Looking back on 2008, something I'm not sure I'll be able to do effectively for several more weeks, if not months, I see it more as a way I got here from there more than anything else.
From a training perspective, it was filled with 4-8 week stretches of top quality training, intensity and focus, followed by periods of injury, distraction and lack of focus. When I think of my training at its best: March and April when I was training days, that great first week of April when I trained for five days in a row, dropping from 163.6 on Monday to 155.4 on Friday afternoon and returning to my home office to sit in my chair literally vibrating with energy and exhaustion.
That was the first stretch of idleness, the shoulder injury that sidelined me until June when another burst of activity - this time lasting for about five weeks - leading to my first tournament win, and second place finish, as a blue belt at the Revolution event in July.
The year had begun with fairly minimum training, a recurrence of my eye injury in the fourth week of January as I trained for the February Revolution event on the 9th allowed for sub-par average of two training sessions a week. Scribbling for the Daily Planet dominated the remainder of February leading to that great six weeks in spring that I already mentioned.
I had high hopes for the end of 2008 - the November revolution event, in particular. My training in August was not bad, averaging probably 2-3 classes a week, with the pace picking up in September as the two-day Marcelo Garcia seminar and the Gracie Barra Friendly tournament on the 27th when I was totally overwhelmed by Sauleh. Nevertheless, my weight was good, the training was good.
In October, I fell off the bus. A mid-month visit from the in-laws and two weeks of missed time due to winter colds made October a disaster of a month from a training perspective. From the 15 classes, seminars and competitions in September, I fell to a mere 5 sessions on the mat in October.
I decided against competing in the November event and didn't train again until the 11th. The year I had planned was not working out nearly as planned. I made it onto the tatame 8 times in November and, in December, with the weather, a trip to Tucson for Christmas and a recurrent cornea erosion, saw me at the academy for only 8 times again.
In one of my notebooks, I wrote that my goals for 2008 were: "Stay healthy, train consistently, compete frequently." There's an argument that after missing six weeks with a bad labrium/shoulder, one week for an eye injury in the spring, two weeks for a common cold in the fall and another week's worth of eye-related absence in the early winter, I've not done a very good job of meeting the first goal.
The second is largely a function of the first. What I do like about 2008 is that it is clear that when I get in the mat time, I reap the rewards. I think my two biggest growth spurts came this spring training with Steve and Brian during the afternoons and in September, late November and early December rolling with teammates like Stephen and Clint when I switched back to evenings. I can only wonder what more consistent training would have done for me.
As for the third goal of competing frequently, it's a little harder to say. I would have liked to have competed in at least three of the four events in 2008: the three Revolution events in February, July and November and the Subleague event in May. As it turned out, I did half those events. But I also did the Gracie Barra Friendly events, which had at least some of the pressure of fighting in front of an audience. So maybe I'll call it a draw on the third and final goal for 2008.
At the end of 2008 - or near it - I earned my purple belt. For all my shortcomings this year, the end result was something overwhelmingly positive.
It was a crazy year. And it looks like some of the sacrifices on the personal front over the course of 2008 are going to pay off in 2009 after all. Perhaps, with my earning the faixa roxa, the same can be said for my jiu jitsu life, as well.
I'll write a Gameplan for 2009 post tomorrow. For now, the lessons of 2008 are clear: training consistency, focus and good health are really the three most important factors in improving my work on the mat. All the outside conditioning, theorizing and film study can contribute so much. But when I'm getting my mat time, training with a goal in mind, and getting my sleep, everything gets better.
