Purple belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

Yahoo! On Monday night, at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training just after returning from the European championships, instructor Edson Jorge awarded me the purple belt! After almost five years of training in this sport, it sure feels good.

This, however, is both good, and bad.

A lot of responsibility goes with the purple belt. It's the first belt in BJJ that generally qualifies you to teach. And it's the half-way point to black. That's the good.

The bad, for me, is that the student are really gunning for you when rolling in class. I'd kind of decided to modify my training, to try to reduce the number of little niggling injuries that seem to have accumulated, by rolling hard only once a week. But now it seems like I'm going to be fighting for my life every time we train.