This season of BJJ was probably the most challenging and rewarding at the same time. Early this year I received my first stripe promotion after training for 5 months. It was a great feeling and it felt like all my hard work had paid off. However this feeling slowly eroded away as I found it very difficult to balance my study schedule and my training slots. I tried to train at least 3 times a week for around 2/3 hours each session, but this mostly resulted in having only a mere 6 hours of sleep per night and a minimum amount of work done. It was a huge risk for me to keep training at this pace and I knew that sooner or later it would affect my grades. Therefore to overcome this challenge and to make sure I could balance both school work and training, I revamped my whole daily routine. I decided that I needed to become more productive so I could free up some extra time to train. Thus, I used my 2 frees on Monday to complete as much work as possible for the week ahead, and therefore would allow me to train both on Sunday and Tuesday as there would be less work (only 2 blocks on Monday and all homework completed for Tuesday). Furthermore, I made sure that the moment I came home I completed an hour or two of homework so that I could proceed to go to train right after. This method worked very well and I managed to get decent/good grades and at the same time maximise my training.

The second challenge that I faced was my first national competition. I was due to compete in March but only signing up for the competition last minute, it only gave me 2 weeks to make weight and train. This was extremely had for me because I had little time to make sure I was dieting properly in order to make weight for Featherweight Juveniles Division. Unfortunately at the time I was 65 kg and needed to cut to 60 kg in 2 weeks which was unhealthy for a teen like me and would most likely make me much weaker. Therefore I decided to fight in the open weight and therefore I did not have to worry about my weight but instead focus on strategies and techniques to fight bigger and smaller opponents. Fast forward to two weeks later I found myself fighting against both types of opponents. It was a huge risk for my to participate because of the fear of the fear of getting injured in such a crucial time in the academic year. However I knew that I had to take a risk in order to undertake a new challenge which I know I will learn a lot from…

I received Silver in my first ever tournament. It was an amazing experience getting second at nationals and at the same time overcoming the challenge of balancing my training and my school life. In the future I would like to approach this type of challenge in the same way as I feel that it is the method that has worked best for me and my personal growth and development

 

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