Motivation

What a difference a day makes. Yesterday, I was reflecting about our sparring class and how it’s nice to not be the newest white belt anymore. Not that I’m dominating the new guys, I catch them sometimes, and sometimes I’m able to focus simply on being in a good position, and sometimes they catch me. Then there was sparring class tonight.

Compared to a couple months ago, I did all right. The times I was submitted, I was able to defend a while and keep moving. Which is something I couldn’t say not too long ago. However, tonight was bad for another reason. Multiple times tonight I felt like I was just too exhausted to move. I was sore. My knees hurt, my back is a little strained etc. I have a game plan for my tournament coming up on the 23rd, but I’m not super confident that I’ll pull it off.  Combining all of that made it hard to be motivated to keep pushing forward.

But there is one thing that does keep me moving forward, simply this: I will not be unprepared for my tournament. Clearly I’m not going to be able to plan for every case. I might be matched up with someone much younger, or stronger, or someone who’s got more BJJ experience than me, or has a wrestling background. I might have to compete with someone who has done several tournaments already. Or, none of that might happen. I can’t control those things. I can control my training. I can control my conditioning. I can control my game plan. That’s what’s motivating me to keep pressing forward. My first tournament is coming up in 18 days. I have but 4 sparring sessions left before the tournament (assuming I don’t spar the week leading up to the tournament.) I have about 5 conditioning days left as well. I want to be able to walk off the mat knowing that I was as ready as I could be, and not questioning “What if I did 1 more sparring session? What if I didn’t skip that class a couple weeks back.”