Business in BJJ: Niche Hunters-Gi Pants

If there's any piece of advice that you'll hear over and over again when starting a business, it's that you should find a problem that no one else is solving, and solve it. Sites like Amazon and Ebay...that first gelato or cupcake shop in your city...they all did it.

Well, I was puttering around DSTRYRsg today (I don't know why I don't spend more time on this blog) and ran across JGP.com...that stands for Just Gi Pants. Their mission? To solve the problem of gi pants that pass away before their time. Considering that companies are starting to sell pants separately more, I'm not sure if these guys are going to see a natural whittling away of the problem they've solved for just $39.99 a pair, but kudos to them for finding the hole.

I feel gym-fat.

I'm always amazed at how off my body image can be...and that's in either direction. I think I'm thinner than I am when I've gained weight and larger than I am when I lose.

I was rooting around in some old CDs last night while trying to find the installation disc for my wireless router and ran across a disc with some video from a vacation on it.

When I first started dancing Salsa, I saw the clip below on YouTube and was mesmerized by the Chinese guy dancing (not to mention the awesomeness of the song). His name is Huo Yao Fei and is a great Cuban style dancer who spent years studying on the island. I jokingly swore to a friend that I would dance with him one day.



Well, that CD that I found had the video of me finally getting that dance with him in Beijing. (Dude's lead is crazy subtle)



The crazy part though, is that viewing it last night, I thought "wow, look at how less bulky I was." At the time though, I felt much larger than I looked, even on film and even larger than I "feel" now, even with extra jiu jitsu mass. I need to keep a more objective look at myself and strangely, jiu jitsu makes that harder. While I feel street-thinner, starting agility/ginastica class has me feeling gym-fat...basically, my point of reference has changed. I expect more. While before training I might have viewed my weight in relation to your average, sized 14, 169 lb and 5'4" American woman(I still swear that seems a bit skewed toward the heavy/short side) who does little more than walk, type and hit your occasional spin class, I now see myself in relation to fitter people AND see where excess weight slows me down and makes upper body work insanely hard.

I'm counting this as a growing pain though...both of physical improvement, and of getting past physical self-acceptance and into self-appreciation. 

A Queen Moment and SEO

So I just finished 2 hours of SEO work for GiFreak. While getting the site up and running has been 9 months of brutality, this marketing deal is even worse. I at least had a vision for the site, now, all of a sudden, I have to spread the word of my vision to a growing but pretty disparate niche. I can't say I learned much in school about internet marketing...well...I did in undergrad, but the Internet being what it is, none of that is even slightly pertinent anymore.

Speaking of time drains, I'm also TOTALLY behind on reviewing the Bigger Stronger series for Stephan over at Grapplearts. Like I said when I first got it though, I like to take my time and focusing just on grip fighting for a month (or three) has been a big help in getting my mind to pay continual attention to grips. I've gotten compliments from JazzHands and KimonoMaster on my stripping. Making grips? Still working on that one. Speaking of Grapplearts stuff, check out this majorly cool shirt!

I love gray and silver. 

So Monday, Parrumpa was teaching a technique and just as he was talking about pressure, this song came on...



Being the Queen lover I am, it took everything in me not to start wailing along with Freddie. Instead, I turned quickly to JazzHands, nodding happily in music-induced glee at the relevance of the track. I think he just thought I liked the technique though.

Great. Now I'm stuck in a Queen YouTube loop. 

An epiphany, pre-passing out and the death of a pseudonym

Tonight...except for my turfed-toe burning like crazy...was a very cool night. One of my church buddies has started coming with his daughter. I talked to her before class and after being a bit shy because she was the only girl in class, she's really liking it. This is my first experience seeing a non-gi person in a gi and it's a lot like the first time I ran into Jazzhands at Walmart, sans kimono...a little surreal at first...your eyes take a second to adjust. Gis make people's faces change, I swear.

So tonight we did some work from the back. Variations of and options around the bow and arrow choke (which I love, yet again, don't use). My biggest issue? Grips again. I have girly hands that, after 2+ years of training, people still compliment as soft and that just don't like squeezing into fist-like shapes...so Parrumpa had to come over and fixed the borkedness of my hands so I wasn't losing the choke mid-way through. We went through a couple times, and then started working on a variation where you place the knee behind the head and then adjust that leg over the shoulder if you don't get the tap. The purple belt I was with went through it a couple times, and on the third, he transitioned pretty quickly, never really letting the blood flow again. I reached up to tap and uh...nothing happened. Next thing I know I found myself slumping peacefully toward the mat.

Well, I don't know if it was the choke or just things finally sinking in, but after rolling back to back with JazzHands, the purple I drilled with and Ryan (FKA Brownbeltinstructor) I sat down and all of a sudden, I saw ...differences...real differences in each of their games...different uses of strength, speed...different uses of transitions...different preferences for top and bottom. I'd always known they were there, but now, they're as clear as differences in personalities. The roll with Ryan was the most telling though...it's been...who knows, maybe a year since I've worked with him and I got to see how much he has going on at one time. It's really crazy, but cool, because I felt like I didn't have time to think...nice, because thinking is one of the big things that slows me down. 

My version of cauliflower ear...

...I think my time has come. I've run out my time wearing inexpensive earrings.

I've generally stayed away from straight up "cheap" ones, but I love a set of overstated, mid-priced ear-candy. Today though, I looked at my left lobe and saw raw flesh. I squarely blame BJJ.

I've always had earring issues...I didn't get them pierced until I was 17. Why so late? Well, my father apparently was sternly against my mother piercing them when I was 2, then, by the time I was old enough to start drilling holes in my body myself, I was terrified by the process. I really wish someone would have explained to me how the "gun" worked. I assumed someone stood at one end of the booth with you at the other end, holding your lobe out. I envisioned myself doubled over in pain, a sparkly stud protruding from my eye socket after a none-too-coordinated booth attendant ruined my life.

Just as I was going off to college, I got my ears pierced. Wasn't too bad and I followed the post-piercing instructions. Still though, I  was plagued with months of oozy, painful lobes. They never really stopped. Over a decade later and I still have to give them weekends off. It was working for a while, but lately, I've been noticing they've been warm and swollen even after a few hours of wearing earrings that previously gave me no problems.

So yeah, it's not actually cauliflower ear, but my best guess is that they're exposed to more infection potential from training and even the best washing only goes so far. So...I guess I'll try all surgical steel earrings (the selection isn't half as fun) and see what happens. 

A favor to ask...GiFreak 1.0

OK...so over the past several months, I've been working on this idea I've had of a magical database that holds all the gis in the world so that, if say, you want a pink, camo, hemp gi with an A2 top and A3 bottom, a rope drawstring and elastic crotch, well, you wouldn't have to surf 400 message boards to find it. I also wanted to create a database of all the great gi reviews out there, so if I'm considering buying the Vulkan UltraLite, I'd save myself some googling and would find the best reviews out there with a few clicks.

...and so GiFreak was born.

It's through most of the development, but we're trying to clean up any bumps and funkiness that might be going on in the look, the funcionality, whatever before the genuine marketing push starts. So...whenever you have some free time, it would be a HUGE favor if you would go to www.gifreak.com and just...play around. Search for stuff, submit comments, read the FAQs, submit fake manufacturer registrations with funky names (put the word "test" somewhere in there, just so I know it's not real). Basically, have at it and if you have any issues, ideas, problems or suggestions, just shoot me an email here or through the contact form on the site.

I want this tool to make everybody's gi-buying life easier, but also, I think BJJ is a great sport, and that any centralization will benefit everybody in the long run. Thanks in advance!