I received this email from a new BJJ practitioner and thought I would share with you her (anonymous) questions and my answers, for whatever they're worth!
Hello,
I recently discovered your blog and I was wondering if I could ask
you a question. I started BJJ this spring, and since then I've
learned a lot, but sometimes it feels like too much. I feel like my
instructor just taught me a bunch of moves for a variety of situations
but I just can't remember them all-- or if I'm put into a position, my
brain just starts going wild thinking about, should I submit, choke,
sweep? and if I choose one, even more options come up and finally when I
decide to do something, my opponent has already escaped. I've tried to
just sort out which ones work best for my size, position, etc. but the
next week my instructor would ask me to demonstrate a sweep that I don't
use in rolling so I perform it poorly. Is there any kind of balance?
Any kind of
trick to help me remember
everything?
Sincerely,
______________
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Dear ___________,
OK-- finally, at a real keyboard! sorry for the delay!
What
you described is 100% totally normal and was experienced by all of us
as we began jiu jitsu. I will say that there are probably 3-4 instructors
I know of in the world who would not have you feeling this way-- but
only because they structure the learning opportunities for rank
beginners very differently AND they have ridiculously exceptional grasp
of the theory of BJJ AND the ability to teach.
I'm sure you know, being
able to do something is not necessarily proof that you can TEACH
something, and rarely do the two run together! Plus, most classes are
comprised of a range of experience levels, so
the "bottom" people who just started have to kind of tag along as best
they can. It's a steep learning curve the first year (or if you're like
me, year or two...) BUT it's not YOU, it's everyone, so just keep
plugging away...the short version is--- relax (impossible) and ride with
it... eventually, it will start making more and more sense, either
because of the natural progression of learning BJJ, or because your
instructors get better, or both.
One thing you can do to help
yourself process things and be more systematic is to think about BJJ
outside of class. What you're really lacking at this point is a plan...
a program of action. Kind of a recipe-- when a little kid approaches a
street corner, mom always tells them "stop-- look both ways-- listen
for a car." You need the same kind of simplistic 1-2-3 kind of plan at
the beginning which hopefully can be expanded and adapted to incorporate
new stuff.
I learned
this when I was training about 3 months in a haphazard horrible way,
and had been at a real BJJ school a week. I decided I was going to
compete! (Get it out of the way when I couldn't possibly expect much of
myself.) On the way to the tournament with some teammates, they asked
me what my gameplan was. (I laughed.) The advice I received was, pick
your favorite submission. I said-- "uhhhh... I don't have one!" They said
PICK ONE-- so I randomly picked "guillotine." The next advice: Always
go for that submission if you can't think of anything else to do. (In
other words-- if someone GIVES you a triangle, don't struggle to get
them out of it so you can do your guillotine. But when lost, go for a
guillotine.) The last piece of advice: if you're not in a position where you can
go for a guillotine, get into better position.
This was great
for me. It reinforced that my ultimate goal is not points, not
stalling, not anything other than submission. It gave me a clarity I
needed desperately. And while it was no good at all as far as HOW to
get into better position... it was a good starting point. It helped me
narrow down what felt like a yawning chasm of amorphous opportunity--
when I did have some kind of dominant position, it foreclosed those
moments of freezing while thinking-- in which people always started
causing problems by MOVING, durn them... and when I was on the bottom,
it helped me define everything in terms of "can I do X from here? if
not, I must get out of here."
Think of it like a flow chart.
Maybe easier if you have submission you like that works from top and from guard-- that's probably why I picked guillotine then-- now, I am so top-dependent, it has
fostered by sweep game out of sheer desperation to get back on top.. But the flow chart in its simplest sense goes like this:
Where am I? If on top, go to X or submission. If on bottom-- can I do X sub? can I do Y sub? If
yes, do it. If not, sweep, get to top. Then go back to "if on top."
When
you have only one sweep, for instance, you need to work very hard on
understanding the physical elements that make the other person likely to
be swept by that sweep. A scissor sweep is a basic early-beginner
sweep, but it's also very hard to do if they're sitting back on their
haunches, which is the easy defense. So you can't just try to FORCE
them to be swept-- you'll sit there with legs akimbo and they'll pass.
Sometimes it is best for beginners to only learn a couple options from
each position because it forces them (and their classmates) to really
home in on the elemental side of BJJ. "Hmm, scissor only works when
they're putting their momentum forward. How can I make them do that?"
Now--
the other questions you asked. When you're rolling, you have to
predict that learning new stuff NEVER goes well against people
your level and higher. It just doesn't. And when you have just begun,
there is NO ONE below your level (usually) unless you're a guy and you
can out-muscle them. Sheer force does work, sad to say. But if you
don't have sheer force to rely on, it's okay-- you will develop more
slowly, but you will develop better technique than someone who is capable of muscling their opponents inefficiently. But the longer you keep
at it-- and keep trying, regardless of the fact that you will be losing
most or all of your "matches" and rolls and rounds and so on....
eventually people will join up after you, and you will have a brief
moment or two where you are weaker physically but have better
technique.
(I used to kid, sorta, that for me as a blue belt, there was a two week golden period in the life of every
whitebelt-- in which they was experienced enough to not be a danger to me
by spazzing, but not experienced enough to overcome my superior
technique with just enough technique of his own
plus all that muscle. The trick was watching the new whitebelts and
pouncing at the right time so I could use that whole two weeks to
experiment and practice my offense. The better I got, the longer that
time period got-- now there's a good 2-3 months of most whitebelts for me.)
Sorry for rambling-- to
summarize that-- you will constantly lose, and that's okay. It doesn't
mean anything about whether or not you're learning.
And your last topic issues-- your
instructor wants demonstrations but it wasn't what you were practicing
and you do it badly. This too is commonplace. I struggle with this. There's simply no
way to practice everything equally-- but you should make an effort
especially now early on to use your open mat times for drilling. Just
make a list of every technique you have been taught-- it's probably
somewhere near 30 by now if not more. And pick three to five each time
you train, and drill each of them just 5-10 times (more if you're determined) with a partner (be
sure to give them drilling time too). Let's say this week you drill
sweeps from guard-- scissor, push, flower-- and next week your
instructor wants you to show a butterfly sweep. You screw up-- so
what! He doesn't expect you to do it right and no matter how well you
did it, he'd find something to suggest for improvement. Won't mean you
won't be promoted or anything else. The important thing is, you get
into a routine whereby you systematically review and practice all the
time. Sometimes you won't practice the "right" thing to catch the
instructor's "cycle" or eye or
whatever, but who cares, you are going to be improving.
As for
remembering everything-- omg no. There's no way. I have two notebooks I
use for seminars and privates, and I have a box full of
printer-paper-sized pages of notes I used to take during class proper
(I'd pinch from the academy printer.) I have hundreds of pages of
exhaustive notes on techniques and I really don't remember anything
instinctively outside of what I use
all the
time. And instructors know this. That's why in time you'll realize
they repeat, repeat, repeat techniques.
Every time you see a tech in
class, you'll learn maybe 40-50% of it. You'll go out and try it in
live sparring and use it probably badly to one degree or another. After a couple
months maybe he'll show it again-- you'll see an additional 10% that
didn't stick out to you the first time because you lacked any experience
in trying to
implement it yourself. So you'll practice and try it more and more--
sometimes you'll totally forget a technique the minute class is over and
you won't try it at all. Sometimes what happens is there's no place in
your game to park the new technique, so you just never come close to
it.
(Here's my lily pad theory of jiu jitsu.... as students, we learn
by hopping from one lily pad of technique to another. If we only know
techniques that are widely scattered apart like lily pads far apart on a
lake, we stay on one pad. As we learn more techniques that are very
closely related to the pad we're on, we can "make the leap" from one to
the next, and get comfortable and familiar with that "neighborhood." So
you'll see a very common assortment of techniques to be taught together
might be-- from closed guard, the armbar, the triangle, and the
omoplata. Or from closed guard, the hip-bump sweep, the kimura, and the
guillotine.)
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Anyway, that was my long ramble on her questions. Your advice and input is, as always, welcome :)
