For Those Getting Back to Training: Be Kind to Yourself

So, I’m not sure what it’s like at the moment in your city, state or country, but for some of us particularly on the East Coast, restrictions are slowly starting to lift and we are getting back to some semblance of training. Yay!

I and several other people have made jokes about going back to the gym and training and basically destroying our bodies. While that to some extent will be true for everyone that had to take some time off, we should also remember to be kind to our bodies: we collectively spent months either attempting to compensate for our lack of jiu jitsu through a variety of other activities in our own homes or with some version of social distancing, or simply not working out but rather taking care of our families and loved ones, or even yet trying to navigate unemployment and other hardships that were brought on by the virus.

For those who can go back to training at this time, great! Please sure to do so as responsibly as possible: I imagine your academy has come up with some safety protocol to keep everyone as safe as possible. Another thing is to make sure to be kind to yourself. As I mentioned we spent this time either trying to compensate for not doing jiu jitsu, or outright not doing anything workout related at all (and for good reason): and as we say, the one thing that’s going to make you better at jiu jitsu, is more jiu jitsu. And as tempting as it is to go whole hog, and try to do “all the things(!!)”, that’s just a recipe for disaster, and may keep you on the side lines for a while as you recover from some injury due to over-enthusiasm.

It can be difficult to be sure, but practice a little self restraint, give yourself some time to ease back into jiu jitsu and I’m sure that you’ll be back to your old schedule in no time.

That’s it for now: have a great day everyone!