Renaissance Man

Now is the time of my personal Renaissance Age of Jiu-Jitsu; a time of flourishing Science and Art.

Let us look at what has recently passed, and what will soon be.

There is a system in place that rewards students for managing to attend a large number of classes within a set period. The reward is usually a little stripe on their coloured belt. The number of classes is often difficult to accumulate without going well overtime.

Partly in response to this, six months ago I started attending an extra class each week by travelling to nearby North Vancouver to train with Gracie Black Belt Marc Marins. This has eliminated any issues with attendance totals, but the real result has been a significant increase in my Jiu-Jitsu.

You see, Marc is a top-notch, highly-experienced and respected teacher of the art. When he does any lesson, even one I know well, he emphasizes tiny little differences. Sometimes, he steps outside of the official curriculum altogether, and we do things that blow my mind. He is also beyond value when I have a question I need answered.

This doesn't mean I train even one second less at home. If anything, it has me trying to find more fragments of time to work on what I've learned, and to share it with others.

I also had an extra chance to train with Rener Gracie. Back in February I did my usual, yearly two-week visit to Los Angeles to train. This is always good, but the extra chance came just last weekend.

Rener was giving a seminar at the Greater Seattle police training facility. This was my fifth time that I'd been able to do this with him, or with his brother, and it was by far the best. I walked out of the gym exhausted after 8 hours of training, but with a head bursting with new concepts and techniques.

All that extra work, from assorted points of view has made me much, much better. I find holes in people's movement when they occur, rather than right after they close up like I usually do. Understanding of new material comes faster, and deeper. I am rolling more fluidly.

The future is also inspiringly bright.

The head of our school Shawn Phillips has been living part-time in Mexico for the last year and a half, and had just arrived back for a nice, long stint. He is a great teacher, and fits my learning style very well. Not only will he be teaching our regular classes, he has expressed a desire to do extra training outside of the timetable.

In a similar vein to that, Tawha and I have been working hard on the material for one of the technical exams. That will be continuing, along with all the normal classes, and alongside the extra work with Shawn, and my weekly visits to Vancouver.

Renaissance men do not allow anything to interfere with their pursuit of learning, and a road-bump is coming up in the fall.

Helen and I will be off to Britain, France, and a Mediterranean cruise. I am greatly looking forward to this, but it will punch a great big hole into my training. Certainly, I can catch up after we are back, but there is an opportunity to start the repair work before it even happens.

August is always a week training month, as our school shuts down for a bit more than a week. A normal month contains 12 to 13 advanced classes, but August will only have 9.

My Monday visits will boost this up to 12, but this just isn't enough for me. With the Summer ferry being in effect, it will be possible to stay later in Vancouver attending the evening class as well, and still get home. The total jumped to 15.

This lead me to reconsider the school shutdown in another way. By straying outside of Monday, it seems that I can add 3 more Vancouver classes. The total becomes 18.

This doesn't even take into account any August extra training with Shawn, or with Tawha on the exam material, or with anybody else who wants to hit the mat.

I shall fly off to Europe quite content that everything possible to prepare my training has been done.

And wasn't the Renaissance followed by the Age of Enlightenment?

Or was it the Thirty Years War?