A friend/coworker who is a blackbelt who trained under Chuck Norris (before Chuck became a celebrity) and frequented different schools/studios to study a variety of martial arts told me today about a counter-culture of martial arts. Apparently it’s a very common thing for blackbelts to hit on and pick up on female martial arts students, and there is a market of female “blackbelt groupies.” My friend said he’s seen this in virtually all the studios he’s been in. Guys even say things like “I’m right about to get my black belt. Then I’ll be getting all these women.” And there are women in these studios who have slept with most of the blackbelts there. Ew. And here I thought that the people I’d meet in martial arts would be nice people because no one expects hot feminine women to be taking martial arts so picking up women can’t be the guys’ motivation for attending the class. Armed with this knowledge, however, I felt empowered and liberated as I drove to jujitsu. As another friend suggested, I am just gonna step back and watch the train wreck that’s about to happen between the new girl and the blackbelt.
The class was totally different for me today because of my new nonchalance. I was more easy-going, more open, and made a bunch of new friends. I think I shall go to the September convention in Arizona. In our after-class discussions today, it looks like it’s going to be a co-ed hotel room situation between me, the new girl (who I now get along with because I no longer care about the competition), an intermediate level Japanese guy named Josh (who tried to talk to me yesterday but of course my head wasn’t in it then), and another intermediate level guy named Gerardo. I had a really good time chatting and sorta hanging out w/these 2 guys today throughout class. From the bits and pieces I observed, it didn’t look like the blackbelt appreciated my new friendships. He ignored me unless he was dealing directly with me (like during grappling), and if we had to deal with each other, he’d throw liners at me like “Don’t worry, you’re safe with me.” At one point he touched the side of my neck with his fingertip and said, “Oh, you’ve got a pretty bad burn there.” I shrugged. When I got home, I looked in the mirror and the burn must’ve totally and completely healed itself. It was all pretty laughable.
Oh yeah. And I led the class again on abs, and was happy to see that the 3 new ab exercises I added in were strains to them. Brave class, tho. They are very gung-ho about a good strenous workout.