balance… thing

I’m posting tonight (Sunday) because I won’t have time during the week and I’m determined to keep my schedule of once per week blogging up. I have a big week of training ahead and I can’t wait to start. As I’ve mentioned in a previous post or two, Abmar Barbosa is going to coach all of the classes this week at the gym from Tuesday night onwards. Opportunities like this don’t come along every day so I’m determined to make the most of it and train twice a day for the week. Tomorrow I’ll do some stretching and some prehab as usual and tomorrow night I might have a wee roll. Come Tuesday I’ll be back in training.

My toe seems to have benefitted from the week off, although the pain is still there with certain movements I can definitely feel an improvement which is great because I was starting to worry that I’d completely torn something. The acid test is actually rolling and passing guard in particular was causing me problems, so I’ll reserve judgement on how good it is until I give it a good test tomorrow night. Stupid toe. Really, I mean, a toe. I don’t think there’s an injury that sounds more wussy than this. Very painful though, I swear.

Right then, to the business of the day, and the reason for my rather witty post title.* I was asked about how I balance training and coaching with family life and I suppose it’s a little rude not to answer since I get all of about 2 blog requests per annum. I make a conscious effort to keep my work and family separate, and I suppose the blog counts as work. Simultaneously, I’ve given two points in that last sentence. 1) I try to keep them separate, 2) I’m breaking that rule to some extent here, but it’s only to answer the question about why I have the rule. But wait. If I’m breaking the rule to explain the rule… will the rule cease to exist? Damn.

I have a beautiful family. I know everyone says that about their family, but I’ve seen everyone else’s and mine is really beautiful and their’s isn’t. Woody Allen is 5 and Smiley is 15 months. I like reading their books to them and I’d love to put them to bed every night, but I don’t get to because of the nature of my work. This is the only drawback I can see to my career choice, but you have to balance that drawback with having a dad who loves getting out of bed to come into work every morning and comes home every evening with a smile on his face. Also, when your dad can choke out every other dad in the playground, that’s helpful in resolving small disputes over who was on the swing first.

Of course, there’s someone else in my family but I keep her just for me, so sod off blog readers and go read about Jordan and Alex. One titbit of information will have to do. Would you believe it, someone in jiu jitsu summed up this for me a few weeks back. I was asking him how he balanced all the travel and training with his partner. He said something that really hit home. “Some women drag you down. But the right woman, she raises you up”. Damn. That’s some deep stuff for a training blog.

Gotta go. There’s eh, something in my eye.

*interestingly?, I never title my posts until after I’ve written them. I don’t plan my posts well enough to have a pre-written title. What this means, of course, is that I’ve just assumed I’m going to think of something witty, which puts the pressure on a bit. I haven’t thought this through very well.

? this depends on your definition of interesting.