It looks like the natural period of rest has started as we enter the holiday season for 2010.

The Academy has posted the Christmas hours, Professor Britto is in Brazil and the class sizes are already much smaller.

Professor Britto was very mindfull of his students feelings this week as the classes after promotions can be tough for the guys who did not manage to level up. I thought this was a nice touch that he spoke of this. You can't have ego in this game. Ego would have stopped me from going to class on Monday and enjoying watching my team mates beaming and being part of their celebration. When Jorge mentioned he was never disappointed by any promotion that happened I understood what he meant. I got the second stripe on my belt and to be honest that's good enough for me to round of the year.

The school also held another promotions ceremony on Wednesday for those who had not yet received their new belts.

Correndo ('Running' in Portuguese) is the traditional Gauntlet you must run after you have got you promotion...you get your back whipped while you run down a passage made up of your peers...who are doing the whacking...we had a huge number of promotions so there was alot of whipping to be done.

Eduardo, Mikey and Tommy will be taking care of business until Professor Britto is back at the start of January.

It will be good to let our bodies heal from the training and fatten up with the eating over Christmas but I am already dialing in the World Jiu Jitsu Pro Trials in February in Montreal. There's no real reason for relaxing and taking a time out from training...we do jiu jitsu. It's what we love to do. Somewhere in my head a few weeks ago I promised myself 2 weeks rest but that's likely not going to happen. That urge to be on the mats and to make myself a slightly better version of who I was yesterday does not go away.

Here's hoping you are having a safe and sound December so far.

And once again congratulations to all my team mates for a great year and for all the recent promotions.