Who needs drugs when being under a high mount of a 200+ pound purple belt is a euphoric out of body experience. It takes time but one day you’ll feel comfortable under there.
There’s this brown belt who loves heavy metal music and loves to beat me up. I’m always under his mount. He’s sweaty. It always drips in my face. But underneath all that muscle and perspiration, I’m calm collected and composed. Totally unfazed. No amount of moisture will dampen my spirits.
In jiu jitsu you need to become unbothered by chaos during a roll. And it is chaos. Controlled chaos. From a competitive round to a flow roll, anything could happen and you need your wits about you.
Take grips for example, where the hell do I put my hands? Put them somewhere, anywhere is a good start. Control yourself and then control your opponent. My shift in perspective came from years of being tossed around, pinned, swept, and subbed. And it eventually hit me ‘this ain’t so bad!’
Being under side control is arguably the worst position in my blue belt opinion. But I’ve been stuck under there so much it feels like home. And home is where the heart is. And in this case it is also where understanding comes from.
You get your ass kicked in jiu jitsu enough you actually start to figure things out. It’s supposed to be hard. That’s why most people don’t do this martial art. But trust me, if you can stay calm while you can’t hear because your head is stuck in your partners gi jacket, you taste blood (hopefully it’s yours), you have mat burn on your toes, and your old shoulder injury is acting up again mid roll, well heck that’s half the battle! This means you’re going to make it. This means you’re going to last. Just don’t panic. They WANT you to panic so when you make a mistake they take advantage of that and then soon enough will submit you.
Tips on How to Stay Calm While Getting Your Ass Kicked -breath, big breaths -get them off balance and use every tiny opening they give you -mantra ‘re-gaurd’ just keep repeating that in your head, or out loud if you want to scare them -use your hands, frame, remember ‘the table’, everyone is a table, take one table leg away and the table falls over, that’s when you escape
Next time you are under the high mount of that 200+ pound purple belt, just remember, if your calm it will show and it will spook them. Gather yourself and plan your escape. You don’t have long. But this time you’ll be ready. Because you’re home. Home sweet home. And home is where you belong. Home is where you’re at peace. Now go in peace and don’t panic!
One of the things my father and I bonded over was wrestling. He introduced it to me when I was thirteen years old. He used to coach it way back in the day. So watching the NCAA Wrestling Championships this weekend with him has been nice.
I often think about why did I join a jiu jitsu gym at 36 years old (now 40)? I’ve written about it a bunch but basically I think the main reason is to relive my high school wrestling glory days and to try to connect to what it used to give me. It was one of the few things I was good at as a teenager. Other than skipping class and smoking pot.
Winning a rookie tournament and getting gold in grade nine was a highlight of my wresling career. I remember my coach checking in on me while he coached other members of the team and sort of just let me do my thing. It was something I won and felt I really deserved it.
Being better than average at high school wrestling is part of my life story. It helped shape me. Throughout the years I’d indulge in enjoyable recollection about the ‘good ole’ days’ and wonder if there was ever a way I could get that back. Also throughout the years I would get distracted with drugs and alcohol and parties and basically going throuhg life aimlessly with no purpose or direction. And never returned to the mats. Until decades later, I finally got my act together, got sober, got married, and felt at peace enough to learn to grapple again.
What does grappling signify to me, what does it represent now that I’m at the beginning of middle age?
Bare with me here, I’m going to get deep for a minute. Culture is fractionated. Old avenues and sources of meaning are no longer present as they used to be. The shared collective values of community and institutions (that we used to trust) have collapsed.
As Paul Publisher (@ZeitvilleMedia) would say, ‘people now stitch together personal identities, beliefs, and communities from fragmented cultural remnants, like a patchwork quilt, creating individualized or micro-tribal realities amid decentralization, multiplicity, and parallel subcultures.’
Basically, we need more awe and less A.I. We need more mystery and less slop. We need more texture and less smooth monochrome frictionless living. Less optimization and more struggle.
So what the hell does this have to do with a 40 year old blue belt trying to recapture his high school mat glory?
Well to put it another way, what would I be missing if I took jiu jitsu out of my life now?
I’d be missing that texture and awe and mystery I get now from a martial art.
I would be missing a sense on community. A social life. Exercise. Hobby. Goals. Everything good that comes from martial arts and everything good I used to get way back in the day. But most importantly, I’d be missing a catalyst through which I can divert the demons. A funnel to direct my energy and focus. And an avenue to maybe inspire myself and others. You know, meaning and purpose.
Is the meaning coming from the activity itself, or what it demands from me?
Does the meaning come from the tactile physical touch and throwing and gripping and movement of my body OR does it come from the mindests motivation schedule disipline and study that the martial art demands?
I suppose it’s all of that. The meaning for me shows up in the hard rounds and breakthroughs and losses and the little positional wins I have on the mat. It gives me immediate feedback of how I am doing. If the work I put in on and off the mats is working or not. I am not left to wonder. It’s a wonderful thing to overcome the physical and mental demands of grappling. Especially now that I’m 40 and that most 40 year old men are not doing this. They should be, in one form or another not just in martial arts.
So when people say ‘it’s just jiu jitsu, it’s not that deep’ I know what they mean. I know what they are trying to say. Heck I even say that sometimes. But maybe the don’t really think about it this way, think about it in terms of meaning-generation or meaning-mining. Meaningmaxxing. Bro, are you even meaningmaxxing?
But for folks like me that had their life change for the better because I joined a martial art at a later age, it IS that deep. It means something. And I bet it means something to you as well. It matters.
So whatever the reason is that you joined a grappling gym, I know it’s a net positive in your life. And I hope it continues to be for many more years to come.
Keep rolling keep struggling keep finding texture and friction and community and purpose. It’s not just jij jitsu. It’s meaningmaxxing. And it’s worth every sore elbow hip knee and mat burn. See you on the mats.
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.
To the eighteen year old blue belt that tapped me with a tarikoplata twice in one roll, well done.
To the giant white belt who caught me in a nasty triangle and made me tap, well done.
To the fifteen year old white belt that was out manoeuvring me and jumped on a sweet back take, well done.
You know when a higher belt tells out you did a good job, feels good doesn’t it. Because they’ve been around and they know the grind. If a lower belt or a young gun beats you our bests you on the mat, let them know! Tell them what they did well. Be encouraging to your fellow grapplers, and let’s help make this community as positive as possible!
Do you want people to stick around? Yes because that means more rolling for us!
Stop caring about stripes and miss the grading class. Show up when you can even if that means you’ve only gone eight times in four months. When you’re not on the mat watch MMA and technique clips and collegiate wrestling tournaments. Read about grappling and follow people on social media that grapple. Keep stoking the coals so your love for kimono cuddling never fully goes away. The orginal cohort that joined when you did is getting smaller and smaller. Out last the attrition watch new whites come and go. More fodder for you. The smell of the mats and durable heavyweight cotton gi’s and someone elses blood how did it get on my sleeve oh man we are a weird bunch of folks who do this every week and then go to work like we’re normal people. Sigue apareciendo stay the course and before you know it you’ll be a brown belt with a food gut but the grip of a mythical gryphon.
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.
Competing as a hobbyist is exhilarating. Doing your regular life routine but also preparing for a fight can be challenging but it’s worth it.
Here’s my training regime for my upcoming comp in October (month and a half away)…
Fitness Gym:
All upper body lifting. Chest press, bicep curls, back rows, and shoulder presses. I must look the part and when I walk onto the mat I will strike fear into hearts of my opponents. 2 days a week should be good. My cardio is not the greatest so I’m not really looking to improve that much in that area. Too much work.
Get those 10,000 steps in before bed.
BJJ Gym Frequency:
Open mat every Saturday. Roll all ten rounds. Pick white belts as my partners so I can build confidence from smashing them. No gi once or twice a week. Also go to fundamentals class once or twice a week with my wife because we always have a fun time goofing around.
BJJ Skills to Work On:
Gripping in gi and no gi. I get the grip fight in gi but my No gi gripping is shite. If my grip game is solid I can get to a good position and work to submit from there. Pretty confident with that part. Also a heavy focus on underhooks and open guard for No gi.
Nutrition:
I eat pretty well. Cook almost every night. Steak, pork, or ground beef with veggies and rice. But when I’m at work, that’s when I eat like crap. Gotta stay away from the fries and Tim Bits. Need to lose 2-3 pounds, is definitely doable.
Mindset:
I felt way more confident and comfortable at my last competition in January, when I didn’t care about the outcome of the match. It took pressure off me and my expectations were realistic and I had more fun. Also, a trick I do is not looking at the brackets and my opponents before hand, so I don’t look at their profiles on SmoothComp and then psych myself out. I have my wife tell me when my match is coming up. And only try to see my opponent right before I get on the mat.
What are some ways that YOU like to prepare for a BJJ competition?
You know what I mean. But for those that don’t…try not to stare, and instead use good eye contact. Stop fidgeting and slouching and instead stand up straight with your shoulders back and chest out like the popular sculpting position called ‘Contrapposto.’ Own your space with certainty.
Simply be cool. Be friendly, but not too much of a nice guy (read: No More Mr. Nice Guy by Robert Glover).
At the same time, don’t be a conceded, know-everything asshole. Blend a perfect mix of confident and relaxed with approachable and composed.
This makes people respect you and want to be around you. And most importantly it will make people more likely to want to partner up with you.
Becoming the type of person I just described above is beyond the scope of this post. And probably not attainable for most people. Believe me, I’ve been trying for over a decade. But just going to jiu jitsu class regularly, will help with those personality characteristics.
This sport has a way of changing people for the better (most of the time). Also, grappling tends to filter out the goofs. Usually but not always. Don’t be weird.
A note on creepy…if you get paired up with a woman from your class, don’t be creepy. If you don’t know what that means, you might be creepy.
Match Their Intensity
Have you ever rolled with a person that felt like they were fighting demons?
It’s as if you are being used as a stress ball. It’s as if the tension they’ve accumulated throughout the week is being released onto you. It’s as if their unresolved trauma and shock is your fault and you must pay.
We’ve all been there. We might even be that person. But If I had one piece of advice to new white belts, it would be: chill the f*** out.
We want to have a good experience sparring and rolling with our partners, and the best thing to do is to match their intensity while rolling.
Have you ever heard of ‘mirroring’? “Mirroring is the behaviour in which one person subconsciously imitates the gesture, speech pattern, or attitude of another.” They say that this can be a good way to build rapport with others.
When you’re trying to match someones intensity, think of mirroring.
If they go hard, you go hard. If they want to flow roll, you flow roll. And everything in between. This is based on FEEL. Yes you can roll how you want, but if you roll too hard, some folks will avoid rolling with you.
That being said, I believe it’s good to roll with as many different types of people and styles, so your bjj game can absorb the breadth that the sport has to offer. Just be careful.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: you can roll with whoever you like and you can not roll with anyone you don’t like. It’s your journey, do what you want.
Allow Your Partner to Practice the Technique
This comes down to patience and giving your partner the appropriate amount of resistance.
The person you’ve partnered up with may be a clumsy new white belt (or a clumsy blue belt with one stripe, like me). Allow them the space to fail and fail and fail, and give advice when asked or when needed. Don’t get frustrated when they get frustrated, show some maturity. This is tough because a blue belt only knows what a blue belt knows. For example, if someone asks me a question regarding a technique we’re practising, I give them details that I recognize but I always tell them that the head instructor knows best and to call them over for more clarification.
My wife is very competitive. Board games, card games, anything that involves competition. When we are at BJJ and she isn’t understanding the technique right away, she sometimes gets frustrated. I do my best to use encouraging language “You got this” or “That’s almost right, but here’s a detail that might help…” or “Let’s get (so and so) over here to show us the correct movement.” Encouraging language makes people feel comfortable even when they are failing.
And trust me, when I don’t use encouraging language or if I get frustrated and annoyed, we both feel it and our energy shifts. Just be aware that your demeanor can affect your partner. Keep that in mind.
A note on humility…it’s okay if you don’t understand and perform the technique right away. Jiu jitsu is hard and it will take a long time to get good at it. Some people pick it up fast while others not so fast. “Learn to be where you’re at.”
The other aspect of allowing your partner to practice the technique, is giving appropriate resistance. That means not going 100% defence and not allowing them to go through the motions of the submission or guard passing or whatever you’re learning.
Some people even ask me to give more resistance if they want to feel what it’s like when someone is trying to defend themselves from the technique. Ask your partner, or tell your partner how much resistance they/you want when learning a technique.
Don’t be weird. Match your partners intensity.And allow your partner to actually practice the technique you’re learning.
I’m still trying to master all of those and expect to be working on them for many years to come. Because one of my biggest goals in jiu jitsu is to become a good partner. If we learn well together, we all get better together. And if we all get better together, we can fight each other using really cool moves and become modern day ninjas. Isn’t that what we all want?
There and Back 