Finding Balance, Round Two: Jiu-Jitsu Training and Daily Commitments

Ever wondered how to keep your passion for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu alive amidst a sea of responsibilities? Join me on this special episode of Caffeinated Jiu-Jitsu where we tackle the intricate dance of maintaining a balanced life while staying committed to your training. Discover the art of setting clear priorities without sacrificing the joy of stepping onto the mats. From juggling demanding work schedules and family commitments to carving out precious training time, we explore practical strategies to ensure BJJ remains a source of growth and happiness, and not just another task on your to-do list.

Communication with loved ones, utilizing off-mat time effectively, and setting achievable micro-goals can be game-changers. Hear personal stories and actionable tips on finding that sweet spot between long-term consistency and realistic expectations. Whether it's training early mornings or late evenings, consistency doesn't mean perfection—it means showing up when you can, and making the most of every session. Tune in to learn how to balance your jiu-jitsu journey with life's many demands and maintain harmony across all aspects of your life.

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Keep Your Passion Brewing

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to Caffeinated Jiu-Jitsu the blend of white belt enthusiasm, black belt wisdom and a dash of caffeine for that extra kick. Dive deep into the world of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as we explore the journey, techniques, challenges and the sheer joy of the sport from a white belt's perspective. From intriguing interviews with renowned coaches and professors to playful fun episodes that'll have you chuckling mid-roll. We've got it all brewed and ready. Now stepping onto the mats and into your ears, here's your host, joe Motes.

Speaker 2 0:56

One of my favorite quotes about time. Actually, there's two that come to mind. The first one is by Miles Davis, and it is time isn't the main thing, it's the only thing. And then the other one is by Charles Buxton. He was a member of Parliament back in the 1800s but he said that you'll never find time for anything. If you want time, you must make it. So welcome back everyone to Caffeinated Jiu Jitsu.

Speaker 2 1:44

I am your host, joe Motz, and this is kind of a spur of the moment episode. We're in between guests. Right now. My work has been extremely busy and time very limited. I'm recording this episode in a hotel room in Charlotte, north Carolina. It's 1040. I am making time. I don't have time. So I'm making some time.

Speaker 2 2:21

And this episode is about time and how we spend it, how we leverage or how we can mold our life to ensure our BJJ journey is not sidetracked. Journey is not sidetracked. Full disclosure. Right now I'm kind of going through that first kind of lull in my BJJ journey where and everybody faces it where I was training a lot and I was excited about doing extra training because of a competition coming up, and then all of a sudden, just almost overnight, life has just completely changed. Schedules have changed and even though I knew some of it was coming, I guess I wasn't prepared to the impact it could have on some of the things that I had in my life for myself. That helped keep me balanced. And as I drove up to Charlotte today, I was thinking about this and kind of put together, I guess, a little bit of this episode in my head.

Speaker 2 3:51

But the topic is is is really for those of us who juggle the demands which should be everybody, which we juggle the demands of life on and off the mats how to balance family life, work life, life and still find time to train and interact with our BJJ community and compete and travel to, you know, attend seminars, whatever, right, if you're anything like me, you have had moments like I'm in now, where you're running around from work and you're picking up or taking the kids to school and sports just started for for my kids, uh, trying to manage family time. You know I work in the close to the city. I work an hour away from my house, hour plus, hour plus. So it's I'm gone a lot for work. It's.

Speaker 2 4:51

It would not be right if I went straight from work every day and then train to, you know eight, nine o'clock every night in jujitsu and then drove an hour home and I would never see my kids. They would never see me, ever seen me. And in the back of your mind you're still wondering how can I squeeze mat time in, how can I find some time for me to train, for me, to continue my journey? And that's what I'm going to, just kind of open mic, I guess, talk about and I'm just going to say some of the stuff that I thought about today on my drive up and and also just whatever really pops into my head. Look, I get it again. I experiencing it.

Speaker 2 5:44

Life can be hella chaotic. The idea of consistently training BJJ Jiu Jitsu while handling everything else, it really feels like a pipe dream. Sometimes, those of us who are, whether we're hobbyists or competitors, we're all obsessed to some degree and would be on the mats 24 seven if we could. But I'm here to tell you it's, it's doable, with the right mindset and strategies in place, not to be on the mat 24 seven but to balance that. And I'm thinking through some of the approaches that that I found useful maybe up until now doesn't mean because they're not working for me now, they won't work for you now.

Speaker 2 6:38

Um, you just have to kind of pick up the, the ones that that resonate with with you, and I'm going to talk about setting priorities and managing your time like a pro, and even involving your family in your journey. It's a little hard to involve your work co-workers, and so it's not. It's probably not going to be too many tips there, but but it's really so that your training doesn't feel like it's just another task and then it's always something that you enjoy and that it's. You know, you're never sitting in your car after work or getting ready to go to an open mat and, like you know that you dread going to training. We never want to be in that state and most of us probably never would be, but we have to set things in motion and set priorities and set goals and block off. Uh, you know time we have. We have to make it, we have to make our time. So it's super late, but it may not be late when you listen to this.

Speaker 2 8:01

Um, so grab your, your coffee, your caffeine or whatever keeps you caffeinated, and and let's jump into some some things. So the first thing is is around. Priorities is what I want to talk about, and if you're balancing family work, jujitsu, you know, know that time is the most valuable resource. The trick is getting crystal clear on what your non-negotiables are, and for me it's simple. You know my kids the family comes first, work is second and jujitsu is that crucial third element that keeps me grounded.

Speaker 2 8:48

I want to talk a little bit more about that um and a little bit that that connection it's, it's my outlet, it's my reset button and, honestly, it makes me better in every other area in my life. I am way less stressed when I'm consistently training. I'm much happier, I'm able to focus more, I'm able to enjoy my time off the mat just as much as I enjoy my time on the mat. And when, when you're deciding how to spend your time, think about what, what really drives you individually. And if jujitsu is important, then it's worth making time for, and even if that means sacrificing some other things that maybe aren't essential Maybe you don't, I don't know, you don't sit. Well, here's one for me. I have this game on my phone. It's. This is so crazy and silly, but I'm going to share it Pokemon trading, card game live or something like that. It's the app and Pokemon's been around for years.

Speaker 2 10:05

I think I was young no, I wasn't I don't know how old they are, but they're old, right, um, and I never cared anything about pokemon, the game, and I download this app. Well, the boys started, some of the boys started collecting them and it just became an interest and and then I download this game to show them and then I start liking it. But long story short, I'd wake up on the weekends and I would start no one else would be up and I would start just playing this game for hours and instead of going into my garage where my gym area is and maybe doing a strength training exercise or doing some yoga for jujitsu or some mobility stuff. So that's what I mean about sacrificing. I'm not talking about like missing your kids' baseball games or missing birthdays. I don't want that to come across as what I'm kind of alluding to, but there are things in your life, if you think about it, that you can sacrifice and you want to make a mental list or write those down. But remember, prioritizing doesn't mean being rigid. Life is going to throw you curveballs, and that's okay. The goal here is to make sure that, even when things get busy, you're still finding ways to keep your priorities in front of you, and I used to set these crazy. I'm going to do this. This is a priority. I'm going to do it this date, this time, and if that doesn't happen, one time we'll have to redo everything. And that's not what I'm talking about when setting priorities. It's really identifying the key, critical things in your life that you have to have in your day to day, your week to week, your month to month and throughout your year to be you and to be happy and to be the best you.

Speaker 2 12:15

For me, when I was prioritizing BJJ, I actually I felt I showed up better for for my family, for my friends. My energy is always higher, my stress levels are lower, I'm more present and if you're struggling to make time for the mats, you know, just remember, taking care of yourself is not selfish and it allows you to take care of everyone else. I don't know why as a species I'll say it like that we frown upon or we shy away from taking care of ourselves. They have dedicated priorities and times where they do things like self-care, and it could be fitness, it could be, you know, self-development, I I don't know, but there's a trait that they share right, and it's taking care of themselves, and I think that society, somehow is impressed on us. If we do something for ourselves, we're selfish, and I think the word selfish needs to either be removed from our vocabulary or it needs to be clearly defined. I don't look at prioritizing something that is important to me me personally that's maybe not important to others as being selfish, and neither should you, and you know, once you have these priorities identified, it's really about looking at your day and getting to be a time management.

Speaker 2 14:17

Ninja, I I try to only get between five to six, maybe seven If I'm eight hours, nine hours. You better come check my pulse of sleep a night, and I like that because I get a couple more hours of the day to do some things and I get it. A lot of you are going to hear that and think, oh my God, this, this guy doesn't sleep as much as he should. He's going to, you know, experience some kind of breakdown. I'm 45 years old and I haven't yet, so I think my body is just one of those that can run off a little bit of sleep. I am trying to get at least six to seven now that I am am getting older, but, um, yeah, uh, I try to go to bed before I want tonight but try to go to bed before midnight. I try not to wake up before four or five and then I get my day going.

Speaker 2 15:29

But time management and time management's really the name of the game when you're balancing so many different roles one, uh, one of the strategies is strategies that I found is something called, uh, oh gosh, it's called micro scheduling and this means breaking down your week into something new, newish. It's breaking down your week into blocks or collections and committing to specific slots for training. I treat my training sessions, or was treating my training sessions, like I would work, a meeting or a family event. If it's on the calendar, you know it's happening. What's happening now?

Speaker 2 16:25

The problem with that is my life, family life and work life. Well, work life hasn't really changed, but my family life allowed for me to do this. You know, uh, blocking strategy allowed me to to do it where it worked and with line align with our gyms, classes and hours that they're open and trainings available. Because, look, that's I think that is one of the frustrating things for me and jujitsu, and with gyms and things like that there's there's only a certain amount of times that you can get in there. It's not like they're open all day and every hour they're running a you know a class. I mean it's, it's. It would be ridiculous to think that that could happen. I mean it'd be awesome if there were 24 hour jujitsu gyms that would be insane.

Balancing Jiu-Jitsu Training With Life

Speaker 2 17:32

Actually, maybe I should write that down in my journal Anyway. Actually, maybe I should write that down in my journal Anyway. But you have to. As a practitioner, we have to really manage our time around. When the gym is available to us, when the instructors are available, I mean we can do privates, but then we have to pay and then it's still only going to be between those hours or in conjunction with the hours that the gym is open. We're pretty lucky at Roswell Alliance Roswell, we have a lunch, we have a morning, we have an evening, we have a kids class, we have all those in one day, no-transcript. They have a morning class every now and then and they have a noon class every other week. They have their standard evening class, but if you're on limited time it's not helpful. And then sometimes, if you're in a smaller town, you only have one, maybe two gyms to choose from. So then, where are you at? What are you going to do? And I guess it really comes down to how flexible you want to be. Comes down to how flexible you want to be. There's going to be weeks maybe. If you have kind of a fluctuating schedule in your life, maybe you have mom takes the kids Monday, tuesday, wednesday, dad Thursday and Friday, or vice versa. But there are going to be weeks where everything goes according to plan and you're going to be able to train three, four, five, whatever times a week. Then they're going to be weeks where life happens and I believe that's where I'm at right now, because it's not necessarily the change in the kids' schedule Like I'm having to take them two of them to school in the mornings, and mornings were my designated time. I very seldom miss a morning just because they're aligned and fit. But what I think is happening right now is with work, and work is you know, I can't get to the morning. Noon has become my new dedicated time, but a lot of things can pop up when you're at work. Today I was going to lunch class and then I was going to head up here to Charlotte and I was going to try and catch the evening class at Alliance in Charlotte and I was walking out to go to walking out of my job to go train at Alliance in Roswell, georgia, and passed my boss's office and I heard her hey, joe, come here a minute, and that minute turned into an hour, burned through my training time. I said okay, well, missed that time. Now I'm going to beat feet up to Charlotte. Only takes a few hours, I'll get up there in plenty of time. Didn't happen? Traffic delays, construction. It took me additional almost hour and a half to get up here from where I thought I would be. I, you know their class started at seven. I got up here at like 740. And you know that's things are going to happen like that. They've been happening a lot lately for me. They may be happening a lot for you lately like that. But you know what. That's okay, that's okay.

Speaker 2 21:43

The goal is consistency over the long run, not perfection week to week. And I think that's something that I have gotten into thinking that, oh, if I miss one week I'm not going to be any good, if I miss two weeks I'm going to be even worse. Oh man, I don't know, I would forget all jujitsu if I missed a month. But that's not the case and I don't believe that's what our professors mean when they tell us, hey, make sure you come into training or make sure you're being consistent. I don't think they mean if you don't train day in, day out, you're not going to be any good. So I think that's something that, especially now, I need to reinforce in myself. And if you're listening, you need to read in your thinking that way that you know if I don't go Monday and Tuesday, I might as well not go this week, because I've already missed every technique that professor's going to teach, if that's you remember.

Speaker 2 22:50

The goal is consistency over the long run. On average, it takes anywhere from 10 to 15, maybe more years to get a black belt in jujitsu. If you're chasing belts or you know whatever, or even to you know, I guess, get good at jujitsu, it takes a long time as well, but we always refer to this as a journey. We all understand this is a long game. So training is no different.

Speaker 2 23:19

It's it's in a long run approach, and one of the best ways I think one of the best ways to fit training into a busy schedule is to find times that don't interfere with probably your family or your external what I'll call people commitments, because work is usually nine to five, unless you're some kind of you know, public service or night shift in the manufacturer or police officer, something like that. Most business office jobs, I would say even maybe some construction jobs, are nine to five. Um, but our commitments to our loved ones, our friends, our, our, our parents, whatever it is. That is 24, seven, that's ongoing, that never really ends. And for me, now especially, it's early mornings or late evenings are when I have to be as present as I can with, you know, the kiddos with the family, with the kiddos with the family. They've got to get to school and different places in the morning and the evenings they need to be taken to their sports events and those times can be golden and everyone's either. Um, I, I think it's. I think it's almost like you're given the first best part of you and the kind of the last last part of you.

Speaker 2 25:08

But the reality is for most of us this is some of the best time to train is early in the mornings or late in the evenings. Now, late in the evenings don't necessarily work for me, for one reason because of the distance between Alliance Roswell and my home, which is over an hour. So if I worked in Brazelton, lived in Brazelton, worked in Brazelton, lived in Brazelton, my evenings I could do the evening class because, well for one, it's less than five miles from my house where I would be training. So evenings for me don't necessarily work. Before A lot of us, evenings work really well because you can get off work, you can go right to training. There's a lot of classes start at six or seven, so there's some time to you know, decompress and your commute to your gym or whatever. And then early mornings even though I'm no longer able to train at the 7am class, mornings have continued to be a great time for me to work out, wake up, have some time to myself. So I hope a lot of you who are listening has a gym that has a morning class, because those offer a lot of opportunity.

Speaker 2 26:28

I used to love going to train with the guys in the morning. We had a crew. We uh, what was it? The caffeinated rollers. We even had these, these badges, dark. Had these badges made? Oh God, not badges, patches, patches made and we sewn them on man, I wish I maybe I'll put a picture in the. I don't have a picture. Well, anyway, it's really cool badge. It's basically the skeleton in a gi that's hugging a coffee, um, a coffee mug, and it's caffeinated rollers. It was. This is really cool, right?

Speaker 2 27:03

I miss, I miss that camaraderie. I miss, you know, going in and burning some calories and getting woken up and taking a shower and then heading to work, I always felt super energized, where now it takes me just a little bit longer to get to that fully awake, fully energized, fully caffeinated joe mode, if you will. Uh, let's see. Um, what else? What else can I say here? Um, you know, if you're doing early mornings, you know if you're doing early mornings, I'm not telling you to do this, but maybe this is one of the instances where you could sacrifice a little bit of sleep. You know, I'm not telling you you got to go crazy and get six or five hours of sleep, but I mean, do you need nine or ten? That seems like a little much when you could take that time. Get up, splash some water on your face, take down some espresso real fast, get your butt to training, so it'll be worth it, trust me. So what are some other strategies that we can think through and talk about? And I think there's something that could be game changer.

Speaker 2 28:27

Now, I'm not practicing what I preach here, but it's really involving your, your family, in in your, your jujitsu journey. And uh, I'm pretty sure we all talk about it with our families, but for those of us with kids, there's nothing cooler than seeing them develop an interest in something that we're passionate about and I think it's the same for them. I am starting to see my own kids Well, I'm starting to see it with my own kids. I am teaching them a few basic moves at home. I've brought them to a couple open mats. I remember for New Year's Day this year, cam and Christian and myself went to the open mat at ironwolf. They had a new year's day open mat, bringing in a new year's with jujitsu. I think it was something like that and it was god. It was amazing. There were so many people there. I was rolling with both boys. The boys started, you know, rolling and wrestling around. It was just great and it was a great way to bring in a new year.

Speaker 2 29:41

And then my 13 year old Trenton it's all my boys are, are giants, they're, they're all bigger than me. They took after, uh, apparently, their mom's side of the family, where all the males are like six plus, like I think there's one like six, four, six, five, maybe at least six, three. They're all like 200 something pounds. I mean, they're just giant, they're just big men. And all of the all of uh our boys have have they. I guess they got their genetics and so they're again. Long story short, Trenton's bigger than me almost now. Uh think he's like 130 pounds. He's almost 5'11". If he's not 5'11" already, I'm 5'11". And you know he'll come up and he'll grab me and he'll try to take me down. And I've shown him a couple single leg variations, an ankle pick, and he legitimately, a couple days ago, like legitimately, almost took me down. If it hadn't have been for a door jam I would have probably went down. And I remember thinking how cool is this, you know, and I enjoy when he gets in the mood to kind of roll a little bit or he'll listen and let me teach him something.

Maintaining Balance and Avoiding Burnout

Speaker 2 31:12

So also, you know, get your kids, if they're interested in a higher level, to get involved with a kids class. So get involved with a kid's class. Maybe volunteer to coach a kid's class. If your kids are in jujitsu training, ask the professor hey, do you mind if I come onto the mat and help out if you're shorthanded one day, and that can be a huge bonding experience for your kid, even if you're not spending the whole time with your kid, which you probably shouldn't be. But, um, I think, I think it may. I think things like that would make them understand or give them a better understanding of why you're so committed to training. And it's not that they have to get out there and fall in love with it and become obsessed, but exposing them to it's not a bad thing.

Speaker 2 32:12

And even if your family isn't directly involved in jiu-jitsu, communication is key. I have a hard time doing this. Let your partner know your training schedule in advance, if you can Be open about how important it is to you. This isn't just about asking permission to do something you love I don't think any of us should ask permission to do something we love but it's about building, you know, mutual respect and understanding so that, uh, your loved ones feel included and, you know, supports your goals. And I've talked to I've talked to a mix of people where their spouses support them and then there's there's there's spouses that don't support them, and it makes it really hard. And you know, when everyone's on the same page, it reduces tension and it makes it easier to stay consistent.

Speaker 2 33:14

And you know, here's the thing. This is your journey, and your journey in j and jujitsu can actually be a source and an inspiration in your family if you don't allow to drive a wedge and sacrifice critical time with them and, you know, kind of get them jaded on it. When your kids see that you're, you're pushing yourself and sticking to your goals and stay in discipline, they're learning life lessons through your example and and I'll tell you that's, that's really powerful. And no, I think that's it, I that, I think we've, we've, I've covered everything I wanted to cover in that. I think it's probably one of the most critical strategies, especially if you have a big family, um, but we've talked about consistency twice in both of those strategies and let's, let's dive in a little bit more on that, because this is consistency, is 100% the secret sauce here and um, but let's be real, it's also the hardest part. It's the hardest thing to maintain when you've got a full plate.

Speaker 2 35:29

And the good news is the good news is, consistency doesn't mean you have to be on the mat five days a week. It's about showing up regularly. Even if that's just once or twice a week, it adds up over time. Now, if you're a belt chaser, it's probably not going to work out for you. It's going to take you a long time to get those stripes. It's going to take you a long time to get those, that belt. But if the love of jujitsu, the art of jujitsu, and learning the techniques and training with your friends and your fellow practitioners. If that's what's important to you, consistency is just showing up, and it's not just showing up every time the lights are on.

Speaker 2 36:22

I think when I started at Roswell Alliance is when I started setting micro goals. Instead of stressing about how much time I'm spending training, I focused on small, manageable goals like drilling specific techniques and improving in one area each month, and it took my professor Rodrigo a few times to kind of tell me this and talk to me about this strategy, because I was all over the place. I was trying to play open guard, closed guard, half guard. Uh, I don't even think I was trying submissions until I was like a four stripe white belt, I was just frailing all over the place. But and this is something I've circled back to, now that I am in this lull because I have set this micro goal of becoming really good at half guard and attacks from close guard so I've been able, able, knowing that this is in my journal and this is in my priorities list, or my micro goals, even though I'm not training all of the you know maybe the videos that I'm watching or the instructional videos that I'm watching or the techniques that I'm reading about back to in my journals that we went over in class. Like all of it has to deal with one of the other either attacks in close guard or half guard, offense defense and it's helped me still feel like I'm progressing, even though I'm only training maybe one to two times a week.

Speaker 2 38:14

Another tip to use off the mat well, how can I say this? Another tip is to use your off-mat time wisely, which is exactly kind of what I'm talking about here. Maybe you can't make it to class, but you can still. You can still watch instructionals, you can still visualize techniques. You can go back and read in your journals. A lot of us are writing in our journals and never going back. Uh, professor Rodrigo told, told me one time, or asked me one time well, how many times do you go back and reread the stuff that you write? And my answer to him was hardly, hardly, never. You do quick workouts at home.

Speaker 2 38:58

The point is, there are always something that you can stay engaged with, even when life is crazy with a couple people at our gym is hey, I've got some mats over by the gym at work, and if there's ever some times you want to get together and just do some specific training or drilling. We can do that and maybe it'll work better for both of our schedules. It's about making time. You've got to make your time right, and one of my down times it wasn't anything as drastic as this. That's where I really got into the mind mapping thing and I know I haven't talked a lot about mind maps lately, but I still use them. I still do them. I've got this massive, massive like flow chart for half guard. It's. It's insane. I sometimes I look at it and I wrote it and I don't even know where to start and I don't know how beneficial it is for me to have to go back and use and study. But it's very beneficial, uh, to build like the actual process of building this map because it's making me like, visualize all these scenarios from when I was training all the time. It's bringing all of that back to to my mind.

Speaker 2 40:19

So I've always everyone knows I'm a huge fan of instructionals, the right instructionals. Pay attention to who you're listening to and watching off the mat. Pay attention that you know that you're not getting it all off ig and youtube bjj fanatics has some of the, if not the all, of the top, you know tier instructionals or instructors and professors uh, highly recommend, you know, watching the content that you watch and making sure it's coming from a legit place. I think this next thing is really kind of the last thing. It's actually the culmination of everything we talked about. It's actually the culmination of everything we talked about. So if you don't do some of the things we talked about or the things we talked about, you come to this point and that's burnout and that's fatigue and with everything that you've got going on, burnout is a real concern and it's easy to feel like you're dropping the ball in one area when you're juggling so many balls.

Speaker 2 41:38

And the key is recognizing the signs early. If you're feeling mentally drained or physically exhausted, it might be time to step back and recharge. Maybe you need to take a month off from jujitsu. Maybe you need to let life balance out. Maybe you need to train only once a week. That's crazy to say, but maybe it's true. It's even harder to do. I can tell you that. Just remember that rest rest, I do recognize, is part of the process and it is part of the process. Taking that week off and scaling back for a little while doesn't mean you're losing your progress.

Speaker 2 42:31

I was just texting, maybe an hour ago, rodrigo, and he sent me a text. It's Professor Macio and he sent me a text hey, how are you? And he'll do that from time to time. You know he'll check in on us and he's definitely been checking up on me because of everything that's going on. And we just kind of went back and forth and I was, you know, expressing some of my frustrations and you know mental angst and, um, you know, I told him. I said hey, I know you may be sitting there worried that I'm gonna, I'm gonna quit, you know, because I am a blue belt and everybody knows the running joke is blue belts, quit. Actually it's not a joke, statistics show that they quit a blue belt, and everybody knows the running joke is blue belts, quit. Actually it's not a joke, statistics show that they quit a lot. And he said no, I'm not worried about you, you know. I know you're going to. I know you, you know you love jujitsu, you're going to continue. He just wants me training. He just wants me back training and he's like any good professor, he's just checking in. He just wants me back training and he's like any good professor.

Speaker 2 43:36

He's just checking in and my whole point of saying that is, or sharing that story, is I told him in one of the texts, or alluded to, something exactly like this, where I feel like if I'm going to miss a day or I'm missing this time, I'm going to lose everything and some things in life. If you don't use it, you lose it. I don't think that's completely true. In Jiu Jitsu. Some of you may disagree. I first learned mouth escape when I was in the military and combat. I didn't know anything about jujitsu, I didn't even know that came from jujitsu, but when I saw it being taught at Alliance I remembered oh, I kind of know how to do this already. And that was 20 years later. So don't get in your mind, in your head, that if you miss an hour you've lost three or four hours. In fact, time off may be what you need to come back better and stronger.

Speaker 2 44:55

I have not for a long time been as consistent in my strength training as I am now and as I have been, and I think what's going to happen is in the next week or so when my training schedule opens up and I'm able to get back to training, to some semblance of what I was. I'm going to be supercharged, because not only now have I mastered or gotten to the habit of working out consistently. Now I'm training consistently and finally it's all coming together. Now, if I could get my diet down, okay, whatever. But my goal in dieting? Listen, diets are crap, all of them, every single diet is crap.

Speaker 2 45:38

There's only one thing you have to do burn more calories than you take in. You're gonna lose weight. You're gonna be okay. Now, don't do it like I did. You know, burn all the calories, training six, seven hours a week and only take in like a thousand calories. Don't do that. But your body just needs to be in a caloric deficit.

Speaker 2 45:59

I'm not a nutritionalist, I'm not a fitness guru. I'm not. But work for me and pretty sure, to some degree, our bodies have some similarities when it comes to weight loss. I don't know, but anyway, I digress. Where are we at? Yeah, coming back stronger, that time off can help you with that. Coming back stronger, um, that time off can help you with that.

Speaker 2 46:34

And there's no rule in jujitsu, like there's no crying in baseball, um, that's you know. Of course it's not a rule, but there's no rule in jujitsu that says you have to train every single day to improve. Uh, it's about consistency over that long haul and the sooner we realize that, the happier we're going to be, the less stress we're going to be, the easier on ourselves we're going to be. And, yeah, um, to wrap things up, let's uh, let's take a look back at some of the stuff we talked about, if I can recall at all.

Speaker 2 47:14

Prioritizing what matters most, managing our time strategically, involving those that we're responsible to and for in our journey, and being kind to yourself when life gets hectic that's the formula for balancing jiu-jitsu with everything else. It's not about being perfect. It's about finding your rhythm that works for you and sticking with it. And guess what? You're going to find that rhythm and then, several months down the road, a year down the road, life's going to happen and you're going to have to find it again and you have to stick to it again, and maybe that happens three or four or five times in your journey.

Speaker 2 48:03

So, whether you're a parent listening to this or someone just starting out in jujitsu, or someone who's been training for years and is is trying to keep the balance, I hope that you have found some value in this spur of the moment episode and and chat and just look, jujitsu is not a marathon. I got that backwards. Jiu-jitsu is a marathon, not a sprint. Keep showing up, even if it's in small ways, and you'll see progress. You will absolutely see progress.

Speaker 2 48:50

So it's 11.26 pm. I am not even going to edit this episode. I'm putting this out there, just freestyle, sitting down, getting on the mic, talking about something that I needed to talk about. This episode is as much for me as it is for you and for the listeners and, as always, I would love to hear your thoughts and share how you balance training with the demands of life. You can follow me on Instagram at the, at caffeinated underscore jujitsu. That is our caffeinated jujitsu IG community. We'd love to have you join us and I try to post a few times a week, mostly just stories and and things like that. Of course, we always make uh. We always make uh. I always make announcements when, when new episodes drop on the, on the podcast, and you know like, follow, subscribe.

Speaker 2 50:03

I hope you're enjoying these episodes. We've had some amazing guest episodes lately. It's almost it's. It's getting harder and harder to kind of one-up all the great people that are coming up. Not that we want to one-up anyone but love to see some engagement and hear from you. You can reach out to me at caffeinatedjiujitsu at gmailcom Website is coming soon. Jiu-jitsu at gmailcom website is coming soon. Um, you can also. There's a feature in the link the podcast where you can send a message. It's like a direct message to me with a question and I can. I can answer best I can. I'm always here and always up to connecting with everyone, and thanks for tuning in and stay caffeinated and we'll see you in the next episode.

Speaker 1 51:02

And that's the final tap on today's episode of Caffeinated Jiu-Jitsu. A big thanks to all of our listeners, especially today's insightful guest, for sharing their BJJ knowledge and tales. If you felt that adrenaline rush and are hungry for more, hit, subscribe, drop a review and spread the jujitsu buzz. For show notes and to contact the host, reach out to the email provided in the podcast description and to join our grappling community. Head out to the email provided in the podcast description and to join our grappling community, head over to Instagram. Get those geese, crisp your coffee strong and always be prepared for the next roll Oss.