Merry Maniac

Today, there will be a class at our local Jiu-Jitsu school, and tomorrow there are none. The day after that I go into Vancouver and get evaluated to see if I am good enough to receive a Brown Belt.

That happens early in the morning. If I fail, likely I’d just waddle home straight away in a bit of a funk.

Passing, however, would see my compulsive behaviors kick in. As a brand new Brown Belt, I already be collecting attendance towards adding the first of four possible stripes onto my freshly unwrapped new belt.

With a new belt to wear, I think I’d go for coffee, and then return to attend the Vancouver school’s midday class.

That would put me rushing to get to the ferry terminal to get home in time to train at the Gibsons school in the evening.

The day after that is my normal day to travel into the city to train so I’d be back on the first ferry about an hour before dawn again.

Then both schools shut down to have Christmas breaks. Crazy me will already have 3 classes tallied on his attendance record.

The weird thing is that people are always saying to chase technique, or chase skill, but never to chase rank.

I humbly disagree, but only because they are wrong.

After receiving a promotion right before Christmas most people would take things a little easier. Few would train that very day in the city, and then rush like a crazy person to get home to train again, and then catch the stupidly early ferry again the next morning to train again in the city.

A dedicated person, just might go once, but it would be unlikely that all the rushing about to make it to a second class would hold much appeal, and certainly getting to three would seem like madness.

Doing so for me is a bit of a game. The fastest that it is permitted to earn a belt stripe is 8 months. There are no exceptions.

In that time, it is necessary to have attended 90 or more appropriate advanced sessions ( the actual goal is for 100, but ten of these are so easy to collect that I don’t even bother thinking about them at all).

With the amount that I travel, there is no way I can finish the attendance in 8 months if I train like a normal person. Assuming I can manage absolutely perfect attendance (never sick, nor injured, and no conflicts of any kind) whenever I’m home, I will only have managed 67 classes by the time that warm August day has rolled along.

Collecting 90 classes would take me 11 months and 2 weeks. That sounds like a year to me.

However, I go into the city to train every Saturday. Doing this means that my attendance goal will be reached in exactly 8 months.

But I don’t leave it at that.

On one of our yearly big trips, we usually head out two weeks early, and stop off in LA so that I can train at Gracie University. Putting that trip into the mix, I lose classes at my home school for two weeks, and two Saturdays in Vancouver, but train a ton in LA.

Doing this means that my tally goal will actually be reached 6 weeks before the due date.

But even that isn’t enough. Rob and I will be working on BBS exams, which will require tons of extra mat work. I also run a Sunday session, and work with anybody during open mat time on anything. Factoring these shows my tally growing at an alarming rate.

About half of these sessions end up as nothing, or at least nothing that I can credit myself for. Even so, they make it so that my tally total will be finished easily 3 months before the due date.

If I train after getting promoted in a couple of days, and before the Christmas shutdown it will change all of the potential tally completion dates by one week in my favour.

There is a direct correlation between the amount of training somebody does, and how good they are, and how much they improve over time.

I like getting my tallies up as a form of motivation, and the rank promotion system directly feeds into this. I am either improving by chasing rank, or I am earning rank by chasing improvement.

The point to all this jibber-jaber is to explain why I will be on the mat between the time of my Brown Belt exam and the schools shutting downs shortly after.

If it was really just me chasing the tallies, I would stop after attaining the goal, or at least cut back a lot. I do that, but continue on at my merry, maniac pace.

Also, if I train straight away after a getting a new belt, everybody will get to admire it.