Stethoscopes and Armbars: Keep On Keeping On

I had a strong theme last week and this week: routine. My days became incredibly predictable – wake up, make coffee, go to class, go to the library, go to jiu jitsu, go home and study, sleep, repeat. Now, I am usually a huge fan of a solid routine, but lately I wish I could shake it up a bit. Here’s what I’ve realized though – sometimes progress comes with a bit of repetition. The best way to do well on a test? Study, study, and study some more. The best way to become better at jiu jitsu? Drill, drill, and drill some more. The best way to become a great runner (and I am doing a 5K soon) is to get out there every day and run. I know that having a routine is very typical for anyone whether you’re a student or you have an 8-5 job. Maybe I’m just missing the college life a bit now that June is looming (My Step 1 date is June 11... yeesh).

One thing I realized the other day is that you CAN in fact keep going even when you think you can’t. For example, I was 5 hours deep into respiratory physio and I genuinely thought I was going to pull my hair out (pulm is definitely not my favorite) but I grabbed some more coffee (if anyone has a way to cure my habit, please let me know) and refocused and went another 3 hours. Another example – the other day I very *poorly* tried to get into deep half guard and ended up failing miserably and was smothered instead. [For all my non BJJ readers… essentially your head gets mashed between a person’s torso and the mat and their gi is blocking all routes of air.] My brain kicked into high gear and said “you can’t breathe, you can’t move, this is miserable just quit”. I didn’t – I made sure to take slow breaths and waited for them to move to reposition myself. So what I’m trying to say is I’ve learned that even when your own mind tells you that you can’t do something – don’t listen! Because you can in fact study longer, train harder, run faster, and go that extra match.

So is the routine working? Am I pushing through when my brain says I can’t? …. My studying is coming along as well as it can be, and my jiu jitsu…well… hard to tell. I did finally learn what it means to pick up your intensity (turns out that’s been sorely missing from my game) thanks to a really great brown belt. So in addition to truly picking up the intensity of my game and actually working on attacking rather than defending, I’m also going to work on the “mental game” if you will. I was told I miss a lot because I simply fail to see it in the moment. I think that all has to do with the “survival mode” I’ve lived in for the last 7 months. Time to move away from the safety of just surviving and work on doing…well anything else.

There are only 24 days left until Chicago (and that means 23 before my next exam). So, as long as my routine continues to work that’s what I plan on sticking with. I’ve got big goals for the exam and the tournament!