Starting my BJJ journey

Hi Steemit,

This is my first post ever, and for me this was important post to get out before I Introduce Myself, as I have been putting this off for some time. I have decided to use this as a place for me to journal about my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Journey. Recently I have decided to focus myself a lot more on my BJJ development over the summer, having registered for a competition in August but for now is most likely cancelled. I have purchased ZEN JIU JITSU BEYOND ROLLING BY OLIVER STAARK to help me with this. The book focuses on developing your skills from White to Blue Belt and within the early pages it strongly encourages small journal entries every time you train or spar. My goal with this is to have an additional outlet to expand upon my thoughts/ development/ comments on my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu journey.

I have been practicing since April '16, so just over a year at this point. Living in Northern Ontario, the biggest challenge I face is getting out and being able to train with different and other practitioners. At our club we generally have anywhere from 6-12 in our BJJ classes but we are about a 50/50 split white and blue belts, with the occasional purple belt stopping in. We are affiliated with a Black Belt academy down in Toronto so we occasionally go down their to train or they come up to put on a training seminar. But for the most part we train with the same 6 or so people. So sometimes it can be tricky when you are training with the same people, as a white belt because I feel like I am only seeing a certain style and not seeing what else is out there.

This was very apparent to me when I had my first competition last March about a year into my practicing. Luckily the event was a round-robin style competition so I was guaranteed 4 matches per division that I competed in, I competed in both GI and NoGI. Going in I was very aware of my abilities and have trained a few times with other people but never in a competition format so I knew that it would be unlike anything I experiences before. That being said I am able to hold my own against most of the people at our club, so I set a goal for myself to win 1 match. And at the end of it all I completed my goal! The whole event was a great experience being able to realize that competition level and seeing where I need to get to if I want to be successful.

It is very unfortunate that they had to cancel this up coming competition but I am looking forward to testing myself again and seeing how I have come along since April.

That being said I want to use this as a tool to help keep myself accountable because given my training situation I am going to have to take some initiative myself if I want to improve and learn different/ new techniques.