Monday, November 16, 2015

Three Stripes

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, we don't test for promotions at BJJ.

Moving up in rank is determined by 3 things: amount of time spent in your current rank, number of classes in your current rank, and demonstration of improvement appropriate to justify a position in the newer rank.

The only one of these things that is easy to see is the number of classes.  My last two promotions occurred just after reaching the attendance milestones.  When I reached it this time, I will admit this was me for a few weeks:


At some point, I realized - I'm not going to get promoted just because I've been coming to a lot of classes.  Something in my game needs to change.  I decided to stop even looking at my attendance number and just get back to work.

Starting to work on my top game was a help, and learning a few new submissions was perhaps as well.  But following my coach's advice and just focusing on holding people down for as long as possible was what really made the difference, and the change I made must have been clear to him as well.  I had turned a major corner.  

So tonight, this happened.


Grateful for excellent coaching and the self-discipline this is training in me to be patient and trust the process.  I'll do my best to live up to this new rank.

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