Mindset

Jiu-jitsu's hardest problems, in my first year at least, have not been physical. They are the ones that happen between the ears: what tapping means about you (nothing), what progress feels like when you cannot see it (mostly nothing, then everything at once), and what to do with the month when quitting starts sounding reasonable (apparently: keep showing up, but I wrote a whole post about it).

This tag is the journal's inside game. No techniques live here. It is the posts about being a beginner rather than doing beginner things: getting smashed politely by people who started years before you, learning that panic is optional, and finding out the curriculum was never really the moves.

The featured posts are ordered the way the lessons arrived for me. Tapping first, because it is the first mental skill the mat demands. Read these on the days the mat felt heavier than usual.