Frustration and Recovery

I'm taking a break from studying for finals to discuss what the past few days at BJJ have been like.

For the first time, I became truly frustrated and upset during class. This past Saturday I had about 3 hours of training. We started from the feet in the latter part of class, and I felt like I kept getting passed, swept, and taken down. I reached a breaking point when we started from the feet and I kept getting taken down. I slapped the mat with my hand after each takedown and was clearly upset after the last few rounds of sparring. This also wasn't the typical "sometimes you're the hammer and sometimes you're the nail" situation. I just feel like over the past few weeks that I didn't perform as well as I know I can.

I went to the locker room visibly upset. Fortunately, one of my teammates was there to reassure me. She had been sitting on the sidelines with one the other students in my class and said both of them had been commenting that I had gotten much better in the past few months. I was rolling with a blue belt who was smaller than me and apparently I had put up a good fight.

And I think that's where recovery begins. Realizing that someone who has watched me over a period of time has noticed improvement that means that how I feel is not necessarily aligned with how I'm doing. Recovery is moving on and not letting frustration get the best of you. I've learned that it is very easy for me to let frustration get the best of me and hamper me from achieving my goals, and I'm certainly not going to let that happen in jiu jitsu.

I am not one of those people who cares deeply about belt promotions. I've always said I would rather be the best white belt than the worst blue belt. My only concern in BJJ is getting better. I want to get better at submissions, passes, sweeps, takedowns, and everything in between. I want to be able to be able to implement each technique better and better each time I attend class. I don't care about "winning" during each sparring session, but I do want to prove to myself that I am getting better each time I step on the mat. I think it's difficult for me to see if I am getting better simply because I can't really observe what I'm doing from the outside.

Lots of my teammates are training for Worlds right now, and I am sad I can't join them. I want redemption from Pan Ams, but I think that job hunting and focusing on the future is more important right now. But if my parents just happened to give me a plane ticket as my graduation present I might just change my mind...