THE RED CORNER

NEWS AND UPDATES FROM THE NORTH STAR ACADEMY OF MIXED MARTIAL ARTS

WEEK OF AUGUST 5TH, 2024

 

Happy Monday Team!

Hard to believe, but we are already in August!  Where does the time go??  Summer “ends” at the end of the month (but don’t worry, all you crazy people that love the 90+ degree heat will surely have plenty to work with in September and beyond the way things have been going).

Summer is always on the slower side for us — trips, obligations, events, the list goes on and on.  It can be hard to maintain your routine in the presence of all these things that pop up.

So, here’s some advice (and it’s literally the same advice I give all new students): keep your expectations flexible, in the sense that you have to give yourself room to have hiccups and make mistakes.  We tend to be way too hard on ourselves when it comes to our attendance, our intensity, and our progress.

If we expect 4-5 days of consistent, unbroken training of ourselves, we’ll feel like a failure if we only log 2-3 in any given week.  And that sense of failing can be significantly more damaging than simply missing out on an hour or two here and there.  Too often people internalize it as a personal failure (“I can’t ever stay consistent with anything, why should I try?”) rather than as a normal part of their relationship with training.

So give yourself space and grace to move through the world at your own pace, to enjoy your training, and also to allow new experiences to take priority when they pop up.

The martial arts is a life long pursuit.  It’s like a marriage.  The honeymooning stage is wonderful, but it ends at some point — and you are left with a partnership that both serves and challenges you, but that should never demand too much of you or hold you back.  It encourages new experiences, new growth, and new priorities as long as you honor and serve your commitment to your spouse.

Your relationship with martial arts is the same.  It will be here.  It will always be here.  It will both serve and challenge you, and throughout your life will support you as you move through all the challenges that life has to offer.

So, again, be easy on yourself when you stumble a bit — but also make sure to play your role as a responsible, committed partner to your training.  You will find that, over time, your life will be greatly enriched.

Beyond that, just continue to take your pre-class showers, wear deodorant, and keep your bare feet off the concrete 🙂

I’ll see you on the mats!

 

–Coach J

You can find this week’s Monday Mindset HERE

You can find this week’s Junior Samurai Stripe Challenge HERE