Focusing on one thing while training.

So, last Friday I kind of injured my shoulder.  Just a weird position, I was north-south on top of a big bluebelt, and I made a big mistake-- I reached back too far with my left arm trying to transition from the underhook to the overhook on that side.  Because I had the underhook on the right side, he was able to reach behind my back and grab my left elbow (I should have tapped right there, as it isn't going anywhere useful.)  For whatever reason, I persisted in holding position, so he transferred his grip to my left wrist and kind of pulled my arm behind my back.  Ugh.  So I took the weekend off and did some icing and ibuprofen and now I'm pretty much better.  Right knee still tweaked but what can you do?

At least I am better enough to roll comfortably at noon training today.  We had some visitors, a cool whitebelt lady and her yellow belt son, and both were very technical and fun training partners.  I have been working on a few intermingled passing systems lately-- you know I'm all up in BJJScout's business with the Lo knee slide and toreando passes, plus some corrections and tweaks to my X pass from friends-- and I'm pretty much ignoring the rest of my game right now.

Do you do that?  do you focus on one element and kind of let everything else take care of itself?  I used to be easily distracted-- come to class meaning to work on X, leave feeling like I had to work on A-Z... but now I really do try to give myself a pass on improving everything all at once and just think about X for a while.  I rolled with Ketra, our resident Bronze Place Winner at this past Worlds (woot!) and I kind of accepted that her passing was going to be better than my guard.  I tried to be at peace with that (not the pass itself, I still fought that every step of the way) so that I wouldn't end up leaving the roll feeling horribly down on myself.  But it was a nice opportunity to work on my guard and try to remember the places where I screwed up for later analysis.

I realize I'll never likely be a world champion, and I'm okay with that.  But I do want to continue enjoying this journey for many many years, and part of that will require managing my expectations and hopes.

Hope you're doing well :)