For the first couple months of the year
I dealt with injuries and illness. I strained my back and that took a
couple weeks to recover from. Then I caught the flu and lost another
week. After that I aggravated my back and had to deal with that again
and on top of that, the flu had evolved into a lung disease. By the
time I was injury-free and healthy it was going on March!
Ok so I had some things that kept me
off the mat through March, but why haven't I been rolling since then?
In a word: finances. I have some expenses coming up later this year
and had to take a careful look at my budget to cut some spending.
Unfortunately, that meant cutting out training at Gracie Barra.
They're great over there and Professor Caveirinha is the man but it
was costing more than I could dish out.
Although I was away from training I
didn't stay away from jiu-jitsu. I watched many, many, and lots of
videos on YouTube. I watched a few matches involving Roger Gracie,
Rafael Lovato, and Kyron Gracie to name a few and of course I watched
matches involving Cavierinha. Mostly I watch instructional videos
like the Gracie Breakdowns and others where instructors breakdown
techniques. I didn't watch them to learn new techniques. No way am I
going to learn just by watching a video. I would watch to understand
concepts. For example, I'll watch a video about the kimura submission
and a concept I'll take away is that elbow positioning is crucial to
both attacking and defending a kimura. Another one dealt with grip
fighting and I took away that preventing your opponent from getting a
strong grip on you is a preventative style of defense. Things like
that. It let me at least keep jiu-jitsu techniques fresh in my mind
but it really doesn't substitute for time on the mat.
It looked like I was going to be off
the mats for the foreseeable future. It was rough. I suffered
withdrawals and constantly found myself putting choke holds on my leg
pretending it was somebody's neck, unconsciously doing hip-escapes
when lying on my back, and just imagining submissions. Jiu-jitsu was
a major part of my life, fitness, and stress-relief and it was gone.
Dang...
With such a withdrawal going on I began
looking for alternatives. There had to be somewhere I could train
that wouldn't cost so much. But there really wasn't. That is until
the UFC Gym came along. I get an awesome discount because of where I
work and with their early-enrollment specials I got a really good
deal. Suddenly I had an affordable place to train and workout
anytime. So I signed up.
I've been waiting well over a month for
the gym to open and this past Saturday it finally did. I was so
excited to get back onto the mat. I went to their expo event on
Saturday and planned to get in there on Sunday and find somebody to
roll with. But no...on Sunday I felt like I was getting sick and the
last thing I need is to push it too hard and get another lung
infection. I'm already feeling better but it looks like I'll have to
wait a few more days before I can roll again. I don't mind the wait
too much. I'm just stoked to get back into it.
