Regular readers of this blog (are there really any? I don’t know, but it sounds cool) will no doubt have seen my struggles dealing with my tournament performance a few weeks ago. It was even noticeable to some of my teammates the week following my tournament as they asked if that was still bothering me.
This past week was not a good BJJ week for me. Our gym was closed for Labor Day. I wasn’t able to train over lunch on Tuesday. Thursday I had my bag packed and was ready to go, and life “got in the way” so I had to go deal with that. So I went 8 days between training sessions.
This past Friday I was at open mat and was rolling with one of my favorite BJJ people. He’s been better than me my entire career, but that doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the rolls. I had a decent day on Friday night. Granted, I didn’t submit him, I’ve only done that once and I’m not convinced that I really got him that time. But I was able to defend some positions, escape some positions and overall give him some good looks as he got ready for a tournament.
As I left the gym that night I thought “This is why people train.” You can have a bad day, week, or month. But then you have a good, not great, day and you are excited to train again. It was fun just to be in the gym rolling with people I enjoy hanging around with, and getting a good sweat in for about an hour, before I kicked off my weekend.
After lamenting about my tournament performance, I received a lot of encouragement about how it’s the person who doesn’t quit that achieves. That seems to be true. What I do know is that had I quit, or even just wallowed in my self pity and stayed away from the gym for awhile, I wouldn’t have been able to experience Friday. You’ve got to get back on the horse.