt because I had my fair share already. I still have somewhat some form of trauma about it, but I felt that it somewhat shaped me and oriented me in the right direction. Then again, I'm not saying this is right either, there's something in the middle that is just right. You can't be too harsh with your kids, nor too easy. Anyway, I just felt like ranting and mind you, this shouldn't be a thing I would ever need to worry about because I wouldn't want to have kids. I'd be a terrible daddy: always wandering off wrestling too many guys. I'd be to blame if my kids misbehave.
Blog ID 177

Thursday November 16 2017 - To reply or not?	Some thoughts
This is a common discussion I get when I talk to some wrestlers I've met along the way. People tell me that I'm nice and that I seem to wrestle just about every one. Truth is that I try to give everybody a chance. Not everyone will share my way of thinking... You can't be a match to everybody and you'll sometimes meet wrestlers that absolutely want to wrestle you, but you don't really want to wrestle them... so how do you handle them? Sometimes, just telling them that you're not interested is plain easy and it ends there. It sounds pretty easy in theory. In practice, it's not that simple. I met a guy who was a teacher in psychology and he told me that you have about two types of people that handle rejection: 1) You have the guy with low self-esteem that will be extremely hurt and that will say to himself: "Nobody wants me, I must be hideous. I'll go hide in my corner." If you are a good judge of character and can identify a person with an insecure personality from a face pic, then you'd be able to make the right decision for someone affected with case 1. But this ain't easy. Most likely, a person with personality one won't have a face pic because of his low self-esteem to start with. I guess that's why many wrestlers require that a face pic is posted on a profile before they can reply. Let's take a look at case two: 2) You have the complete opposite over confident guy that will say to himself: "That's fine. There's plenty of fish out there and there are many people who will appreciate me the way I am." Well, problem solved if the rejection recipient is this type of guy. Life goes on and you didn't hurt anyone, nor did he hurt you. That example above is a bit exaggerated, so let's put also in that category the group of people that understands your response, thanks you for your honesty and moves on quietly. Whether it falls in category 1 or 2, many wrestlers don't want to accidentally hurt the person on the opposite end. It also goes in hand with what my mother uses to tell me: "If you don't have anything good to say, don't say anything at all." With experience, you quickly learn there are actually more than two cases. So let me expand the initial two cases by creating two new ones: 3) The third case would be the persistent guy that will keep on messaging you anyway even if you said "No". The solution to this is simple, this is where you don't need to reply any further. You said it the first time, you don't need to repeat it again. This also sounds simple but in reality you have the really really persistent ones. There's a block button for that but I met some users who don't want to block in case the person on the other end ends up in anger and retaliates. This actually leads to the fourth case: 4) There's the extreme case where you fall on a psycho that will not accept rejection and will threaten you. Now this leaves a mark and sometimes a permanent trauma. With today's problems about revenge porn, identity theft and impersonation, with search engines making it easier to track down people and with the increasing cases of hacking worldwide, it may be the reason why many people still don't want to include their faces in their pictures or even reply to someone by saying "Not interested." They don't need to over-analyze whether someone falls in category one, two or three... the risk of falling in category 4 is enough for them to not reply at all when they are not interested. I can understand them myself a little bit: I remember saying to someone that I didn't think our personalities would match for a second encounter and his reply was pretty frightening. Yes, I can just hit the delete button, or even better in my case, delete his profile (although this would be abusing my administrative powers, but that's another story). So, I can understand the impact for someone who is clueless in technology and fears the retaliation of another user. Similarly to the four types of users who handle rejection, you have to put the two types of people who handles threats. 1) Many just laugh and delete the message and/or block the user. And honestly, you should fall in this category. 2) Others are scared and wonder what the user on the other end is capable of. So why bother with a reply that can explode in your face if you can just instead... not reply at all? In fact, to this day this is the reason why the blocking system on my site is a silent one instead of a flashing one that tells the other party that you blocked his profile. Because I've been through this myself. In my case, I can laugh, but I think of the other users who instead become shrouded with fear. Anyway, this is still a subject for debate. I'll continue on this topic another time.
Blog ID 161

Saturday October 3 2015 - Hope from injuries and understanding the transition from sub to pro	Some thoughts
About a month ago, I had a back injury that left me grounded in bed for about one week. All in all, it took me three weeks to recover and even now, I still feel the consequences of it. It healed about 90% and you are left with a reminder in the 10% that never heals, probably for the rest of my life. It's like my right shoulder injury. It's away most of the time, but occasionally, it will come back and haunt me if I pull out a rough move with it or if somebody jerks a hold aggressively on it. I see more and more profiles on my website where people leave submission for good and switch to pro. I start understanding them better. When you accumulate all these injuries over the years and when these injuries don't heal completely after time, one day you are faced with the decision to either stop wrestling or to switch to a style that is safer for you, or that will slow down the progression of new injuries. When I had my back pain, I almost felt like crying.. I felt like I wouldn't be able to wrestle for the rest of my life. Wrestling is my passion.. I've pursued it for the last 15 years and I've met so many great people because of it. My matches last week-end gave me hope; hope that I can still wrestle, that I can live with my injuries or with my pains, heal from them, learn from my mistakes, wrestle around them, do exercise that will help improve their condition over time, be more careful on how I move and choose my opponents wisely. I forgot to mark it here, I kind of use this blog here as my personal diary and to remember whom I have wrestled in the past. At the end of July, I wrestled with Samjamba (id 997). He gained a bit of weight over the years and he had a 90 lbs advantage over me when we wrestled. We were wrestling competitively. It was fun initially, but after a while, I felt a bit scared... The weight he was putting on me was weakening me a lot... I felt vulnerable and I felt like this guy could land of me in an incorrect way, or put a hold and jerk it in such a way that I could hurt myself... I could easily break my ribs, hurt my back, worsen or twist my shoulder incorrectly or break something. Then I suddenly understood better why people choose to only wrestle submission with guys withing their weight range, and they will only do pro for those above their weight range. That's actually a very safe thing to do. It's all common sense. You can easily hurt yourself if you're not careful in sub because the moves are much more intense than pro, and they are also applied faster. In pro, you can vary the pace and you can vary the intensity. Sure, you can do the same with sub, but it is actually very easy to get carried away and go full out, full strength, full competitive. Mind you, I still do love wrestling bigger guys... especially to put them over my shoulder in a torture rack, but that's a pro move and the opponent cooperates with you. It has always been a bragging point for me to be able to say, hey, I lifted 230, 240 or 250 over my shoulders. I just need to think differently or think twice if I'm going for submission against a much heavier opponent. Is he experienced? Is he careful? Will he know not to go over my limits? People with wrestling experience are the best to tangle with... I've wrestled many newbies that will go all out and put a full strength pressure over an incorrectly applied sleeper, and that's one of the most dangerous thing to do. Pressure must only be applied gradually or you'll run the risk of hurting someone... badly. These newbies want to prove themselves and they don't know that they can change someone's life forever. The experienced ones know what they do and they often release the hold before I tap, they never jerk a hold, they understand the concept of gradual pressure because they know when injuries can happen and they want to prevent that. After all, the goal of wrestling is to have fun, not to hurt someone. Sometimes, you also need to have some humility and apply the concept of preventive tapping. I tend to increasingly tap more often nowadays out of prevention. Knowing that my shoulder or my back can't take as much pain as it can take in the past, I tap before I feel too much pain whether it is from stretching or from squeezing. This is to protect these pains from growing worse or from reappearing. Anyway, that was my rant for today. I know I can still wrestle for quite a while and I'll keep on doing so for hopefully, a couple of more decades. I'm 35 now, I'm not old, but I'm not super young either. I need to be careful and I hope you guys out there will be careful too after reading this.
Blog ID 33