Progress will slow

A year and a half ago I started in Jiu-Jitsu, and have trained pretty hard.

If it had been a martial arts with a more traditional rank structure I'd have run through a lot of belts already. In the first year I'd have earned Yellow, Orange, and Green. By last Christmas I'd have turned Blue, and about now be getting Purple.

I'd be a Brown Belt by this coming summer, and be looking at a Black Belt the summer after that.

In Jiu-Jitsu, I've earned my Blue Belt and nothing else.

Instead of a hypothetical Brown Belt this summer, I'll still be wearing my Jiu-Jitsu Blue Belt.

I'm pushing hard to accelerate my progress, and should be allowed to put a cute little stripe on my beat -up old Blue Belt by Christmas.

By the next summer if all goes well, instead of a hypothetical Black Belt, I will still have the same Blue Belt plus stripe.

I'll still have three more stripes to earn before going for a Jiu-Jitsu Purple Belt.

I expect my rate of progress to slow considerably. To go fast I take occasional private lessons. They are well worth the price, but my income is going to drop dramatically in a couple of weeks as I enter retirement. No more private lessons after this year.

Helen and I plan on traveling a lot. This will mean significant breaks in my training. I doubt it will be possible to plug the holes without private lessons.

Without any breaks, it takes a bit over a year and a half to complete a stripe. With travel breaks hear and there, I'll probably have to do each rank's training cycle twice. This will make each little stripe take more like three years.

Let's see. I should complete my first stripe while 57 years of age. I'll be 60 when I get to second stripe, 63 at third, and 66 at fourth. Jumping to Purple isn't as arduous, and it takes much less than a year. Let's call it Purple Belt at 66.

I might make that, but higher colors seem unlikely. There are four stripes within Purple as well, and I certainly will not progress faster. A Brown Belt at age 78? Not very likely.

Therefore, after getting my first Blue Belt stripe I plan on changing my focus.

Currently I'm pretty driven to progress in rank. Higher rank gets access to the next level of technical curriculum. I'll have to let this go. I'll take the stripes as they come, but won't push for them.

I'll learn and train in order to simply improve. I will train for the enjoyment of the activity. As I'll likely repeat the training cycle twice, I should be able to get twice as good at it as I would be able to while powering through.

That's actually a change I might just enjoy.