Friday, January 3, 2014

Doubts

It's weird. Since the mono, I feel like my body has aged 10yrs in 6mos. I was wiped out after class today, and was barely able to drag myself out to the ridge for walk with the dog. I haven't had as much water in the past 24hrs as I should have, but I can't imagine it would knock me this far out. The problem is that this general fatigue is getting to be a more and more frequent occurrence. I love jiu jitsu but I can't be dragging ass all the time. I went to all the trouble of moving my squat rack, bench and weights into the house and absolutely don't have the energy to use them.

Aside from that, I'm feeling like the locomotive headlight is bearing down on me in regards to belt ranking. It's so utterly dumb to obsess about it, but I've chatted about it with a couple of teammates and it's causing me angst. One of my teammates is a two stripe blue and is not happy about being left out of the advanced class on Sunday. When we roll, he often comes out ahead, and submitted me just this morning. Both of us would agree that he's the superior jiu jiterio. But I have four stripes, so I can attend the advanced class and he can't. It's also true that I'll be eligible for promotion before summer, and he probably won't. How is that fair? He's better. Not just athletically. Technically.

I am very, very egalitarian-minded. It really rubs me the wrong way that just by looking at my belt that someone would get the impression that I am better than I am. I think I'm going to ask James to hold off on purple until the fall, because I sure as hell don't feel as if I'm on that precipice yet. I felt like I was worthy of blue when that promotion happened, but not this one. Maybe I won't in the fall either, but good grief.

"Trust the instructor", is what I would tell myself if I were looking at it objectively. I do trust the instructor. But I don't like feeling that I don't fit the standard of the grade either. Hmpf.

2 comments:

SavageKitsune said...

If you *really* want to avoid promotion, go to your instructor and say, "When am I going to get my purple?" ;)

Relax On The Mat said...

Excellent advice! I forgot about the reverse belt jinx!