Never Stop Learning
There’s not a lot that I can add to this post, wherein a microbiologist tells you why it’s important to wash your belt. Instead, I made a silly comic expressing the same sentiments.
This was just some quick doodling when I had 5 minutes, but I had fun doing it, so maybe I’ll make more comics. If anybody has suggested topics, let me know.
“Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.” — Marvin Bell
The American poet Marvin Bell has a tremendous body of work that spans traditional, experimental and radical forms. His work is passionate, intricate and thoughtful — and as you’d expect, this makes him worth listening to when he talks about creating art.
There are points of commonality between the literary arts and the martial ones. I’ve been thinking about writing more lately, so I returned to some Marvin Bell texts the other day.
What does this have to do with training? I was struck by how many of Marvin Bell’s 32 Statements About Poetry sound, with minimal editing, like he could be talking about jiu-jitsu.
Below, I’ve taken many of the 32 statements and lightly edited them. I removed the ones that are just about the process of writing poetry. But I kept the majority of the statements, replacing “poetry” with “jiu-jitsu” and “writing” with “training,” for example. To me, there are significant insights that cross over. This might say something about the practice of each art, or it might simply speak well of Bell’s observations about life.
If you’re interested in poetry, check out the original 32 statements (and, while you’re at it, The Book of the Dead Man). If you’re just here for the jiu-jitsu, read on for some advice from a different type of artist.
1. Every jiu-jitsu practitioner is an experimentalist.
Jiu-jitsu is like science: we experiment with techniques. If the techniques work against a resisting opponent, we keep using and refining them. If not, they’re changed or discarded. And each of us has different physical attributes: for a time, I experimented with the body triangle. Upon my scientific discovery that I had stubby legs ill-suited for the task, I moved on. Training means trying things and finding what works for you.
2. Learning jiu-jitsu is a simple process: learn something, then train it; learn something else, then train something else. And show in your training what you have learned.
Jiu-jitsu is a deep, rich, complex art: jiu-jitsu is hard. In contrast, learning jiu-jitsu is easy. You find a great instructor, show up and do what they say. Drill the older stuff regularly, and be open when they show you something new.
3. There is no one way to train and no right way to train.
One of the instructors I respect most is old school, but also open-minded. After he watched a Caio Terra DVD, he remarked about how odd it was that Caio teaches techniques in a radically different way than he does — but the technique still makes sense. This is one reason Dave Camarillo’s maxim “train with everyone” is so apt: there are many things to learn and many different ways to learn them.
4. The good stuff and the bad stuff are all part of the stuff. No good stuff without bad stuff.
5. Learn the rules, break the rules, make up new rules, break the new rules.
Some of Bell’s statements I didn’t have to edit at all: these two were among them. These are true of poetry and jiu-jitsu and life. The latter in particular has echoed in my head for many years.
In jiu-jitsu, I think about rules like “hands off the mat,” which new people absolutely need to internalize. Then you train for a while and you learn exceptions. But this simple dozen words could be a philosophy all its own.
6. You do not learn from work like yours as much as you learn from work unlike yours.
I will never pull 50/50. Yet I own Tony Pacenski’s 50/50 guard DVD set. This is both because it’s important to learn the techniques you’ll come up against, and because it gives me a window into a way of doing things that is vastly different from my own.
7. Originality is a new amalgam of influences.
Ryan Hall is justifiably known for making great instructional DVDs. One of the things I like most about them is that Ryan explicitly mentions where he learned certain techniques and principles — almost like an academic citing sources. The way he thinks about jiu-jitsu is original, but includes knowledge he’s gathered from other sources. In amalgamation there is creativity.
Like it says in Hamlet, there is nothing new under the sun. We stand on the shoulders of those who came before us.
(This is also, incidentally, a reason I love rap music and mash-ups: creative combination and repurposing of found objects. But that’s a different post.)
8. Try to drill techniques at least one person in the room will hate.
You can take this one of two ways. Either “that guy is going to make fun of me for drilling berimbolo, but I’m going to do it anyway,” or “I am going to drill heavy pressure techniques, like the kind Roy Marsh teaches, and give people free chiropractic adjustments.”
Like Bell says, there’s no one way to do things.
12. It’s not what one begins with that matters; it’s the quality of attention paid to it thereafter.
I started out with much better takedowns and takedown defense than one of my training partners. She’s been working assiduously on it, and now she’s basically caught up to me. Nothing is static.
21. Jiu-jitsu has content but is not strictly about its contents.
These days when I go to a seminar I’m more interested in conceptual understanding than I am in learning new moves. Concepts are more important than contents. Once you have a bucket, you can always fill it with water. If you have no bucket, get all the water you want, and all you’ll have is a wet floor.
Leo Vieira told me at a seminar this year: “As long as I am comfortable and using less energy than my opponent, I’m doing the right thing.” It blew my mind.
23. One does not learn by having a teacher do the work.
You can ask your instructor to show you every technique they know. They can spend weeks of their life doing so. If you don’t drill constantly, you won’t learn even one of those.
28. Jiu-jitsu is a manifestation of more important things. On the one hand, it’s art! On the other, it’s just art.
Dave Camarillo’s academy has one rule: respect. It’s amazing how one principle can apply to all practices and situations.
It’s great to learn self-defense, just like it’s great to learn to move people with poetic words. But it’s really about the larger picture: respect, beauty, work ethic and becoming a better person.
29. Viewed in perspective, Parnassus is a very short mountain.
I’m just going to leave that right where it is. It’s perfect.
30. A good workshop continually signals that we are all in this together, teacher too.
Bell wrote this about writing workshops, but the best jiu-jitsu seminars are like this.
Murilo Bustamante, a man who as achieved more as a competitor, coach and instructor than 99 percent of people ever will, came to teach where I train. He listened to every question. He showed every detail people needed help with. He had enormous respect from everyone before he walked into the room and left with more than when entered.
32. Art is a way of life, not a career.
That says it all, no?
Quick crass commercial message: the Voltron rashie I did for Toro, which has belt-ranked lions ready to help you defend the universe, is on BJJHQ.com tonight at 11 p.m. I have a hunch these will go fast, so if you’d like one, check out the sale! And thanks as always for the support.
My name is Jeff, and I’m a gi addict. I make no apologies for this. The more gis I have clean and ready, the more opportunities I have to drill and roll — and because I train a lot and work a full-time job, reaching the bottom of the rotation happens a fair bit.
A good Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu gi is a functional piece of art. The function is most important, most would agree — the fit, the feel, the comfort and durability. If we’re honest, though, we have to admit that the art part matters as well. Clothing that looks good is more appealing than clothing that looks bad, whether you’re going to grip up on it or not.
I admire the way some designers are able to bridge the gap and make something that both looks good and works well. I thought I’d shout out five designs that I think are innovative without going too far afield, beautiful without being garish, and arty but still meeting the basic needs of the jiu-jiteiro.
Two caveats before I start: most of you know that I design gear for Toro BJJ, so I’m going to exempt Toro gis from consideration (even though I’m really stoked about the next Toro number, which we just got a sample of and will come out later this summer):
Second caveat: everyone has different taste. Some people rock tailored suits and some people opt for hoodies and flip-flops. I’m not a snob, and am a firm believer in letting people like what they like. My own tastes certainly influence this list. I hope and expect that people will post about great gis that I missed.
These gis I’ m about to list are all from different companies, were released at different times and have little in common other than I don’t own any of them (and, y’know, my birthday is in October). Friends of mine own each of these, though, so I got some insight into the quality of each release from them.
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are five creative gis that I think are awesome.
5. “Furinkazan“, by Muae
Printing directly on the inside of the gi is a bold innovation, and the image selection is terrific. It looks sharp at first, and on repeated washing, fades into a historical look. I’ve seen it on Ze Grapplez, and can testify that the art continues to pop long after the first time you roll in and wash it.
The decision to do this type of sublimated printing, coupled with the image choice, impressed me a lot when this gi came out. I still haven’t seen anything quite like it.
4. “The Wave,” by Scramble
If you want to talk about historically significant artwork, Hokusai’s “The Great Wave” has to be mentioned. This BBC podcast explains why: Hokusai’s magnum opus was really a metaphor for the changing world, the fusion of culture that happened after Matthew Perry’s gunboat diplomacy forced Japan to open up to the West.
Plus, to this day “The Great Wave” is still visually striking. That’s why it was such an inspired choice for Scramble to modify the image for use on an internal rashguard. Not only does it look fantastic, like the original image, the Wave gi is a merge of the old (classic white gi) and the new (flashy gi with internal rashguard).
3. “The Heavenly Kimono,” by Meerkatsu
Your artwork doesn’t have to cover the entire inside of the kimono in order to make a statement. Witness this inaugural gi offering from prominent BJJ artist Seymour “Meerkatsu” Yang, whose offering is a worthy successor to his Heavenly Footlock and Heavenly Wristlock shirts.
Besides looking great, the thematic consistency between the differing types of apparel is really cool. (It’s also admirable how much of Yang’s work in this vein benefits charities).
2. “Wu-Tang Killa Bee Series,” by Enzo Kimonos
If you aren’t down with the Wu, I don’t even know what to tell you. Even if innovation in music isn’t your thing, the logo image is iconic, and placed on the front skirt of the gi like this adds the right amount of flash. It’s distinctive but not ostentatious. (Now, the interior of the gi, that’s a different story).
It’s also a cool idea to merge BJJ, a niche community with passionate devotees, with Wu-Tang, a defined subculture that has considerably more followers. As a proud nerd, I’m always interested in where unusual affinities collide (Doctor Who and jiu-jitsu, anyone)? Making this collision happen deserves some dap.
1. “The 47 Gi,” by Ronin
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of John Smalls. I must confess I didn’t know he’d done the art for the 47 Gi by Ronin Brand until a friend bought it. Smalls illustrated 47 common techniques for the interior of this kimono, and the results are as nice as you’d expect.
One distinction I’d make between this kimono and the other interior-print gis I’ve listed: instead of one big art piece, this has smaller segments that serve a larger unified theme. That’s different, and different is cool.
There you have it: five gis that I think reflect thoughtful and creative design. A final note related to gi commerce: people at my gym are very fortunate, since we share space with Cageside Fight Shop. Not every school is lucky enough to have a local martial arts gear company nearby, and the good folks that work there are awesome about letting you try on a bunch of gis to see what fits you best.
Trying on a gi before you make the order is something I totally recommend. dangerous, in that it feeds the gi addiction, but also excellent, because there’s nothing worse than dropping $100+ on something you’re excited to train in only to find that it fits like rented suit. Support your local fight shop, folks.
Quickly: Roy Marsh is a good friend of mine, a great guy and a tremendous teacher of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. He has graciously offered to teach a seminar at the gym I attend to benefit two great charities. It’s a $20 minimum donation, which makes it possibly the best value seminar of all time.
If you have trained with Roy, you know how good he is. If you haven’t, you owe it to yourself. Come learn great stuff and help out great causes.
I have a new rashguard design I want to show you. First, though, let me ask you two questions: how do you feel about bullies? And have you seen Mary Poppins?
Yes, these questions are related, and they’re also related to the new rashie I’m finishing up. It’s a tribute to Edith Garrud, the Suffragette Who Knew Jiu-Jitsu, and by extension the group of British suffragists she trained to fight around the turn of the last century.
Who was Edith Garrud? The short version: she was the ultimate anti-bully. A 4-foot, 11-inch woman who stood up to gangs of armed men twice her size using jiu-jitsu, and trained dozens of others to do so as well: how could I not make a rashguard paying tribute to a badass like that?
Back before women had the vote, the British government really pulled out all the stops to crush the suffragist movement. There were police beatings, brutal force-feedings of hunger strikers, and more grisly behaviors. Yes, the Edwardian era British crown was fully down with cracking the skulls of prominent women’s suffrage activists like Emmeline Pankhurst.
Nobody likes a bully, and the people trying to beat down women’s suffragists were kind of the exemplar of bullyhood. Fortunately, Mrs. Pankhurst had The Bodyguard, a 30-woman group of buttkickers trained by Edith Garrud. Quoth Lady Edith: “Women using jiu-jitsu have brought great burly cowards nearly twice their size to their feet and made them howl for mercy.”
The British newspaper punch published a cartoon paying homage to Garrud in 1910, dubbing her “The Suffragette Who Knew Jiu-Jitsu.” I used this cartoon to create a composite image as the basis of a new rashie.
This is the front:
This is the back:
Here’s the draft of how the whole works is going to look. This is a rough version, but the body of the rashie is going to mimic old-time newsprint.
When I was a kid, I watched Mary Poppins. Maybe you did, too. Maybe you remember this song, which name-checks the aforementioned Emmeline Pankhurst:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvk1NZDFvZU&feature=kp
Of course, the movie offers a somewhat sanitized version of a rather gnarly part of history, which you can learn more about through this awesome Prezi, or by checking out some nasty contemporary visual depictions of people who thought women ought to be able to vote.
But what got me thinking about Mary Poppins is the song’s refrain: “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us. And they’ll sing in grateful chorus: ‘Well done, Sister Suffragette!”
Those daughters’ daughters? That’s our generation. About 100 years ago, a bunch of tiny, fearless fighters stood up for themselves. That’s worth remembering and yes, adoring. We take the right to vote for granted today, but half the population has it because some extraordinary people put their asses on the line a few generation ago.
These stories fascinate me, and I’ve of necessity given short shrift to them. (For more, you can listen to a terrific BBC “In Our Time” podcast about this, and an episode of “A History of the World in 100 Objects” about a penny defaced by suffragists in an act of art sabotage).
This post could be thousands of words long, so I’ll cut it short by encouraging you to check out all the links (and of course to buy the rashguard when it comes out!).
We’ll wrap up by noting that the British government, as this article notes, honored Edith with a plaque in 2012. The last paragraph of the piece struck me:
But Tony Wolf cautions against romanticised images of suffragettes throwing officers around. “The bodyguard had some remarkable tactical victories using decoys and disguises,” he says. “But the grim reality is that they were heavily outnumbered by the police and were often injured.”
This premise is true but the conclusion is flawed. They were always outnumbered, and many of these women (Garrud included) wore layers of carboard under their dresses to cushion truncheon blows from police. They were smaller, fewer in number, and hopelessly outgunned in terms of weaponry and resources. That’s undeniable.
But they fought. They were right, and they knew it, and so they fought anyway, often knowing they were going to take beatings. Doesn’t that make them even fiercer and more courageous than if they won every fight? I certainly think so.
Edith Garrud lived to be 99, and kicked enough ass for 99 lifetimes of that length. Well done, Sister Suffragette.
A couple of long posts planned: Mundial recap plus a historical post I’m excited about. But Toro just released a shirt I made, which is a bit of a regional in-joke, but if you’re from the south and like biscuits, maybe you think it’s funny.
I don’t talk about goals a lot on the blog, for a variety of reasons. Thinking about them? That’s a different matter.
Your mental approach matters a great deal in terms of how you perform, and one of greatest flaws has always been overthinking things. When you get trapped in your own head — especially mine — it’s not the best recipe for going out and doing what you’ve trained to do.
We all have coping mechanisms, and one of mine is list-making. I think about a series of tasks I have to complete in order to put myself in the best position to succeed. That’s really all you can ask of yourself. If you put a good process in place, you’ll most likely get the best result you could have.
The lists also help me focus on the single specific task at hand. I fly out Tuesday to compete in the Mundials on Thursday. There are 84 guys in my division. If you let yourself think about all those potential matches, you’ll go crazy (at least I would).
So here’s my goal: to give $30 to charity.
If you read the blog regularly, you might know that I donate $10 for every match I win during the year to three worthy charities. Last year it was two, the Women’s Debate Institute and the George Pendergrass Foundation. This year I’m also matching my friend Alec Cerruto’s donations to Backpack Pals, a charity that supplies food to needy children. So every match I win costs me 30 bucks, which is probably the best 30 bucks I ever spend.
So that’s the goal. $30. In the event that I reach that goal, I’ll try to give out another $30. But I shouldn’t and can’t and won’t think beyond the first check I’ll write (or really, PayPal transfer — who writes checks?).
It helps that in my position, I have different goals than someone else might. I turn 40 this October. I love to train and compete, so that’s what I do. I don’t have grander ambitions to set the competition world on fire at the upper belt levels. This is what I do for fun, and I think I perform best when I’m just out there having a blast.
I can’t tell you exactly how I’ll feel when I step out onto the mat, but I’ll tell you what I hope I feel: joy. Gratefulness that I have the opportunity to practice Brazilian jiu-jitsu at all. The sense of relief that I finally get to have some fun after weeks of hard training.
That, and I hope I feel a little poorer. We’ll see!
Have you ever apologized after a loss? If so, stop it.
I’m not talking about the extreme situations here where you do something foolish that causes a loss — failing to prepare properly, or making a huge mistake ignoring your coach’s advice during the match. If you do those things, go ahead and say you’re sorry.
That’s not usually what happens, though. Most often we lose because we had a tough matchup, or because we’re learning and growing and ran into a situation where we didn’t know the right thing to do.
Mostly, I’m talking to myself here: I used to apologize when I got knocked out of tournaments. I used to feel like I’d let my teammates, coach and training partners down if I lost.
This is very different from my perspective now. I have begun think of tournament competitions as just an extension of training: instead of training with the people I roll with everyday, I’m putting myself in a different situation with an opponent whose techniques are unknown. This is an extremely valuable training experience, since you aren’t going to know if your opponent wrestled, did judo or anything else.
Changing this viewpoint took me a long time. The impulse to say “sorry” is understandable: your instructor and training partners put a ton of energy, sweat and bodily risk into helping you prepare. You want to run strong for them.
But I came to realize that it misses the point: it misses the process, the journey. It misses what makes you proud about your gym and teammates. When I sat down and thought about what makes me proud of my instructor and teammates, competitive success barely made the list.
I’m proud of the way we support each other. I’m proud of the way nobody lets anybody else quit during a hard workout. I’m proud of my friends’ competitive achievements, yes, but I’m just as impressed by the grinders that show up and train every day even though they haven’t had tournament success — maybe even more so. I’m proud that, like any family, we sometimes bicker but we get over it and keep helping each other get better.
What’s a medal compared to that? What’s a great day at a tournament — even the best day — compared to years of that shared experience?
A loss might end a tournament for you. It might sting. It should sting: if you’re preparing right, you’ve put a ton of effort into the experience. That tiny part of your jiu-jitsu journey might end in that painful fashion.
But a loss won’t stop your gym, and a loss won’t stop you. The journey goes on. The effort you put into training, the work you put in and the sacrifices you made don’t go away. They’re the ingredients that have made you improve, at jiu-jitsu and at life.
The process is the big picture. Think of a tournament as just part of training, a necessary but impermanent part of your permanent, day-to-day practice.
So go out there and win every match if you can. But if you lose, you don’t owe me, or your teammates — or anyone — an apology. You don’t owe anyone anything but, where applicable: “thanks for helping me out: see you in the gym tomorrow.”
If you’ve trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu for any appreciable amount of time, you’ve had injuries.
Personally, I consider myself one of the more fortunate. Sure, I’ve had the occasional malady, but I have been lucky to avoid a major injury that would require surgery. Besides the pain and expense — as much it galls me to admit this — I don’t want to take the time off from training that a major injury would require.
One of the first pieces of advice I try to tell the new guys who go too hard is that injury is the real enemy: if you want to get better at jiu-jitsu, staying on the mats is job one. Especially for a guy who weighs 138, turns 40 this year and trains regularly, I’ve been very lucky.
That’s what I keep telling myself this month. Leading up to the New York Open, I had a nagging foot injury that I trained through. At the tournament, I re-injured it during my finals match. Now, every time it gets manipulated in the wrong way — even gently — it becomes debilitating.
But there’s the Catch-22: you can’t train without risking injury, but part of the reason you want to avoid injury is so you can keep training, especially with a tournament (like, say, the Mundials) coming up. Where is the line between being tough and being stupid?
The answer I’ve come to is that you must evaluate two factors: risk of re-injury and reward of training. When you’re nicked up, which is how I’d classify my current injury, you can still train some things. For example, one of my training partners hurt his knee and spent his healing time working half-guard. You also must evaluate your ability to protect yourself while drilling and rolling, and figure out whether you’re taking too great a chance on setting yourself back.
Naturally, figuring this out depends on the severity of an injury. I’ve had back injuries that were simple stiffness and would loosen up once I got moving, and back injuries that I’d have had to be a lunatic to train through.
Given my various experiences with being nicked up, I’ve often been surprised at how easy some injuries are to train with and how hard others are. I do a lot with gi grips, for example, but finger and hand injuries are relatively simple to train with. You can wrap ’em up and hide the injured hand. (In fact, at least one person reading this has choked me using only one hand).
The opposite end of the spectrum: rib injuries. I’ve had two ribs pop out. You use your core for everything, in jiu-jitsu and in life. One of my rib injuries was extremely painful and fairly debilitating. The other one didn’t hurt much. But then I tried to sit up and couldn’t. This foot injury has shown me — again, stupid as it sounds — just how much you use your foot, both in guard and on top. It’s harder to hide than you’d think.
After musing on which of my little bumps and bruises were hardest to train with, I made this graphic rating the injuries on a scale of 0 (a cakewalk) to 10 (sweet merciful crap, maybe we’ll stay in bed and watch videos).
This is just my own experience and is not meant to be taken very seriously. The only medical advice I feel comfortable giving is “you should eat right and train jiu-jitsu.”
There shouldn’t be many surprises here. The big muscles and joints are always big problems. I also always think it’s worth noting that if you have an infection, that’s a 10 and you should stay home, period: I raise an eyebrow at how many folks don’t get this.
One notable rating, and this might be a function of the severity of the injury: I personally found it easier to train with a messed-up knee than with a messed-up foot. Obviously, my knee injury wasn’t a major thing, but I was able to change up the things I was doing fairly effectively to protect the knee.
With the foot? Can’t be on top, you’ve got to stand on it. Can’t really keep the guard closed, and with open guard, you either have to step on hips and biceps (ouch!) or try to hide that foot by putting it further away from your opponent — which means you need to shrimp off of it (also ouch).
We all have strengths and weaknesses. In terms of the old remedy of Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation, my ICE game is tight, and the rest I have a problem with. (See what I did there?)
The old saying goes, “If you wake up one morning after training and nothing hurts, you died.” My hope is we all start to prove that saying wrong. Happy and healthy training to all of you.