Wednesday, January 27, 2010

More fabulous reflections from Cane Prevost...

He's with SBGi in Oregon... a beautiful little snip from his blog The Gentle Art, found here.

"When you tie on a brown belt your ego tells you that you need to be able to destroy everyone purple belt and below. And if you are not very careful that ego idea can paralyze you. The minute you are scared to roll with someone because you don’t know if you can beat them you are dead. You have just effectively put the emergency brakes on your progress.

What then are you to do? You have to throw your hat into the ring and trust that your BJJ will get you through. You may not “win.” You may not tap out the other guy. Your training will take you through and the mat will tell you what you need to know. And, if you are in with the right group of guys you will take your mugging and know that it buys you a millimeter of progress. You’ll sit on the edge of the mat with chests heaving. Sweat pouring down your face. You’ll slap each other on the back and debrief your games with smiles and laughs. And, you’ll feel good knowing that all you could do is what you did. Throw your hat in the ring and see what happens.

It’s the beautiful surrender of Jiu jitsu. You can never predetermine outcomes. You can’t guarantee victory. Character is built not by the victories but by all the tough rolls and taps you encounter along the way. That’s the paradox. Eventually you will have tapped 10,000 times or more. The rolls won’t get any easier. You’ll surrender again and again measuring your progress one millimeter at a time trusting the process."

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Excellent post.

A.D. McClish said...

Loved this post, and your last one!! Fabio has told us before that if a white belt catches a blue belt in something, that doesn't make the white belt a blue belt or turn the blue belt back into a white belt. It just means that either the white belt got lucky or the blue belt got lazy or something like that. It's important for both sides not to get prideful after something like that happens. You can't have a cohesive team that way.