Today I finally returned to BJJ. Between October and November, I’ve gone a total of 4 times, including today. Maybe 5 times. There were a few reasons: My friend was moving away and I wanted to spend more time with him, and I got sick–I’ve been burning through Kleenex like a sick person with a box of matches.
But really, it was more about motivation, and more specifically, my lack of motivation.
The whole truth and nothing but the truth
When I switched schools, it ended poorly. It felt a little bit like the end of a relationship–you don’t want to cause extra drama by talking about it, but you are hurting a bit and you withdraw. I walked away from my gym feeling extremely butthurt and frustrated and depressed.
My new gym is great, but it’s been really hard picking up the pieces and starting at a new school. You have to get to know everyone, you start from scratch, you don’t know how things will be. What I loved so much about my old school were my partners, and now I had to get to know a whole slew of new partners, and I was having problems getting excited about that.
Then I got into a habit of not going, and I’d look at my watch and think: If I go to bjj I will only have 3 hours to sit and relax, but if I skip it, I’ll have a wonderful 6 hours of NOTHING. This became more appealing, I’m sorry to say. I tend to be a creature of habit and routine, and in the last two months, NOT doing BJJ became my routine. Then I got sick and it reinforced that.
But, I’m happy to say that I’m back. My sniffly nose finally stopped running and sneezing, so I skipped hanging out with the graduating class in order to go to jiu jitsu.
And boy was it worth it. First, the instructor said to me: “Hey, we haven’t seen you in a long time!” I like when my partners or instructors help keep me accountable, so this was a very good sign to me. Second, the class was small–only 5 of us plus the instructor. During drilling the instructor partnered with me. This was something incredible to me. At my last school the instructor was VERY hands off. Having a hands-on instructor is really important to me, and it was really nice to hear him say “Nice job!” It was more feedback than I’d gotten in a long time.
So I’m very happy to say that the instructor at my gym is everything I’d hoped for. I’m very excited to go back tomorrow, and boy do I need it. I was huffing and puffing and so tired! Only an hour and I was pretty tapped. 🙂
What this really illustrated to me was the importance of good habits and motivation. It’s easy to keep doing something when you’re excited about it, but what happens if, for some reason, you find yourself not so excited about going to classes? What happens if you’d rather stay home and work on your projects or read a book? How do you self motivate?
Three months ago I would have said that my motivation was to be better in BJJ. And I suppose that is a worthwhile motivation–it was then. Now it’s back to my roots with: I want to be more physically fit. I know I’ll recapture my excitement and joy–it’s still there, but I was really affected when I broke up with my first school, and it muted it a lot for me.
So my question to you: what is your motivation? What keeps you going back when you are having a tough time? What keeps you going back when the excitement and joy and energy aren’t always there? It’s not always rainbows and sunshine and flowers. Sometimes love-of-BJJ is enough, and sometimes it’s not. What do you do when it’s not enough?
Hi Julia,
I’m really glad that you are feeling better and that you are working on getting back into the swing of BJJ. As it happens I was thinking of you the other day, thinking you’d been off-grid in a blog/BJJ way and I was wondering if you’d decided BJJ wasn’t for you after all. I’m glad to hear that wasn’t the case!
As you’ll know from your hitherto short, but dramatic, journey in BJJ is a very challenging but rewarding pursuit. I guarantee that you will go through many more ups and downs and sometimes you just gotta take it on the chin and make yourself train and other times it is good to say, I need a week to let myself recover. Is about getting the balance and consistent training over the longer term.
For me, martial arts has been a central part of my personal development since ’98 and BJJ a core part of that since 2004/5. I keep motivated because I love BJJ. But what do I mean by ‘love’. I love the balance between challenge and reward, I love what I learn about myself and what I am capable of (or not yet capable of), I love those moments of growth (followed by the not so great long periods of apparent plateau), I love how consistent effort does pay dividends, I love the people I train with, I love how BJJ training more than any other sort of martial arts has, for me, helped me to overcome my ego (work in progress!) and harden me physically, emotionally and mentally to make me more in charge of me and I love the evolution of my game as my basics get tighter and I start using them in more advanced ways.
It sounds like your new coach has a much more loving ‘tude – so important – and I hope you bond with your club in the fullness of time.
x
Thank you! You guys have been very helpful. It’s nice to feel part of a larger community, outside of just my one school. 🙂 You guys are actually a big part of my external motivation.
Hray! she’s back.
Glad the new clubs is working out and you’ve got your mojo back. Sometimes a break is necessary, sounds like it helped rather than hindered.
Thank you! I started to feel embarrassed today–we were doing “flow sparring” or something like that, and I had never done it. Then I had a pep talk with myself and said “WHY ARE YOU EMBARRASSED? Of course you’ll be terrible at this if you’ve never done it before! No one is awesome at things the first time they do it!”
Perspective. Hmmm…methinks I have a topic for an upcoming blog post.
Yay, you’re back online! Was a little worried 🙂
FWIW, I’d never done flow rolling before either until very recently. And I’ve been training two years! I was embarrassed but I just have to put my ego in a box and be willing to suck in order to get better.
I am motivated by a variety of different things at different times, and usually when I am transitioning between bigger-picture motives I get worried, like uh oh, it’s not working for me any more!! What if I *gasp* lose my love affair with jits? (phew, so far, so good..)
Usually I’m motivated by some combination of: desire to get better, to see friends, to get a good workout, to see improvement by a particular whitebelt, to prepare for a tournament, to make good on a committment to someone who is coming specifically to roll with me, to see a cute boy (just being honest, not that I ever let it interfere with my concentration, but it exists and I’m just calling it aloud), fear that my training partners will be increasing the gap between me and them if I’m absent, curiosity about a new technique, excitement over people getting promoted, need to burn off frustration related to something outside of jits, or comparative boredom (or having to do housework) at home if I don’t go.
I’m happy you’re back!
I agree with Meg that sometimes you need to train when you don’t feel like it but sometimes it is just as important to take it easy.
Good luck with your new school.
Hi Julia,
I’ve taken a very laid back approach to jiu-jitsu. I train when I want to and don’t train when I don’t want to and stopped counting the days others are training. The constant comparison to your training partners as to how often they train and how fast/slow they progress is the worst. It can eat you up and adds too much stress. You train for yourself and who cares if you take a break or only train once a week. At the end of the day it’s just jiu-jitsu.
I’ve noticed that I enjoy training much more now, have less frustration “if something doesn’t work”, less injures and generally much healthier approach to this race to the next belt. As long as I train, they’ll promote me one day.
Welcome back 🙂
Good to see you’re back: you’re already one of the best bloggers out there despite having only been around a few months, so you definitely need to keep training and writing! 🙂
My motivation probably isn’t too dissimilar to yours: I do it to keep fit and have fun. It can be tough to force yourself to go down to training, but I’ve attempted (not always successfully, but most of the time) to make sure I go once a week at the very least, normally twice.
I think all of us sometimes feel like skipping class, particularly if we’re a bit tired and don’t fancy the idea of getting squashed for an hour and a half. However, every time I’ve felt like that and forced myself to go anyway, I’ve always come away glad that I did.
If I miss a few classes, I immediately start feeling fat, which means I feel like I can’t eat that tasty looking chocolate cake or a gloriously squishy steak and kidney pie, which makes me unhappy. So, I go train again to earn my food. That’s probably going to get much worse as I get older and my metabolism slows down… ;p
I’m happy you’re training again! It really is easy for “not going to BJJ” to become a part of your routine.
If my “love-of-BJJ” is not enough on a particular day, it is definitely the people and the general atmosphere of my club that gets me to go. I love joking with teammates and forgetting about all my troubles and commitments for a while. I also love getting sweaty.
But I also agree with Triin and Laura. It is important to focus on yourself and know when you’re just feeling lazy or when you just really need a night off cuz you’re too distracted or over-tired.
Hi 🙂
When I don’t feel like going, I usually have a pep talk with myself, knowing if I can lurch myself out of my door then I will go, and as was previously mentioned before, I have yet to force myself to go and be unhappy I did so. Yikes, all those negatives make that a confusing sentence–On days I’ve had to force myself to go, I have always left bjj feeling better then when I got there.
I also know that my friends at my dojo will come tearing down my door if I don’t show up, so that’s a great motivator too 🙂
I’ve been practicing BJJ since 2004 and also practiced Judo for a year. What I know for a fact is that you will always have bouts where going to BJJ practice is the last thing that you want to do. My advice is don’t force yourself to go. If you want to take a break then take a break.
The downside is that your skills can deteriorate. To avoid this I perform drills at home. I use a heavy bag to practice positional techniques and also use solo drills.
Also, to be honest, a lot of new people will catch the BJJ bug and then go to class non-stop for about 3 to 6 months. That’s about how long it takes for them to hit their plateau and realize that the rest will be mostly uphill. A lot of people quit at that point. But if they still have the same feeling for BJJ and decide to keep going it will be worth it in the end.
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[…] presenting the “whole story” is also not the job of every article. Just as I may have a crappy day and write about that, I don’t feel like I have to treat BJJ as though it’s a crappy […]