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Fitness

The Dark Teatime of the Roll: When Training Gets Derailed

There are times when my life is absolutely on point. This is not one of those. I’m not getting my training in, and I’m not going to anytime soon, at least not to the level I’m used to and prefer.

val worthington, valerie worthington, bjj, mma, brazilian jiu jitsu, grappling

Written by Valerie Worthington Last updated on Nov 22, 2021

There are times when my life is absolutely on point. I’m on top of things in my personal and professional arenas, my writing feels effortless, and I am training regularly, frequently, and purposefully. I’m like Neo in The Matrix, dodging life’s bullets before they even leave the gun.

This is not one of those times.

I’m in that place again: The dark teatime of the roll. I end up here every now and then, and I don’t like it, but it’s part of my life and my grappling journey. It’s that place where I think about the recent past and look to the immediate future and draw the same conclusion: I’m not getting my training in, and I’m not going to anytime soon, at least not to the level I’m used to and prefer.

One of the many things that makes it frustrating is that there’s nothing specific to point to. I’m not injured, I’m not sick, I’m not working to meet one specific deadline. Rather, my other priorities are, well, taking priority, as they sometimes do. And I understand and embrace these other priorities; otherwise I wouldn’t refer to them as such. But the analogy I like to use about balancing our lives being like balancing on a Swiss ball or a moving bus breaks down, as all analogies do. It does so in terms of time. What I mean is, in the analogy, the adjustments we make to our balance are immediate, and so are the results of those adjustments. In the analogy, we can immediately restore some semblance of uprightness to ourselves.

Oh, to live in the analogy. In real life, it seems that the adjustments I make take a while to yield results, and before that can happen, it takes a while for me to realize an adjustment is warranted and then another while to create the opportunity for the adjustment. Just as it can take some time to get out of balance and make the unwanted slide toward the crazy, it can also take some time to restore that balance.

Lately I’ve been juggling things like the demands of a newish job, my commitment to seeing my family on a regular basis, my writing, my work with Women’s Grappling Camp, which just finished a spectacular edition at Brazil 021 in Chicago, and the other things I insist on doing, like sleeping and showering. I’ve been getting in a little training of my own, but as I mentioned, it’s not very much relative to what I’m used to.

A further issue is that the farther away I get from a regular training routine, the harder it is for me to see my way clear to getting back to one. What I mean is, I know in the back of my mind that I’m out of practice, out of shape, and lacking my timing and sharpness, and I don’t want to have to acknowledge the steps I have taken backward in order to move forward again.

You’ve probably gathered by now that this place I’m in could be accurately called The Whiny Place. I know the right things to do to get back on track, things like ride out this time frame, look on the bright side, acknowledge that I’m making choices, that I need to own both the good and bad consequences of my choices, and be grateful that I have other priorities to prioritize. Unfortunately for me, though, I’m human, and sometimes I can’t follow all the advice I see fit to dispense to others. Eventually I get there, but I do have the wambulance on speed dial.

So at the time of this writing, I’m getting ready to mope on over to training, at which point I will try to make myself snap out of it so as not to bummer up anyone else’s experience. And if past dark place visits are any indication, I will be much perkier on the other side of this training session, at least for the rest of the evening. Tomorrow I may wake up and find myself still struggling to retain my training balance, hoping that the large and small changes I’ve made toward that end (I’m done with traveling for the foreseeable future, I’m almost caught up on outstanding work, I have a weekend coming up to get back to it), will get me there.

Meanwhile, I’ll feel sorry for myself and try not to visit my self-pity on anyone else. Except anyone who reads this.

Am I the only poopy-pants in this crowd, or do you sometimes find yourself behind the eight-ball and cranky about it? Post your plaintive observations to comments.

Photos courtesy of Shutterstock.

val worthington, valerie worthington, bjj, mma, brazilian jiu jitsu, grappling

About Valerie Worthington

Valerie Worthington has been moving her body since before she was born, for many reasons and with many outcomes. She really started to pay attention to how, when, and why her body moves when she began training in Brazilian jiu jitsu in 1998. From then on, she became hugely invested in educating herself about how to optimize her body movement for BJJ and how to support it in doing so. She has observed that these endeavors require her to invest herself not only physically, but also mentally, emotionally, and psychologically, fueling a particular interest in the influence on her life of these dimensions of athletic activity.

Valerie has developed as a BJJ practitioner via her own training and competition preparation, teaching and coaching other practitioners, and writing about her life as a jiu jitsu devotee through the lens of her education, personal experiences, and professional background. She holds a bachelor’s degree in English literature from Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and a doctorate in educational psychology from Michigan State University. She is a first-degree black belt in BJJ, as well as co-founder and proprietor of Groundswell Grappling Concepts. She trains at Princeton Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Princeton, New Jersey.

Most recently, Valerie is the author of How to Love a Grappler: A Guide for People Who Love People Who Love Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.

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