Time

One of the guys at Jiu-Jitsu is really keen. He wants to get to his Blue Belt test as soon as possible. This is pretty much what I was doing at this time last year.

He is now currently 6 months away from his goal.

To speed this up he asked me if I'd give him private lessons every Friday. I am allowed to do this for White Belts.

This would move his goal closer by about two months.

I don't really want to commit to this, but said I'd be willing to do it every second Friday. I want to keep the other open sessions for working on my own stuff. This would make his test be about 5 months away.

A private lesson takes about half an hour, so it's not an onerous commitment on my part. He offered to pay me, which I declined.

If somebody were really, really keen they might be able to talk several of the Blue Belts into helping them out.

There is enough open-mat time at the academy to crank out 3 private lessons. If my friend could arrange this, he could be all done in 2.5 months.

I wish such an option were possible for the Blue Belts.

My next test is 17 months off. If I could take bonus classes at the same ratio it would knock off almost a year.

Not possible, of course.

I resent every delay in my own progress. There are 60 items on my next test. Each of them takes a full week to learn and drill. I thought that would mean a bit over a year to complete. Wrong. It is longer than that.

Between each of the 7 chapters, there are three or four weeks of review. I admit review is necessary, but hate that it takes so many weeks. I review on my own like crazy, but most don't. We are currently in week three of a four-week review. We start new material again on December 4th, and will crank out three more techniques before Christmas.

That will put me at 12 competed out of the goal total of 60.

We had a Blue Belt meeting last night. Everybody that could come, did. Looking around I was jealous. They are all much less than half my age. If they dawdle along, they can still eventually progress. Every one of them can someday be a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt.

I cannot dawdle. If I progress as fast as is theoretically possible, I would reach Black Belt by the age of 80. Somewhere between now and then my rate of progress will slow significantly. A single old-guy injury could end my training altogether. A Brown Belt would put me ONLY into my 70s. Realistically, I cannot expect to reach this level either.

Purple? My early 60s. That’s realistic.

In any case, I have limited time to get as far as possible. Each Belt or added stripe is a victory.

I really understand my White Belt's drive to move on quickly through private lessons.