How often do you get the chance to be on the mat with seven or eight black belts, many of whom have won the worlds, Pans, Brazilian nationals — or all of the above? For me, the answer is “never.”
When Vicente Junior announced some of the people who would be training at his camp for Pans at BJJ Conquest, I knew I had to do it. It meant a round-trip nine hour drive, but I figured it would be worth it, and it has been. We train three times a day, and each time we get instruction from the likes of Samir Chantre, Quiexinho, Caio Terra, and of course Vicente himself.
I’m competing at the Pans this weekend, and this seemed like a fantastic way to prepare: by seeing how some of the best guys in the world prepare, and learning as much as I could from them.
Training session, take notes, training session, take notes, training session, take notes, sleep, repeat.
Beyond that, though, it’s just been a great life experience. I’m not going to say too much about the specifics of the training sessions here. We’re doing a lot of drilling, a lot of rolling, and a lot of positional work. The most valuable thing for me, though, has been soaking up the way these top-level guys approach their own training. As Yogi Berra once said, you can observe a lot just by watching.
As an older guy, I have to admit I was worried about the toll that training three or four times a day would take on my body prior to a big tournament. But I’ve learned a lot, both about techniques and about how to approach training in way that challenges you and keeps you fresh.
It’s also been a humbling experience. It’s an amazing privilege to roll with guys on this level, and it’ll also show you exactly where you’re at on the food chain. Feel good about your top game? Have fun trying to stay on top. Feel good about your guard? They’ll pass it over and over, effortlessly, in multiple ways.
I’m putting out an APB for my guard. It doesn’t exist up here.
In the strictest sense, this is a vacation for me. I took a week off of work to do it. It’s also a vacation in a broader sense: I walk around the mat and think that there’s no place I’d rather be. However I do in the tournament, I’ve spent most of each day on the mat. I’ve learned a ton from some brilliant jiu-jitsu minds. And isn’t that really what it’s all about?
Although I don’t train for MMA fights myself, a lot of my good friends and training partners do. It’s exciting for me to take part in their camps. It feels amazing when they win and like I’ve been punched in the gut when they don’t.
Fortunately, two of my friends finished their fights by TKO this week. This is always going to be a primarily jiu-jitsu blog, but I thought this was worth noting (and I expect to write about MMA again when three of my teammates fight in the Bull City Brawl on Oct. 12.) For more regular MMA stuff, check out Carolina MMA.
Both fought on the InkaFC card in Peru. Harold Hubbard was making his MMA debut, and D’Juan Owens, an active pro, was looking for another win. Me, I was watching the Internet for video so I could make animated GIFs like these:
Harold wins by ground and pound.
Harold simply outclassed his opponent, standing and on the ground. The guy took him down (which is hard to do), but Harold’s jiu-jitsu meant he couldn’t do much afterward. And once Harold got on top, well, you see the GIF.
D’Juan had a tough fight against a skilled opponent, but managed to get the TKO finish in round three.
D’Juan knocks the taste, and mouthpiece, out of the guy’s mouth.
Since this is a BJJ blog, I really should have made GIFs out of D’Juan’s two omoplata sweeps. But everyone wants to see finishes, so here y’go.
When we finished up with a 6 a.m. drilling session the other day, one of my white belt training partners asked me a poignant question. “So,” he said, “when do you stop feeling incompetent at this?”
I laughed, and gave him a glib answer: “I’ll let you know when it happens to me.”
I feel like I owe him a better answer, though. This is a dedicated guy we’re talking about — not everyone gets up at 5:30 to drill with me — and honestly, everyone has felt that way. Jiu-jitsu is so complex and multifaceted that there is always some aspect of it giving you trouble.
This post is my effort to get past that flippant first-thought answer and think through five legitimate responses to that question.
1. Even The Basics Come Hard: Accept That. It took me three classes to learn to shrimp. Not shrimp perfectly. Not shrimp well. To understand the basic mechanics of one of the art’s most fundamental movements enough that I could actually do it. Seriously, that took me three classes. It took me several nights and personal attention from the instructor before I could participate in the very first warmup.
Eminem’s reaction to watching my first attempts at shrimping.
I tell this story for two reasons: first, take heart! Even if you totally brainlock on the simplest things, a little patience can get you where you want to be. Second, get some perspective. These movements are counter-intuitive. We don’t grow up moving like a shrimp does: it has to be learned. It takes some of us (like me) longer than others, and that’s fine.
2. Everything is Relative. I was fortunate enough to go to the Mundials as a white belt after training a little over a year. I hadn’t competed outside of North Carolina, and it was an incredible experience.
One remarkable aspect of watching the best in the world: you’d see a guy mow through competition with a smile on his face. You’d think that he was invincible.
Then you’d see him get schooled in the next match. Then you’d see the guy that beat him lose. And then you think again about that first guy, and how he could tap you 10 times in a five minute round without using his hands.
It’s all relative. Even now, I’ll hear an incredible instructor remark after training with someone like Royce Gracie or Gui Valente: “Wow, he really makes me feel like I don’t know jiu-jitsu.” Compared to a day-one white belt, a very good white belt can feel like a fount of information. Compared to someone who has been training 30 years since childhood, a very good black belt can feel like a white belt.
Either of the two guys on the end could submit me 10 times, blindfolded, with each hand in their belt. BJJ has levels.
There will be days when you feel like you’re getting this. Then there will be days when you feel like me during my second class, trying to shrimp.
By now my training partner is probably saying “enough with the platitudes. Give me a number.” OK. Done stalling. I’ll give it a shot.
3. About 18 Months. Once you train for about a year and a half, you’ll feel like you have a good handle on the basics. Depending upon how much you go to class, you might earn a blue belt slightly before or slightly after this time. Again, everyone is different. Some people have natural aptitude for grappling, and you can get there faster by spending more time on the mats, taking privates, watching videos, reading books, or whatever supplemental effort is best for your learning style.
But if you go to class regularly (say, three to five times a week) and do your drilling, you’ll build a solid foundation for yourself. You’ll start to recognize mistakes other white belts are making. This will help you first stop making those mistakes yourself, and then start exploiting those mistakes.
This is a really fun and exciting time in your development, and I think you’ll really enjoy it. I had an absolute blast when this happened for me, and it happened probably around the 18 month mark. That’s the good news.
Yes, there’s bad news.
4. … And Then You’ll Start Feeling Incompetent Again. Right after I got my blue belt, I felt euphoric. And so should you when you level up! It’s the result of a lot of work, sacrifice and effort, and you should be proud of it.
And then you should forget about what belt you have on and get right back to training. Because after you’ve had that belt a year, you’ll look back and can’t believe how little that dude who got that belt knew.
Everyone is making progress all the time. Other people — your training partners, your opponents — are getting better. You’ll feel good about where you’re at, but the rising tide means you’ve got to keep learning or get left behind.
Hey, I got good at the double under pass! I’ll just keep doing … ah, crap.
That’s a beautiful thing, though! If you get good at the triangle choke, let’s say, your partners must adapt. Eventually, they will stop you from triangling them. Then, you’ll be forced to either figure out new setups or use a different technique. This, in turn, forces you to learn and improve.
The down side to this is that you end up feeling like a doofus. But that’s why the wise jiu-jiteiros tell the new guys that it’s important to keep the ego in check.
The art will do that for you, don’t worry. Last weekend I had perhaps the best tournament I’ve ever had. This week I got back and trained with some guys so good, they thwarted everything I was doing and submitted me multiple times without breathing hard. It’s inspiring, and humbling, to roll with people whose technique is at the level where it makes you feel utterly ineffectual and incompetent.
This brings us back to:
5. I’ll Let You Know When It Happens. Sorry, man, we’re back to the beginning.
Maybe, as the Buddhist meditation master Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche told Allen Ginsberg, the first thought really is the best thought. Or maybe jiu-jitsu is just so rich and complicated that I’m always going to feel like a novice.
If you saw me try to shrimp, you’d probably bet on the latter, and I probably would too.
That’s the thing, though: ultimately, you’re competing against yourself. The you of today is no doubt miles more competent than the day one version. And you’re only getting better.
There will always be people that make you feel like you have no technique compared to them. But when I think back on the version of myself that walked into the gym about three years ago, I have no doubt that I would tune him up without him even realizing what I was doing.
We all feel lost sometimes. Part of why jiu-jitsu is so interesting is that there will always be more of it to understand. Embrace that, and enjoy the ride.
It was a weekend of firsts in Atlanta. For the first time, I worked a table at an IBJJF tournament (more on that below), and for the first time (spoiler alert), I took gold at an IBJJF event!
Shane, you’ve looked better, homie … but then, so have I.
Working the table was actually a productive and fun experience. For one thing, I got to work with some incredible black belt referees, guys like David “Rock” Jacobs and Marlon Loor Vera. You learn a lot seeing how knowledgable and accomplished black belts approach matches — and it was fun. I also got to work a Lucas Lepri match and get a front-row seat to watch Bruno Malfacine.
The picture above was taken right before the adult blue belt final, and I’m including it because it was represents the weirdest table work story of the weekend. Usually, the matches come bang-bang-bang, one right after the other. But the final was delayed. The match runner came by and said “we’re going to give this one 10 minutes: we’ve got some puking happening.”
“Which guy?”
“… both of them.”
The run through the division had gassed both guys so much that each of them vomited not once, not twice, but roughly two dozen times. When we thought we had the match ready to go, one of the guys had to rush off the mat for one final stomach evacuation. Good times!
The other reason I enjoyed working the table is it gave me something to do other than sit around thinking about my matches. A common problem I wind up having is getting stuck in my own head and winding myself before matches. Having something to focus on only helped. (My mental strategy was to think like this: hey, the worst that can happen is I lose a jiu-jitsu match. I’ve lost lots of jiu-jitsu matches! Been there.)
The only unfortunate part: I really enjoy hanging out with my teammates and taking pictures. I didn’t get to do almost any of that. Next time!
A few notable things from the tournament:
* I’ve been a blue belt since June 2012. During that time, I’ve trained so much that the IBJJF declared my belt too worn and frayed for competition. This made me almost as happy as the medal, at least after I was able to borrow a belt from another Team Royce guy (thanks, Braxton). Some people say it’s frayed and worn because I wash it too much. I prefer to think it’s the training, but it’s true that I’m anti-belt-microbes.
* In the gym, I play around with all kind of new, fun and risky techniques. I’ve been known to berimbolo on occasion. But in this (and most) tournaments, I didn’t do anything that isn’t on the Triangle Jiu-Jitsu blue belt basics curriculum. This was exactly how I’d hoped it would go: the fundamentals work and you can never drill them too much.
Good things happen when you put a hand in the collar.
I had two matches in my division and one in absolute. All three were against good guys and accomplished competitors. Unfortunately, I lost my absolute match by advantage in the last 30 seconds — the guy tried to pass and forced me to turtle, giving up the advantage. But that match taught me a lot and gave me some things to work on in the future.
I felt good about both matches in weight, too. I pulled guard in one match and played top in the other after getting an ankle pick takedown, so I got to work both top and bottom game. I’d give you the full play-by-play, but no one really cares about that but me and my mom. And mom’s visiting in three weeks, so I’ll get to tell her in person.
You can also read my awesome teammate Kim’s recap as well. So let’s get straight to the photo and the Charity Challenge update!
First IBJJF gold!
Quick recap for those who are new to the blog: I’m donating $10 for every match I win this year to the Women’s Debate Institute. But to encourage others to get involved, I asked people to vote on a second charity to benefit as well. I’ve told some folks this, but the winner of that vote was anti-cancer charity the George Pendergrass Foundation, edging out other worthy causes like Reporters Without Borders, RAINN, the Wounded Warrior Project and Carolina Basset Hound Rescue.
A few gracious people offered to match my donations — and, in fact, another person has pledged since my last post — meaning every win this year is worth $35 to charity so far. There are still a ton of cool rewards you can win if you get involved, including a bottle of the rarest and best beer in the world, Westvleteren 12. Check out all the ways you can get involved and help.
And now, let’s tally the results! I won seven matches this time around, adding to the total from before. Here’s where we’re at:
CHARITY PROJECT STATISTICS
Matches Won This Tournament: 2
Total Won For The Year: 13
Money Raised For Charity: $70
Total Raised So Far: $455
This blog post will be organized into two questions.
QUESTION THE FIRST: Is it weird that two or three of my favorite matches from this past tournament were ones I lost?
U.S. Grappling’s Grapplemania tournament just wrapped up. It’s always a fun and well-run tournament, and I decided to do six divisions: all the 30+ divisions in gi and no-gi, all the young man weight divisions gi and no-gi, and both 30+ absolute open weight divisions. (When U.S. Grappling posts the complete results, I’ll tell you how my team did, but for now I just have some anecdotes).
I knew doing six divisions meant I would be really tired by the end of the day, but I didn’t realize exactly how tired. I’d done all eight divisions on two occasions, and only one of those gassed me out this hard.
Part of it was competing against guys with super cardio: one of my opponents that I faced three times used to be a professional runner, and he’s great at pushing the pace to tire you out. Part of it was doing absolute: you’ve got to work pretty hard to stop big guys from passing your guard.
The thing is, when you’re tired, your technique takes over — because it has to. Rickson Gracie has said that he’d exhaust himself before certain training sessions just to be sure he wasn’t muscling anything or using explosive athleticism.
Now, I don’t have muscles or explosive athleticism to begin with, so you can be sure I’m using all technique by the middle of the day.
That’s why I think my three favorite matches were ones where I came up short. In each of these matches, I gassed hard. But I was able to fight through that adversity and survive, relying on technique to do so. I always try my best to win, but one of my main goals for the tournament was to focus on the training and learning aspect of competition as well. I’ll give one example of these matches to demonstrate what I mean.
In a six-minute blue belt match, I faced that tough, skilled opponent with great cardio I mentioned before. For the first third of the match, I was doing well. Then, the pace he forced me to fight at made me bonk, and bonk hard. I seriously felt nauseous. That’s when he passed. It got worse from there: he flowed through a series of bad positions for me — took knee on belly, mounted, went back to knee on belly, etc. Ugh.
Out of necessity, I went into survival mode. I told myself, “you have one minute of hard rolling in you during this match. You have to survive the onslaught for three minutes, and then just go full-out and try to submit him.”
And that’s what happened. I didn’t win, of course, and lost by a lot of points, but I was really happy with my survival skills (which are at the core of jiujitsu) and with the fact that I’ve gotten to know what my body is capable of.
No win for you this time!
At the end of the day I had three silver medals and one bronze out of seven divisions. Sure, I would have loved to get one gold or pick up one or two more medals, but on balance I’m happy with how I did.
QUESTION THE SECOND: Does anyone know where to buy a giant novelty check?
I ask because the year is half over, and one of my donors and I want to deliver the charity project funds with one of those comically large Ed McMahon-style checks.
Heeeeeyoooooooooo!
Quick recap for those who are new to the blog: I’m donating $10 for every match I win this year to the Women’s Debate Institute. But to encourage others to get involved, I asked people to vote on a second charity to benefit as well. I’ve told some folks this, but the winner of that vote was anti-cancer charity the George Pendergrass Foundation, edging out other worthy causes like Reporters Without Borders, RAINN, the
Wounded Warrior Project and Carolina Basset Hound Rescue.
A few gracious people offered to match my donations, meaning every win this year is worth $25 to charity so far. There are still a ton of cool rewards you can win if you get involved, including a bottle of the rarest and best beer in the world, Westvleteren 12. Check out all the ways you can get involved and help.
And now, let’s tally the results! I won seven matches this time around, adding to the total from before. Here’s where we’re at:
CHARITY PROJECT STATISTICS
Matches Won This Tournament: 7
Total Won For The Year: 11
Money Raised For Charity: $175
Total Raised So Far: $275
Next stop: the Atlanta Open on Aug. 31. I can only do one division there (two if I get really lucky), so there won’t be as many matches for me. But Team Royce Gracie North Carolina is going to take a big group of people, so hopefully we can make some noise.
My tournament schedule this year got thrown for a loop with a couple of nagging injuries, but we’re back at it tomorrow for US Grappling’s Grapplemania in Henderson, NC.
It’s rare that we hope something we paid for winds up costing us more money, but that’s where I’m at. Here’s hoping I come home with a light wallet but a happier guy. Full report to follow.
I’m a compulsive list-maker. Maybe it’s because I have a lot of things going on. Maybe it’s because all my concussions make my brain the consistency of vichyssoise. Or maybe it’s just an effective organizational strategy.
Because jiu-jitsu is so vast, the techniques I use today bear little resemblance to the techniques I used 6 months ago. Sometimes, that’s good (hey, I’m learning new stuff!); sometimes, that’s bad (hey, I’ve stopped using the stuff that works in favor of other stuff that’s doesn’t work yet!). Regardless, in a long game like learning jiu-jitsu, list-making can be an effective learning tool. I’d like to talk a little bit about what I try to do, and how it helps me learn.
I’m going to be writing about two related tactics. Making lists of techniques to study and work on in training helps show you where your strengths and weaknesses currently are. And making flowcharts of “If X happens, I can do Y or Z” can help you figure out your game plan for rolling in competitions.
These are two distinct issues. That super-fancy new sweep from Tornado guard may be cool as hell, but you might want to wait before throwing it into the “A” game bucket. The techniques you want to do most in training aren’t necessarily the ones you want to break out at a big tournament. Once you’re in that big tournament, though, you want a decision tree that supports the transitions you want to make.
Let’s talk about basic list-making for training first, since that’s way simpler. I keep a notebook with a few techniques I’m working on from every position. I use Evernote, which is free software that lets you add links to photos, videos and other instructionals. That way I can keep the whole works on my phone and laptop, so if I’m curious what details I’m missing on that new guard pass, I can check it out quickly.
This is what the interface looks like: as you can see, in addition to the notes I write, I can keep notes from class and from seminars I attend, videos of techniques I want to study and other research. You can search by keyword and tag, too, which is useful. (Click to expand the picture)
The specific way you actually make a list or flowchart is peripheral, though. We all learn in different ways, and some of us will get more from books than they will from videos, or vice versa. I just think it’s valuable to spend time thinking about these topics, however you do it. The more mental energy you spend on technical matters, the more likely you are to improve. For me, the mere process of making lists reminds me of things I used to do that worked, but that I don’t do any more for whatever reason, and keeps fresh in my mind the new stuff that I’m working on, but am not good at yet.
The lists help me figure out what techniques I know, what I’m comfortable with and what I need to improve. The flowcharts help me organize all these components into a game plan. To illustrate how this works, I made this sample flowchart. We start and end with the orange circles, and the items along the way give us options along the lines of “If he does this, I can do this or this.”
So, for example, we start in the center, standing. If he’s a normal human, I usually shoot and try to take him down. If he’s a very good judo guy or a skillful wrestling guy, I probably pull guard. Then you follow the chart from there.
It’s like choose your own adventure, but with real-life consequences! You’ll want to click on it for the big version in order to really see it.
You’ll note this is an oversimplified version. In this magical flowchart world, we never get swept or get our guard passed. Optimism! (But also, the submission defenses, escapes and guard recovery techniques you use are subjects for a whole other flowchart).
And yes, I should probably have lines between Side Control and Neon Belly and Mount (and, for that matter, between Side Control and Back), because of various transitions. This is more of a “here’s how I would do this,” with some jokes thrown in, than an actual game plan. Although it does have some elements of my actual game plan in there — you’re welcome, opponents!
The point isn’t to have a rigid structure that tells you exactly what to do in every situation. The point is, if you think a lot about your options from different positions, you’re more likely to smoothly flow toward those options than if you haven’t thought much about them before. Don’t think that just because the flowchart says you’re going for one of these three things from a position locks you into it.
Does anyone else do something like this? If so (whether you do it in a similar or different manner to how I do it), how does it work for you?
My first tournament of the year — and the first one that counts toward my charity project — was this past Saturday.
More than 300 people entered US Grappling‘s NC State Championships this weekend. It was one of the biggest tournaments I’ve seen in North Carolina, if not the biggest. It was a very cool environment to be a part of: people drove down from West Virginia, Virginia and Washington, D.C. to compete.
I had several great matches against very tough competitors. There are some seriously skillful individuals in my divisions.
Before I get to the results — hey, I’ve got to keep some semblance of suspense, even though everyone reading this was probably at the tournament except my mom — I want to say two things: first, I’m grateful for the two people so far who have agreed to match my donations to charity based on the number of competition matches I win this year. With their help, every win this year is worth $25 to charity. I was stoked to cost myself and my friends some money.
Second, this weekend made me think about the process by which we improve at jiu-jitsu. Primarily, my instructors and training partners are the people that help me get better on a day-to-day basis, and I owe them a lot. But in competing against good BJJ players that I don’t roll with on the daily, I notice different details about the techniques I use, and the techniques others use against me. Those competition matches always teach me a ton about what strides I’ve taken and what else I need to work on. So thanks, guys.
As for results: Out of of the four divisions I entered, I came away with two gold medals and one silver. I won gold in both men’s and 30+ no-gi at my weight, took second in the 30+ gi, and didn’t place in the men’s gi. I lost in the first round to the same dude I faced in the 30+ gi finals, a really tough and technical guy.
My teammates also performed righteously, when US Grappling posts the final results, I’ll share a complete list of their medals. Just don’t want to leave anybody out, and we had a ton of entrants.
I had entered all the absolute divisions as well: was looking forward to getting a bunch of extra matches in. Unfortunately, I have a nagging knee problem that I tweaked in my last match at weight.
Don’t worry, it’s nothing serious — but it still wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to play guard against dudes over 200 pounds with a gimpy knee, so I bowed out to roll another day. I love doing absolute, but I do enough dumb and fun things that I didn’t feel like adding to the list.
CHARITY VOTES (the standings for the second charity I’ll give to):
George Pendergrass Foundation: 5
Carolina Basset Hound Rescue: 5
Reporters Without Borders: 3
RAINN: 2
Wounded Warrior Project: 2
Two years ago today, I stumbled into Triangle Jiu-Jitsu Academy. (That’s right: Valentine’s Day is my Jiu-Jitsu-Versary). I put on my old karate gi, learned the upa escape, got painfully choked a few times and got hooked immediately.
The Cliff’s Notes: I like fun. I like Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I like raising money for worthy causes. You can help me with all three – and get yourself some cool prizes while you’re at it.
I want to challenge myself for a good cause this year. For every tournament match I win in 2013, I have decided to donate $10 to the Women’s Debate Institute and to another charity. That’s the first place you come in: what should the second charity be?There’s voting, and prizes, and good times.
The upshot: BJJ has been an immensely positive force in my life and the lives of my friends. I’m really grateful for the chance to train, and I wanted to use that as a tool to help out some great causes. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
