The more time I spend in jiujitsu, the more I think about how best to create a school culture. I’ve been lucky to learn from a lot of amazing people, and while each gym is different, the best ones have a set of core values — often implicit. I wanted to make those values explicit, so I came up with this.
What do you think? What’s missing?
We Believe
We believe that jiujitsu is for everyone. Not everyone has the same goals or the same ceiling, but everyone can improve their life by training.
We believe in constant improvement. Everyone in your life knows something that you don’t. Every person on the mat can help you get better at something.
We believe in being good training partners. Your training partner is the most important person in the gym. Train so both people get something out of the class.
We believe in training hard and training smart. If we never spar hard, we don’t get all the benefits jiujitsu offers as an “alive” martial art. If we treat every sparring round like the finals at the world championships, we sacrifice technical understanding and risk injury. Train hard. Train smart.
We believe in jiujitsu for self defense, jiujitsu for sport, and jiujitsu for life. This art will help you reach your goals — and if you pay attention to the fundamentals, you can succeed in all the areas of jiujitsu.
We believe that jiujitsu is for everyone. This is important, so we’re saying it again. Everyone is welcome here.
Your job at white and blue belt is to learn, reinforce and try to master the fundamentals. Every gym defines what those fundamentals are slightly differently, but however your gym’s fundamentals curriculum is structured, your time at white and blue belt has to end with you knowing it inside and out.
In August, I wrote about how to make an improvement plan while you’re a white or blue belt. A lot of the off-the-mat tactics for improvement — visualization, yoga, meditation — remain the same, and are never going to be bad for you. Those practices are all things I still do as often as I can. As you advance in the belt ranks, though, you can expand your knowledge and skillset — both because you’re going to be able to assimilate more information, and because more techniques become legal in competition.
This doesn’t mean you abandon the basics. Quite the opposite. Refining my understanding of the fundamentals is something I expect to do for the rest of my life. Yet as your knowledge expands, the more you realize how much there is to know.
That’s why structuring your training becomes more important at high blue belt, purple belt and thereabouts. It’s the most efficient way to know what you know, and conversely what you don’t know. Evaluating your knowledge base helps determine your drilling and learning priorities. Of course you should keep coming to class, including the fundamentals class. Extra drilling and focused training during rolling are great ways to get faster, better results in addition to class.
On the day before my wedding, we had a special open mat where a host of jiujitsu friends converged to train during my last full day as a single guy.
It was already a tremendous experience — twelve rolls for me! Five black belts! — even before my instructor surprised me with my brown belt.
I want to thank everybody who reached out with congratulations, either for the marriage or the belt or both. Toward the end of the honeymoon, during the long travel day back to Durham from Belize, I started to think about goals for the next year or two.
(Okay, you got me: I was really thinking about this long before the flight back, as Betsy and I were plotting the invention of Double Reverse Secret Octopus Guard on the beach).
Although I certainly still have competition goals, those aren’t really the terms I’m thinking in right now. I’ll analyze those in earnest in December. My main aim has always been to have good, solid fundamental jiujitsu over the long term. The rest will come as long as I keep my eye on that.
My main goal at brown belt is to tap more. Well, kind of. Let me explain what I mean.
To maximize your potential, you have to both enhance the skills you’re good at and shore up your weaknesses. Ideally you do these at the same time, but you’re naturally going to focus more on certain aspects at different stages of the journey. At purple belt, most of what I was working on related directly to positional advancement and control — escapes from bad spots, sweeps to get on top, guard passing and maintaining dominant positions. You can see how this would fit in with the long-term goals.
The jiujitsu teachers I respect most are those that keep learning and are nearly impossible to submit. One thing I’ve learned: they don’t get that way by locking people down in side control.
At the wedding open mat, I noticed several of the black belts who don’t get to train with each other very often consciously putting themselves in another black belt’s best spots. If a guy had a dangerous guard, they’d eagerly play there. A guy has a good footlock game? Let’s play legs with him. Someone is known for their omoplata? Let’s start there and see what happens.
Does this mean you’re going to tap more than you would normally? Sure. But it also means you’re getting insights that you wouldn’t get if, say, you got to a spot where you knew you were safe, or if the only person you ever let get to omoplata was a new blue belt.
Seeing these guys that I admire, and whose skills are much greater than my own, roll in this manner really inspired me to put myself in more dangerous spots. Jiujitsu is about survival, and there’s tremendous power in learning about where are the danger points are. In order to know those points you have to explore them. Maybe you saw Garry Tonon’s recent quote about tapping several times a round on average? There are many reasons he’s so good, but I have a feeling that’s one of them. You don’t escape a Kron Gracie armbar without getting putting yourself in danger of being armbarred consistently.
At brown belt my A-game is fairly well defined. I know the techniques and move sets that make sense to me. To get to the next level — and have that rock-solid fundamental jiujitsu over the long term — it’s time to spend hours on the mat exploring my weaknesses and fixing those holes, and learning more about other folks’ strengths so I can add those insights.
So yeah, one goal over the next year is to tap a lot more. I have other goals, too, believe me, but those are for future posts.
Goal-setting has been a huge help for me. I constantly try to set and evaluate short- and long-term goals. Do you have tactics for goal-setting? What are they?
Planning for the worst-case scenarios is the best way to ensure those scenarios don’t happen.
When you’re dealing with something as complex as jiujitsu, the possibilities for what might happen in a given sparring session or competition are almost literally limitless. Preparing as best we can, physically and mentally, is the best way to be prepared. How do we prepare to succeed, though, when the material we need to know is so vast?
The answers slightly vary based on experience level and belt level — and vary greatly from person to person, because we all have individualized needs — but I’m going to give you my best general answers for how to make a three-month plan dedicated to improving your jiujitsu. These would vary based on people’s goals, of course, and particular needs. A young woman focused intently on winning competition jiujitsu matches would have different needs from an older man focused on weight loss and self defense, for example.
Having a plan doesn’t guarantee that you’ll hit your goal, but it’s the best way I know for structured improvement. Plus, if you miss your goal, you’ll know you did everything you could to get there, which is some solace.
Originally, this post was going to be how to make a training plan at every belt level. It got very long very fast, though, so I’m splitting it in two. This post will cover how to make a training plan for white and early blue belts. If you’re a mid-level blue belt and up (say, you’ve been a blue belt more than two years, or have two stripes or more), a post is coming for you soon (EDIT: that post is here).
And here’s an idea — what if, instead of just offering private lessons, gym owners offered personalized training plan packages for one, three, or six months that included tailored improvement plans for that specific student? Just a thought for you gym owners. Continue reading “Making a Training Plan For Jiujitsu at White and Blue Belt”
Mat time is the best time. You should — and almost always will — feel better about everything after a solid night of training. In order to get the most out of mat time, it helps to think about your approach.
One of the rarest but smartest questions I get from newer people is, phrased one way or another, “How do I roll?” Sometimes people are looking for a technique to start a sparring session with, just to get the game going. Sometimes people don’t want to be jerk people complain about having to roll with. Often, people want to know how to maximize the value they get from rolling sessions.
All of these are great reasons, and they hint at an important meta-principle about jiujitsu: don’t be afraid to ask questions! People want to help you progress. Besides, we’ve all seen problems created when someone erroneously assumes they know the rolling culture of their gym without having to ask.
Here are five principles that should help, especially for newer people.
Learning jiujitsu is like learning a language. You don’t do it all at once. You learn the smallest, most base elements of a new tongue (an alphabet, words) before you dive in to the whole grand structure.
As you get more building blocks — more movements, a larger vocabulary of techniques — your understanding of the physical grammar expands. This is an exciting, albeit frustrating, process. I still remember the first time I hit the basic rear naked choke, and I also remember the months it took me to get there.
But you can’t say the same words forever unless you’re Hodor. You also can’t rear naked choke everyone either. If you want to become fluent, you have to acknowledge that what you’re aiming for is a long process.
That’s where transitions come in. Learning a technique well is powerful, but learning to flow between the techniques amplifies that power manifold. It’s the difference between knowing words and being able to have a conversation.
In this analogy, drilling complete transitions — chaining moves together — represents sentences and phrases, the core components of dialogue. When someone defends our attack, we want to be able to understand the language of that defense — and have our responsive phrase flow from us immediately and effortlessly.
We’ve talked about the power of drilling before. It helps us solidify our core of knowledge. Other people have knowledge, too, though. To stay ahead of them, we have to drill, and to drill chains of moves. I had a great response to my earlier post about how I drill and learn moves, so I thought it might be helpful to do a follow-up on my method for drilling transitions.
I divide the types of chain drills I do into two categories in my mind: static (or simple) and dynamic (or active). These aren’t cut-and-dried distinctions, but it’s how I think about them. We’ll start with the most simplistic versions of these and advance to the most complex.
Editor’s Note: We run occasional guest posts from members of the jiu-jitsu community, and would love to run more. If you would like to submit one, please e-mail us. This is one we received from a competitive blue belt in North Carolina, in “open letter” format. We liked it a lot and hope you do, too.
To the girl who thinks she can’t do it:
As I look back over the past 2 years of my life, I am almost unable to fathom how much everything has changed.
Two years ago, I was sitting in the breakroom at work talking to an old friend, when he broke the news. I found out the guy – that just a year earlier I thought I was going to marry – just became a father. He was starting a family, a life, and I was just sitting in the breakroom. Granted, I didn’t want to be a mother at 23, but this news hit me like a ton of bricks. (I now know that no one has their life together at 23, but at the time it felt like my world was falling apart).
The situation slowly sunk in and weighed heavy on me.
As a visitor to another academy, I never expect high-level black belts to roll with me. They’ve earned the right to train with whoever they want to. But Fernando Yamasaki had heard that I was competing at a major tournament soon, and he wanted to help me.
“Come after me,” he said. “Really kick my butt.” (Yeah, like that’s going to happen.)
My philosophy on sparring with people who outclass me is simple: I try to be as technical as possible, to try to do correct movements. I try not to use much strength or athleticism — partially because I don’t actually have those things, but mostly because this person is going to beat me anyway. I might as well be cerebral about my beating so I can learn from it, instead of risking hitting them in the nose and really taking a whooping. I rolled as well as I could against Fernando, but I wasn’t trying to go at competition speed and he knew it.
After the round was over, he put my hand on my shoulder and said this:
“You’re a very nice man,” he said, not meaning it as a compliment. “But that doesn’t work for competition.”
This is my advanced Nogi finals match with Kelly Quinn from this past weekend. Fun match! Thanks Kelly.
(It sure didn’t work here, but this was still a fun match)
***
If you asked people I train with to describe me, I think that word would come up, nice. I certainly try to be. I also try to be realistic about my own level — I’m 41 and do this as a hobby, often in the 30+ division — and this type of realism creates humility, because realistically, there are a lot of people that are better at jiujitsu than I am. This isn’t something I have to be convinced of: it’s just naturally how I think and who I am.
Which brings up another story about another badass black belt scoffing at me. When I came out for a major tournament, I got pulled out of the bullpen and went to stand by the mat where I’d compete. Jason Culbreth saw me smiling and laughing and waving to people. He tried to give me a lecture about getting into the kick-that-guy’s-ass mindframe. But I just couldn’t stop smiling. This is what I do for fun, I said, and shrugged.
“Well,” he responded with a mix of amusement and disgust, “you’ve got to be who you are, I guess.”
Part of the way I act before the match is rational, and part of it isn’t. The rational part of my mind says that both me and the other guy have prepared as much as we can, and either I’m better than him or I’m not. There isn’t much I can do about it at the point right before the match, so why stress about it?
The irrational part is something that I don’t admit very often, and now I’m going to admit it in public. What I’m about to admit is odd, and it makes me very fortunate.
Once the match begins and we slap hands, I think I’m going to win. Always. No matter what. No matter who the other person is, no matter how badly the match is going. The other person could be a world-class black belt, and I just wouldn’t think about that during the flow of the match. My opponent could be up 25-0, and I’d believe that I was going to catch a neck or a foot and submit him. (This happened to me at the Worlds, when I was down something like 13-2 and I never thought I was going to lose until the timer went off).
Lost this match, too.
This isn’t something I’ve trained: it’s just something that happens, which is lucky for me, because I think the mental aspect of jiujitsu is critical.In order to compete, you have to get rid of doubt.
By itself, this isn’t even very unusual. Most of the successful competitors I know describe something similar, a preternatural confidence.
What makes my experience strange is that, outside of that few intense minutes on the mat, I think I’m very conscious of where I stand. If you were to ask me about certain guys I compete against, I have no problem saying who I think is better than me (which drives my instructor crazy sometimes). During tournaments, I’ll find myself in a situation where I’m in a match with someone who, objectively, should smash me. But that thought won’t even occur to me. A few minutes after his hand gets raised, I’ll think … “wait a second, how did I think I could beat that guy?”
I don’t have an answer to that question. I don’t know why it happens. And I don’t feel like this is something I can take credit for, since it’s just happened for me, the way some people are naturally strong, or fast.
This works both ways, of course. We all know someone who is an absolute beast that, for some reason, doesn’t realize that they should be beating up everyone. I know a lot of competitors these days have mental coaches, which makes sense. Mental attributes are just like physical attributes. We all get dealt a hand by nature, and then it’s up to us to maximize what we’ve been given. You might be naturally strong, but you have to do work to maintain and enhance that. A competition mentality is the same: some people are born with it. Some people need to develop it, just like physical strength.
And maybe you’re strong, but don’t have a lot of flexibility: truly training to be the best you can be involves addressing weaknesses as well as strengths. Even top-level competitors admit to competition nerves. It’s unproductive to complain about the guy in the gym with monstrous muscles: it’s more productive to honestly analyze what your own gifts are, as well as the traits you have to improve.
When I compete seriously, I try to visit as many different academies as I can. My own school will always be home, but if we don’t have class or if I’m traveling, it’s valuable to train with people who do techniques differently, who have different strengths than I do, and people who are just plain better.
I’ll keep rolling with whoever will train with me. And I’ll continue to be as nice as I can. Most of all, in terms of competition, I’ll adhere to the advice of Fernando Yamasaki — modified by the maxim of my favorite philosophy graduate from NYU:
For every job, there is a perfect tool. Life is about taking the tools you’re given and applying them as best you can in the correct situations. I’m grateful for the odd little mental switch in me that flips when the match starts, even if I don’t fully understand it.
Editor’s Note: Like a gentleman, the only time I ever touch feet is when I’m giving Marcellus Wallace a foot massage. But my good friend Lt. Col. Toehold goes for your feet like a submission-focused Rex Ryan. (Actually, maybe Rex Ryan is submission focused. Let’s not think about that too closely). Anyway, enjoy this guest post, and thanks to Lt. Col. Toehold for writing it.
ADCC 2015. Thirty-three matches ended in submission. Nine of those were lower body submissions including six heel hooks, two toeholds, and one kneebar. Polaris 2 this weekend saw two incredible battles in Tonon vs. Imanari and Cummings vs. Bodycomb. Both matches ended in heel hook. Ryan Hall just won his way onto the Ultimate Fighter house by an Imanari roll to inverted 50/50, followed by a heel hook. Eddie Cummings won the Eddie Bravo 3 tournament, submitting the entire field with heel hooks.
Without a doubt, leg locks are the fastest growing set of submissions in the sport. They can also be the most dangerous because they are often misunderstood and hence not immediately respected.
I wanted to take the time to share some thoughts on leg locks. First off, let me clarify something. I’m a purple belt. Which means a couple things. Most importantly I’m early on in the learning process. This is important to understand because I’m not preaching years of advice. Rather, I’m explaining the path that I’m on in my education of leg locks. Second, I’m not even allowed to do leg locks in competition. This means my sage advice hasn’t even been tested in IBJJF competitions.
Without a fighter from Japan and a few Brazilian pioneers, I wouldn’t be writing this blog. Without a black belt from Vermont, I wouldn’t be competing at high-level tournaments. Without a select handful of dedicated people, I would be a completely different person than I am — a less happy, less tough person leading a less fulfilled life.
That last paragraph is about my lineage in jiujitsu, the teachers that have trained me. We think about that a fair bit in the martial arts.
Interestingly, a new guest article on JiuJitsu Times purports to not see why lineage matters. While I see where the author is coming from — yes, in a fight or a tournament match, no one cares who your instructor is — the piece wildly misanalyzes what lineage is and why it’s important. Continue reading “Why BJJ Lineage Matters”
