jiu jitsu mindset

“You can never stop thinking deeply about jiu jitsu, and you can never stop practicing the basics of you movements because thats what’s going to allow you continue to improve and never stagnate. There is never a reason for you to stop improving. So, as long as you take responsibility for your own training, and you are constantly thinking about it and constantly paying attention to the details, you’re always going to be able to continue moving forward and continue your progression. -Ryan Hall (attacking the back dvd series)

this is a pretty important statement in my opinion. i have a lot of friends and training partners who could really use this type of mindset in jiu jitsu. a bunch of people i have met through my training dont quite understand the importance of taking responsibility for their training. they believe that going to a class or two a week is somehow going to magically make them a lot better than it will. when they leave the gym, they disconnect from jiu jitsu altogether, and dont really think about it until its time to train again. its like they are plugging into the matrix, and when they leave, they unplug and go on about their lives. i can understand this type of thinking to a point, if you are just into jiu jitsu for exercise, and not really into it to become good at it. i cant understand, though, how anyone can expect to be technical and progress through the ranks and become proficient at jiu jitsu. its not possible. jiu jitsu is a lifestyle, your training must follow you through your daily life and be a part of your psyche. you absolutely have to break down techniques in your head, add supplemental training (whether it be visual or physical), and learn to understand the basic fundamentals of techniques, not just the sequence of motions.

your instructor can not do this for you.

this is a task that you must learn to do for yourself. do mental reps and visualize yourself going through the motions keeping close sight of all of the details. you learn the moves in class, you drill the moves in class to get a physical connect to the actions, but it is your job to think about what you have learned outside of class when you have introspective time to concentrate.

there really is no limit to how good you can get at jiu jitsu. the game is constantly progressing, and we are all just beginners. unless you are not training at all, the only thing holding you back from your goals is probably yourself.

Logo stuff

Some early ideas:

Which has evolved to:

And trimmed down to:

Still waiting on more ideas to surface, but they might get scrapped. Who knows?

UPDATE: bigger head. ring continued. basic easy to read font. kinda like it. still needs cleanup.

or no ring

Family snapseeds

Diets don’t work.

If I were to ask just about anybody I meet to define the word “diet”, I would most likely hear: “a temporary change in eating habits in order to lose weight/ cut weight/ get healthier/ etc…”

Diets fail. All diets. They all fail in the long run. You may gain immediate success, but for a long term solution, a diet will fail. I believe the reason even the best diets fail is because of the very definition of the word, or at least, the common perception of the word.

Temporary.

That’s the problem. People look at dieting as a temporary solution. Nutrition needs to be approached as a lifestyle change, not a diet. I hear people all the time say “dieting sucks”, or “man I can’t wait til this diet is over”. You will never be successful if you don’t just suck it up and deal with it. Dieting sucks, I agree. Quitting smoking sucked too. The way i dealt with it was to stop and move on. Eating is an addiction for most people and needs to e dealt with the same way. Just stop doing it, or in this case, start doing it right.

You can’t dwell on how much you miss soda. You can’t dream about donuts you used to eat. You have to get the hell over it, sack up, and quit eating poorly. You will continue to be overweight until you make the commitment to yourself. Nobody is going to lose the weight for you. No amount of exercise is going to replace healthy nutrition. Food is fuel for our bodies. If you fill your tank with sludge, it is going to respond accordingly.

I got caught up in this same situation this fall as I get hit with almost every year. Egg nog. It’s my kryptonite. I can pass on the pizza, burgers, fries, etc. with ease, because I know how much they effect my BJJ, but for some reason, it harder with the egg nog. I guess it’s because it’s only available for a few months of the year, and I feel like I need to get it while I can. I’m done now. I realized I was falling into the very trap I preach about. Being weak willed and filling my body with sludge for whatever reason. It’s only hurting my goals. So, just like that, i’m finished with it. The full jug in my fridge is going down the drain today.

I have no pity for people who complain about dieting. I have no pity for people who can’t quit smoking. It’s weakness, pure and simple. Your mind runs your body. You control every decision you make. You are choosing to eat like crap. Nobody ever “needs” fast food, sugary treats, soda. The human body isn’t built to run on food like that. The only reason you want it do it is because of how brainwashed we have become by advertising. That’s really a whole new blog post, but the point is still the same. You make your own decisions, it’s time to grow up and start acting for yourself. There is a movie quote that has always been in my mind that has helped me:

“Guilt is like a bag of fuckin’ bricks. All ya gotta do is set it down.” – John Milton (Al Pacino) The Devil’s Advocate

The easiest thing you can do, is to stop doing something. Stop buying bad food. Stop buying cigarettes. Don’t put it in your fridge, and you won’t eat it. Don’t order pizza. Just stop doing it, not because it’s not in your diet, but because it’s not an option. You won’t miss it if it’s not even a possibility.

stribling

photos from our recent trip to stribling orchard

Technical Pressure

I was chatting with Michelle Welti tonight for a minute while we were drilling stack passes, and I thought it might make an interesting blog entry. The conversation was about heavy pressure. It’s amazing how it’s so incredibly hard to put into words exactly how to be heavy. The biggest thing I took away from my time spent with Big Jay Corbett while he was instructing at Rage was his explanation: “try to envision a six inch diameter circle on your opponent, and then try to fit every ounce of your weight into that circle.” It made sense in my head, but I still had such a tough time making it happen for such a long time. How can I fit all of my weight into one spot? Magically, it seemed, about a year later, I could do it. How did I figure it out? I hadn’t been doing anything different? I thought. But, unknowingly I had!
There comes many points in your BJJ journey where things just… Click. Going from playing a guessing game to learning to play a reactionary game. Waiting until your opponent makes a move, then attempting to counter it. Then, going from a reactionary game to making actions to force the reaction from your opponent. When you realize that playing a reactionary game just doesn’t work against higher level opponents. “If you think, you are late. If you are late, you use strength. If you use strength, you tire. If you tire, you die.” -Saulo Ribeiro. Words to live by.
Among these enlightening moments is the one where pressure starts to make sense. All of a sudden, it seems like that impossible 6″ circle is anywhere you want it. The cross face, knee on belly, stack passing… It’s like you have found a way to harness gravity and focus it! A small 150lb man now feels like he weighs 300lbs on top. We have all felt it from the bottom, it’s awesome! And it’s really not all that difficult to do. But what is difficult, is to explain it. It’s something that, unfortunately, has to be learnt through action, not explanation. Sometimes heavy pressure can be achieved through counter pressure, such as with a modified scarf hold. Just a small amount of pull on the opposite arm from your legs while you pick your weight off the floor and drive your ribs into theirs can make a ton of difference. But the biggest part isn’t so much the counter pressure, it’s the simple thing that beginners seem to miss.
It’s the drive.
Not just focusing your weight into that small area, but constantly driving off of your feet to create more force. It doesn’t have to be a lot of pushing, a small amount applied constantly at the right angle is very effective. The closest explanation I can offer is to keep your knees and butt off the ground just an inch, no more, and drive off of your feet and then try to imagine your circle. Technical pressure, as many call it, took me well into blue belt to figure out, and it’s still getting better. It’s something that I have asked about a lot as a white belt, and even though I actually got pretty much the exact explanation I just gave, it still took me a long time to understand. You can see it in videos. You know it’s there, but it takes the smallest little details to make it a reality. Details so tiny that you can’t even see them well enough to make use of them. In fact, this blog was pretty much a waste of time, considering anyone looking for an answer, even if you found it, you wont know it until one day when you didn’t even know you are doing anything different, someone will say to you “Wow! Thats some good pressure!” I’m sure you will get a little smirk on your face as the light bulb turns on.
Until then, keep rolling and one day you will find that little 6″ circle really is possible to achieve.

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lazy sundays and teaching…

the last 2 months or so have been pretty awesome. my workload has been very light and i have been able to get some great supplemental training in. this couldn’t have come at a better time for me, considering my wife is going to go into labor literally any minute now. as awesome as it is going to be to have a new baby boy in the house, its definitely going to grind my BJJ to a halt for at least a few weeks. i have been getting in between 6-7 classes or sparring sessions per week and i feel like my game has improved so much just in recent months. its quite amazing how important mat time and experience really is in BJJ. my “normal” schedule since my wife got pregnant again has been 3 classes per week. taking 2 and teaching 1. i was starting to feel almost like a plateau in my progress until i stepped it up. this week felt like a pinnacle so far for me. friday i had two classes and a crazy intense hour of rolling with a very determined miss michelle welti, followed by a rough saturday morning class. i’m so incredibly sore and tired today, and still i cant stop thinking about BJJ.

unfortunately for my progress, not only is the baby coming, but my current jobsite is going to be finished this week, forcing me to go back to a more structured schedule at work, and no more definite day classes. there will be some here and there, but i wont know it until the day of. now, with that being said, once things smooth out on the homefront, i should at least be able to go back to 3 night classes and saturday class. that will be nice. i really feel like 4 is the magic number, anything less doesn’t cut it. whether it be teaching or taking, that amount of focused mat time seems to work for me. hopefully ill be able to get back into a good schedule quickly, considering a newborn baby requires very little attention. but its not the boy im worried about at this point, its the little girl who is jumping headfirst into her terrible twos!

__________________________

people come up to me all the time and talk to me about teaching, offering condolences for not being able to take enough classes sometimes when our instructor is out. but there is definitely something to be said for teaching a technique. i have had this discussion with my instructor a few times. teaching a move makes you take a look at yourself and ask “how well do i really know this technique?” you have to be able to be comfortable enough with your own knowledge to answer specific questions about different aspects of the technique, like “what if your opponent does ___?” “why isn’t this working for me?” having the understanding to break down a movement and confidence that you know what you are talking about is paramount. whats also important is enthusiasm. when you have a lot of success with something, you really want to pass on that success to your peers as well. you end up learning more about the specific details in a single technique by teaching it to others sometimes than when you learn it yourself. now, im not saying i would just watch something on youtube and show it in class. i will only show things that i have learned and drilled many times myself, and used, with success in live sparring. i also greatly respect my instructors approach and style, and try to keep in time with his teachings. i wouldn’t show something that i know he wouldn’t, it has to be consistent in order to be effective.

Then there is always the debate on when to teach… When I started, I would not have felt comfortable learning from a blue belt. I know many people on forums still feel the same way. I don’t see a problem with it anymore since I have a much better understanding of the belt structure at my school. Other schools seem to reward people with belts due to time spent and how well they do against other white belts, not so much based on how the person has grasped not only the basic fundamentals, but how well they can implement them as they are needed. I think at blue belt you should not only have a firm knowledge of fundamentals, but should also be starting to build a more advanced game. Advanced guard work, guard retention, positions, etc, and also be incorporating them into their game regularly and starting to develop their own “style”. Are you going to play the quick explosive style, the smooth technical style, the aggressive heavy style, etc? I feel that once you have begun this part of the journey, you should have a strong enough basics game that teaching should be easy. For a white belt looking to get some color, I think some of these points should be food for thought. Ask yourself this as well, “if I got my ____belt today, and had to compete at that belt tomorrow, would I be ready?” If you are unsure, consider yourself not ready. Think about the positions that other ____ belts are playing. If you understand them, and know how to deal with them offensively and defensively, and not panic when somebody gets you in x, de la riva, deep half, spider, quarter, or any of the many other guards out there, it might be time. But remember, if your instructor doesn’t believe it, then there’s a good chance it’s not time yet. Keep working, have fun, and don’t stress about some silly belt color.

Remember, jiu jitsu is not a race, it’s a marathon.

i love my lazy sundays off, as exhausted and sore as i am, it gives me lots of time to think about the many things i have learned through the week.

to be continued, im sure…

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