Jiu-jitsu Month 18

Well, I am so happy to have survived the first month as a blue belt. My initial

fear faded, no serious injuries came, and people treated me the same as before.

Of course, my standard of survival was not winning but simply enjoying the daily

drill.

 

I heard a lot about it before and maybe had the blue belt blues for a couple of

days after being promoted on Nov 18, feeling undeserving. I soon recovered as I

kept showing up and feeling no shame in tapping. So it might simply have to do

with maturity as I remembered this quote from Douglas Engelbart, the inventor of

the computer mouse,

 

    The rate at which a person can mature is directly proportional to the

    embarrassment he can tolerate.

 

Getting older has some upside, after all.

 

I read some posts on the topic of BJJ promotions. I liked what Tom DeBlass's

youtube message for new blue belts. He believed the blue belt was the toughest

belt there was for the huge range of skill levels. I have been doing what he

encouraged people to do: keep the discipline, just show up, and do not let

plateaus or being submitted by white belts stop training. I really liked the

article titled "Be Honest, If Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Never Had a Belt System, Would

You Still Do It?" by Mike Mrkulic who quoted Saulo Ribeiro saying

 

    Enjoy the days as a blue because once you get your purple you’ll never go

    back to blue ever again.

 

On Dec 27, my former teacher Gene shared an article where it said

 

    ... Keep this in mind when you get frustrated training. No matter how many

    times you got submitted, you are still doing something positive for your

    health.

 

In a world of striving, achieving, and displaying, people tend to take things

for granted and forget the obvious. It's good to fix the big picture right in

front of our eyes, all the time.

    

Talking about health, early in the month, Matt taught a great lesson where he

showed ways to stretch the wrist which I instantly liked. He confirmed that

keeping the joint mobile is a way to defend wristlocks. For me, there was

another benefit.

 

I was caught in an armbar a few months back and straightening the right elbow

had since been painful. I found that everyday, after I stretch the wrists (I have

tight wrists, by the way) in both directions, the pain in my right arm would be

gone. It came back overnight and disappeared again after the next stretch. So I

would kill two birds with one stone by stretching wrists. Eventually, the

ligaments might build up to do "pushups on fins" as Pavel shows in 'The Naked

Warrior.'

 

The last week of the year open-mat training was cancelled to dodge a new wave of

covid. I enjoyed the time-off but got sick, rainy weather ruled out hiking, and

toward the end got restless. I look forward to the New Year.