With my first competition approaching, my eyes moved away from the roll of tape at the back of the academy. I stopped calculating the days, weeks, months, and classes since my last promotion. I ceased measuring myself against others receiving stripes before or after me. I simply focused on attending more classes.
I evaluated my life, my goals, and my job to eke out a bit more mat time. I would sneak out for a long lunch a couple times a week or cling to a morning latte to drag me through the day. I even rearranged my gym workouts to best maximize recovery and stop pushing myself to get bigger and stronger. Instead I sought out endurance, mobility, and athleticism.
The increase in training, though, came with a price. I woke up stiff and sore. Bruises covered my shins, face, and arms. Some days I walked through a cloud of fog from sleep deprivation while the morning latte did nothing except make me shit. Yet I kept chugging along like some tiny train engine. My goals were my goals.
To combat my battered body, I started taking more vitamins, minerals and supplements (Glucosamine, Fish Oil, BCAAs, etc.; just to clarify this last statement for PED-reasons). My joints stopped hurting, which may have been the vitamins or learning to tap before I really, really needed to (a nice tightrope to walk). As far as other benefits (maintaining or gaining strength, stamina, height, a chiseled jaw, fuzzier chest), I’m not sure. At this point, I’m too afraid to purge the supplements from my system and wake up feeling like roadkill. Hell, half the time I hurt anyway. So would ceasing my consumption of supplements make my body fall apart like some rusting jalopy? I don’t know. Instead I drank a lot of water, took my pills, and tiptoed along the line of over-training.
Was all of this – soreness, pills, supplements, tiredness – called an addiction?
##
If this sounds like addiction…I’m aware. At some point in those months/weeks, I became addicted to jiu-jitsu in the same way I grow addicted to anything in my life (soccer, reading, writing, my career, etc.). As my wife describes me, “There’s no gray, it’s all black or white.” All the way in or all the way out.
I think of it more as resource allocation. I could dabble. I could take more time to get good at something. I could pop in and out from soccer teams or jiu-jitsu or a million other pursuits. Quite simply, I could do less jiu-jitsu.
To me, though, dabbling reminded me of the wannabe cool guy that kinda-sorta attended graduate school, but never decided on a thesis. He thought about doing the whole Peace Corps thing, but was going through a bad breakup at the time. He’s working on his real estate license, but also wants to join a David Bowie cover band as the lead guitarist. He started collected vintage records, but then got really into online gaming. They’re all over the place and never follow through with anything. They glom onto the next kinda-sorta cool thing and vaguely associate with everything. I’m not that sort of person.
Instead, I become obsessive. Yet, I’d hoped my obsessive days were behind me. I’d quit soccer. I was writing steadily. I had a new job with a high ceiling of potential. I was an adult with a 401(k), a mortgage, and a life. Martial arts (and jiu-jitsu) was to be a hobby. A HOBBY DAMMIT!!
As a one stripe white belt, I threw myself into training pretty much every day while absorbing motivational quotes about jiu-jitsu. It changed my life. It’s the art that makes a smaller person a warrior. Better to be a warrior in the garden… Blah, blah, blah.
Nonetheless, the obsession led to at least one obvious thing…improvement and that’s what I wanted.
##
Before I knew it, Sam called my name again at the end of class. I wish it was more like the Price is Right (“Tom…come on down…”) and in my memory it does resemble the excitement of bidding for a new washer and drier or spinning the big wheel. Instead, though, it was much tamer. Sweaty and red-faced, I looked confused until Sam repeated my name. Of course I could blame the Atlanta heat, but I held true to an earlier post about never jumping up when I first heard my name called by my professor/head instructor.
A strip of tape dangled from Sam’s fingers. This thin piece of sticky, white fabric would soon join its older sibling on my white belt. This time, though, I didn’t care. It wasn’t why I trained or kept showing up. My focus had shifted. A more Zen-like (or urgent) reason permeated my training. I wanted to survive and maybe thrive in a competition. I wanted to get good at jiu-jitsu. Whatever that meant in my mid-30s.
That isn’t to say I didn’t appreciate the acknowledgement of my hard work. It also didn’t mean that I was ready for blue belt or could throw myself into an intermediate No-Gi division (yet). It just meant I no longer focused on belts or stripes to gauge my improvements. Instead, I saw and see stripes as recognition and encouragement of my time and efforts.
##
At two stripes, I realized I was no longer at the very bottom of the totem pole. Yes, the ground still beckoned, but I had improved. Students that didn’t train as often or as hard, ones that started before me, I could hold my own or even surprise with a kinda-sorta sweep or a kinda-sorta pass. What exactly those sweeps or passes were? I’m not sure. Instead I just kinda-sorta did some jiu-jitsu stuff and found myself in good spots.
I started surviving against people that usually battered me like a cat playing with a kitten. I remember getting spinning arm barred every few seconds against a blue belt (Greg). That stopped happening. I kept my elbows in when they inevitably passed my guard. I could endure defensively, not letting them get a choke or prevent them from getting my back. I knew what they needed to submit me, so I focused on not letting them get those things. Although small, these improvements felt important. After being the scraps fed to others, I started becoming actual prey.