One of my favorite lines from Roethke is a great way to describe being off the mats for even a short period of time.
My latest challenge have been these meio-pesado blue belts. What they've been exposing is the downside of my relatively static half-guard game. My initial reaction had been to try and develop a more dynamic half guard, moving more toward a deep half game, for example. But I'm having second thoughts, for most of the obvious reasons.
There was a line in a recent retrospective on Terere that caught me. It suggested that Terere felt claustrophobic when playing from the bottom. And because of this, he focused on having an exceptional top game.
This reminded me that one of the more important things for a black belt to do is to carve out his or her jiu-jitsu out of the whole stone. You are what you is, to steal a line from Zappa, and you're better off figuring out how to make that work rather than wasting your time wondering what life would be like if you were someone else with someone else's game.
Everyone is different. There's a lot of jiu-jitsu out there. Some of it, arguably most of it, is ultimately there just to keep you from being ignorant. The rest, on the other hand, is all yours - if you'll have it.
There were a "few tricks with a knife I used to do" - to continue my lyrical larceny - when it comes to having the kind of game that will accentuate my positives. 2013 will be largely about trying bring that back.
162.4 on the mat post-train. Another back-loaded training week with four sessions scheduled between tonight and Saturday, including the Masters class Friday night. I'm looking forward to being lighter.
