Frustration

I haven't made it to Robot since last Friday. My job keeps getting in the way. I make it to the office, ass in chair, by 8 every day. I take a 30 minute lunch -- tops. I work efficiently and diligently, and without fail this last week every time I was getting up to head to the gym I got a call or an emergency issue to deal with.

It doesn't feel fair. How can it be so hard to be walking out the door at 6 when I've been at the office since 8? The 7:30 class I can totally do, but it isn't for my belt level anymore. If I want my blue I have to attend the 6:30 class regularly. For some reason my office just cannot seem to let me go by 6.

I read these posts by black belts and higher belts about how you can't let any excuse get in the way of training, that you have to figure out a way to make it work, and I get really frustrated. I don't know what else to do. I've even tried getting to the office at 7 (after having trained until 9:30 the night before) and I still get calls and issues to deal with at 6. If I leave the office anyway and deal with it after class, I could be fired. Really. So these posts about not letting work be an excuse...are they saying to risk getting fired? I don't get it.

Maybe I could go to the two morning classes a week my gym has...I don't know. I'm extremely frustrated at trying to balance work and training, and I can't seem to find a way out of it.

Open Mat & the X Guard Sweep

Yesterday at girls' class we worked an X-guard sweep that I thought I had down pretty well. We started from a basic open guard (grab sleeves, lean back, feet on hips of your partner) and then dove under our partner's legs and hooked the ankle to the shoulder while doing a collar drag. Get your x-hooks in, and push against your partner's thigh. As they start to fall, let go of the collar and lift the leg up and as the fall stand up. We practiced it a lot. And positional sparred. I thought I got it. And then I went to open mat.

My hubs is about a foot taller than me, and I was drilling it on him. It . Did. Not. Work. We drilled and drilled and drilled and even worked on my technical stand up to make sure I was doing it right. For the life of me I could not push him over!! ARGH!!!! I hate when I think I did something well in class, and then in execution I cannot get it to work. So frustrating.

Nothing left to do but train train train and drill drill drill. I really think this sweep could work for me if I could just get it right.

Team Oyama, the destroyer

The good news: the vertigo seems gone. GONE!!! I have pushed myself really hard this week and the dizzy that comes along with some of the basic BJJ training drills (bear crawl, dead bug, little car) doesn't stay for more than a few minutes after the drill. This is a BIG step for me. Feeling dizzy is hard for me. I freak out a little. I get really scared that the dizzy won't go away and I tense up. But it has gone away each time!! Watch out, tomorrow I might actually try front/back rolls!

The bad news: I'm 15 pounds heavier and sooooooo out of shape. Everything. Hurts.

Today I drove Bri down to Team Oyama with me to take the girls' class with Laercio and Erica. As per usual, the warm-up nearly killed me. But we worked x-guard and I needed that. We drilled a sweep, and they did positional sparring on that sweep; had to do 5 pushups every time we got swept. And I did about 200 pushups. I'm not joking.

Kicking and Punching

I made it to Robot today in time for cardio kickboxing, and despite feeling like I was going to die from exhaustion most of the hour, it was the best hour I have had in a long time. Using my body again feels...there just aren't words for how good it feels.

New Year, New Schedule, New Curriculum

Happy New Year!!!

Robot started a brand new schedule tonight, and I was super stoked to go try it out. They added an intermediate class specifically geared toward white belts that want to get their blue belts. That would be me!! I would love to have it in 2012, even if it is December 31, 2012. I'm tired of spinning my wheels with my training. 2012 is the year I step it up and take a real shot at that blue.

After so many weeks and months off from real training, I was apprehensive, but I did great!! I haven't had a single vertigo episode for two weeks, and I went off my vertigo meds due to the side effects that were making training and functioning as a normal human being impossible. Words cannot describe how wonderful I felt getting back on the mat and how great I feel now that the work out is done.

I really enjoyed the workout. We worked some basic closed guard moves, but in a way I had never worked on before and I learned a lot. I learned that I had been getting triangled from my closed guard passes because my base isn't wide enough and I'm not keeping my elbows out and locked and protecting the climb. I also learned that the problem with my hip bump sweep was that I wasn't bumping my hips up and high enough -- I was just pushing forward with low hips. Once I figured that out, it was going really well. Sparring was hard -- I can't seem to execute during sparring the way I do during drilling. Just one more thing to work on in 2012!!

I was also inspired to be more vocal and show less fear during training by this article: http://www.richmondselfdefense.com/2011/uncategorized/brazilian-jiu-jitsu—a-female-perspective/ If you are a woman and train, or you train with women, check it out. She had some things to say that I really needed to hear, like that women have to be outgoing and proactive about their training because they are usually the only or one of few at their gyms. We have to be fearless. I'll admit that lately I've caved to the fear; fear of failure, fear of getting hurt, fear of making an ass of myself, fear of guys flat out telling me they don't want to train with a girl... you name it and I have feared it. Not this year. Not any more. I want to progress and get better. I want to keep the feeling I had after my last tournament when I knew what was happening every step of the way. I'm going to keep training and training and training until it clicks. And when it does, it's going to be glorious.