Rush?

Pretty much from my very start in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu I've been in a rush.

Rank in this martial art is about the slowest anywhere, and I was no youngster when I first stepped onto the mat. It was 2011, and I was 55. I'm 58 now.

I knew that I only had so many years in which I'd be able to progress. There are a lot of levels to get through in the Gracie system. They have 3 coloured belts (Blue, Purple, Brown), that each come with five levels (no stripe, one stripe, two, three, and four).

I pushed and managed to earn a Blue Belt in 9 months, a record at my local school. I continued this pattern with my new rank.

Back then, adding each of the four rank stripes onto a Blue Belt would take nearly two years. I found this unacceptably slow.

I passed the test for my first stripe within 18 months.

The Gracie system then evolved, making promotions possible every 8 months. I received a second stripe.

I'd say I'm about halfway along the road to adding a third.

As part of my journey, last winter I travelled to train at the main Gracie Academy in Los Angeles. I was there for 8 weeks, and attended several classes daily.

The idea of going back every winter was already planted in my brain. For this coming cold season, there were two separate trips south planned. One of these was a trip to Arizona, which would be stretched a bit to give me another week at the Gracie Academy. The other was a dedicated 3 week training vacation.

My training trips and my rush-to-progress are related in an unfortunate way. Both might just have come to a halt.

In about April, my knee started acting weird. For no discernible reason, it began to swell, and to react poorly to almost any sort of activity. It didn't seem to be getting better, so I followed the doctor/MRI/physio route.

There was no particular injury, just general age-related deterioration. I've been taking a lot of care with it, and up until last week was seeing glacially slow, but steady improvement.

Not it's hurt again, and worse than it was before. With four months of care, I'd gotten it back to darn good, and am suddenly back to square one. Even if I can fix it up again over the next four months, that puts the calendar into winter. That's when I'm supposed to be training like a madman down in LA. I won't be able to. The risk to the knee is too great.

I'd have to sit out every warm up. The training lessons themselves would be OK, but the daily sparring wouldn't. At best I could come up with a few trusted partners, similar to my at-home situation.

Will have to seriously consider not going at all.

What about training at home? It seems pretty safe. I trust all my partners here.

What if the knee doesn't get better? What if it gets worse? Currently I do all my required kneeling with my weight almost all on my good knee. What if the good knee gets bad?

My ultimate progress goal was to earn a Purple Belt. I was on track to do so sometime in 2016 or 2017. To do so will only be possible if I can continue steady training at home, with occasional visits to LA interspersed.

With a damaged training schedule, I would eventually still be able to earn my last two Blue Belt stripes, although at a slower rate. The jump to Purple requires an evaluation by the Gracies that is mostly predicated on sparring comfort and ability. Can the candidate roll like a Purple Belt?

Don't think I'll match up to that standard.

Perhaps my rush is over.