Training at a new school

It’s been a while since I’ve dusted this blog off. I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I think, frankly, it became too much like work. I love to write. I also still love jiu jitsu, but when I begin taking things too seriously, I have to back off and put things into perspective. Last October, I got a promotion at work, which consumed quite a bit of my time. Add two teenagers and a toddler to the mix, along with a spouse who travels quite a bit for work, and I had a lot on my plate. As a consequence, it took a long time to figure things out.

I still train under James Foster and, frankly, can’t imagine moving outside of the FBJJ family, but I was excited to hear that Bing was going to open up an affiliate much closer to my house. Bing is a brown belt under James Foster, and he’s now the proud owner of Phantom BJJ in Maple Valley, WA. While I am now technically his student, we are all under the FBJJ/Lotus Club umbrella.

As a happy consequence, I’ve trained more since October than I had in the entire previous year. I’m beginning to find my groove again, slowly clawing my way back into shape. It’s been good. While I never completely fell out of training, it was so sporadic that I wasn’t really making any progress. It feels really good to be training regularly again.

There’s a serious crud making its way through the area and I guess it’s Bing’s turn. He asked me to run the class for them. There were 5 guys at class yesterday, and all were white belts. So we worked some basics. For technique, I showed them how I like to use a cross collar grip from closed guard, with a couple of chokes that work well as a combination.

Anyway, I can’t promise I’ll be posting regularly again, but as my training begins to settle back into a rhythm, so will my posting.