For my own record, I am going to celebrate two BJJ victories from this week. People should celebrate progress more often. Rest assured that I am beating myself up about my failures outside of this blog, but I like to keep this space positive whenever possible.
Today I had a drills class that was based on mount. Given my size, weight, and skill level, that meant I spent most of my time in class trying to escape. Maybe at some point I'll get into stories about what worked and what didn't work technique-wise, but for now I'm focusing on mindset. The victory for me here is that I kept trying. Its so easy to just pause for a minute when I'm tired, even when that's the worst thing I can do. So I said I wasn't going to do that, I would keep fighting until something worked and I didn't care if that meant suffering through an entire 5 minute round barely able to breathe as I fought off every submission attempt. It was fun, but ow. I needed a 3 hour nap after class before I could move again. However, I'm tougher than I thought. I will try to do that all the time now.
Second victory was Thursday. The normal class is focused on takedowns for the next month or whatever. It was time to confront that fear of falling that follows me around making me all tense and disturbing my aura of somewhat calm. I survived. Not the most glamorous victory, but I'll take it. Kudos to fellow white-belt Scott for being very patient and helpful and for being just nice enough that I learned a ton and just mean enough that I had to face my fear. Seriously, its hard to explain striking that kind of balance, but I know what it feels like and I respect the training partners that can do it that much more.
On a related note I have extra special leg bruises - see! I'm thinking about going as a leopard for Halloween.
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