Dose

I’m honestly pretty impressed with people who are able to write/blog regularly while leading a “normal” life (i.e. they don’t write for a living). I’ve had the best of intentions but free time tends to get allocated pretty quickly.  Regardless, I’ve mentioned that writing about stuff is nice because it provides some perspective, and that’s something that everyone could use a little more of, especially me. I think that committing a thought to paper (pixels?) and knowing that it’s out there in the world for people to read makes you look at the position of perspective you’re holding a little differently, like a little dose of self-therapy.

BJJ Session # 26/27 – Survive

One perspective which you could look at life from would be this: life is about reps. The more reps you get at something  the better you get. The fewer reps you have at something, the worse you are. The instances of “natural” talent blooming the instant someone picks up a stick, club, ball, pen, paintbrush or musical instrument are infinitesimally rare. Sure, there are people who seem to “get” things better than others, the task fitting their brains a bit better than others, but those out there that are performing something at a high level all have something in common. Reps. Thousands upon thousands of reps. In all situations, under all conditions, from all angles. When everyone is watching, and when you’re all alone. You don’t shoot the puck like this in a live game without thousands of reps:

There are a million books written about this, and my brief elaboration above is an oversimplification, but the basic truth remains: there is no substitute for reps if the goal is mastery. It seems the universal experience when starting BJJ is this: you will get a lot of reps at trying to survive. 

BJJ Session # 25 – RNC

We continued this week with working from bottom half guard, with the focus on taking the back. Previously, after we had worked to overcome 1 ) being flat on our back, 2) the cross-face and 3) the under-hook, we either replaced our guard or went out the back to take their back.  I felt more comfortable again with the process of moving out the back, control his hip and pulling him back onto me. It’s still a work in progress, but it’s coming.  

BJJ Session # 24 – Rinse, Repeat

Since I’m really only able to attend classes twice a week, aside from the occasional open mat, the ideal set up would be if the first class would be on either Tues/Wed and the second on Thur/Fri.  The reason is that the Tues/Wed classes are the same lesson plan, as are the Thur/Fri classes. So, when life (read: kids) conspires against the ideal schedule, I end up going to both the Thursday and Friday classes and repeating the same lesson.  I can only speak to my experience so far, which is that any class, even a repeated one, is better than no class. I imagine it would be the same for the majority of people regardless of their experience or belt. For me at three months into BJJ, I could argue that the repetition is maybe better for me than moving on to a new variation or technique. It’s not like one hour drilling 2-out-of-hundreds of half-guard options is going to lead to me releasing my own half guard DVD instructional. With all that being said, it’s interesting how the same lesson and drills can seem so different 24 hours later.

BJJ Session # 23 – Bottom half

Back to class and into drilling techniques from bottom half guard. Our prof outlined some of the structure of the curriculum that we’ll be covering over the next few months, the weekly/monthly cycles, and the introduction (for me, at least) of the progressive guard system for grading in the spring. My personal instinct when doing most things is to ‘wing it’, but I’ve learned that I work best within a structure… if that makes any sense. Like, let me know the rules of the game, the parameters and expectations and then I’m comfortable being creative within those spaces. If I can remove the insecurity and uncertainty of a situation (i.e. understanding the landscape) I’m comfortable winging it within. So, although the current/previous format of class was great (when you have literally everything to learn and a long way to go it doesn’t matter what your first few steps look like… just as long as you take them) I liked hearing about the structure to come.