Level Changes

I know my place in the Jiu-Jitsu hierarchy.  I know how good I am and how good I’m not.  I’m not a world-class competitor, but I’ve had many opportunities to train with world-class competitors.  That’s how I know I’m not one of them.

But I love how many times I’ve had the honor of training with the best my sport has to offer.  It’s one of my favorite things about combat sports.

I remember the first world champion I met.  He was, at the time, an absolute pinnacle of the sport who had competed (and won) at some of the highest stages possible.  I was training on a slow Friday where only a couple of teammates had shown up for practice.  I was thinking about leaving for the night when he approached me.  He was surprisingly timid when he asked me, “do you want to roll?”

I’m not sure how other people think, but, in my mind, if a world champion asks you if you want to roll, the answer is always “yes.” 

I learned that night what a heavy bag feels like.  I was outsized, outclassed, and outgunned.  I got absolutely crushed.  Because so few had shown up for practice that night, it was just he and I.  We sparred for more than an hour.  He wrecked me in a way that might have been considered humiliating if I hadn’t been having such a good time—I’ll admit that I was slightly starstruck.  I could barely walk back to the dressing room when we were finished.  Every tendon and ligament felt like it was on fire.

It was an honor to be beat down by a world champion.

A few years passed before I saw him again.  During those years I kept training and fighting.  I was consistently on the mats.  I was training with a different team that seemed to fit me well.  It felt like I was learning.

One night that same world champion showed up at my new academy.  He talked with my coach.  He was in town for a little while and needed to get some training.  He was hoping he could find some people to spar with.

My coach was very accommodating, and it’s always good to help a world champion out.  He grabbed a few of us “bigger” grapplers (did I mention that he was a heavyweight world champion?) and set up some rounds.

I hadn’t seen this world champion in a long time.  He acted like he remembered me from those years past (maybe he did and maybe he was being polite) and he thanked me for my time.  I found it a little warming to be have a grappler of that caliber express gratitude for my time.

My Jiu-jitsu had gotten better since last time he and I had sparred.  My coach had taught me well and I had embraced his instruction.  Since the last time I sparred with this champion, I’d had the opportunity to spar with two or three other world champions.  I was a different grappler from the last time we had met.

He was still a world champion and I was not.

He wasn’t passing my guard at will, but he was passing it.  I was holding him at bay for small amounts of time and attempting submissions that he shrugged off.  He had a couple of moves that he was known for—signatures of a sort—and he ran those at me quite effectively.  I didn’t stop them.  I fought them enough to delay them a little while before being forced to tap.  I considered that a victory of sorts.

We were a few rounds deep when he tried to set up his favorite (I knew it was his favorite because he had already done it to me half a dozen times) guard pass. 

…it’s strange the things I remember…

He was trying to set an over-under pass by kneeling on my one leg and scooping the other with his (incredibly) large biceps.  But I had expected it just a little bit (he had already done it to me half a dozen times), so I shifted my hip just enough to slip out from under his knee and shin.

The movement left him in the position we all train to avoid when passing guard—one arm in and one arm out.  He’d made just a small mistake, and I had done something just slightly correct.  I pounced on that opportunity like my first morning cup of coffee.  I launched my hips and locked my legs into a triangle-choke position.

He was significantly bigger than me, and he was much more experienced than I.  He flexed his neck and shoulders and began to build up his posture.  I knew I couldn’t finish that triangle as a choke, so I shifted to a different angle and managed to find a slightly exposed arm, instead.  Almost without thinking, I grabbed that arm in a Kimura grip and turned my hips into the submission…until I felt him tap.

I had submitted a world champion.

I wanted to be classy about things, so I kept my expression even.  But in my head I was celebrating with fireworks and champagne.  I had just submitted a world champion—a heavyweight world champion at that.

I quickly realized that he had been holding back.  He had been using me as an opportunity to fine-tune his technique and try a few things he was testing.  He hadn’t been rolling like a champion—he had been rolling like a scientist in a laboratory.  I had ruined his experiment.

I was about to pay for it.

The moment we started again I felt a stark difference.  Everything about his technique was more intense. He was faster, he was sharper, and he was more intentional.  He was already bigger than me, but he made it feel like gravity was no longer a constant in the small places where I found myself underneath his pressure.  He gave me no quarter.  He submitted me three or four times with what was left of that round, and he submitted me ugly.

We still had three rounds to go.

Those next three rounds were the equivalent of being in a me-sized blender.  He wrecked me.  He crushed me.  He showed me why he was a world champion and why I was not.  I ended that session in a pile of sweat and pain.  It was obvious that I was no longer considered the “fun” roll.  I had become a legitimate threat to be dealt with.

It was beautiful.

After we wound things down and the mats were being mopped, I noticed him talking to my coach.  They were still in conversation when I went back to change.  I was worn out, so it took a little longer for me to work out of my sweaty gear than it normally would.  When I was done, my coach was waiting by the front door.

“Good job tonight,” he said.

“I feel like I got hit by a truck,” I replied.

“Jeff came over to talk to me about your rounds.”

It felt like I was supposed to ask, so I did.  “What did he have to say?”

“He wanted to know what belt you are.”  We’d been training no-gi, so there was no way he could know.

My coach waited there expectantly for a few moments.  I kind of shrugged.  I knew my place in Jiu-Jitsu.  I knew how good I wasn’t.

“I told him you were a brown belt,” my coach said after I didn’t ask.  “I think it made him feel better about you tapping him.”

“But I’m a purple belt,” I replied.  “I’m not a brown belt.”

“That’s going to change,” he told me, almost flippantly.  “What’s important is that Jeff is in town for a few weeks and getting ready for Worlds.  He’s hoping that you’ll be here for his training camp.  He wants good training partners, and he asked for you specifically.”

I’m a difficult guy to teach.  There’s lots of reasons why.  It might be a combination of my learning disabilities and a sensitive ego, or it might just be that I have a hard time paying attention.  One of the more difficult things that I’ve learned about myself is that the way I learn best is through conflict.  I have to learn things the hard way, and learning the hard way is always attached to some kind of pain or discomfort.  I don’t like pain and discomfort.  Those things make me want to quit.

The best things about seem to be revealed in the throes of my worst beatings.  The places where I am challenged and where I am opposed—those are the places that refine and increase me.

A crucible for silver, and a smelter for gold, and the LORD is the tester of hearts. (Proverbs 17:3) 

But when I find myself in the center of those challenges, I am not usually aware that those challenges are there for my improvement.  I want them to go away—go away now.  I want the trial, whatever it is, to just be over.  I’ve had enough.

Many of my “trials” don’t even deserve to be called trials.  I brought them on myself.  I created the pain and I created the discomfort.  They are not trials.  They are consequences.  Usually, they are consequences that I fully deserve.

I cry out to God to make them end.  He allows them to stay.  It feels punitive.  But God doesn’t do punitive.  He does discipline.  He does it because He is fully invested in my growth.

No discipline seems enjoyable at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it yields the fruit of peace and righteousness to those who have been trained by it. (Hebrews 12:11) 

Not every bad thing that happens to me is my fault.  It’s a fallen world full of suffering.  Sometimes that suffering finds way to me, whether invited or not.  I might find myself the victim of choices that others make.  I might simply find myself a “victim” of the life that happens around me.

Again, I cry out to God.  I want Him to make it end.  I want Him to take it away.  But He doesn’t.  Not yet.  He doesn’t take it away because He knows what I need in that moment.  I need to learn to fight.  I need to learn to fight better.

Yet He knows the way I have taken; when He has tested me, I will emerge as pure gold. (Job 23:10) 

My God has a view that my eyes can’t see.  He sees what I will be beyond the challenges, beyond the trials, and beyond the suffering.  I’ve had some tremendous coaches in my time, but God’s game plan is superior to all of them.  He’s engineering a design in my favor—using these seemingly uncontrollable circumstances to hone and perfect me.

I can’t see it because I can’t see like God.  He sees the product that I will be, shining and complete.  All I see is the moment.  I’m anchored in the now. 

God’s eyes are always on me.  He’s never going to let me be crushed.  He’ll allow me to flail and fail just enough that I know I am at my end.  Because, when I am at my end, I know I need to reach for a strength that can’t be found inside of me.  I need to reach for God—my God.  That’s where my strength is found.

No temptation has overtaken you except what is common to humanity. God is faithful, and He will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation He will also provide a way of escape so that you are able to bear it. (1 Corinthians 10:13) 

The battles I fight on this planet are bigger than me.  I can’t win this stuff on my own.  God is designing these fights in such a way that I am forced to rely on His strength rather than mine.

Indeed, we personally had a death sentence within ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves but in God who raises the dead.  He has delivered us from such a terrible death, and He will deliver us. We have put our hope in Him that He will deliver us again.  (2 Corinthians 1:9-10) 

When I learn—and I’m not easy to teach—where my strength comes from, I find that I can’t help but get better.  I transform into a different version of myself—one that is closer (albeit, marginally closer) to the design that He built me to be.  God’s not just seeing me through this fight, He’s preparing me for the next one.  He knows that there’s always going to be a next one, because that is the nature of living in this world.

God sees the small picture that is me.  He sees the minutiae and the randomness that lives inside.  He knows my inner struggles and my outer fights.

But He also has the bigger picture view, the one that is my place inside of a larger creation.  He is not mired in the inconvenience of time.  He can see who I am, who I was, and who I am going to be.  He can see them all at the same time.

I don’t have insight into any of those scenes.  It’s easy for me to forget who I am now compared to who I was before.  I see myself in the mirror every day, so I take the progress for granted.  I often can’t be bothered to take stock of the changes that have been made.  I so easily forget all of the hard lessons I learned before and the revelations the provided to me.

It’s as if I find myself in the middle of a hard round that I’m not sure I can win.  My eyes quest to find that timer so I can see when the round ends—how much longer I have to endure.  But it’s also like somebody forgot to start the timer.  There’s no limit to this fight.  The fight ends when the fight ends, and the fight ends when somebody is finished.

I’m not willing to be finished.  I’ve got too much work left to do, even when the work comes at a price.  Every victory comes at a price.

I’m trying to remember that the price is an investment, and the investment is worth the value that will be returned.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18)