Stupid Brain

As I've said many times, my Jiu-Jitsu goal is to get as far in rank as I can before old age shuts my progress down. This means I'm racing the clock and calendar, and like my promotions to come along in a sprightly fashion.

My stupid brain tried to trick me off of this very-simple goal.

Today it was open-mat time at the academy. I unlocked, swept the mat, and got changed. Promptly at start time Sarah showed up looking for some help. She's a new student, with about three weeks under her belt. Being clever and ambitious, she's figured out the system that we have where Blue Belts can give official credit for out-of-class work.

She was hoping that Cosme would show up, as he is a certified instructor. Working with him earns double credit. Sadly for her, no Cosme today.

I agreed to help her out, so we started working on her stuff. Better than nothing, I suppose.

After a bit, Nathan arrived, also hoping to find Cosme. He figured out the fast track months ago, and is already in the process of recording his Blue Belt test videos. He wanted to go over the guard test material for his next filming.

No Cosme, but I was happy to help, so he wandered off to grab a bite to eat while I finished up with Sarah.

A bit later, she'd put in enough work, so I checked the appropriate box on her attendance card. She thanked me and headed out, just as Nathan was returning.

We worked on his guard test for maybe 20 minutes, and then he headed off. This wasn't enough time for me to add a check to his card, but he doesn't need them anymore. All of his boxes are marked in already.

I headed home as well.

That's when my daydreaming brain tried to screw me up.

It started to tell me that I like helping others, which I do, and that if I were to become an instructor, I would be better equipped to do so. Shawn, our instructor, and Cosme are our only people with teachers certification. Tobias is going through the procedure right now, and will be certified soon.

I started thinking about when it would be possible for me to hook into the Instructor Certification Program, and thought about the costs, and the logistics.

And then the snap back to reality occurred.

My goal is to progress as quickly and far as I can in rank. Becoming an instructor could seriously mess that up.

I have a Purple Belt exam in my not-too-distant future. Let's call it a year away. After that, assuming almost-perfect attendance, I would work through 4 stripe promotions, and then, just maybe face a Brown Belt exam. That would be a minimum of 4 or 5 years altogether. Just possibly, a Black Belt exam might happen 4 or 5 years after that. Age could easily be an issue at Brown already, and even more so at Black. Delay would be a bad thing.

What does that have to do with being certified as an instructor? The problem is that the Gracies have a higher standard for the people they authorize to spread their system.

They are tough enough on “ordinary” promotion candidates. With instructors they are brutal.

Taking an exam for a Belt is a big deal. It means a trip to Los Angeles, with all the hassles and costs that entails. Being a winter-only traveller means that a failure would put mean re-test would cost another year. Repeated failure is quite possible.

My whimsical thought of getting instructor certification could seriously derail my main goal of fast rank progress.

Never mind. Not doing it.

Stupid brain.