2026 Training Log Part 10

Just one training session last week as I went on a holiday later in the week.

Monday

Jiu Jitsu. A great session because I don’t coach it, can switch my brain off and switch into student mode for the evening and just enjoy myself doing the thing I love the most about martial arts- training.

It honestly doesn’t matter what’s being taught, who is there, what weight or belt everyone is, if the position suits me or not, I just love to train.

And we piss around the margins, worrying if this or that is “optimal”, or if there’s a better way to learn skills, or if you should be warming up a certain way, doing more positional drills, doing more technique, sparring less or more. Some of that might be enjoyable to do, but all of the thinking about it and arguing about it makes it miserable.

And while we’re on misery…

I would hate to be starting to train now as a young guy. It’s not the training, that’s great. It’s the internet man. We have to do something about the internet.

When I was a young competitor, I would get up at Stupid O’Clock so that I could keep on weighing (wait for this), 75kgs. I ran at 5.30am to keep my weight down, and on those pre-dawn roads I would think about what my opponents were doing. Were they up at 5am before work, doing their road work like I was? What was their training like? Were they getting good sparring? How much were they doing? Was I doing enough? I would torment myself with these imaginary supermen who were up an hour before me, running a mile more than me, had better sparring partners than me, and had better technique than me.

But now, I wouldn’t have to imagine it, I could just open my phone and see it. All of those carefully curated training videos would be right there for me to see. Everyone’s personal Rocky montage playing in front of you whenever you want it. In this world, you’re never doing enough, and you’re always, always behind the curve.

Whether you want to be or not, when you get to my age and my experience you become avuncular when speaking to younger guys on the mat. I try as much as I can to meet them on their own turf, but it’s too difficult not to age myself and begin a sentence with “In my day…” But the one lesson I try to pass on is just enjoy it. Enjoy any time you get to train. Smile. Have the craic with the guys around you. Don’t worry about what the others are doing. They’re not doing as much as they say they are anyway.

The best part about that is that when you look back on your training you’ll understand that the times when you had the most fun coincided with the times you improved the most. That’s not a happy accident. I remember keeping an old training diary (as in on paper), and we used to put our RPE on it (rate of perceived exertion). 1 being I just about broke a sweat, 5 being I couldn’t stand up afterwards. If you had too many 5s, you needed a break. Too many 1s and 2s, you needed to push harder. At one stage I started adding emojis. A sad, happy, or neutral face for how I was feeling in general. It was remarkable how many of my 5s coincided with a sad face. When you’re not enjoying it, everything seems like work.

But hey, I’m speaking to the wrong demographic. Kids don’t read blogs.

See you on the mat,

Barry