Young People These Days

I don't feel old, usually, but I am the oldest person at our Jiu-Jitsu school.

Our instructor, Shawn, is about 5 years younger, and we have two other students about 5 years younger than that.

None of us feel as old as we are, or act it. There is, however, a real difference in how our brains work than is true of the younger folks.

We have one guy in his middle thirties, and he seems like us, but there is a big jump down to our herd of folks in their twenties.

Us old buggers decide to do things, and then pretty much follow through. The youngsters decide things, too, but then tend to let things slide. They still want to do it, but they don't make it happen. Of course, this is a huge generalization.

I think it's how the two groups perceive time. To us oldsters, a year is no big deal, and a mere couple of months is nothing.

Koko is a good example. She came home from university a few months back for one of those glorious, four-month, college summers. Right at the beginning she announced her intention to do her BBS1 exam. Such a thing takes tons of extra out-of-class-time work.

Month one passed, and she didn't start. Month two was the same. Month three, nothing.

It wasn't until almost month four that she got rolling, and only then when I pointed out to her the reality of how little time was left to accomplish what she was after. She still really wanted to get going, so we started doing the extra work required.

The test has three huge segments, and three small sparring ones. She got first big part recorded on July 30; the third on August 23, with the second in between. She did the first sparring video September 2^nd, and the second the next night. Only one left to go, and 4 days to do it in.

She clearly has as much drive as any of the old farts, but somehow a different sense of time.

Scott and Cosme are young, and worked towards the same test that Koko is almost done with. They each got two of the big parts done, and a couple of the little ones, and then just stalled. Time slid, and slid, and slid, and now over six months have gone by with no progress at all.

Shaw is one of us oldies. As an instructor he has to keep up with the exams. He has to complete each within a year of their release. BBS2 came out in January, so he had all of 2015 to get it done. He was finished in about four weeks, which is about as is fast as is humanly possible. No sliding; done.

I think I know how it feels to have a younger person's sense of time. Remember when you were a kid, and on your way home on the last day of school in June. You had over two months of free time stretching off into infinity before you.

I hated school. How much pain did it feel like every Monday morning when that 9 o'clock bell rang?

Of course, our young people aren't that young, but they are closer to being that age than they are to being ours.

There also seems to be a difference in asking for as much help as these tests take. Getting one done means getting somebody to agree to putting in 20-30 hours of intense, extra work, and seeming to get nothing back.

Koko never did ask anybody. I offered. Scott and Cosme never asked anybody. They acted as each others partners. Shawn not only asked for help, but he gathered a team of it. He had Scott as his partner, and me as reader (a person to call out the techniques rather than stopping to check the list frequently) and pair of outside eyeballs.

I wonder if this blog will piss anybody off. It might seem that I've just said that people under 30 are useless at getting things done, and that geezers rock. I suppose I have.

There are counter arguments aplenty.

The same Cosme who hasn't gotten his BBS1 exam completed, has gone through the similarly-difficult program to become a certified instructor under the Gracies, and that included getting himself down to Los Angeles for part of the training. This is just one example.

Nathan is still a teenager, and has pushed his training along so that he is within a hair of earning a Blue Belt. He has done this by corralling help from advanced students during open-mat time, and doing private lessons.

Anyhow, I like my basic thesis enough that I'm going to stop now, and not argue the opposite case. I'll leave that for people to do in the comments section.

Or even better; they should prove me wrong by getting BBS1 done.

Drive Out

Helen and I love to travel, but the return home is always good, too.

If we go to visit family, it is in a city called Victoria. To get there or back involves two ferry trips. There is no way to really plan a travel time to there or back with any great accuracy. Not only would we have to predict highway and city traffic, the added complications of ferry schedules (which are a bit bizarre), as well as guessing how heavy the ferry traffic is. We don't try. We just go.

If we are on a flying trip, it isn't bad going. We just leave tons of extra time, as we don't take a car. That means riding a transit bus, a ferry, another city bus, and the train to the airport, in order to get to our plane. Coming home has all of that backwards, plus whatever the flying adds into the mix that everybody else has to contend with, like connections and possible flight delays. We don't try and predict our return when flying, either.

Road trips are about the same. Normally those head into the US, which involves a border crossing, which is always a crap shoot, especially if you have to try and hit a particular ferry after it. Again, no point in trying.

What this all means is that we never race when heading home. No point to it, and what are we racing for? Wouldn't there have to be a goal?

So anyhow, we were off with my sister Kathy, and her husband Al for a few days in Ucluelet, after a week in Victoria. Ucluelet is also on the island.

The plan that Helen and I settled on for the day of leaving was to pack up, do one more (rain-soaked) beach walk, and then head out. Google maps calculates the drive to the ferry as 2 hours and 39 minutes. Ucluelet is one of the places Google maps has trouble with. The road out winds insanely, and is mostly one lane each way, and runs through several towns. Along the way, Helen wanted to hit Costco, and at least one craft supply place.

We would then catch our first ferry, whose trip lasts an hour and 45 minutes. Then it would be a short drive over to the second ferry, which sails for 45 minutes. The end part is a 45 minute drive home. The first boat sails hourly, but the second only goes every second hour.

I had mentioned a desire to get home in time to get to Jiu-Jitsu, which starts at 7pm. It was just a, “it would be nice if” kinda thought, not a real goal.

The day before our return, I downloaded the boat schedules, cranked up Google maps, and did the math. I told Helen that there was no way we would get me home in time unless we were on the road by 9am., and if we limited our Costco time to 30 minutes (fat chance), and dropped the craft store stops. That translates into impossible, and didn't even take into consideration a final beach walk.

I thought that settled it, but after thinking about it for a while, she said she didn't need that last beach walk (who was this person and what did she do with Helen?), or the Costco visit, and only needed to hit one craft place?

We were on the road by 8:30am, making my Jiu-Jitsu class a distinct possibility.

Ever get caught on a long, skinny, tight-cornered road when you're in a hurry? What happens nine-times-out-of-ten is that you scoot along until you catch up to a big, fat RV, or a freight truck, or white-knuckled slow poke. You slow to a crawl, and can't escape as there is nowhere that is safe to pass. Any kind of a slow drive would have killed the dream.

Miracle of miracles, this didn't happen. Sure, we were less than lightning fast, but no serious slow-downs.

Found the craft store on the way, and they had exactly what Helen was looking for. We were out in no time at all. I couldn't believe how well everything was going.

Got to the ferry terminal with time to spare, loaded aboard, and were on our way. Ate on the boat, and did the switch over to the lot for boat two as slick as a whistle. The schedules don't line up at all (horrible actually, as we got to see boat two pull out just as we arrived, but that's what is supposed to happen). We did the parking-lot wait, and loaded right to the front of the boat. Napped during this leg of the voyage.

At that point, ETA prediction became, well, predictable. I was going to make it to class.

We banged off the final drive, got home, unloaded the car, and I gathered up my Jiu-Jitsu gear. I usually enjoy the half-hour drive to class, but after 11 hours of travel I didn't.

Class was lovely. We worked on sit-up sweep, which I am pretty sucky at, as well as some guillotine work, which I'm also lousy at. Perfect training for me. There was exactly the right amount of sparring at the end. After we broke up and people headed to the change rooms, Koko grabbed Tobias and wanted to film one of her 3 test sparring videos. Scott and I each ran a camera (backup, you know), and her roll with Tobias looked good enough to submit. All-in-all, a great night at Jiu-Jitsu.

Then a little half-hour drive home.

I was tired, for some inexplicable reason.

Good Bunch

What a team we've got?

There are about ten advanced students at our Jiu-Jitsu school who are active at all. There are a few more that are off for the summer, and might be back soon. We all hold various levels of Blue Belt, but should have some Purple Belts soon

Every night that the White Belts train, there are at least 4 or 5 Blue Belts present to help out the beginner.

During the advanced class, every single person is a delight to work with. All are interested in getting the details right, and work towards that goal. Nobody is a jerk to roll with when sparring time starts.

There are almost always at least a couple of people working during open-mat time. People are forever asking each other for help, or offering it, or asking questions, or working together through review material.

Sometimes our instructor holds sessions where he is really isn't trying to teach, but is working on the advanced stuff he is learning himself. If we show up, we do learn, but not in a formal way. It is also totally optional. Even so, I don't think there has ever been less than three people there to work with him, and sometimes as many as a half dozen.

Seminars are valuable training opportunities, and very rare anyplace near our home. Two years ago there was one in Seattle, about four hours from here, and which requires overnight hotel stays. Four of us attended. This year there was another, and five us us were there.

The only one closer happened in Richmond, next to Vancouver. We could get there and back in the same day. Nineteen of us were there, including twelve from the advanced class.

Two of our students have also gone as far at Los Angeles to be involved in the Gracie instructor certification program.

All-in-all, it's a great bunch, doing a lot to take responsibility for their own learning. We have an excellent instructor, but expecting him to do or to arrange everything is counter-productive.

He provides us with a wonderful program. We could just learn it as it comes, one lesson at a time. The Gracies themselves say we can only expect to retain 10-25% of the material following such a system. To do better, we have to do better ourselves.

That's why I attend all our instructor's self-training sessions, as well as every open-mat session. I am one of those helper Blue Belts who attend the White Belt classes. If somebody of any level wants help, I'm right there. If a fellow advanced student wants to prep for an exam, I am ready to commit to do whatever it takes to help.

Many of the others are the same way, but perhaps to not quite so nuts an extent.

Being retired with heaps of time is wonderful.

Throws and Dumps

There is a Judo theme happening at Jiu-Jitsu lately.

At the last training day before our one-week summer shut down, we had a couple of new students give us a try.

One of these was a young woman who is pretty high level in competitive Judo. I bet she was finding the differences between what she knows and what we were training in that day interesting, and hope she returns.

Then the Judo theme recurred a couple of days later. Koko and I were on the mat working on her test stuff. Technically, as this was a day of the school closure, we weren't open, but she needed to train, and I have a key.

Anyhow, in walks a guy looking for information. We chatted with him a bit. He's an older gent, like me, who has trained in Judo and Karate. Being a long-time Karate guy myself, that part was just mildly interesting. My ears perked up at the mention of Judo. We gave him the information he was after, and he departed.

Two Judo people present in our building only a couple of days apart.

I would love both, or either of them to become regulars.

But why?

The answer is pretty simple. Every martial art or sport has strengths and weaknesses.

Want to learn to hit people with padded gloves? You should study boxing, but not if you want to learn how to strike bare-fisted. The exact opposite is true of Karate. It's great at striking without gloves, and sucks when wearing them. Wrestling is great at putting people on the ground, and sucks at finishing them off once you do. The list goes on and on.

I was interested in Jiu-Jitsu in the first place due to the massive holes in Karate regarding grappling. It has since become my primary art due to the fun factor.

So what are the holes in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu? It isn't good against multiple attackers. No art is really great, but Jiu-Jitsu is especially bad.

Another weak area in Jiu-Jitsu has to do with taking an opponent to the mat. It is great if the other guy doesn't know anything, but not if he is knowledgeable.

You see it all the time. A couple of Jiu-Jitsu folks start to roll. They happen to be standing. They might grab each others sleeve or collar, and make a few half-hearted attempts to accomplish something, and then one or both spontaneously proceeds to sit down. If only one does, and the other doesn't, the grounded guy often starts aggressively scooting forward on his ass.

Really? In anything like a real fight, or even a UFC bout, that would equal a nasty ass whooping.

In day-to-day rolling or point Jiu-Jitsu competition it is embarrassingly frequent.

So how to improve the standing/take-down phase? One can work harder on mastering the techniques within Jiu-Jitsu that handle that aspect, but that would still leave one limited. The other way would be to supplement things.

The two best styles to compliment what we do in Jiu-Jitsu in the standing/take-down phase would be freestyle wrestling, and Judo.

I am a technique-oriented guy, which means for me Judo would be the better choice.

So having a new Judo buddy or two would be super. There are exactly 67 throws in the traditional Judo syllabus. If you include all the take-downs I've learned in 4 years of Jiu-Jitsu, it adds up to about 20, and only a half dozen of those can be considered throws in any manner at all. That leaves a humongous heap of stuff I can learn from Judo.

There is also a style of training that Judo people do that I really like. Let's say one of the people joins, and agrees to show me one of their dozen or so hip-throw techniques. Judo people do really high numbers of repetitions when they work on things; really, really high numbers of repetitions.

I learn best that way. They wouldn't think it weird to have me do the lesson a zillions times over.

In any case, chances are that neither will stick around long if they return at all. The older gentleman seemed to find our schedule to be out of sync with his, so he's a long shot. The Judo woman made it to one class so far, but she might not find either us or Jiu-Jitsu to her taste. She had a friend try it out at the same time. This means that if either of them doesn't want to return, likely neither will. We shall see.

We shall see.

Hajime (that means to begin).

Grandpa

There are dangers in retirement.

One of the sneakiest has to do with ending up in a geezer ghetto, either literally or figuratively.

A literal example would be like the place we visited in Arizona for a month last winter. It is a lovely community set in an area with year-round sunshine. Prices are reasonable, and there are tons of activities like lapidary (rock work), quilting, tennis, pickleball, karaoke, hot tubs to soak in, and a pool. As newly retired, we were the babies of the place, just barely squeaking in past the mandatory minimum age.

A non-literal situation is one where an older person lives in a regular community, and partakes of activities full of like-aged people, and who also has friends who are of similar age.

There is an energy, and modernity in younger people. It is important to remain a part of that world. Younger can mean many things, from babies, to kids, to teens, to young adults, to parents with young kids, and on up to those nearing-retirement.

Some maintain contact through family. A person with kids or grand kids has a built-in youth contact system, assuming they get to see them fairly often.

I am a good example of an old guy at risk.

I retired a couple of years ago, from a job as a high-school teacher. Very large numbers of hours were spent in the company of many amazing kids. Every day I got to see how stupid all the worry about the coming generation is, and had the privilege of seeing things through the kids' eyes.

That is no longer true for me.

There are no young people on our street. I have family members who are younger, but who live far away. We have friends our age who live far off, too. The only people I regularly see socially are my wife's friends, and they are all at least our age.

So how do I get my fix of differently-aged people that I say is so important.

Simple; I rassle with them.

I train in Jiu-Jitsu, and at 59, am the oldest student attending our school, by quite at bit. I have no contact with the children's groups, and so only know the people in our adult programs.

Adult is a relative term. Perhaps they should be called an “adult-sized” programs. There are several in the beginners group who are in their early teens. Most are twenty-ish, and sometimes we get somebody actually in their thirties. Rarely older.

Our advanced class has students ranging from age 16 up to their early 50s, and me. The average age of everybody excluding me is mid-20s.

These are the young people I that I regularly hang around with.

It's very cool, as they pretty much have to treat me as one of them. They have no choice, or I'll choke them out.

We are a collection of peers, who just happen to be of widely-varied ages.

If I am away, and want to find out what we've covered, I turn to Elizabeth. She has the best detail memory, and just happens to be 20 years old. If I want to work with somebody really strong, I turn to Rob who is 50, not that it matters. Koko, who is home for the summer from university and a third my age, has been working hard on completing a technical Jiu-Jitsu exam, and I've been helping her out as I know the material, and have free time.

The only two that outrank me are in their twenties, and one of those is the only student who is also certified as an instructor (as is, of course, our instructor). Their relative youth is irrelevant.

Just a bunch of people training together.

I get to be the oldest.

Adulting, Fit, Confident

OK, so you've reached that part of your life where you should be adulting all over the place.

This isn't easy, and you can lose track of what's important. You've got to take care of yourself.

So, being out of school, you'd better learn be a confident person, and to be keeping fit.

If you like ball-related activities, the fitness thing is pretty easy to sort out.

Team sports are a bit tricky. It's hard to get large groups of folks together to play, for example, volleyball. It only gets harder with time. Small groups just work out better.

There's tennis, and golf, and stuff like pickleball. Lots of things like that. My good friend Bernie plays pickleball and badminton.

The only issue, is that you still need to join some kind of league, or group, or just to know a few people who share your interest to go play the front nine. Bernie's groups always want him to join their executive committee.

Or maybe you just might be like me and despise anything to do with team sports, or things played with balls, or birds, or pucks.

Running can work, or biking, or something less traditional. Our area has fencing. En garde!

Find your thing, get fit, and have fun.

But wouldn't it be cool to do something that increases your level of confidence at the exact same time.

Nothing I've listed so far are a-list activities in this regard. I think learning to speak Japanese or Spanish would do more for me in that regard than playing tennis. The only problem is, taking academic courses does nothing for the old bod'.

Here comes the sales pitch; consider martial arts.

Although a Karate guy for decades, I'm currently training in Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, so will come at it from that angle.

You go to a class, receive instruction, and practise the material with some other people.

Before you get all worried and think somebody is going to beat you up, relax. There is nothing even remotely similar to fighting in the beginner class.

You get shown two techniques per evening; one while standing, and one on the ground. The ground one usually has a few variations.

The instructor demonstrates things one bit at a time, from several angles, and in great detail. Then you work on it with another new person. The instructor and a bunch of helpers cruise around and assist. After a few minutes it's time for the next demo of the next bit. Then you work on that.

Before you know it the hour is over. Nobody grabbed you and threw you about, making you feel stupid, or hurting you. You do this twice a week, for about a year.

Towards the end of that period, you will experience having an advanced student sort of attacking you, but only with a series of exactly the aggressive moves that you've been learning how to handle. They do it exactly the way you expect, and you will find that the “correct” response comes naturally to you. Don't worry about being unable. I've been training for four years, and every single person to have joined in that time has been able to handle this.

If you've made it through the program for that long, you will find yourself surrounded by people far less experienced than yourself. The only ones with more training are the teacher assistants, and other members of the advanced class.

Maybe you choose to do the exam to become one of them. If you do, you will be introduced to the intimidating world of free sparring. The cool thing is that your partners really want you to succeed, and will offer pointers, and go at a speed and intensity appropriate to your newby-hood. Soon, this too will become second nature.

So what do you get if you don't join the advanced class? For one thing, you'll be more fit. If you didn't increase your eating, your weight will have been dropping about 1/4 pound a week. You'll also have gained muscle. You will be stronger.

You'll also have participated in a year-long course focused totally on self-defence. You will have worked with folks of every size and strength, cooperatively. You will be quite used to handling big folks pretending to be aggressive and out to take your head off.

Perhaps you visit a pub with a few friends one evening. You look around and think, “I bet I could handle anybody here.”

That's a pretty cool feeling, especially if you're a smallish dude. It's even better if you are a 5', hundred-pound chick.

Keep coming and it gets even better. So you take the test, and earn a fancy schmancy Blue Belt. You'll be training even more, and your body will become even stronger, and if you so choose, thinner. You will learn infinitely more complicated material, but it will be introduced in a progressive manner.

You'll get even more confident visiting that pub, or in the mall, or everywhere. It's nice, and you don't get that from golf, tennis, or jogging.

So what else do you get that goes along having a better life? I had a friend in Karate who maintained almost perfect attendance. He was single, and had a decent job. One day at coffee, various people explained why they trained. His contribution was that if he wasn't at Karate, he'd be at the bar, which would be bad for him, and would cost a fortune over time. His conclusion was that he didn't care what it cost, martial arts were saving him a big bucks.

The downside is that you might miss out on some TV watching, or Facebooking, or Pinteresting, or even reading my blog.

Pick a Goal

I get tired of all the nonsense about how you should, "go for your dreams and everything will go your way."

It's a lie.

Every significant human endeavour contains a massive random component. That's right; I said luck.

Take my progress in Jiu-Jitsu. I am trying to get as high in rank as I can, as fast as I can. My age is pretty advanced for this kind of activity, and there are a limited number for years that I'll be able to do it at full speed.

I started training in September of 2011. My first promotion is one that should have happened around Christmas of the next year. I did extra private lessons, and solo practice, and finished in 9 months. I went for my dream, but luck was involved.

Early on in my training, I started repeatedly injuring my feet. It seemed to be something to do with my old toes not bending properly whenever they got slammed into the mat. Nobody else experienced this. It is certain that more than a few of these injuries involved broken toes. I just duct taped them together, and kept going. After a couple of months, it stopped happening.

If the pain had been more intense, or if my feet hadn't eventually adapted, my training could have ended right there. Logically, it should at least have slowed me down. It did neither.

Then I picked up a cracked rib at Karate. Hurt like a bugger, but like toes, there is no way to cast up a rib. Kept training, with great care. It took a very long time to heal, but eventually did.

If the crack had been a bit more severe, or if somebody had landed hard on it at Jiu-Jitsu, it could well have ended my training. It should have slowed me down, but it didn't.

Got my Blue Belt, and started working through the curriculum that would eventually earn me a stripe. It should have taken about two years. I did it in one-and-a-half. Again, I'd done extra lessons and tons of solo work.

Went and visited the Gracie Academy after that for 8 weeks. Trained for 101 classes with world-class instructors, and rolled with many, many people of every rank. Came home tired but uninjured.

By then, the promotion system was about to change in a manner that would be infinitely in my favour. Eight months per stripe would now be easily possible. It looked as if the new system would make my next promotion happen July, but that isn't how it turned out.

As soon as I got home from Los Angeles, my instructor awarded me a second stripe, which he made official at the earliest date that he could. I got to wear my new stripe in March, and it became “real” in June.

Luck had changed the system for me, and then my instructor's good will had given me an honorary promotion that became real one month ahead of the already-exciting official new system date.

The bad news is that days after my return, I hurt my knee while rolling, bad. This forced me to miss quite a few classes, and then to return while taking it easy. It got re-injured, and I ended up getting an MRI, a number of doctor visits, and a whole pile of physio therapy sessions.

If the injury had been slightly worse, it would have been all over. As it was, the medical advice, and physio, and everything I did to compensate, worked together and I healed up. It seemed to take forever, but I kept training. Major luck for me again.

Got my third stripe in February of 2015, exactly on time to-the-day. Slightly before that date, my hand went into the mat, end on, with both Scott and me on top of it. It got x-rayed, and poked and prodded, and had a visit to a specialist in the city. It didn't stop or slow me, and is also getting better.

I am now less than two months from my 4^th and final Blue Belt stripe promotion.

That will be almost exactly 4 years after I stated training.

If the system hadn't changed, I would be a Blue Belt Stripe Two. I was very lucky that they changed things radically, and I will instead be a Blue Belt Stripe Four.

Any of a myriad of injuries could have stopped or slowed my progress, but I was super lucky in that none of them did.

I am also darn lucky that my old body didn't pick up any injuries of a more significant nature. I figure I'm fortunate to still be training at all.

Am I plowing forward expecting that because I'm pursuing a dream, that things will continue to go my way.

I am not a fan of magical thinking. One bad back roll or foot lock, and I could be done.

Did I push through my injuries with grit and determination? Nope. At every class that I train while taped up, I decide if I should be training that day. The answer is usually "yes." If not, I sit on the sidelines and watch. It was dumb luck that I have had to actually sit out very few times.

What I've done is to work with what I've been given. I did the best I could out of the old rank system, and continue doing the same with the new. Avoiding injury is always in my mind, and when I get one, do the best possible under the circumstances.

I call myself a realist, both in my original goal of getting as far in rank as I can, and in my bumpy road towards attaining it.

If my goal had been, “to get a Black Belt,” it would have been dashed already. The math says that the absolute fastest one could be earned would have me in my 70s. That is just not realistic. I didn't know that when I started, but knew that the road to Black would be very, very long.

If a goal becomes impossible, it's too easy to get discouraged.

So my goal is, “to get as high in rank as possible.” I also have a shorter-term objective to get a Purple Belt. That's only a year or two off, and is therefore almost in my lap, and wouldn't be the end of my road.

And who knows, maybe the winds of luck will blow my way again. Perhaps it will turn out that the Gracie's have a modified standard for geezers, or that they will introduce one.

They have awarded Blue Belts to people much older than me, but I am unaware of any belts of Purple or above being given. Such students face a comprehensive exam process if they are from an outlying school like ours. Students at the Gracie Academy in LA are awarded rank when they are judged ready; no test. Under those test-free rules, old folks can progress to the stars.

For my goal, this isn't necessary. If I cannot get get Black, or Brown, or even Purple then the level below that will be the highest that I can reach.

In any case, the threat can lie in the attainment of the goal.

Take Ronda Rousey. Before her UFC and mma days, she was a high-level Judo competitor. She worked like a fanatic for most of her life leading up to the Holy Grail; the Olympics. She brought home a silver medal. Then what?

She lost direction. She ended up rudderless for a year or two. She drank, and even took up smoking....an Olympic athlete smoking? It took her a long time to find a new dream and regain a sense of stability.

A lot of people have the goal of earning a Blue Belt. They get it, start training half-assed for a while, and then quit.

The phenomenon repeats at Purple, as many make that their goal. Instructors say that this doesn't happen at Brown. It seems those shooting that high, shoot a bit higher to Black. I wonder if it happens at Black, but really have no idea.

It also really helps if your goal just happens to involve something you really like to do.

I really enjoy going to Jiu-Jitsu. If there is something dandy on TV, and some part of me hurts, and I'm tired, and my big chair is soft, I still get up and go to Jiu-Jitsu. JJ only happens during certain hours, and there are lots of other times for all the other things.

Even when I'm training like a nutjob, like I've done for the past week, it only adds up to 14.5 hours. That's about 12% of my waking hours. Normally it's significantly less. That's about the same as a few rounds of golf with lunch afterwards. My wife spends that much time sewing and quilting.

Whenever my body is wracked up, and all I can do is sit on the sidelines and watch, I do that, too. People seem to think this displays some kind of super dedication. Not really. If I stayed home I would just be watching TV or Facebooking, and I enjoy Jiu-Jitsu more. If I can pick up one previously elusive detail, it is worth it.

However, Jiu-Jitsu isn't the ultimate attraction in my life. For example; Helen and I love to travel, and that is something that we can do together, and with friends. The biggest retardant to my Jiu-Jitsu goal is all the holes that travel punches into my attendance.

So here are my thoughts that I think are much better than to, "go for your goals and then everything will go your way."

"Pick a goal that is realistic, and open-ended, and is in an activity that you find to be a hoot, but keep it in perspective, and keep doing it unless something more important pops up, and try to not let injury or illness stop you, but don't be all crazy, and don't let attaining your goal leave you rudderless."

I guess that is a bit too much of a mouthful to make a motivational slogan.