Master cycle

My Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Blue Belt test is over. I finished the last part on Thursday. It has taken over 7 weeks.

Today the instructor reviewed that last part, and announced, "that's a keeper".

He says he'll upload it on Monday.

He says the fastest results have returned in about a week, with some taking as long as three weeks.

Assuming I pass, that would make me a Blue Belt sometime between June 25 and July 9. Even if Helen and I are on our first short summer road trip I'm sure that news will be either emailed or facebooked to me.

If we're still around, I can start coming to the Blue Belt classes.

The White Belt classes have a fancy name that is OK. They are called Combatives. That just means fighting. The Olympics group Judo, Wrestling, TKD and fencing all together and call it Combatives.

The Blue Belt classes have an unfortunate name. They are called Master Cycle. I'm sure it means something like "cycle through the techniques over and over until they are mastered."

The word Master in martial arts has a different connotation. It means a person with a true and deep understanding of the art. People will scoff if they hear I've been training for 9 months and am about to start taking Master's classes. That isn't what is meant, but it's what it sounds like.

Today, I was the only student present. The teacher took me through a bunch of more advanced stuff. That was interesting. We then rolled about for a while. I got nothing on him, but he only submitted me a few times. Unable to attack, I defended. Afterwards he said he could see my wrestling background, which I took as a compliment. We then chatted for a while and then headed out.

It was my first training day in quite a while without a test looming over everything.

It was swell.