A Memorable Experience.......

Confidence....

Today will be the last day of conditioning followed by some light rolling just to maintain sharpness. I feel supremely confident. I have trained hard and fine tuned a lot of my game this past 30 days. I fly out to Los Angeles at 6:30am. I feel a lot less nervous than I thought I would. It feels just like another competition. And that mainly stems from the confidence I have in my instructors and the Jiu Jitsu they have bestowed upon me. I am eager to compete against the best in the world, I welcome the challenge.

Thank you to everyone that has been in my corner supporting me and best wishes to my teammates as we try to inscribe our names in history.

Staying Sharp........

After having a successful showing at the Bluegrass open last weekend, it is back to the grind stone in preparation for Worlds in a few weeks. Training has been going well for the entire team. Focusing on structure, connection and staying discipline. There are a lot of fancy things people are doing, and structure and connection are the antithesis to those fancy things.

A dull blade can still cut you, but a sharp blade can sever a limb. That truly is the difference between a good grappler and a great grappler. At some point you will have compiled an efficient amount of technique and only the details will separate the best from the rest. Connection, timing, sensitivity and how sharp you are will be the deciding factor in a lot of competition based scenarios. The right choice at the wrong time, still ends up being the wrong choice. Sharpness will be the deciding factor in what techniques are successful and what techniques are not.

The next week or so will be spent fine tuning everything and getting mentally focused.

30 Days to Greatness!!!

Registration is complete! My intentions are to keep everyone updated with training progress, diet tips, Crossfit Workouts from hell, along with some general tomfoolery to make the process as enjoyable as possible. Four weeks to batten down the hatches and prepare for the biggest competition of my life!

Training Smart????

Often you will hear an instructor or competitor say you have to train smart. But not many people fully understand what that means. A common assumption is that when someone speaks about training smart typically they are addressing the issues that occur with high intensity levels on the mat. We have all trained with that one person who no matter how light you want to roll or how much you want to flow, that person has one pace and one pace only which is Mundials, match 5 for the Gold Medal! Although it is important to train with a high level of intensity in preparation for competitions, it is not a good idea to train at that level all the time as it will eventually lead to injury.

With that said, training smart constitutes much more than moderating or regulating intensity levels on the mat. How and what you train are equally as important. After a few years of training everyone will develop a set of go to positions, attacks, counters, and escapes. It is natural for you to do what you are best at, especially when you are under duress. And the trap that a lot of people fall into is the “I catch everyone with this” trap. We all have a set move list we know we can count on. Be it the triangle, the guillotine, or a certain combination such as scissor sweep to armbar.

We fall in love with these techniques and transitions as white belts and use them often because, well frankly, you just don’t know a whole lot else at that time. But once you have moved up in the ranks and added a few years to you game it gets tougher and tougher to pull those moves off with the same effortless consistency. So the natural inclination for most is to further perfect those move sets. We too often drill and practice those techniques as much as possible, and look for all the many ways to get to our go to moves or combinations. Now for competition, this is likely a formula for success. It is most beneficial to start compititions with your A, B and C move set verses your X, Y or Z move set. We want to win or lose with our best stuff. But for overall growth, training just what you are good at is not a good formula for long term success and achieving the overall all goal of becoming a better grappler.

In summary, training smart includes putting yourself in bad situations, position specific training, handicapping yourself when training with lower skilled individuals, drilling instead of free rolling, isolation training (move specific), moderating intensity, and most important, the constant regulation of your ego are going to lead to long term victory and success both on and off the mat. If you can’t get past your own pridefulness, you will never allow yourself to be in uncomfortable positions for risk of being submitted. You have to train where you are weakest and strengthen all the links in your chain.

Training with one hand, only working from the guard, instead of just pulling guard, work for the takedown, only working escapes from side control, training 10 minutes with someone of lesser skill and refraining from attacking with submissions, training with someone better than you and preventing that person from mounting or taking your back, etc. These are the surefire ways to improve your game for both self defense and competition.

Train Smart and Train Often!!!!!!

Building a Better You.........

Often one will hear a Jiu Jitsu student or instructor speak on how Jiu Jitsu has changed their life. For the average person, it may be difficult to see how rolling around with someone on the ground can allow you to achieve enlightenment or allow a person to reach a near euphoric universal clarification on all that is grand and beautiful. Frequently these types of statements are brushed off as “hippie talk” and the individuals considered spurious at best. I will attempt to clarify in my own words to give a more tangible explanation on why people including myself feel this way about the art of Jiu Jitsu.

To attain a high level of proficiency in Jiu Jitsu it requires years of practice, dedication and discipline. To become great at Jiu Jitsu it would take all of the same, but even more of the key ingredient………………..time. Time is a fickle thing. It is a currency of sort. We spend it on watching T.V., eating, working, video games, sleeping, or chasing tail. We spend it on drinking and partying, playing and parenting, living and loving, and the list goes on and on.

Jiu Jitsu is unique in its abilities to initiate a sustained ripple effect throughout your life. Unlike other activities or hobbies that can occasionally cause one to change short term habits, few things can almost force one to overhaul their entire life for the better.  Addiction to Jiu Jitsu quickly forces you to choose your priorities. Would you rather party or train, would you rather hang out at the bar after work or train after work?
Jiu Jitsu is hard, very hard. And because of that intrinsic characteristic it will either make or break most people in the first year, if not the first month. In a 30 day period one will come into contact with the fear. And this fear will stand in front of you like a mile of 10 foot walls. The fear of physical contact, the fear of altercation, the fear of failure, the fear of hurt pride, the fear of commitment, and ultimately the mighty ego, will be the undoing of many first timers.

Jiu Jitsu asks you to show up voluntarily to a place where you will quickly realize how inferior your abilities to defend yourself truly are. The truth will be clear on the mat. The mat is a sort of looking glass. It will show you in complete clarity where your mental toughness is, how big of an ego you have, and how resolute you are.  You will be humbled day in and day out for years to come. You will have to actively make the choice to show up every day or every other day and learn. You will have to push past the claustrophobia, the physical discomfort, and the fear. Overcome your pride, selfishness, and inherent uneasiness with not “Winning”. You will have to get over the fact that you simply don’t know everything. All of these breakthroughs are humbling. Each  of the hurdles  you jump give you strength and every day you pick up something new, your confidence increases and your perseverance is all the more evident through your mini personal victories every day.

On this journey you will learn to trust your training partners, trust you instructors with your well being, and trust yourself that you have the willpower to dedicate yourself to a difficult mental and physical challenge. Through this initial process you are almost born again. Because every skill both physical and mental that is acquired along the way can be extrapolated to every aspect of your life, patience to solve complex problems, the ability to defuse altercations through conflict resolution, and the mental stoutness and clarity to think past the visceral responses that are generated by our feeble monkey brains. The road rage, the tough guy/girl routine, the need for approval and validation will slowly dissolve as you are less and less dependent on your ego and pride to guide your every decision. The benefits are countless. This week I will cover others such as diet and fitness in later posts.

Black is the new White?

Sometimes when you show up to the mat you are trying to grasp so much it’s hard to get everything to stick. It’s a lot like swimming in the ocean. While you’re getting thrashed around by big waves you’re basically just trying to stay afloat and avoid drowning. For a while you think the feeling is localized in your own psyche. But everyone has felt that and likely still does.

As a beginning White Belt your ABSOLUTE sole purpose and main priority should be learning to survive.  If you’re flailing your arms around like your trying to scare kids on Halloween, they are more susceptible to attack. Therefore you should always keep them tight. You should always keep your opponents hands off of your collar to avoid chokes.  Focus heavily on having good posture and having good base. Your primary objective as a White Belt is to stay alive and make it as difficult as possible for your opponent to attack you. Mastering defense is what it means to be a White Belt.  With this type of mental shift you will save yourself a lot of time trying to figure out how to “Win”.

As a Blue Belt you should be very adept at keeping your appendages attached to their proper joints and your blood consistently flowing to your brain without being shut off by nasty chokes. At this stage your goal will shift from defense to escapes. You want to be as slippery as a pig in a pigpen during a rain storm. A Blue Belts game should consist of perfecting your escapes and transitions. It should be increasingly difficult to even hold you in a position let alone attempt to attack you from one. During this period you can afford to move a lot more due to your increased body awareness and defensive skills that were honed during your time as a White Belt. If you find yourself in a less than savory position then you should already be proficient in “Staying Safe”; and equally as proficient in being patient and waiting for an opportunity to move to a superior position.

Now as a Purple Belt things shift more towards the guard. Pulling Guard and maintaining the Guard. Since the majority of your attacks will be from the Guard this should be your focus. Purple Belts should be efficient at avoiding attacks by utilizing great defense and being agile on the mat. Escaping and transitioning through and from various positions. Now is the time to focus on escaping and pulling Guard then maintaining the Guard. You will also be starting to develop your own game a bit during this stage. This development will progress mostly from increasing your skill level in the Guard.

Now as a Brown Belt you have a solid defensive game, vibrant escapes, and a dynamic Guard. But so does every other Brown Belt. Now is the time to work on passing the dozens of guards out there. You can’t work your game; if you’re constantly stuck in someone else’s Guard. And everyone knows it’s a pain trying to pass a really good Guard. This is also the stage where you are not only refining your own game, but refining others game also. Fine tuning your abilities to instruct others and point out the proper way to perform a technique on various body types will be the key to making the jump to the next level.

Your been through fire and hell, long hot, roasting days on the mat, years of being flipped, swept, choked, locked, chewed up and spit out. And now FINALLY you have arrived. It’s almost impossible to attack you; you’re always moving around and escaping. Your opponents throw tantrums on the mat because they can’t hold you in a position for more than a second. And even if they manage to get you in the Guard you pass with ease like Peyton Manning against a High School football team.

At the rank of Black Belt you have a deeper understanding of leverage, timing, weight distribution, and the combination of what I like to call the Jiu Jitsu Sixth Sense which is sensation and reaction (You’re basically a Jedi on the mat).

Now it’s time to finish. It’s time to attack and finish attacks from all the positions you have become ever so comfortable with. Now when you grab a hold of something, you take it home with you! That arm is now your arm. His joints respond the way you want them to. He is but a helpless crash dummy coming along for the ride. You dictate the pace, and you are now in control.
As a Black Belt it’s all about finishing and fine tuning. Insuring that not only can you drive the ball 90 yards, you can score at will. Everything you have learned over the past years has been stripped down to its simplest form. You act instinctively to your opponent, relentlessly adapting to your environment. Like the great Bruce Lee often said you don’t even have to think, it just does it all on its own.

Many Black Belts often refer to themselves as a White Belt that never quits. It is important to remember that even at the Black Belt level you still feel like a White Belt. There is still so much to learn.

It’s a long Journey for us all. Never quit and eventually we all can get there.