your progress is like stocks

Isn’t it difficult seeing progress sometimes?

Don’t get me wrong, sometimes we can track our improvements easily, like when we look to increase our weights that we lift in the gym, or the times we run over a certain distance.

But even then it can feel difficult and sometimes like progress just isn’t being made.

In a sport like jiu jitsu it can be even more difficult. How can you tangibly tell that you’re better than you were last week. Realistically it’s not easy at all to do and ultimately, like I always coach, the battle of improving is with ourself not anybody else.

A raising tide lifts all ships is a phrase I love to use with my coaching, and even though it’s origins lie within the financial industry it applies to many things, BJJ and improvements made especially.

Working within a group of likeminded individuals like you get in great mma and martial arts gyms and academies Is fantastic for improvement. You all, as a team seem to influence and improve each other at varying rates and degrees with help from your coaches.

But developing your skillset alongside others is also when it becomes difficult to gauge the improvements too. As you improve so do they.

We also feel sometimes like our improvements are not only non existent but that we’re actually getting worse.

How can it be, i’m training 4 times a week and I know nothing about jiu jitsu it seems like I’m forgetting more than I remember.

This happens a lot.

To everyone.

Some weeks, you feel like you created all the moves in jiu jitsu, it all falls in to place and people seemingly fall in to your submission attempts with ease.

Then suddenly, things don’t seem to work.

Not only do the things you try to practice not seem to work, but your go to moves and game don’t make sense either. You can’t hit your sweeps, your reversals, your submissions and your body feels heavy and out of sync.

You’re now in the dip.

And, for your sanity, progress in training and happiness and enjoyment throughout it all it’s really important to understand that we ALL go through this dip. No matter the belt, no matter the experience. It just so happens the more experience you have the easier it is to hide it to others and to scrape by. But it still happens. We all have these dip sessions, days, weeks, months.

But it’s also important to know what’s after a dip, when you got the bottom.

You begin your rise.

In my coaching role I always liken it to the stock market.

If you ever follow stocks and investments, you see the rise and fall of the company worth rise and fall.

If you zoom in to the image you can just see the line pointing down. The value dropping. Then maybe it’s a little rise and a drop again.

In the minutiae it can look demoralising. A little depressing. But life, is the same, we have lulls and dips and highs and peaks and levelling out and all in between.

We sometimes just need to zoom out, take a little step back to see the bigger picture.

When we look at where we started up to now, even though we feel we are on a big dip and not progressing, we have come a long way on the upward stroke of just so happens that we are on a dip right at this moment.

It’s exactly the same in self development.

I have the habit of continuously reading, studying and learning.

I’m disciplined with my practice and aim to stick and maintain to all I plan out but sometimes, I feel like I miss the mark. I wonder if I have read enough or retained enough knowledge and put my learned skills in to practice. I lose track of my reading and struggle to finish books in the normal time I would with the same enjoyment.

But I now know that I’m just on a dip, I’ll keep my focus and aim to get as much of the best from it that I can but not to let it derail me fully from my chosen task as I know the rise will be coming again soon and this next one could be a really big one.

If you’re on the dip remember that a peak will come if you just work through it.

Zoom out a little, take a step back and take in the big picture.

See where you started and how far you have progressed, there’s no doubt it’s higher than the start.

Keep pushing on.