Promotions

I don’t always know the difference between the surreal and the unreal.  Maybe there is no difference.  I’m not sure, and this was a moment where I was doubly unsure.

I looked out over the group that had gathered at the end of our belt-testing session and found myself weighted by a heavy significance.  It had been a large testing group, and my academy still holds standards and expectations, so everyone had worked hard.  Before any one of these individuals could progress to the next level, they had to prove that they were worthy to wear the color of a new belt. 

It wasn’t just about that morning.  That few hours had been a formality to capstone the months and years of training that every one of those men and women had invested into their Jiu-jitsu journey.  It hadn’t been easy for any one of them—intentionally so—so there was a little blood and the odor of stale sweat (maybe I could someday market that as an air freshener).  Part of my role that day, as a senior black belt, had been to put each student through paces of sort—I had applied pressure, done a little punching and choking, critiqued their performance.   A big part of my job over the years had been to make every one of them work for their respective promotions.

It’s been a long time since I received a belt promotion of my own—I guess that’s the natural consequence of wearing a black belt.  I knew how significant this moment was to every practitioner who was advancing that day.  Even though I would be receiving no promotion of my own, this morning took on a certain sense, a thickness that my mind couldn’t wrap all the way around.  I’ll admit that it was a truly emotional experience.

It had been a big crew with promotions to all levels.  One of my newest and deepest friends was receiving a blue belt that he had invested his heart and soul into earning.  His process had been therapeutic to him and, together, we had found ridiculous amounts of spiritual wisdom that mirrored life-challenges along that voyage. 

Another of my students had come in to help somebody else test without realizing she was, herself, being graded.  I’d been doing a fair amount of work as she prepared, thinking she would test in a few months.  She didn’t think she was ready, so we didn’t tell her she was ready until after the fact.  There were a couple of purple belts, too, that I had invested quite a bit of my own time into, and brown belts who I’ve worked with for years as they progressed through the system.

One of my long-time friends was receiving his black belt.  He’d trained for years.  He was one of the two men in my life who convinced me that I needed to be a cop (the other received a brown belt promotion that same day).  His advice led me to one of the most positively life-altering decisions I ever made.  Another of my teammates had started training when he was a new adult—barely just 18.  Over the years he had become my absolute nemesis—a peer and training partner to keep me sharp.  One of the other black belts was a gentleman that I admire more than I can put into words.  He made some mistakes when he was young and has adamantly refused to allow those mistakes to define him.  He is a wonderful husband, father, and human—the kind of man that I’m proud to see wearing a black belt from my academy.

But—but, then—there was another young man there waiting to receive his black belt.  It was a belt he had well-earned.  And maybe that’s where the weight of that moment crashed into me in the most beautiful of ways.  Watching him take on that new rank—that new responsibility—pierced something in my very soul.

One generation will declare Your works to the next and will proclaim Your mighty acts. (Psalms 145:4) 

I looked up and everything changed.  I know that’s something of a cliché, but it’s a cliché because of how often it’s true.  Things have changed faster than I think I’m ready to deal with.

I imagine I could describe it as a transformation, because that’s the only fitting word my vocabulary can find.  I remember years before when he and his brother first started training with my team.  They were a couple of goofy kids who cried a lot because they cried when they lost and they lost rather frequently.  They lost in competition and they lost on the mats during practice.  In the early days, victories were rare, whether in tournaments or during preparation.

No matter how much they lost, they chose to keep coming back.  They remained eager to learn.  Even in the moments they wanted to quit, they never did.  They just kept learning.

I remember walking into the dressing room one evening to change and go home.  These two young boys ran back to where I was and pleaded with me.

“Will you come teach us something?”

What do you want me to teach you?

“Anything.”

As a coach, it’s impossible to not honor a request like that.  So, the three of us cruised back out onto the mats, and I spent a while working with them on grip-fighting.  We worked on the skill, then on the details.  They kept practicing.

They started winning—not always, but frequently.  Most importantly, they kept learning.

As their journey arced into adolescence, they also continued to develop as practitioners and competitors.  It was fun to watch, and it was fun to coach.  It was an honor to be part of the voyage. 

In the early days they were easy to handle.  After all, they were children and I was a full-sized adult (who refused to act like an adult).  I could bat them around playfully like a cat playing with a mouse.  As they grew in stature and skill, the playfulness became more intentional.  My movements pointed toward instruction rather than game.  With my size and experience, I could force our sparring into the place I wanted it to be so that we could practice the things I wanted them to practice.  Sometimes I would pause our sparring mid-battle to explain the next step in the attack or escape. Other times I would silently guide them to the exact same link in the technical chain time after time until I felt they grasped the idea.

I started noticing that they were using the techniques I was teaching.  There was something amazingly satisfying about that.  They started using my stuff in competition, even, with greater success than me.  It was a joy to watch.

Time marched on, because that’s what time does.  The older of the two brothers raised his right hand and enlisted.  I was proud to see him do it, but I was also sad to see him go.  This is a natural progression whether I like it or not.  The younger of the two remained behind, and he remained voraciously hungry for Jiu-jitsu knowledge.

By then his potential had become evident, not only to me but to many others.  Some things had changed about my schedule, and I was able to take a more active role at the academy.  I started coaching more.  I even started training more.  He was always anxious to get some rounds in with me, and he was moving well.  I was bigger, stronger, and—obviously—more experienced, but I could feel his progress every time we sparred.  I began to exert more intentional pressure on him.  I made it a point to punish his mistakes and reward his successes.  I wasn’t just there to burn calories.  I was there to—hopefully—make him better.

I could be wrong, but I think that he and I developed a unique connection.  I wasn’t so far removed from my own days as a competitor that I couldn’t remember the doubts, fears, and emotions inherent with competition at high level.  It’s especially challenging for those of us with sensitive hearts—we tend to feel things more intensely.  My coaching became as much about mindset as it did technique.  I’d learned a lot of my lessons as a fighter the hard way, and I wanted to give him a chance at not having to experience my mistakes.

He absorbed everything I had to offer.  I had a number of friends I train with, too, who are better at this stuff than I am.  So, I started to connect him with those grapplers, as well.  He absorbed everything they had to offer.  He sought out just about anyone he could—even some of the best in the world—and absorbed everything they had to offer.  He just kept getting better.

I remember accompanying him to his first tournament in an advanced bracket.  I knew a lot of his opponents, and I knew they were all exceedingly accomplished.  I didn’t tell him.  He had just been promoted to an advanced belt and was 16-years old fighting against grown men.  I didn’t tell him how good the other competitors were because I didn’t want him preoccupied.  I just wanted him to acquit himself well.  And he did. 

He didn’t win the whole thing that day—it’s one of those memory moments that remains forefront of my brain.  He had injured himself goofing around with one of his friends just before his first match started.  He had sucked it up and continued forward, despite being hurt.  The one time he was submitted that day happened because his opponent submitted him at the exact body part that had been injured.  He was obviously upset at the end of that day and close to tears, because he knew he could have won.

I hadn’t competed in a long time, but I didn’t forget how that felt.  He felt like he could have done more—at least, that’s what his brain thought after the whole thing was over.  But our physical limitations are a real thing, even if they feel less than they are in our memory.  Our brains are traitorous things.  I tried to give him some coach’s wisdom while I iced and wrapped that injury.  I did my best to remind him that he was going to heal and come back to wreck this division.

I was right.  Within weeks he was destroying black belt and advanced divisions.  He became the sort of competitor that other competitors researched before they fought.  He developed a name and a reputation.  He was almost feared, and he was definitely respected.

As great as all that was, it wasn’t the most important part of his persona.  What really stirred my heart was the part where he started coaching.  I would creep onto the mats, sometimes, just to watch him working with some of the younger students.  From time to time, I would do my best to steal some of the technique he was teaching.  As much as anything, I just loved watching his patient but demanding demeanor with a group of youths who admired him to an absurd degree.  He worked hard to be worthy of that admiration.

And what you have heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, commit to faithful men who will be able to teach others also. (2 Timothy 2:2) 

At the academy and on the mats he was training hard and had somehow found a balance between coaching, getting hard rounds, and drilling new technique.  It’s a difficult balance that’s not easy to find.  I’ve been doing this for a long time, and I still struggle to find it.  He kept getting better, and he kept getting tougher to deal with.

I’m not going to lie and pretend that I don’t have an ego.  I fight every day to keep it from being the most significant part of me.  But, when he began running legitimate technique at me, there was a moment when I didn’t want to acknowledge that my student had become a peer.  I still had a tendency to start our sparring sessions like he was that 80-pound kid from years prior, and I would give just a little opening to see what he would do with it.  Every time I left an opening he made me pay. 

I still remember the first time he tapped me honestly.  To this day I don’t know if he knows that he put me to sleep.  I underestimated his triangle choke and it was so smooth that I couldn’t get my hand up to tap before I snorted.  That’s a thing my body does just before I lose consciousness—for some reason I snort.  I snorted and I was out.  It was a really good choke.

In time—within a very short time—it stopped being about my ego.  It was about the fact that I wanted to be good enough to be worthy of his respect and good enough that I could help him prepare for whatever competition was next.  I was inspired to bring my best to the mats so that I could push him toward whatever was next.  His need to be better forced me to be better.  I wanted to give him the best version of me to prepare him to be the best version of himself.

His desire to be better made me better.

He was a sponge.  He absorbed everything I did and made it his own.  From time to time he would pause and ask me questions about my technique.  Ten minutes later he would be attacking me with the technique I had just shown him.  He started figuring out how to defend my best submissions and escape my best positions.  He was forcing me to do things that were different—things that were outside of my comfort.

That wasn’t even the worst of it.  He also started analyzing my game.  He figured out where my tendencies and proclivities lay.  He started setting traps.  He forced me to adjust my favorite stuff and rely and things I didn’t do well.  It forced me to get better at the things I wasn’t very good at. 

It was fun.  It was stupid fun.  He reminded me of how much fun Jiu-jitsu could be. 

Somewhere along the way, some secret memorandum must have circulated throughout the academy.  My friends, coaches, and teammates had all decided—or conspired, possibly—to force me back into competition.  I’d gotten a little complacent over the decade or so since my last tournament, and I started getting text messages in the middle of the night and little verbal jabs—“are you going to sign up and compete with us at this next tournament?”

I held it off for a little while, shrugging and finding excuses for all the reasons I couldn’t participate in the next set of matches.  Then, one day, this young man, in an off-handed sort of way, simply said, “I’ve never actually seen you compete.”

That was a moment for me.  He had been training with me since he was an awkward 7-year old and had never seen me step on a competition mat.  The timing couldn’t have been better than that moment.  My mind was in a place where it was wrestling with things, and I knew that my team deserved the best I had to offer—he deserved the best I had to offer.  He deserved to see me at my best, and, possibly, even at my worst.

I’m not sure if what I did next would be considered unconventional or not.  It was something that felt natural to me for that moment.  It felt like it was a thing I needed to do.

I made him be my coach.

We even talked about it before training camp started.  I told him that he was in charge of training camp and that my role was to do whatever he said.  I surrendered myself to his knowledge, and he put together an incredible camp.  He focused on the things I specifically needed to develop—he was good enough that he could analyze my weaknesses.  He held me accountable to my technique, forcing me to shed whatever ego I had and embrace the parts of my Jiu-jitsu where I was lacking.

It was a phenomenal camp, and I was more than ready when it was done.  If I take even a moment to stop and consider, there’s a very real threat of overwhelming emotion.  He had taken everything I poured into him and poured it right back into me.

I could say that this is a natural cycle, but it really is unnatural.  It’s not the sort of thing that happens with any sort of frequency.  Maybe that’s what makes it so beautiful.

I’ve continued to compete since that training camp—why would I waste that sort of progress?  Not too long ago I was watching some video from my matches.  He’s the one that recorded them for me.  He was standing next to my coach and holding my phone.  I couldn’t see his face, but I could hear his voice—and I know the sound of his voice.  He was feeding advice to my coach so my coach could feed it to me.  He was coaching my coach on how to coach me, because he knew me well enough to have earned that right. 

I’m still not sure if that’s surreal or unreal.

When the summer ends he going to leave for a while.  He’s going on to do wonderful things and Jiu-jitsu is going to long remain a part of his journey.  He’s always going to carry a part of me with him, and I can only hope it’s the better part of me.

In the meantime, we’ve still got a couple of tournaments to compete in before the school year starts.  We’re going to get some rounds in the meantime, and they’re going to be legitimately epic rounds.  I’m a bit bigger than he is, but he’s a lot more flexible than I am.  I’ve got more experience, but he’s full of treachery and trickery.  His cardio might be better, but my brain may be more stubborn.

Just a couple of black belts hammering out black belt rounds.

In the same way, you younger men, be subject to the elders. And all of you clothe yourselves with humility toward one another, because God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble. (1 Peter 5:5)