Notes: No gi open mat. First time going to this one since they started offering the noon class on Sundays. Haven’t done No Gi in many months. This was an absolute beat down. A wallop. I haven’t been that wrecked since I was a white belt. But I laughed and we all had fun. Lost count how many times I tapped. I only did five, five minute rounds but at no point did I get dominate grips, control any position, lost scrambles and was chasing never leading. The tap tracking today is only a guess. Physically and mentally feel wonderful. I’ll be back next week.
“Fear is a natural, protective emotion triggered by perceived danger, activating the body’s fight-or-flight response through adrenaline and cortisol. It stems from the brain’s amygdala, which treats both real threats (physical danger) and imagined ones (psychological stress) similarly, causing physical reactions like racing heart, sweating, and alertness.”
Fear can keep us safe by preparing the body to face or flee from danger. In jiu jitsu, you can flee by butt scooting but eventually you’ll have to engage because your opponent will try to hyperextend your limbs or choke you. Fear can also stop you from doing activities that are great for you. But lets back it up a bit, and talk about fear of starting your journey in grappling. We all want to be badass martial artists because we grew up watching Bloodsport or Baki the Grappler or Pride FC or George St. Pierre make his historic UFC championship run. Maybe we used to wrestle in high school and want to relive the glory days on the mat, but we’re forty years old and can barely make it through the warmups. Or maybe we had a traumatic event and want to learn how to defend ourselves because we’re sick of being a b*tch and want to learn confidence and self mastery and how to be an Alpha Cool Chad.
Whatever your reasons for wanting to join the grappling journey, fear is there lingering in the background every time you think about trying a free trial class. Of course it is. Considering a martial art is to consider grabbing and throwing and choking and hurting strangers every week. On purpose. We like to stay in our bubbles of comfort but to embark on a grappling journey is to come to terms with being close and on and over and under other peoples bodies sweating and coughing and spitting and whatever else a nasty human body can do. I’ve been doing jiu jitsu so almost five years and I still get that tiny lovely anxious feeling in my stomach sometimes while stretching on the mat. Because my body knows what is about to happen. A legal Fight Club. And not to mention the nervousness I feel before and during a BJJ competition.
Fear is your body’s reaction to an immediate threat, like a new brown belt who is at least twenty pounds heavier than you just asked you to roll at open mat and you know you shouldn’t spar with him but you also love grappling. Anxiety on the other hand is your reaction to an uncertain threat of future, like what might happen if you pull guard on that brown belt because there is no way in hell you’re going to try to wrestle him because you remember what happened last time.
We should feel fear when we join jiu jitsu. But it should be a healthy fear. A healthy fear of knowing if you do a technique wrong you could really hurt someone or yourself. A healthy fear of being too close to strangers because you don’t know what they are like on the mat. A healthy fear of not wanting to disrespect the gym and instructors.
A healthy fear in jiu jitsu keeps us safe while we learn the art. It’s a balance of respecting the risk of injury and not being too afraid to train. A balance I am still learning, because in the heat of a good roll that competitive nature can feel great but the ego can consume you so be careful. Remember most of you reading this and myself include joined this to have fun so lets make sure that FUN is our main focus. And to those who haven’t joined yet don’t be afraid, sign up for a trial class and see what your body can really do.
I’m laughing more when I roll. Getting swept to my back or tapping to a choke has never been more fun. I think I’m on to something. Grappling has always been fun. But for most of my BJJ journey I’ve had this sense of trying to ‘work towards something’ and focusing on ‘what’s next’ and when will I just ‘get it.’ Lately though, my fixation on promotion and grading has drifted away. I purposely missed the last two promotions and gradings. I just didn’t care. I mean it’s great to see people improve, and the folks that got stripes and new belts I made sure to congratulate them when I saw them next. But for me, stripes have lost their pull on me.
I know a purple belt that never signs in. I’m in awe of his aloofness and his dedication to not recording his attendance. I wish I had that in me.
The slog from blue belt to purple belt is a beautiful frustration of hits and misses and injuries and inadequacies. The visual reward manifests in white tape. To show yourself and others of your dedication. But does it represent actual skill? I bet it would be hard for instructors to keep track of all the students progress without the stripes. And I can see how, say, your first stripe is an indication that ‘hey you’re on the right track!’ And that the fourth stripe can be seen as ‘hey you’re almost there!’
For me I’m not chasing stripes anymore. I’ll be honoured and thankful when I do get my next stripes, because I respect my head instructors decision and trust his judgement if he decides to give me one.
My relationship with grappling is getting deeper (also jiu jitsu is not that deep). I don’t mean in a woo woo I’m a ninja sort of way (but yeah we are ninjas). I mean that my love for grappling is expanding to include not just my progress, in the form of stripes, but also to include the subtle ways we grip and toss and trip each other. The physical movements more than the visual upgrade. I am rediscovering the joys of training. Play curiosity presence over promotion. It is a relief not to put pressure on yourself to get a piece of tape. I highly recommend it.
I submitted a black belt. Holy shit. It was with a cross collar choke from the back. I remember him saying oh shit right when I got a grip on the cross collar and put my other hand in like a half-Nelson-type grip/position. We weren’t going really hard, that’s actually one of the reasons I enjoy sparring with him. But it was definitely the top highlight in jiu jitsu of the last year I’ve been grappling.
I can’t stress this enough: grip fighting is Jiu jitsu. Always start there! And never stop practicing it!
Only went twice this month so far but rolled pretty well. My endurance and cardio are crap but hey it’s winter time and I got a bit of a belly.
And I also heard Mikey Musumeci is learning wrestling from Dagestanis? I’ll believe it when I see it.
While warming up we had Real American by Rick Derringer blaring on the speakers. I’m not an American but it made me feel patriotic.
5 rounds of being the nail. Sometimes I’m the hammer. Not often. Rolled with M again I got to stop doing that. He rolls too hard. I could get badly hurt. I could go back and review all my open mat notes and probably every few sessions I’m telling myself not to role with him. I need to take my own advice. That being said it is good practice for defence. It’s a constant struggle between my ego saying ‘stay and fight!’ and my conscience saying ‘it’s not worth it!’ The struggle is real.
Other than that, I had a lot of fun. Got gassed out quick. A lot of people were breathing heavy I think because of the holiday gluttony.
Last night I was humming and hawing, and telling myself I probably wouldn’t go to open mat because my muscles were sore from going to the fitness gym the day before because I hadn’t gone to the fitness gym in such a long time. I’m glad I went. I’m always glad when I go to the fitness gym and the jiu jitsu gym.
And to all my fellow blue belts slogging away towards purple belt. I salute you. We got this.
The black belt head instructor was rolling with me and proceeded to dominate, as expected. At the end of the roll I said his pressure was amazing. He said it’s all in balance, pressure, and connection. I will try and explain what he said to me.
For example, if you’re in Mount you want to catch your balance first, so they don’t sweep you. Then you want to put pressure on them to make it hard on them to move. Then you want to start making a connection to a limb for a break or their neck for a choke. It seems simple, and it probably is but it’s hard to execute.
The more I think about it, it seems like these concepts of balance, pressure, and connection when added together, equal control.
So how did the rest of my rolls go today?
My ability to dominate white belts continues to impress. My ability to get dominated by higher belts also continues to impress.
What can I say? I’m an impressive blue belt with one stripe.
After rolling with a black belt today at open mat, he said I’ve gotten a lot better. He said that him and another black belt have been watching me from the side of the mat and have noticed I’ve been improving a lot and that my flow is looking really nice.
He also said since I’m a quiet guy, a lot of people are sleeping on me, meaning I’m unsuspecting and they wouldn’t know how good I actually am until they roll with me. I thanked him and said that means a lot coming from him.
Now I’m gonna have a giant smile on my face all day.
After rolling with a back belt (it was more survival than anything), a purple belt called me over. He asked me “do you study Jiu Jitsu?”
I said “I dunno I watch it a lot, I used to wrestle in high school” (I always like to tell people I used to wrestle in high school). He said “you rolled really well with him” as he motioned at the black belt I just sparred with.
What a great compliment!
He then showed me a technique/ submission that I had on the black belt but didn’t realize at the time while rolling that I had it.
For example, I’m in side control on top, both my opponents arms are trapped under me, I then would get a cross-face and then triangle my arms to tighten. It’s like a squeeze submission, very cool.
I thanked him for showing me the technique and then went off to spar with my next partner. A good day on the mats for sure.
As we were drilling a cool sweep in class recently, I think I heard my head instructor say to a couple of white belts, that sweeping is the fastest way to the mount. It got me thinking, maybe I’m doing this bjj thing wrong (wrong for my age and body type).
I’ll be 39 this year. I’m in decent shape, don’t drink or smoke. And can recover fairly well. But I can’t keep up or out wrestle the younger people at my jiu jitsu gym. Ain’t gonna happen. No matter how much I try and finish a single or double leg takedown. Even a failed attempt at a single leg takedown, and I’m exhausted.
Time for a new approach.
The Lazy Man’s Guide to Grappling
“If you’re going to get beat anyway then realize that this is an opportunity to take it easy”
You know how they say, destroy your ego, well in the case of getting beat in a bjj round, if you’re going to lose a position or get submitted, take the L. Your ego won’t be hurt. Your ego will be so strong it doesn’t even care if your guard gets passed because you’ve survived and didn’t get hurt.
“A grappling school is a learning environment and if you grapple long enough you will be able to hand out more whippings than there will be grapplers to accept them.”
Our time will come, my fellow older blue belt. But that time won’t come if we get injured. And we’ll get injured if we keep rolling like an 18 year old college wrestler.
“Once you have them clamped down then you can begin to rest and start thinking about what you want for dinner after practice. Depending upon experience they will be moving a little or a lot in order to break free, but it will be a lot less than you because you have established position. For them, not only have they not established a favorable position, they are operating from a deficit.”
Position before submission. Don’t rush. Establish control before attacking. I constantly need to remind myself of those. If you go slow you can go fast (that sounds like some old school martial arts wisdom, it’s not mine I definitely heard it somewhere though).
“To throw my grappling buddies off when I am on top, I sometimes act as if I am going after a choke or I will pull their gi out of their belt and pretend I am working on a new type of submission. In reality I am just buying time, as most people will try to defend by trying to remove my hand or keep me from tugging on their gi. I often have no idea what I am doing but I gain precious rest while pretending I possess awesome skills”
There isn’t much time to rest and take it easy while grappling, so why not make time? I also often don’t really know what I want to do from any given position, either on top or bottom. “Fake it ‘til to make it” is a good strategy for the aspiring lazy grappler.
“As a lazy grappler I don’t have the energy or motivation to spend two minutes trying to get you down. I need you down yesterday […]
My mission is to, as quickly as possible, do one of the following: overwrap both of my opponent’s arms (one will suffice too), apply a bear hug or get a Greco Roman grip. Once I lock up an opponent I like to apply an inside or outside leg trip
Bear hug and trip. That sounds low effort and low risk. I like the sound of that!
If you want to last long, save energy, and stay cool calm and collected, while rolling jiu jitsu, I highly recommend becoming a lazy grappler.
I’ve noticed some weird bjj training phenomena that has made my bjj game get better. Becoming a lazy grappler is one of them.
Don’t take it too seriously, have fun, and don’t get injured. Don’t use too much energy, low-effort techniques are your friends, and move slow to prevent yourself from getting hurt.
Now doesn’t that sound like a good plan for BJJ longevity!
It’s good to be back on the mats. I went twice in about 2 1/2 weeks I was sick and I wanted to let my shoulder heal. The good news is I am 100% and my shoulder feels much better. Sidenote, one thing I did to help rehab my shoulder was shoulder press using 5 pound dumbbells because I read that it’s a good weight to use, because 5 pounds just uses the rotator cuff whereas heavier weights would use the other muscles around the shoulder.
Anyway, it’s good to be back. I did 2 1/2 hours of JiuJitsu tonight, an hour of advance class, an hour and a half of Nogi. I got beat up and it was wonderful.
I got dummied by purple belts tonight. I feel so alive.
The buzzer saved me again, from a mounted triangle this time.
I practiced the outside single leg like I told myself I would, and I scooped up nine out of 10 of them. Finished zero out of 10 of them.
The last roll of the night in no gi, I had a purple belt really put me through the ringer, but he didn’t submit me and he had many times to try. I could feel his intensity, perhaps he was getting a little frustrated? That’s a win for me. He was really cool after, he said I had some good escapes. I enjoy hearing that from higher belts. Let’s me know I’m on the right track.
There and Back 