First submission

I think my first submission must have been an Americana. I learned that from the Gracie Combatives. I can’t remember what the first submission I was on the receiving end of was because there were too many to count. But with the other white belts I was holding my own from the very beginning. At least, that the way I saw it in my mind.

Earning stripes

My friend who finally convinced me to come back and give the gym a try in the first place had one stripe on belt, but he wasn’t submitting me either. He is four years younger than me, but, to be fair, he clocks in at about 150 and I was tipping the scales at about 215. As I mentioned, he had been attending class for about a year when I showed up. So it came as a surprise when I earned my first stripe at about 3 months in. In fact, four of us earned our first stripe on our white belts that day which was really awesome. I looked forward to tracking all of our progression together.

I was attending class only twice a week. That was all I could get away from work, as the class was in the middle of the day at noon, and with all the showering and everything, I couldn’t get off work more than twice a week. But I was going regularly. I rarely missed a Tuesday or Thursday in the beginning. I was definitely hooked. There’s so much you don’t know when you start anything new, that it’s so easy to make progress.

Adding a Jiu Jitsu class

Sometime  during the summer, I finally started taking a class on Saturday mornings. It was described to me as a Takedown class. I was pretty nervous about that. Again, at 43 years old, I was pretty concerned about injury. It turned out that my concerns were unfounded. The class was awesome.

The instructor was really great, and the class was two hours long instead of just one hour. I could really get a good workout in. Not only that, but I got a lot of rounds of sparring in too.

After just a few Saturdays, I really noticed a big improvement in my game during the week. I lamented not being able to train more often.

Second stripe

I think it was about the beginning of August that I was awarded my second strip on my white belt. Out of the four of us who were awarded our first stripe together, I think I was the second one to get my second stripe. I was pretty surprised and it felt really great. There’s nothing like earning your stripes.

At the end of August, I took off for vacation. It was one of those once in a lifetime opportunities where I took two weeks and flew to Europe to reconnect with some old friends.

Time for vacation

I flew to Vienna, Austria and stayed with a most gracious friend for two weeks. Some other friends of ours had been in Germany visiting relatives, and they all drove down to stay with us for a few days too. It was an amazing time. Unforgettable.

To be honest, I had a little bit of a hard time keeping up. We were constantly on the go. We even flew to Kiev, Ukraine to meet another friend for a weekend. And we were drinking. Just like old times. For better or for worse, we were drinking. I mean, I don’t think the drinking really got in the way. But I did notice that I was feeling short of breath and having palpitations.

We were inverted

Never one to be easily deterred (the gorillas at the gym ten years ago being one example to the contrary), but generally not easily deterred and seeing as I had brought my gi with me all this way, I contacted a local jiu-jitsu gym and was invited to drop by a class.

Let me set out my excuses first: I was exhausted. By the time our friends from Kazakhstan by way of Germany had left, I had already been partying for a week, and I hadn’t been to jiu-jitsu class for over a week and a half. So there.