End of March

End of March? Really? Huh. How did that happen?

This month, I've had fairly steady training. I got some more tattoo work done in the middle of the month, so I had to take a week off there; but aside from that, it's been a steady three-a-week. Sadly, Sunday mornings have fallen apart. The space we were using got leased out, and I'm still looking for a new place to get people together.

Life as a four-stripe blue belt is kind of strange. As would be expected, I place probably excessive expectations on myself, wanting to be to white and blue belts what brown belts are to me. Realistically, I still don't have the ideal training partner setup. I don't have a slew of people to actively drill things on, I don't have a handful of people to battle with on a regular basis....if I want it, I have a few people to just thump me and thrash me all over the mats, so that part is covered. And if I'm honest with myself, part of it is probably that I'm not disciplined enough to 1) recognize what I need in my training at a particular moment, and B) do only those things instead of keeping myself entertained all the time. I know it's a balancing act, but I'm not good at "eating my greens" on the mat.

Klint wants me to compete a few times this year, and as usual, he's most likely right. It will be valuable to get some more experience, and I need to compete without pulling guard at least once. If I intend to keep improving, I need to put myself in uncomfortable positions under pressure, not just while training. My last competition was just straight-up bad. It would be good to vindicate that, so long as I stay true to the utilitarian philosophy rather than the competition mindset. Jumping guard isn't a self-defense strategy, it's a competition strategy. Takedown, pass guard, mount, submit; or, if taken down, either submit or sweep, pass guard, mount, submit.

I watched some of the matches from the Pans. Nothing really jumped out at me; of course the athleticism and technique of the top black belts was impressive, but it's still winning by points and advantages. I didn't see anyone out there hunting for the finish at the possible expense of positional security. And that is what makes jiu jitsu entertaining to watch. Thankfully, another Metamoris event is coming up in May. I hope they get some good matches, because the last one totally lived up and set the stage for future events.

This has been a pretty rambling post; I have the NCAA tournament on in the background, and I'm pretty damned tired, so my concentration and drive are noticeably lacking. I trust you'll be lenient in your criticism.

Progress

It's late, and work demands my attention. I still went to class tonight, and I have been for the last few weeks. Which is good. Because if you keep going, eventually you stop sucking.

Naturally

Of course, once I decide to re-commit to this, I tweak some cartilage in my ribs the following night while training.  Which is awesome.

So now I have an upcoming belt exam, and I can't really train properly. A mentor of mine is telling me to take some time off (as is Klint, to be fair) and let it heal....but as anyone who has met me can tell rather quickly, patience is not my long suit. I've broken out the stim unit and I'm using that every few hours. Though I'm fairly uneducated with it and I have no real idea where to place the contacts so that it shocks the correct place in my ribs. Does that stop me? Of course not. Trial and error. We'll see whether I go to class tomorrow, and if I do, whether I do anything there or just sit there staring like some lost puppy wishing I could be on the mats.

On a separate track:  I have learned very quickly and effectively in the last few months how small and close-knit the American jiu jitsu community is. A training partner of mine told me he was moving down to Austin, TX, and asked if I knew anything about jiu jitsu academies down there. I, of course, do not, but the ever-knowledgable (and fellow legal professional) Georgette Oden knows all about Texan jiu jitsu, so I sent Kyle her way. A week or so later, Georgette messages me to tell me she met Kyle at class and was more than happy to help him find a new home academy. Then Bear Quitugua, Shoyoroll's president/founder/CEO/etc added me to a Jiu-Jitsu/Craft-Beer Crew group on facebook, which also has a handful of other Guerrilla Jiu Jitsu students on it. I may or may not be the only midwestern representative, but I'm sure that won't last.

So I'm apparently out of training for at least tomorrow, and possibly a bit longer.  I won't be able to train properly (i.e., full resistance) for quite some time, I'm sure.  But I'll be drilling and working back to it slowly.  I hate injuries.

No, Really, I'm Still Here

I'll note at the beginning---as I'm sure I have in the last several posts on this space---that I have been absent for too long.  Absent from blogging, that is.  I've maintained a consistent training schedule throughout, but with my job, my wife, our son, said training, and the rest of the obligations that come along with those priorities, some things had to give.  Among those things was this chronicle.  I will work to keep gaps like those that have plagued this space for the last year to a minimum.  I have several reasons for that, both professional and community-oriented.  Suffice it to say, this gives me an opportunity to do more than simply remember jiu jitsu allows me to combine important goals.

As I said above, I've been fortunate to maintain a consistent training schedule.  I get to train and roll no less than three times a week.  And usually no more than four.  I would like more, my wife and son would appreciate less, and so this is that middle part of the venn diagram.  So this is how much training fits in my life right now.

This seems as good a time as any to revisit my stated goals of 2013.

1)  Keep Training.  [Check]

2)  Compete at least once, hopefully twice.  [Check]  I competed at the IBJJF Chicago Summer Open in August and completely shat the bed.  I went in hoping to work a little bit on my feet rather than jump to a guard position that I would feel comfortable in.  I kept telling myself that it wasn't about whether I won, but about how to show that my jiu jitsu is improving and my comfort level in challenging areas that I normally avoid---like takedowns.  So the match started, I grip fought for roughly 9.2 seconds, then grabbed his lapel and sat to open guard.  Exactly as planned.  Really, what happened after that didn't matter.  I didn't have the discipline to do what I said I was going to do.  All the same, my opponent ended up choking me in around 2 minutes.  So really, bang on job there.  It doesn't matter how many times you tell yourself that it's like a hard day training at the academy, competing is different.  And I maintain that I don't particularly like it.  I still pile on the pressure whether it's needed or not.  Not only is it unnecessary, it's unfair to myself.  I don't have time to train six times a week, and I don't have the training partners and resources that a lot of other guys have.  That being said (and it sounds like sour grapes even as I type it), I am confident that I could beat that guy in an academy.  Still, his hand got raised, and I went quickly to find good beer.

3)  Train outside of Minnesota.  [Check]  At Christmas, I trained at a Carlson Gracie academy in Aurora, IL.  Twice.  It wasn't a ton of training, and I didn't get to train with a lot of guys who could beat me down, but it was training away from home, which demands a different kind of etiquette and awareness.  Because no matter how technical you're being, it doesn't do any good to rough up someone while you're visiting their academy.  You're outnumbered, and you're at a place where they train how to hurt people.  Best to release a triangle when they put their knee on your jaw rather than to squeeze until they're unconscious and then pose like Ali.  Just sayin'.

4)  Work my weak positions.  [Check]  I've been focusing on my passing for the last four months straight.  I'm not a nice passer, nor am I good at it.  But I'm better than I was and I'm more comfortable on top.

5)  Work the Belt.  [God I Hope Check]  I have three stripes on my blue right now, and I'm testing for my fourth stripe sometime next month.  I am asked surprisingly often when I think I'll get my purple belt, and I always give the same answer:  When my instructor thinks that I've earned it.

Also this past year, I've begun two friends on their own jiu jitsu journey, which is wonderfully fulfilling.  I've gotten to train with both of them a few times; one lives in Ohio and another trains at another academy in town, so unfortunately we're not training partners.  They seem to have gotten the bug, and that pleases me.

------

A lot has gone on in the jiu jitsu community in the last year, let alone in the last month.  I'm not sure exactly what kind of position I want this blog to occupy in that discussion.  I've noticed that since I started this blog, my posting frequency has somewhat mirrored my internal approach to jiu jitsu----when I needed to focus more on my own individual goals and improvements without looking for external approval or approbation, posting declined.  When it was time to focus on the community, my training partners, and look for ideas from the outside, posting increased.  I don't know if that's something that other writers have noticed, but I found it interesting enough to merit a mention.  I suppose that soon I'll have a new list of goals for the year, and possibly some personal takes on issues in jiu jitsu as a whole.  I'll admit, though, your guess is as good as mine as to what those will look like.

Right.  That's all for now.

Present and Accounted For

Yeah I got my third stripe on my blue belt this past weekend.  At least I think it was this past weekend. It was a Saturday.  And I followed it up with an Oktoberfest.  So it had to be this past weekend.

The academy is still small, but it allows us semi-privates for every class, so I'm not complaining.

I got my wife's cousin into jiu jitsu, but he's out in Ohio, so I don't really get to reap the training benefits of that one too often.  Though it did give us an out to go train at a place in Denver during a family reunion.  That was slick.

I also got another friend to start training.  He has one stripe on his white right now, so that will begin paying off soon.  Hopefully by the time he gets his blue, I'll have something resembling a top game.

Tale of Two Cities

Ok, so this has been banging around in my head for quite some time.  I don't know whether it's actually going to amount to anything, but here we go.

I read an article on breakingmuscle.com about what it takes to be an elite level athlete written by Tom Kelso.  As I understand his thesis, it's: "Be genetically gifted, stay healthy, refine your skills, become mentally sound, hope for good luck."  I read this, and I immediately contrasted it with Malcolm Gladwell's article in the New Yorker from a few years ago, which summarizes the recipe for success as:  "Work hard and put in your time."  These two conclusions seem to be at odds.  And personally, while instinctively I side with the former, I hope the latter to hold more truth.

Kelso's conclusion favors the inherently talented, the ones who made varsity their freshman year without trying that hard.  Kobe Bryant, LeBron James.  Brock Lesnar.  Gladwell's favors the dedicated, those who kept coming to practice despite failure.  Michael Jordan*, Jeremy Lin.  Felipe Costa.  And yes, these are gross generalizations that may not be entirely accurate, but I think you take my point.

What's more inspiring---the top-dog winning as he was always expected to, or seeing someone who has been undervalued because he didn't fit the standard aesthetic ideal gritting his way through to victory?  More and more, this distinction between Kelso and Gladwell is becoming a nullity---look at the guys who consistently win at the big jiu jitsu tournaments.  Gone are the days when BJ Penn can train for three years and take black belt world championship gold home.  Now you have to train six days a week, at least tice a day, with strength and conditioning mixed in.  If you're really dedicated, you'll cross-train judo and wrestling.

I take this a an acceptance by the general public that Gladwell wins out.  Or at least, that Gladwell's conclusion is more right than Kelso's.  It might be that we all take solace in the idea that we could indeed be world champions if we didn't have work and family and money and everything else standing between us and what we think we want to do.

But really, it has more to do with realizing my potential than with making excuses.  I know that as it stands now, I will not be a black belt world champion in 4 years because I have other priorities in life.  I have a career, and I have aspirations outside jiu jitsu, and I have responsibilities besides.  What Gladwell's opinion allows me to do is to commit to working hard despite those "drawbacks" and still get the best out of what time I have.  Still drill before and after class, still roll with friends who can help me improve, find ways to condition off the mat so that when I'm on it, I'm not sucking wind in five minutes.  (Although there is no way to build grappling conditioning better than grappling.  So I have to figure out how to make this one work.)  Because if you commit to the full-court press, you don't have to be as good as your opponents; you just have to be willing to work harder than them every second of the game.  Doesn't sound that hard.




* -- Yes, I understand the irony in labeling Michael Jordan as an untalented hack, especially having lived in the Chicago suburbs during the 1990s.  The fact remains, he's likely the most successful basketball player who didn't make varsity his sophomore year.

Still Here

Yes it's been a month since my last post.  Them's the breaks.

Fatherhood is weird.  It's good and everything, but there's this small person who never leaves and can't do basic things like, you know, eat on his own.  Or speak.  But it's good.  He's wonderful, and his mother is a saint who lets her husband go to jiu jitsu three times a week.  It's phenomenal.

Training----training is very different from what it was in the fall.  We still cannot get a steady group of guys to come to class.  It's alright, as Klint does things other than instruct for his living.  [That part, actually, is great; that means that we know he's there because he wants to be.]  But it is always frustrating in that we always training with the same three or four people and aren't getting looks at different styles all the time.  And as lucky as I am to have my main training partner be a black belt, it is pretty hard on my ego to be unable to see my game develop because he's always taking it up the next step to keep me working harder.  And then when I'm up against the rest of the guys, the lower blue belts and white belts, I'm so excited to be the hammer instead of the nail for once that I don't take the opportunity to work into and out of different positions.  So really, it's me being stupid.

A few weeks ago, Klint turned Saturdays into no-gi.  So we train in the gi Mondays and Wednesdays, and make use of our rashguards on Saturdays.  This Saturday, for once, we had a class full of higher belts.  There was one teenage orange belt, one high white belt, myself [2-stripe blue], two purple belts, two brown belts, and two black belts.  And I got to train with all of them.

Jared, the non-Klint black belt, is a freak.  He is simply unreal.  He kills hooks before you can place them, he gets to side control before you realize he's passing, he uses only as much energy as is strictly required, and makes you use much, much more.  So I got throttled by him for a while.  And I felt like I could do nothing, like I was just flailing and donkey-kicking out of fear.  And when we finished, he was very complimentary.  He asked if I like no-gi, and I have to say that I don't particularly.  I feel like I am just uncontrolled and all muscle.  But apparently, I'm the only one; Klint even texted me later to say that Jared was impressed.  Andy was watching and said I did much better than he was expecting.  I don't know how to take that, so I just say thanks and move along.

I also got to train with Tony [purple] and Gina [brown] during class, working on guard retention and recovery, and then with Jeremy [purple] and Casey [brown] after class, working on---well, just working on training, I guess.  Some strikes, some gutters, a few uncomfortable positions later, and I was suddenly late to get home for a thing.  As I left, Klint and Jared and Casey and Jeremy were going over positions and techniques, and I wanted just to stay for the next two hours and keep learning.  But family.  You know.

Son

This is him at 2 minutes old.  Give or take.

Hands up, elbows in.  He's a natural.

Yeah, about that whole "free time" thing....

My lovely wife and I just had our first child.  And by that I mean that she had the kid while I was there trying not to scream like a small weasel.  It was weird and terrifying and great and all those things.  And now we have this little guy at home, and we're ostensibly responsible for him in every way shape and form.  So that means less time for things.  But she's guaranteed me 2 nights of jiu jitsu a week.  So we've got that going for us.

Which is good, because this afternoon Klint is testing a few of us.  And that means I get to train.  Sadly, the boy is a little too small for the mats right now, and the wife doesn't want to take him out in this weather.  Which is understandable.  So he'll have his first class later on.  Maybe Monday.

More.

Klint has cut back on our classes.  We just don't have enough students to justify all the time we're taking the classroom.  Which bites a big one.  Now he has class Monday and Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings.  So it's three times a week.  Unfortunately, Tuesday and Thursday nights were the nights when we had the separated room all to ourselves the whole night, so we could stay and train and drill as late as we had energy.  Now, we have to share our training space with others.  Which, really, isn't terrible--hell, it might even bring a few of them into class to train.

Today, Klint brought his friend Jared in to teach class.  Jared earned his black belt from Dave Camarillo at the same time as Klint.  He trains up in Brainerd (see also:  arctic wasteland).  He was preceded by the myth. We started training after he had to take a lot of time off for some injuries, and therefore we never had a chance to train with him.

I don't even know where to begin.  He is indescribable.  His technique is phenomenal, he is humble and intelligent and exact and---really, just awe-inspiring.

That meant that today, I went to Gina's class from 8 to 930, rolled for a half hour at 1030, then to Klint's/Jared's class ended up going from 12 to 3.  To be fair, a lot of that was Klint and Jared showing each other new and different techniques.  But that was just as good as class.  And jesus I'm tired.

2012 Goals

Everyone talks about making lists of goals so that you can reflect on them and return to them over time, see how far you've come in actually achieving them.  I don't know whether that's true or not; I hadn't looked at my goals for last year until five minutes ago.

1)  Keep training.  Seems simple enough.  We have a kid coming in short order, and I'll be starting a grown-up job in a week.  All that means that my time won't be as flexible as it has been the last several months.  And my improvement will probably come on a bit slower.  Because I won't be able to get to, say, five to six classes in a week.  Because life takes precedence.  But.  I want to keep training and keep working to get better.

2)  Compete at least once, hopefully twice.  I don't particularly enjoy competing.  It teaches me a lot, and watching myself compete (as painful as that is) shows me where I need to focus training and what parts of my game I have developed.  But the build-up and the distance we have to travel because we have very few tournaments in town and the toll of all that hard training---that's rough.  And with a life outside of the academy, it's hard to properly recover.  I pile the pressure on by not really taking time off and going right back to the mat as soon as I'm home, the mat where I can't train light with my main training partner because my main training partner is my instructor and he doesn't go light with me.  But the benefits of self-awareness and honest assessment outweigh the inconvenience.

3)  Train outside of Minnesota.  Training away from my home academy is always fun and educational.  It also means that I'm not stuck in the great white North all year round.  I want to get to Marcelo's, to Ryan Hall's academy, to Dave's in Pleasanton and Darcy's in San Jose, not to mention a handful of others.  So if I'm traveling, the gi is in the bag.

4)  Work my weak positions so I'm comfortable.  Inside closed guard, passing, half-guard.  It's only three. Shouldn't take that long.

5)  Work the belt.  I don't want my purple yet.  I'm not ready for it.  My game is smoothing itself out and I can feel myself becoming more fluid, but I have entirely too much more to learn to be thinking about that promotion right now.  I have one stripe on my blue, and that's more than anyone else at the academy.  It means a lot that I have that after less than two years training.  Keep the head down, keep working and learning.

Words

We're in the Black Hills for the holiday.  his means that, unfortunately, I won't get to train again until Tuesday.  This is sad.  I even tried to get in touch with a few academies in town, but none of them are going to be training while I'm in town.  In case that changes, the gi, rashguard, and belt are all in the trunk.

I told Brenna earlier this week that she has no idea how much of my thinking time is spent on jiu jitsu.  On the way through South Dakota, we were listening to Radiolab, my new podcast addiction.  We were listening to the episode on Words.  (Here is the link; if you haven't listened to Radiolab, it's probably the smartest thing on the radio right now.)  In this episode, they were discussing the idea of whether language is what allows children to think better than rodents, and later, whether language prevents us from feeling as much emotion as possible.  [Rereading that sentence, it's terribly written and only kind of explains what I want it to, but we'll see if I can make it better.]  One of the stories focused on a woman who was having a stroke, and she wrote a book about the experience.  The left side of her brain was shutting down, and she lost all language.  In those moments, when only the right side of her brain was operating, she said it was indescribable (not the least because she didn't have language) and allowed her to feel in ways that the logic and design of language prevent.

There was another bit about neural connections, and how evolutionarily advanced it is to be able to form the thought "left of the blue wall."  Both rodents and humans have the capacity to define the noun and adjectives in that phrase ("wall," "left," and "blue"), but for some reason, rodents are unable to build the connections necessary to define an item's location in relation to a differently colored wall.  [Again, bad explanation--listen to the radio show.]  So it's as though each of our brains has these islands that define colors and directions and objects, and language (prepositions, in this particular case) allows us to connect those separate islands to one another.

So we were driving the expanse of nothing that is Dakota Country and I started thinking about how my training has been going lately and the feedback that Klint has given me.  I know a lot of techniques.  I can talk about (and even reasonably teach) armbars, takedowns, triangles, kimuras, the Camarillo switch, chokes---when I write it down or try to explain it, I realize that it's a lot more technique than I expected.  I have these islands of technique, and a few bridges between them that I constantly use.  (And this is where the two parts of the episode combined to fuel my thoughts.)  But I'm scared to turn off my left brain when rolling to see whether any other bridges exist for me to use.  Occasionally it happens---I'll do something that's really good and that I didn't expect, but I don't remember what I did so I can't replicate it or even explain it.  But that is what my jiu jitsu needs right now:  less left brain.  In jiu jitsu parlance, I have to flow with the go a bit more.  Stop thinking about it and just roll with the roll.

It's hard.  I have a rather overbearing brain--I want to understand everything that I'm doing, and shooting from the hip in these situations, especially when I'm up against Klint, means that I'm going to have to lose a lot and that I won't enjoy the time I spend training.  Which is simply a fact of life.  And I should get used to it.

Why Not To Be Upset With My Progress

This conversation has happened a handful of times in the last three months:

Them:  You have really good movement.
Me:  Thanks, I appreciate that.
Them:  How long have you been doing jiu jitsu?
Me:  It will be two years this coming February.  So around 20/22 months.
Them:  .....That can't be right.  You're much better than that.  Did you wrestle?
Me:  For a year in eighth grade.  So kind of, but really no.
Them:  That's not fair.

I wish I could take credit for it all on my own.  I can't, and I refuse to.  For starters, I still think I'm not all that good.  I have a few tricks, and one or two standard attacks and set-ups that I always look for.  But I'm not a monster on the mat by any stretch.  Also, my progress is almost entirely due to Klint's instruction.  He's a technical madman.  Every lesson takes the minutiae of each technique, explains why it's important to the particular combination we're working that day, and at the end, goes from the six-inch view to the thirty-thousand-foot view.  From explaining why the elbow control helps more than wrist control for this one set-up to why we should attack constantly and how that affects not only our game, but our opponent's defenses and concentration.

And it all shows in my training.  So that's nice.  And though I'm frustrated and feel stagnant, it seems that I am the only one who thinks that about my game.

I imagine this is something that everyone has to go through during their training.  At least, everyone who isn't BJ Penn (or some other equally ridiculously prodigious grappler) and has to suffer through life with regular concerns like a job and familial obligations.  We're not learning knitting or how to make a collage.  We're fighting.  It's hard, and sometimes it sucks.  But you're not always the best judge of your own progress.  That's something worth remembering.

That's what you get....

Jeremy returned.  I have weeks of thrashing to look forward to.  At the end of class Thursday night, Klint and Jeremy pickled me.  It's like baseball in the back yard when we were kids, where one kid runs between the bases and the other two try to tag him out.  Just back and forth, with the kid in the middle pickled.  That was me.

I honestly can't say whether I was doing anything well or not.  I know that I made some stupid mistakes, and that I hate making those mistakes in general---especially when either Klint or Jeremy are watching me train.  So the fact that each of them was working me over while the other watched was hard on my psyche. Very hard.  I was fighting and screaming at myself over it until I went to sleep.  After gaining a certain level of proficiency at anything, you always get pissed and irritated when you can't do anything, when none of your techniques work.  And that was all of training Thursday.

Friday I got a text from Klint telling me that class was cancelled on Saturday, so Saturday I spent the entire time at Edina, taking class from Gina and her girls early and working through the open mat afterwards.  And for a lot of Saturday, the roles were reversed.  There were a few rounds where I was fighting out of my class---some rounds with higher belts who I knew were going to handle me and they did.  I got to work on my defenses and survival, and the thrashing I took Thursday had me better prepared for those rounds than I otherwise would have been.  I stuck myself into turtle too often, and one of the areas I need the most work is keeping moving through those transitions, from stiff-arming the guard pass to my knees to either my guard or my own takedown reversal.  I left myself in a few terrible spots simply because I didn't keep moving.  So I have some drills to work on, and I'm sure Klint and Jeremy will be able to help me work that problem.  Against a few similar belts, though, I was the driver.  I rolled with two people who were being just as hard on themselves and getting just as frustrated as I was on Thursday.  So I caught myself telling them the same things I heard at the end of Thursday's training:  they're doing well, that they're going to get beat sometimes and that's part of the process.  A few of the other rounds were a bit closer, no one losing self-confidence or slapping the mat.

A bit of the time, I even surprised myself with the techniques my body went to.  I was working a baseball choke, a few bow-and-arrows, some guard passes, Jeremy's back defense....it was a really good morning of training.  I only wish I could remember that those nights that aren't so reassuring.

Plays poorly with others

I went to a seminar this past weekend, given by a very public figure in BJJ around the world.  He is a second or third degree black belt, runs a world-famous academy in southern California, and is a relentless advocate for his family's brand of jiu jitsu and way of life.  I won't name him, though if you do minor research, it won't be hard to figure out.

I was disappointed in the seminar.  One session was about side mount, and the second was about triangle.  Neither went that deep into the position or strategies and philosophies around it.  I think part of the reason was that the hosting academy is new, and it's full of white belts and some blue belts.  As a blue myself, I hesitate to cast aspersions on others who hold the same rank, but looking around the room at some people moving around and drilling, I don't think many of them would have been blue belts at other academies.  So that's my snarkiness for the day.

I went on my own, and no one I knew did the seminar.  it was a room full of strangers.  The effect of that, though, is that my partner was always someone who I didn't know---which is more than fine---and who either doesn't pay as close attention to technique as I do (first session) or simply doesn't normally practice jiu jitsu (second session).  So I felt like I ended up re-teaching the techniques once we started drilling them, which seemed to be wasted time.

If nothing else, it gave me still more confidence in my home academy, and in my instructors methods and philosophy.  Exactly what I need---more reason to feel quietly superior.

Plateaus

I was working last night at the bar and a training partner ended up coming in for a drink with a lady friend. They had dinner and a drink or two, and then she left and he waited at the bar for his bus.  So we got to catch up; he and I don't get to train together that often.  He trains across town at night, when I'm usually at Woodbury.  We started training at roughly the same time, I think, but I have one distinct advantage:  I'm 6'1"-ish, 180 lbs, and he's 5'3"-ish, 130 lbs.  [You heard it here first---size matters.]  He said something that resonated with me:  "I see everyone around me making leaps and moving forward, and I feel like I'm just plateauing."

Why did this resonate with me?  I look over the history of this blog, and I can see (and remember writing) posts about how I feel good about my jiu jitsu, and how I feel like I'm progressing.  Right now, it's a little different.  I know that I'm progressing and improving.   I feel myself giving certain people more trouble than I used to, I see myself beating guys who used to stomp me.  I take my training seriously (more seriously than I think my lovely wife would like), and I make time to roll with guys across town so that I get training in with different bodies and higher belts who are not my instructor.  I hear guys complimenting my progress, etc.  And it still feels like a plateau.  Explain that.

For one, improvement is becoming much more of a slog, a much steeper incline.  It's no longer about learning the basics; now I have to build combinations and increase push-pull sensitivity and up my aggression without sacrificing my defense.  For another, I don't have people with whom to practice building those essentials.  I have Klint to wreck me, I have the white belts to wreck, and I have guys across town to measure my game.  I don't have drilling partners.  And those are the ones I think I need right now.  Blue belt, as I understand it, is where you build your game, where you craft what kind of jiu jitsu player you're going to be and determine what goes into your A game.  I'm going to be here a long, long time.  And I'm cool with that.  What would bother me would be being a blue belt for a long long time and feeling the entire time like I'm not training properly.

Updates

I just got back from a family trip to Texas.  We have family in Ft. Worth, so I got to train twice at Genesis Jiu Jitsu.  A training partner recommended it to me a few months back, and this is the first change I got to train there.  Great bunch of guys, they train hard and were extremely welcoming to me.  They heard I was in from Minnesota and just opened the doors, both literally and figuratively.

I trained one session no gi with them (seems the only time I train no gi is when I travel and visit other academies) and one session gi.  I matched up pretty well against guys of similar rank, I felt.

Right now, my jiu jitsu feels great.  This goes back even to my tournament performance.  I'm very happy with where my game is for the amount of time I've been training and how I'm able to handle myself against people with years more mat time and depth of experience than I have.  I don't have a good competition game, and I'll be the first to admit that.  We just don't get enough competitions in the great white north.  If we want a decent depth of competition, we have to drive to Chicago, and that's six hours and a hotel room for a few nights.  It's brutal.  I think that if I had more opportunity to throw myself into the fire, I would have finer timing and quicker synapses in those situations.  So my tournament results do not coincide with my confidence in my game.  But I don't train for tournaments.  I train for fights.  I train for unexpected situations.  I train for no time limits.  I train so that I'm not the one who gases.  So that I can outlast my opponent and take no damage at the same time.   Of course, I've never had to use it outside the academy.  So there's that.

And that's where I'm going to leave it tonight.  Go train.  Get better.  I took the night off to stay with my gestating bride and pet my forlorn dog, but tomorrow night I'll be back on the mats.  And Friday I get sworn in as an officially licensed attorney in the State of Minnesota.  (If that's not weird, I don't know what is.)  Still, I'll be learning, losing, and loving every second of it as often as I possibly can.

I Hate Rules

Here are my matches:

Weight 1:


Weight 2:


Weight 3 (bronze medal match):


Absolute 1:


Absolute 2:



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I'm happy with where my jiu jitsu is, if not with my tournament performance.  I felt that if there were no governing rules or scoring system -- if this were a sub only tournament, for instance -- then I would have won every match.  I never felt out of my depth, I never felt sideways.  I was in a bad spot once or twice, but I never felt threatened.  And I didn't gas, which was a nice realization.  (Though I'm sure someone will tell me that it just means I wasn't working hard enough.  I will tell that person to pound sand, but that's a different post.)

So here's some more of my jiu jitsu.  Enjoi.

Game Time

I'm on weight.  And miserable for not having had a proper drink in weeks.

I've my schedule plotted to drive down, sleep, weigh in, eat, and then compete.  With a bit of luck, I'll have someone video it.

There's nothing else for me to do at this point but drive down and compete.  I'll do a quick bike ride tomorrow, get some blood pumping in the morning.  But at this point, it's like all those law school tests:  there's nothing I'm going to learn in the hours between now and go time that will make the difference between success and something else.  So it's time to get legitimate work done that I've been delaying, to sleep, and then to fight.

See you on the other side.

Official

I registered for the tournament in Chicago.  No backing out now.  Which is good, because the diet I've restricted myself to sucks.  I'm not much over, just a few pounds, but I don't want to have to bath in salt or wear mountain climbing gear in a sauna the day before.  So that's on.

I have two weddings this week, both Friday and Saturday, and a rehearsal dinner tonight, so I won't be able to train again until Saturday.  I front-loaded the week to balance it out, training Monday morning and evening, Tuesday lunch, and Wednesday morning.  I'm pretty lean and sore, but it appears to be paying off.  I had a few pretty good rolls with higher belts, lasting entirely too long and doing much more than surviving.  I was successfully attacking.  I didn't finish all of my attacks successfully, but that's the way it goes.  It's been something of a confidence booster.  I'm not letting myself think I'm better than I am; I still got wrecked on more than one occasion.  But I'm evolving.  And that is good.

I registered for both my weight division and absolute.  I told myself beforehand that I would do only my weight division.  But going to Chicago is a long way to go, and being guaranteed only one fight just wasn't enough for me.  So I'll have at the very least two (hopefully many more), and I'll be ridiculously tired that night.

Oh yeah, and this morning I found out that I passed the MN bar exam.