A Little About Me...

Hello everyone,

I'm taking a break from the usual study post and writing a bit about myself to give you some more insight to me and my place in life right now. There are several, many even, people I know who have blogs on their training and they're always a good read to really see things through their eyes and get a different perspective. Good friends of mine, one a long time training partner and the other my coach, recently made blog entries that made me think and those, along with reading Christian Graugart's book about training and traveling 'The Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Globetrotter' (Great book, great person, awesome network he's set up. Check out the site http://www.bjjglobetrotters.com ) really got me to thinking about where I am right now. I've noticed I've changed on how I deal with things and how I view training, competing, and just living.
Let me start by telling you that I am in the military, the Navy. Being in the military is what gave me the ability to travel and train, travel the world, beating the bad guys and bringing a gi for some R&R. It's also been the reason I've had to switch schools in the past and take long breaks from training. My friend posted about his 'Jiu-Jitsu mind at sea' (check out that and other posts here: http://bramwelljj.blogspot.ca/ ) and it reminded me a long time belief that as great as our job is serving our country the work stresses and some of the more, shall we say, 'narrow minded' people we work with creates a never ending source of negativity in your life. It's something that needs to be dealt with and constantly checked, otherwise it eats you up and takes over your life. Reminding me of this brought me to the realization that changes in my life have greatly changed how I handle negativity in my life and my overall view of life in general. I attribute my better outlook to three things. 1. I stopped drinking. People can drink all they want, I'm not against drinking I just found it wasn't helping me so I quit. 2. I made the effort to get out and train more. I am privileged to be apart of club that has so many great people, just being around them and training with them makes my day better. Surround yourself with awesome people and you will do awesome things, right? 3. Buddhism. I am in no way religious, and I'm neither for nor against people or who are. I watched a documentary, 'Meditate and Destroy' about Noah Levine, a reformed addict punk who found peace in Buddha's teachings and has made a way of spreading those teachings without any religious connotations in a plain, modern day language. His correlations he made simplifying both the essence of the punk movement and Buddha's own movement really spoke to me and after reading his book, 'Against The Stream' (check out his site if any of this speaks to you http://www.dharmapunx.com ) I've found I've been making headway with dealing with stress and negativity in my life. Learning letting go is key.
So with jiu jitsu so much a part of my life, making it better, what are my goals? Without goals you get stagnant and the determination starts to wear off, then you show up less and that awesome source of positivity in your life becomes less and less. Goals are important, they keep you grounded, and focused, what were mine? Well at first my goal was just to get out more, train all I can. Then it was to work on my blue belt in BJJ and my yellow belt in traditional (Japanese) jiu jitsu. Now it's just to compete and work on a game plan, start putting together chains and working on difficult positions. The goals have become more advanced and no longer are they about hours in or the next belt or stripe. This is something that just gradually happened without even noticing until this week. It was sparked by my coach's blog post, he always has some really good insights to the many other facets of training other than usual hours and reps people think and talk about. This week he wrote about goals, the different goals of students and how those play a game in the goals of the teachers. (always a great read: http://vorpalblade.ca/ ) Reading that I thought 'what are my goals now? I had some for the last year and half and I've attained them one after another, so what am I focusing on now?' So I thought about it, I've recently made the decision to make this year one of testing the competition waters and seeing where I end up with it, and more importantly, where my jiu jitsu ends up with it. In the words of the great Rocky Balboa "I don't care about winning, I just wanna go the distance, no one ever went the distance with Creed before.." at least, that's how I view it now, more on that later. So I sat down and thought out my goals for this year. I have a lot on planning and preparing for this journey and I planned out a lot about hitting different competitions, but where were my goals for my jiu jitsu? Certainly its not just showing up and putting time in is it? And that's when I realized it, I don't care about time in anymore, I'm in no rush for the next belt test or next stripe on my belt. I'm focusing on the things I find lacking from my performance in the latest competition. I have been for some time now.
That brings me to competition. Over the last six months I've been in 3 different competitions so far and my view on them has changed, or evolved, after each one. The first tournament I did was right before my blue belt test. Myself and a few other testers were thinking it'd be a great time to try a tournament and get the feel for one, and maybe some gold, before becoming a blue belt and being the small fish in a big pond again. I had one person to fight and I was determined to give it my all and shoot for gold. I had a game plan and everything. Then the match started and my plan slowly walked off the mats. I started up on points and ended 2 minutes later tapping out to an Americana. I lost and I felt horrible, as did my arm. It was a lot to get over. Then a few months later I'm in my second tournament as a blue belt, with no thoughts of medaling and just wanting to see how the blue belt division was. I had three other guys to go up against and I was just hoping to last the rounds out and not get tapped this time. Then the tournament started, I felt like shit. I was stressed about showing up to get my ass kicked, I just wanted to get it over with and even vowed to never do another competition again. As my division started I found out it was just me and one other guy again, the others were no shows. I thought, 'give it my all and see where this goes' It was an even match, back and forth and after 2 minutes it was stopped with my opponent up by one point. The referee had stopped the match due to my opponent having a bloody nose to get cleaned up. Time went by, then finally the match was called. I won due to forfeit. A lot of good points came from that match, my ability to keep my composure and focus on a game plan during the match, really just handling the adrenaline, was the biggest. But it still wasn't a tap, a 'real' win. And that's just it, I was gunning for a win, deep down inside I wanted to get a tap or win by points, just for once. After that tournament I took the good with the bad and decided that competitions are fun and help my game a lot. So in for another competition it was. This was a different format, a round robin submission only tournament with brackets merged so everyone gets a bunch of rolls. Six beasts in my division and I think only one person was smaller than me. This was the biggest test yet. I walked into it just looking to see where I would end up. Hoping to smash more than be smashed. But everything was different, there was no stress leading up to the tournament day, I felt great and relaxed even on the day. This was about to be my biggest physical and technical test to date and I felt fine. First match I got choked him out. My first competition tap. It felt great. Then I got ran through and tapped to one really aggressive MMA guy who ended up winning gold, still I felt ok. Then I fought against someone 120+ lbs over me, I was in a limitless bracket, it was ended in a draw but I felt like I ran over by a dump truck, repeatedly. In the end I pulled up 1 point behind from 3rd place, but that was ok. I stood my own against a bigger opponent that only the 1st place guy could handle, I got my first, and second, competition taps, and man did I ever learn a lot about myself. After the competition I relaxed for a week and contemplated. I started reading Christian Graugart's book. In the start he describes being in a tournament and losing and still being happy because he's exactly where he wants to be in life, in the end who wins the match isn't important. That's when everything fell into place. I felt good about the tournament because I gave it my all and came away knowing exactly what to work on to further my jiu jitsu. And that's all the competitions are for, furthering my jiu jitsu.   
Jiu itsu makes me happy. It keeps me goal oriented, keeps a source of positivity in life, helps me better handle stress and meet all kinds of awesome people. This is why I cant wait to get out and meet all those people like me around the world. Traveling, training, learning, just being a better person.