in·er·tia

[in-ur-shuh, ih-nur-]

–noun

the property of matter by which it retains its state of rest or its velocity along a straight line so long as it is not acted upon by an external force.

It takes serious effort to break through the inertia that sets in when you get sidetracked from your usual training schedule. In my case, my matter (read: ass) retained its state of  rest or (lack of) velocity on the couch so long as it was not acted upon by an airplane taking me on yet another 10-hour flight for work.

I’ve had a rather long stretch of hardly training BJJ, and only this past week was I able to break through that state of rest and make it out to train a whole two times. Gasp. Don’t pull a hammy, Grappledunk. Surprisingly, I didn’t feel quite as out of synch as I expected to. My timing was a bit off, my technique not quite right, but all in all, not as bad as I was afraid of. I was allowed to keep my belt, at least.

The best part is that there are new girls training, one of whom just got blue, and several of whom want to compete. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that I am just too broken and too busy with the rest of my life to ever compete well, so I just train for the pure enjoyment of it. But I’m excited whenever a new girl wants to give competition a shot. I regretted not competing as a white belt, and I’ve been trying to encourage them to go for it.

It’s strange to me to be the one giving advice and encouragement to the new white belts. I clearly remember my first class and how horribly clueless I felt. And as bad as that first class was, it only got harder when I tried to roll the first time and realized that all I knew how to do with any skill was the doormat position (i.e., flat out on the mat with some big dude walking all over me). Since that day, BJJ has been a series of ups and downs, and frequently it feels like the downs outnumber the ups. It’s easy to get lost in the day to day frustrations of trying to figure out this complex sport and forget where you started out.

So the inertia is broken, and partly because I’m seeing BJJ with the eyes of the new girl again – and then I realize exactly how far it is I’ve come. And I want to keep going.