It is officially six weeks until the Revolution event in July.
The Revolution
I'm officially supposed to hold off training for another week, until January 9th. But circumstances are such that I think I want to get back on the mat this week, even if I avoid sparring until the 9th.
My shoulder is feeling okay, still some tenderness in my deltoid and I can feel that the socket is not where I want it to be. Still, I think I've progressed enough to get back to some movement and some drills - maybe even some light sparring. We'll see what the week brings.
I'm ecstatic about my weight. I'm basically walking around at about 158-159. I'm pretty confident that regular jiu jitsu training will knock a few pounds off of that number, putting me somewhere around 153-154 regularly post-training. At least that's an initial goal. The idea is not to have to even think about cutting weight for the event in July. If I can regularly hit the scale at 153-154 after training, then I'm pretty confident the featherweight limit of 154.9 will be easy to make in a little over a month.
I've got a conditioning program set up, alternating power weeks with power endurance weeks over the next six weeks. I want to alternate that with 4x/week jiu jitsu and 3x/week jiu jitsu. Work will be work - and as always it will do its best to interfere. But I figure they can either pay me for the extra work they've put on my back over the past month and a half - or I can take it in trade by prioritizing my jiu jitsu. Given how unlikely the former is, we'll all just have to put up with the latter.
I mean I would never walk into my boss's office and say, you know, I'd like a 25% raise just because. I'm not going to do any additional work. I just want more money. Yet bosses have no problem expecting you to do additional work without additional compensation all the damn time.
The Hegelian in me insists that we are coming to the end of an era in which this sort of thing has been commonplace. But, as they say, that's another story for another day.
I'm 41 today, by the way, and feeling very much like the decisions I make over the next several years will pretty much be the last, most consequential ones that I'll make in this little go-around. And without beating a dead horse, I can't resist reminding myself that nobody was ever spotted on their death-bed wishing they'd put in more hours at the office.
But wishing they'd spent more hours on the tatame? Now that's a different matter altogether ...
