Some things to muse on

When I tell people that my Brazilian jiu jitsu school has "like, more than five black belts!" they react correctly by reading my excitement level and responding in like terms. I don't think, however, that they truly grasp how amazing it is to have so many black belts in one place where they speak English. The McDojo epidemic of the 80s and 90s has diluted the importance of all ranking systems in the martial arts for those outside our world.

For those in our world (I take it most people reading this are members of the little crazy bjj world), you will understand how monumental a black-belting ceremony is. Yesterday I attended my first one. Steve Bowers, commonly known online as Steve72, was promoted to black belt. There were eight other black belts at the school, and enough brown and purple belts to fill the mats (us white and blue belts had to wait our turn :P).

Among the black belts there, a couple showed up from out of town including some from Yamasaki in D.C. Brad Daddis was also there! I trained with Brad back during my first year of jiu jitsu at Philly MMA. Incidentally, that's also where I met Sharon for the first time. The were both purple belts. Thinking about those first months and then the ceremony yesterday makes me giggly. Yes, giggly. It's the same giggly that I get when I think about Ara, Victor, or any of the other guys from BU and how awkward they were on their first day of jiu jitsu to how skilled and cool they are on the mats now.

I'm going to be a black belt some day too!
How cool is that?!

For now, however, it's back to the drawing board as far as my game is concerned. Actually, come to think of it, what game?

Up until I left Boston I felt I had a really strong top game. That's what Dave had worked on with me for months: passing half-guard, sweeps from butterfly, crushing in side control, standing passes... oh how I love my standing passes...

Now I feel like it's all gone out the window. *Elyse grasps manically at invisible things in the air*. It's not that I've hit one of those plateaus where I feel like I'll never learn anything again -- it's not that at all. In fact, I still feel like I'm improving every day at class, which is a great feeling. It's just that all of the sudden I've realized that I've given up certain aspects of my game for no good reason at all except that they've, well, slipped my mind.

So here it is, revised A-game improvement list:
1. Stabilizing, controlling, and crushing from top
1a. Choosing one take down every class and trying trying trying.
2. Controlling from butterfly, sweep
3. Controlling from half guard, sweep or take the back
4. Core strength
5. Cardio