Three or Four

I love, love, love to travel. I also love Jiu-Jitsu, and sometimes the two are in conflict.

I like planning things ahead, and have been doing so for both vacations and for my Jiu-Jitsu progress in rank.

Up until now, there has been no insurmountable difficulty.

To be promoted in Jiu-Jitsu, there is a minimum 8 month training period. There are also minimum attendance requirements of various types. Most are very easy to fulfil, but the total of 90 advanced classes can be tricky. The third requirement is having your instructor decide you're ready. Mine seems pretty happy with me, so it's really only time and class attendance I have to concern myself with.

Vacations don't stop the days from rolling by, so time-in-rank isn't an obstacle. Class attendance can be.

Up until now, I've had no serious difficulty with this. Sometimes it has been kinda close, but not a problem. I've had an eye on my next couple of promotions, and there is no difficulty for those two, either.

Today, I took things much farther into the future. I've plugged in the most likely travel scenarios.

After receiving a Purple Belt, each of the next four stripes could arrive 8, 16, 32, and 40 months later.

For the first stripe at 8 months, I will not complete my attendance requirement in time, and it will require an additional 3 months. Of course, this moves the timetable for all subsequent promotions back as well. Instead of 8 months, it will come at 11 instead.

For the second stripe, which was to have been at 16 months, there will be no further slippage, so it will also be 3 months back. This one will come at 19 months.

The 24-month third stripe will slide further to an extra 4 months, and the 32 month stripe further still for a total of an additional 6 months. They will come at 28 and 38 months respectively.

That's half a year, and looks like this slippage will continue for all higher ranks as well.

I'm not crazy about how this looked to be turning out, but am ever optimistic. There may be no slippage at all.

An upcoming issue at our school is how to present the curriculum. There is going to be a 50% increase in what we cover very soon. We are currently doing levels 1 and 2 together, section by section, every two weeks. Level 3 will be available soon.

People are managing now, but only barely. Possible solutions after the increase in curriculum could be to perhaps add a third week to every section. That would work, but it would make the entire training cycle jump from about 14 months to 21. That's an awfully long time.

The option that our instructor is currently considering has our main class continuing with levels 1 and 2 at the current pace, and that we add a class to the timetable to concentrate on level 3 for those who want to work on it. Instead of three advanced classes per week, there would be four.

Plugging 4 classes per week into my prediction changes everything. In that paradigm, every one of my future promotion dates will work out at the minimum, regular 8 month intervals.

It would be swell if that's how it goes. At three classes a week, the last Purple Belt stripe would come 38 months after first receiving the belt, compared to 32 if we go to four.