No Magic - Jiujitsu (of course)

 If anything the theme I’ve been having repeat over and over in my life is that nothing is magic. Last blog I was talking about how the wife and I have found the house we are going to call home in North Carolina and while there’s some wonderment and awesomeness involved at the end of the day it was preparedness and opportunity that got us in the position to be able to receive the blessing that was the home. I am seeing the same thing apply in jiujitsu recently.

Recently, as in since about the start of the year, my school has opened up the opportunity to attend training of some sort 5 to sometimes 6 days a week. A lot of this training has been centered around the fundamental levels of training, which I am interested in for all sorts of reasons: I absolutely need this training in general, this training is crucial to me doing better on the purple belt test whenever that pops up again, and personally I want my whole thing to revolve around the fundamental principles of jiujitsu more than anything. At my age and size I’m not every interested in learning that new fancy thing on YouTube; I’m more interested in having a style that shuts all that shit down. Before I digress too much, let me get back on the point.


The school opened up all of these opportunities and I have taken the impetus to go to a lot of the training. I’m at the school now about 5 times a week on average (a slow week has been 4x a week). Trying to pick up this tidbit or this tip or this nuance and this repetition and this bit of footwork. Trying to absorb this information and being able to relay this information back to white belts who may not be able to understand it at the level I can understand it. Being quiet and listening to advanced level belts who have been doing it longer than I can to clean up the things I’m still not good at. So many different levels.


Depending on who you ask, if you come to train about 2x a week, you will slowly progress and improve. 3x a week means you should progress at a faster rate. I don’t know what it means to train 5x a week right now other than my knees are a little achy and I’m having to spend more time on the pso-rite to knock out those stubborn kinks but apparently the people I’m training with are seeing a marked improvement in my performance. From my end I feel like I am picking up on concepts more quickly than I have and when I roll things have slowed down for me a bit. But the point here is…none of this is magic, y’all.


What it does show is that I’m putting hours and hours into this thing to get better at it. Someone who comes to the gym once every couple of months may see that I’m getting better and want to attribute it to any number of things. But really, getting on the mat and keeping it moving is really all it is. It’s not magic. I wish it was but really, I’m glad it’s not. Magic implies that you would start at point A and then presto chango you’re at point B as opposed to being able to know what steps you took to get from point A to point B. I know which one is better. I want to be able to enjoy my journey.

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