We hope everyone has a wonderful holiday season!!

I’m a pretty passive guy, but for some reason, I kind of like kicking people. And I don’t think I’m alone. I’ve tried to ignore that weird little beef-steak section of my brain that gets thrills from battle. But for the past six months, capoiera has been bringing kicks-to-the-head to my cerebellum.
Without delving too deep into evolutionary psychology, I’m going to take Barry McCarthy’s stance that my testicle-intertwined “warrior” brain has grown to actually flourish in combat. My older brother might claim some credit for kicking my ass before dinner every night growing up, and the aggression-flooded media of my childhood gets a shout out. However, I’ll still throw my cord around my genes as the main culprit of my machoism.

I’m slowly accepting.
I leave capoeira class in pain.
My feet sting.
My thighs ache.
Some part of me is bruised and swelling. And all I can think about was that rush of ducking away from a flying heel and preparing to aim my next armada at Palhaço’s head. My mind mourns from relishing the violence that I philosophically disdain, but my ancestral warrior says, “Don’t be a PUNK! You were BORN to dodge kicks! Just shut up and enjoy it.”
And I do.

P.S. Although I feel like this issue is due more of the 100-page, graduate-thesis type explanations that it has received in psychology journals, my wife summed it all up as “you are guy” when I told her what I was writing about. I’ve tried to balance those two extremes of length. One crucial detail I’ve definitely left out though: we have chicas playing capoeira every week too, and I can attest to the fact that their genes are just as messed up as mine.

(in Archer, John’s Male Violence, 1994.)

Two caveats:

1) I am not a doctor, or a health professional of any kind.  My education in the medical arts does not extend beyond high school biology, although I do own the first season of House on DVD.  All subsequent training advice is based on personal observation and experience, and must be taken with the obligatory grain of salt.

2) Cross-training is in no way a substitute for actual training.  The physical demands of capoeira, let alone the techniques and reactions involved, cannot be approximated by even the craziest and most overboard workout schemes.  If you want to improve your capoeira, go to class, as no amount of marathons, sit-ups or military presses can teach you to properly dodge a kick.  Cross-training should be regarded as a supplement rather than a replacement.  If you find capoeira hasn’t already sucked up all of your free time and energy, by all means do some workouts.  But never at the expense of your regular training.

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Part I) Why should I cross-train?

In many sports, cross-training is an integral part of improving performance.  Running sprints can make you a better wide-receiver.  Lifting weights can help you hit more home runs.  For capoeira, however, this relationship is much less direct. Because capoeira movements are so unusual, in general it’s difficult to mimic the stresses capoeira places on your muscles with traditional exercise.  There’s no machine at the gym that works like a back-bend, for example.  So why bother?

The first reason is, of course, your health.  Cross-training is one of the most effective ways to prevent injuries in capoeira. Many of the most common capoeira injuries (knee problems, back pain, etc.) can be avoided by staying in proper shape. Developing strong leg muscles, for instance, greatly reduces the strain capoeira puts on your knees and ankles.  Strong abdominals and back muscles can keep your spine safe.  Capoeira, as we all know, is very physically demanding, and joint injuries are the price a capoeirista pays for not meeting those demands.  For many of us, capoeira is our primary (read: only) source of exercise, aside from carrying cases of Bud Light and bags of Bacon-Cheddar Doritos home from Safeway.  Cross-training can help bridge the dangerous gap between a day spent hunched over a computer working on an Excel spreadsheet and an evening spent attempting back-flips in your academy.

In addition to keeping capoeiristas from becoming arthritic wheelchair-bound vegetables, cross-training can also dramatically, if indirectly, improve one’s game.  After years of training, a capoeirista develops a strong and intuitive sense of the limits of his or her game.  Over time, the largest obstacle stopping a capoeirista from learning new moves or solidifying old ones ceases to be a lack of training and becomes instead a matter of physical ability.  This is especially true for those of us who are not gifted with an excess of natural athleticism.  Those blessed few whose vocabulary of movements is limited only by their imagination and experience can seriously just shut up, as this does not apply to them.  For the rest of us, at a certain point our technique and ability in the roda is dictated as much by our bodies as it is our training.  These limiting factors vary from person to person; I, for example, have extremely inflexible shoulders and back, so much so that I often suspect I have a piece of wood running from my hips to the base of my skull like a scarecrow.  Movements like macaco em pe, au cortado, and the like are thus significantly more difficult for me than for a more limber person.  However, being comparatively lightweight for my size, other moves such as queda de rins, au de cabeca, etc. are easier for me than they are for some of my heavier friends.  Every experienced capoeirista develops an understanding of their own proficiencies and limitations as dictated by their anatomical strengths and weaknesses.  Flexible, strong, agile, light, heavy, tall, short… to a large extent our game, style, and technique are dictated by the physics our bodies.  But these limits are not set in stone.

Targeted cross-training is the best and often the only way to overcome one’s physical limitations.  Strength, flexibility, and agility can all be greatly improved with proper training and dedication, allowing us to break through our personal glass ceilings. While that sounds like ridiculous Richard Simmons-style motivational double-talk, it’s true.  Almost nobody is born with the type of exotic athletic aptitude necessary to master a wide variety of capoeira movements without the investment of time and training.  Those lucky few who are rarely end up in a capoeira class, as they are usually too busy making forty trillion a year in the NBA or fighting crime as superheroes.  The rest of us mere mortals have to identify our boundaries and invest whatever amount of time our bodies require of us to overcome our weaknesses.

II) How should I cross-train?

For general cross-training necessary to prevent injuries, to stay fit, or to just not look so fat in that shirt, here are a few suggestions:

1)  Running - To use myself again as an example: I run an unimpressive 10-12 miles a week, usually spread over two days. Honestly, I hate pretty much every minute of it.  I find it boring, uncomfortable, and hard on my knees.  That being said, the marked improvement I’ve seen in stamina in the roda from this small investment in cross-training is startling, certainly worth a couple hours of unpleasantness a week.  Breathing is easier, and I can train longer and with more focus.  Distance running, or even running sprints or stairs, is a very accessible way to begin cross-training, and also offers a societally acceptable excuse for having the Rocky soundtrack on your ipod.

2)  Free weights & bands – Given the choice between working out with free weights (or some equivalent) and a gym machine, the informed capoeirista almost always chooses free weights.  Machines artificially limit your range of motion in exercises, whereas free weights require you to exert both the strength necessary for the motion and the control necessary to maintain technique.  In other words, a machine allows you to exert yourself blindly, while free weights force you focus on your motor control.  Developing an effective and personalized weights workout, however, requires significantly more investment and knowledge than this article can provide.  Thankfully, many personal trainers at gyms offer one or two free sessions, allowing a capoeirista to ask a barrage of necessary questions and develop a targeted approach without actually paying any exorbitant fees.

3)  The Jail Cell workout: Sit-ups, push-ups, pull-ups, etc.  - There are literally hundreds of simplistic & equipment-free exercises a capoeirista can do outside of class.  Pick a set of easily repeatable exercises that focus on your weaknesses and do them regularly.  The trick to seeing effective results from these is to a) make them routine and b) steadily increase the amount you’re attempting.  It’s far better to do ten pushups a day than to do thirty pushups once every few weeks when you happen to feel like it.  Pick whatever cliché, inane motivational technique helps you maintain your schedule, increase your reps every week (even if it’s only a slight increase), and don’t slack.  An example – Twenty bridge pushups, five pullups, twenty dips between chairs, and fifty situps three times a week, adding on a few more for each week.  It only takes fifteen minutes and as long as you’re consistent, it can be a big help in class.

If flexibility rather than strength is an issue, this same principle can be applied to stretching.  Stretching, especially on days between capoeira classes, can boost flexibility very quickly.  Certainly more quickly than, say, not stretching.

4) Yoga – If you haven’t tried yoga, ignore the quasi-spiritual aspects and any other stigma associated with it and take a class.  Seriously.  Yoga is hard, much harder than many people give it credit for.  It’s probably the most efficient way to improve flexibility and can have a dramatic positive impact on one’s capoeira.  In almost any group, there’s a stark and visible contrast between the capoeiristas with a yoga background and those without.  Although I’m not experienced enough with yoga to recommend a certain type, the wide variety of yoga styles allows you to find one that matches both your personality and your ability level.  Any reservations a capoeirista has about the applicability or effectiveness of yoga can be offset by attending a class or two.  Pay particular attention to the instructor, and you’ll undoubtedly notice a combination of impressive flexibility and crazy whip-cord muscles.  Yoga aficionados have the kind of lean, subtle, enviable upper-body strength usually reserved for rock-climbers and people who dig ditches for a living.  The first person I ever took a yoga class from had been a linebacker in college before quitting football and taking up yoga.  Imagine Vin Diesel but in Cirque de Soleil.

Flexibility should not be overlooked as an important attribute for a capoeirista.  It makes certain difficult movements possible, and makes other moves significantly easier.  A flexible capoeirista relies much less on momentum and force in the roda, and gets almost all floreio at a discount.

4)  Swimming - We’ve saved the best for last.  In my experience, no form exercise compliments capoeira as well as swimming; an unfortunate irony given how few capoeiristas swim regularly.  Most people I’ve trained with know how to swim, but will typically only do so if thrown from a boat.

As a rule, the vast majority of capoeira movements are a type of push or extension.  Things like ginga, bananeira, au, all types of esquivas and kicks, these are essentially different ways of pushing against the ground.  Very few movements, aside from things like rasteira, require any sort of pulling motion, giving a capoeirista a broad, effective, but occasionally lopsided workout.  Swimming, however, offers an almost diametrically opposed set of motions and strains.  Swimming, like capoeira, requires a wide variety of physical exertions, and though it uses many of the same muscles as capoeira, it uses them in such a different way that the workouts have little overlap.

Swimming has other obvious benefits in that it offers a similar cardiovascular workout to running, it’s accessible (if you live near a pool), and it’s very low impact.  Nobody gets shin splints from swimming laps.  All that is secondary, however, to the fact that regular swimming combined with capoeira is one of the most intense and comprehensive workout routines available.

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Perhaps the most difficult step in cross-training for capoeira is coming up with an effective and maintainable routine.  Often the exercises a capoeirista finds most unapproachable and overwhelming are the ones that he or she needs the most.  It takes no small amount of discipline to focus on exercises and routines one finds difficult, but chances are if you find the cross-training you’re doing easy, you’re doing the wrong type.

This is not to say you should always choose the path of most resistance.  I’ve trained with people whose workout routines bordered on masochism, people who ran up mountains at dawn with backpacks full of bricks or constructed freaky, dangerous obstacle courses in their backyards.  Although the eight-year-old in me understands the appeal of building a ropes course over a pit of snakes or bench-pressing giant rocks, ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’d be better of playing the traditionalist and just jumping rope for half an hour.

For a capoeirista, it’s easy to push the limits of physical endurance in class, both because it’s in a group setting and because capoeira is fun in ways that gym routines and personal exercise are definitely not.  However, the serious capoeirista understands that the monotony of cross-training is a small price to pay when compared to the benefits.  Take the time to analyze your weaknesses, craft a manageable routine that addresses them, and keep it up.

When you find yourself exhausted, sore, and disheartened, remember an important axiom:

Working out really sucks, but it’s usually worth it.

The first day after his death our house became the mourning space for all of the capoeirtas. We all just sat there. Speechless. But we were there together, like the family that we have always been.

Once the word got out of his passing, the phone calls started to come in. People calling us to confirm what they heard. We became not only the mourners but the consolers.

But Mestre Carlos was not going down like that. People were not going to wear black to a somber funeral. He was going to have us celebrate his life. So for the next week we danced, we drummed and we played capoeira. It was the ultimate celebration of Carlos’ life.

And we haven’t stopped. What has now become a new tradition, Mission Cultural Center hosts ‘A Day for Carlos.’ On this day Mestre Carlos’ capoeira students, drummers and dancers come together to celebrate his incredible life. The event started off with a capoeira roda in the lobby of the center. After the roda we went upstairs for live drumming and dance class. And, of course, as always, we brought the celebration to the streets. Here are some videos of the event.

I got these lyrics of from this link- http://www.capoeira4all.org/songs/index.php?id=82

Que barulho é esse é um tal de zum zum zum? 
Que barulho é esse é um tal de zum zum zum?
Foi o Manduca da praia que acabou de matar um 
Foi o Manduca da praia que acabou de matar um
Quando a policia chegou foi um tal de auê auê 
Quando a policia chegou foi um tal de auê auê
Vamos embora seu moço que essa briga é pra vale 
Vamos embora seu moço que essa briga é pra vale

English translation…

What is this noise, a kind of zoom zoom zoom? 
What is this noise, a kind of zoom zoom zoom?
That was Manduca da Praia who just killed another one 
That was Manduca da Praia who just killed another one
When the police arrived it was a big mess 
When the police arrived it was a big mess
Let’s get out of here, kid ’cause this fight is for real 
Let’s get out of here, kid ’cause this fight is for real

Thanks to Prof. Indio we have pics and video footage of the event. You can check out his website at http://guanabara.ca/ for more information on his school in Canada. Thanks Prof. Indio!

We just had 4 full days of incredible workshops and batizado. What a week! Mestre Di Mola, Prof. Baiano and Prof. Indio came in for the event and added amazing energy to the event. Prof. Baiano conducted incredible music classes, we had an open roda on 24th and Mission and played a ton of capoeira!

But they weren’t the only ones to come visit us in SF! We had students from every single one of our chapters in the US and Canada join us. Chicago, NYC, LA, Seattle, Madison, Amherst, Minnesota, Winnipeg, and even Sweden. It was such a great event. But let the pics tell the story….

Here are photos from the batizado.

Wednesday, August 19th

• 4:00-5:15 Music Workshop ($10) @ Aceituno Arts, 2141 Mission Street, San Francisco 94110 (Mission District)
• 6:30-10:00 Capoeira Workshops @ Harvey Milk Center, 50 Scott Street, San Francisco, 94117 (Castro)

Thursday, August 20th

• 4:30-5:30 Open Roda @ 24th st.and Mission st., 94110
• 6:30-10:00 Capoeira Workshops @ Harvey Milk Center, 50 Scott Street, San Francisco, 94117 (Lower Haight)

Friday, August 21st

• 4:00-5:15 Music Workshop ($10) @ Aceituno Arts, 2141 Mission Street, San Francisco 94110 (Mission District)
• 6:30-10:00 Capoeira Workshops @ Harvey Milk Center, 50 Scott Street, San Francisco, 94117 (Lower Haight)
• 11:00-1:00 am Celebration for Mestre’s 50 years of capoeira @ Aceituno Arts 2141 Mission Street, San Francisco 94110

Saturday, August 22nd (Batizado)

• 10:30 am-3:30 pm San Francisco Batizado @ Harvey Milk Center, 50 Scott Street, San Francisco, 94117
• 10:00 pm-2:00 am Party at Pena Pacha Mama with Fogo na Roupa (Carlos Aceituno’s Brazilian Bateria) $10 at the door

***Individual workshops are $30. Each day there are 2 workshops. The first workshop is 6:30-8:00 and the second is 8:30-10:00. (if you plan on attending only the second workshop please get there at 8:00 to warm-up). Batizado without the package costs $60.

Getting to San Francisco from SFO or Oakland

For those of you flying in from out of town it is really easy to get to the city from the airport. The BART (The Bay Area subway system) has a stop at the airport and you can take that into the city. Go to this website for further info http://tripplanner.transit.511.org/mtc/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en. This website works for both SFO and Oakland. This website will also give you the routes for the MUNI (the san francisco bus system).

Housing

As for housing, we are working that out right now. Once we get everything settled which should be within this week, we will have your hosts contact you.

San Francisco Resources

Also, for those of you out-of-towners, there are a lot of things to do in the Bay Area. Here are some websites that you can check out that will give you some good places to check out.

http://www.sfstation.com/ (General san francisco guide)

www.yelp.com (Great website that will give you great restaurant and shopping recommendations)

http://www.onlyinsanfrancisco.com/

We look forward to this years batizado!

Instructor photo from lasts years SF batizado (2008)

Congratulations to our top fundraisers!

First Place: Rebecca Calisi  Second Place: Todor Tzolov  Third Place: Laurette Garcia

A big thanks to everyone in coming together in this fundraising effort. This is proof that grassroots fundraising is as strong as ever!

If you are interested in participating or watching Omulu Capoeira Guanabara’s batizado go to www.omulu.org for more info.

I had no excuses. I was going to Rio. It will be my 3rd tour of duty.

Palhaço was in summer school and he couldn’t miss any classes without getting kicked out so he had to stay home. I called up a couple of my girlfriends (also capoeira students) and in 24 hours we had our tickets.

Angela (Manga Rosa), Vicki (Sabeginha) and Me (Andorinha)

So we were on our way to Brazil.

I was given no information about recording times, possible songs I was singing, or training times or locations. I had no information other than Professor Baiano’s phone number. That’s it. Hopefully he picks up…..

We finally got in touch with Baiano and were told to meet him at Cosme Velho to train a little bit with Mestre Preguica and Mestre Di Mola. As we get there we are greeted by all of the capoeira instructors from around Brazil. No students, just Instructors and Professors. And so it begins.

The training was excellent and as a capoeira teacher, it is rare to get to train with a group of fellow capoeira instructors. It was invigorating to challenge and to be challenged.

But I digress, This blog entry is about the music, let’s refocus on recording this CD.

A bunch of capoeira kids that joined us after training.

After training, we head out to Barra Tijuca which is where the recording studio is located. It took us about an hour to get there. We were sweaty and hungry from training and seeing that we would only get started at about 10pm, it looked like it was going to be a long night.

…….And it was.An awesome night but one that kept us going until 5:30 int he morning. We recorded throughout the evening. Excellent songs, on point bateria, perfect. However, I still didn’t have the song that I was going to sing. Mestre Di Mola spoke of this ’song’ throughout the evening but I still have yet to see anything. I was getting nervous but I have to have faith so I waited.

Finally around 2am I get the song. Baiano sings the lyrics and melody with me. For those that have heard any of  Omulu Capoeira Guanabara’s CDs you will recognize baiano’s voice immediately. He has a voice that stands apart from the capoeira crowd, it is incredibly operatic. One can easily consider him a prodigy. Simply said, he’s got vocals. As Baiano goes through the melody with me, I start to see that he is a stickler with details. He is a perfectionist and was not going to let me slide for a second. I get nervous. We decided that rehearsing at 3 in the morning was not going to get me anywhere. We finally finish at 5:30 am and it is at this point that I am reminded that I am not as young as I used to be.

Recording the 4th CD

Next day, I holed myself in my apartment in Ipanema. I practiced the song throughout the day. Later on I met up with Baiano and Indio. We hung out at Ipanema Beach and I, of course, continued to practice and sing. I had very little time to make this song not only sound good but also my own.

We met the next day to record. This time we met a little bit earlier because we needed to be finished in time to get to Lapa for the roda. This means that I cannot mess up because I will NOT be the one making Mestre DiMola late to his Lapa roda. We go through all of the songs and I was the last to go. I was ready.

A shot of cachaça settled some of my nerves and I was felling confident. Let’s do this thing.

BUT then Mestre DiMola flipped the script. He wanted Baiano and I to do a duet. Wait. What?? That is like trying to hang with Mariah Carey. So, ladies and gentlemen, it was time for my ‘A’ game. Take no prisoners. Let’s unleash the dogs.

It it turned into an experience that I will always remember. Signing with Professor Baiano forced me to push myself out of any comfort zone. He has got crazy vocals and an ability turn any melody into something that is absolutley poetic. It was truly a humbling experience but also one where I know that I let there be no boundaries on my own voice. It was then that I realized that I hold back quite a bit when I sing in the roda and I am not sure why. Singing with Baiano gave me license to unleash my own true ability.

The contributors of the 4th CD

And that is priceless.

Sometimes I wonder why I stayed with capoeira for such a long time. Sometimes I fell like capoeira is the boyfriend that I can’t break up with even though he can sometimes give me a huge headache. But then I am reminded. Capoeira brings me gifts. All the time. It brings me training with world classes mestres, recording CD’s, staying up till all hours of the morning with fellows capoeirstas signing capoeira songs and drinking chopp, dancing samba and pagode, and, of course, roda’s in Lapa.

Muito Obrigada, Meus Mestres, Rio, e capoeira!