Pressure

I tend to put a lot of unnecessary pressure on myself. The majority of the time I even know that I’m doing this, that it’s ridiculous, but that realization doesn’t always stop me from piling on the pressure.

When I’m in class, I put the pressure of being a woman, of being 36-years-old, of being most likely the weakest person in the class on myself. Most of the time it works in my favor. Pushing me to work harder so that I never let those circumstances define me and my abilities.

And, then for the last six days there is the pressure of getting ready for a competition while trying to take care of an injury.

This one is a bitch to navigate.

So the injury is kind of weird, different from my other armbar injury. With this one, I can put full pressure on it and I have full mobility with zero pain while in use. I can roll hard, I can drill over and over, but the second I stop there comes the pain. It radiates out from my elbow/mid-arm to my shoulder blade and down to my wrist. It’s been fairly unpredictable too. On Sunday I drilled a ton, got in lots of rolling, and the pain was minimal. Last night, in between each set of drilling my arm was screaming, then it was fine when I was rolling, and then afterwards on the drive home I was in tears. (And, I’m not a pain cryer. Never have been. Not even the time in my childhood that I lost most the skin on my upper leg and arm after a nasty bike wreck on a shifty patch of gravel.)

I have a hard time finding that balance of doing what I can and not doing too much. It’s been extremely frustrating to feel like I can’t push as hard as I want too. As hard as I should be doing right now. It makes me question myself.

“Am I doing enough?”

“Am I going to push too hard and make it worse?”

“Am I just being too weak?”

It’s made the last week of classes really frustrating. It doesn’t feel like I’m making the injury worse at all. In fact I feel improvement in it most days. But, so many times I’ve ended up sitting there in tears from the pain, frustrated that I feel like I can’t do more or not knowing if I should do more, and wondering if I stop working am I just using the pain as an excuse. I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself because it.

What a mental debacle it is.

To look on the bright side, at least if it still hurts come competition day, I can still compete and give it my all. I’m just going to pay for it afterwards.

I’m okay with that.

While we are looking on the bright side, the extreme nervousness I was feeling when I signed up to compete is starting to transform into excitement. I can feel myself improving and I’ve never been this focused on making progress.

I have zero expectations for this competition. It’s my first and I just want to experience it without being disappointed because I had some crazy expectation going in. I mean, I know what I would love for the outcome to be and I know what I will fight for it to be, but I also know that there is more to it than just winning. There are other victories to be had.

In the process of all of this it’s really making me aware of how much I love BJJ. I mean love, love, LOVE it. It consumes my thoughts. I am training six days a week and I look forward to each day, to equipping my brain and body with more fun tools to use.

This whole competition thing has been great for getting me to put all my attention on getting better. It’s changed my attitude, it’s helped me to put my shyness aside further than I have ever been able to before, and it’s made me work harder. If I lose every match, I don’t care. I’ve still already won so much just by going through this process so far. I’m looking forward to seeing what the next two weeks bring. What an experience it’s been so far!