500 Hours of BJJ In A Year: February
This article is an update on the 500 Hours of BJJ in a year challenge, click here for last month’s update.
Although the title might make it obvious, I’ll give you a little refresher on the goals we’re tracking here. 2020 is the year that I’m aiming to cram in 500 hours of BJJ which comprises of a little teaching and a lot of drilling and rolling. I’m able to train once a day, every day thanks to a steady work pattern and if I was to do all seven days, my week would look like this:
Monday: 6:00-7:30 Gi BJJ
Tuesday: 7:00-8:30 No-Gi BJJ (Teaching)
Wednesday: 6:00-7:30 Gi BJJ (Competition Training)
Thursday: 6:30-7:30 Gi BJJ (Fundamentals)
Friday: 6:00-7:30 Gi BJJ
Saturday: 11:00-12:30 No-Gi BJJ
Sunday: 10:00-11:30 No-Gi BJJ (Teaching)
The month started off well as I found out halfway through last month that I needed to get in extra rounds or extra drilling wherever possible and I decided to start doing this right from the beginning of this February. I hit a speedbump after a week or so though after suffering a minor foot injury thanks to me not tapping quick enough to a Toehold. Not a big deal really but I knew I had to take a day or two off in order to come back fully fit and ready to go, the last thing I can afford now is to make a minor injury worse and be forced into a few weeks off: That would probably end this entire challenge.
The next break I had was for Valentine’s Day, I’m married so this wasn’t really something that was avoidable, I’m sure I’m not alone here. That’s why I planned ahead and actually booked the day before off work, so that I could train during the daytime as well as the afternoon and make up for the missed day. Shortly after this (and anyone in the UK can appreciate this) we had horrific rain over a few weeks at the end of February and while no sessions were cancelled, this did hurt the numbers of people who turned up and as a result, I was left with nobody turning up for one Sunday morning class.
My coach was also out in California for the first week of February so some classes were adjusted to purely rolling and I covered for two other classes in the week. I also covered the last Saturday of the month as my coach’s son was competing in his first MMA fight and he was away cornering him, both of these things skewed the split between rolling, drilling and teaching to a little outside the norm, so this is how the month ended up:
Target: 41 hours.
Actual: 40.5 hours.
Gi: 22.5 hours.
No Gi: 18 hours.
Drilling: 11 hours.
Teaching: 11 hours.
Sparring: 18.5 hours.
And the year so far:
Target: 82 hours.
Actual: 79.5 hours.
Gi: 44.5 hours.
No Gi: 35 hours.
Drilling: 25 hours.
Teaching: 19 hours.
Sparring: 35.5 hours.
I’m still a little behind and still fell a little short of the 41 hour goal for the month. That being said, I knew February would be hard at only 29 days and the minor injury coupled with rain really screwed me over too. With that in mind, March should be the month I can hit the 41 hour mark and if all goes well, make up the 2.5 hours that I’m behind too.
To see the rest of the entries in the 500 hours of BJJ in a year challenge, click here.