Until Christmas

My last self-indulgent blog about my upcoming Brown Belt evaluation was back on day 53.

At that time I was wondering if there would be 36 items on the test, or 27. The difference of 9 techniques was making me apprehensive, as those were all new to me and would have taken a great deal of time to prepare on my own.

Now it is day 50, and this seems to have been largely answered.

My instructor says he is 99.9% sure that the offending 9 techniques are not to be included. He did counter this a bit by saying that I should go over all of the Gracie Philosophy videos, which I certainly will do (a total of 10.5 hours of viewing). He also wants me to look over the Master Text. None of this is actually added to the exam itself, and is more than counterbalanced by the loss of 9 techniques.

Doing those added educational tasks will not require any mat time, and only eat into frivolous television viewing.

I now feel quite able to work things up for my mid-December evaluation. I might even develop a more jaunty style of ambulation, and start smiling again.

One thing I will have to watch out for is high-risk sparring or partnering during class time. That is easy to do here, as I know which folk are the safest to play with.

I will be in Vancouver six times between now and test day, and I don’t know folks there so completely. Maybe I can get a hold of one of those that I trust, and get them to commit to being my playmate until after my exam.

So instead of struggling to get totally unknown techniques figured out and trained to a level of fluency, I have been reviewing and refining material I know, and learning unexpected details.

I am also about 3 hours into my Gracie Philosophy viewing assignment, and have been thinking on strategies to avoid training injuries for the next 51 days. After that they don’t matter.

All in all, this entire test preparation process has been incredibly educational, and not merely in the area of Jiu-Jitsu technique.

Around here I’m pretty much the guy who is always helping out others.

For example; a month ago I was part of a team helping my instructor with his technical exams, and hosted a weekly session aimed at helping out the less experiences of our advanced students. Rob and I were just completing the work on his first level of technical exams, and starting to work together to earn the second level for both of us.

Now, with the pressure on me, this has all changed about. I didn’t engineer any of it. All was at the willing instigation of my friends.

My instructor’s sessions are now focused equally on preparing him for his own Black Belt exam and on mine for Brown Belt. My weekly group has also switched themselves to helping me drill for my test. Rob and I are not currently working on our technical exams, but also working on test preparation.

In addition, I’ve been accepted into a special training group at the Vancouver school aimed towards precisely what I need at this point.

So you see, besides all the study and drill, it has been an education to see how wonderfully everybody has shifted things about to help me along my road.

It’s all going so swimmingly, that I’ve actually started looking past the exam itself.

The first thing coming up at that point will be the trip that Helen and I always make to be with family for Christmas. Usually, I go with mixed emotions. As much as I enjoy the holidays with our family, I also severely dislike the break in training.

I imagine that after all of this recent focused work I’ll be glad to step away for a while, whether I pass or fail.