What Makes You GREAT!

What I wouldn't give for one of these right now!

It's 6:30pm and we've got one more round of training, no gi at 8:30pm. We've all done wrestling this morning at 10am and 11:30 was strength and conditioning.

Let me take a moment that the strength and conditioning is nothing short of AMAZING! Coach D'Angelo is constantly correcting us and pushing for more speed and explosiveness. And, the attention to core and hip flexibility,well, I haven't seen it anywhere else. I think the only thing saving my ass is the year of Olympic weightlifting I've done.

One thing I am beginning to understand is that you give 100% in each class and by the time you get to no gi training you are exhausted. Yesterday my knee was bothering me so I iced it during the 8:30 training, plus, I was exhausted from the training earlier that day. I spoke with the teammates today about this fatigued state and the first thing Frank Comacho told me was the idea that you come to class fatigued and work through it, just like in a competition setting. Everyone is sore and tired. Thank God, is all I could think; these people really aren't super human like I thought they were. And, this pushing through while you are dead tired is what makes you GREAT!


Another GREAT thing today was joining the circle of teammates to stretch after strength and conditioning. I'm aware I am visiting from another school but while I am here the teammates made it clear I am a part of Team Lloyd Irvin and come join the circle at the end of class.

Yeah, I know, not a big deal right? But, to someone who grew up a bookworm and didn't feel like she fit in, I was preoccupied with getting on the honor roll, this TEAM thing is still very new to me.

The idea here is no matter what the belt level to train hard with each other and push each other to the next level. Each person believes that getting his/her ass kicked makes them only one thing, BETTER!

I'm just trying to take it all in and keep up the best I can. So, far so good. We'll see what tonight holds.