Brown

Holy shit.

Walter was in town for a seminar and belt testing. The seminar went great, and he showed some low percentage but pretty neat submissions from really bad spots (bottom mount and on the sad end of back control) in addition to some more high percentage techniques.

The next day, I offered to help with belt testing since there were an odd number of testers and one of them was preggers. She did awesome, including an a tomoe nage takedown. She absolutely nailed it.

After the belt testing, it was a shark tank for the newly promoted purple that wasn't injured or pregnant and the two new browns. I participated in the shark tank on the purple and I didn't do great but ok considering he was trying like hell to stall out.

Onto the belt gauntlet. We're all lined up and Jenny goes through first. James tells the guys behind her to wait, pulls out a brown belt and announces that I was being promoted to brown. Again, holy fucking shit. I had to back up to the wall for support. I wasn't expecting to hit brown until sometime next year. Three stripes, why on earth would I expect a belt promotion? Utterly stunned, I started crying a bit, hugged James several times after he tied the belt on and then proceeded to the back of the line for the belt gauntlet. To say that I was stunned would be a massive understatement.

It still feels very, very weird. I have a number of thoughts about it, mainly that I don't deserve the belt yet. There's more that goes into it, but that's the main issue. I feel weird about the guys that were ranked above me a couple of months ago (namely Russ and Sol) that I've now leap-frogged in belt. Jason S too, b/c we were the same rank a couple of months ago. Just b/c I traveled and did reasonably well at tournaments doesn't justify the rank IMO. I mean, I went 2-2 at Pans, 2-0 at Masters and 2-2 at no gi Worlds as a purple. That's not an earth-shattering tournament record. 

Now I can do knee-bars, toe holds, slicers and the whole thing is just WEIRD.

Here's how I'm going to look at it. There's nothing I can do about it, except to continue to learn and enjoy jiu jitsu.

It kindof pummels my adult Worlds plans this year b/c while I didn't like my chances at purple, I thought that I might be at least competitive. But brown?