Sensitivity and Balance

Ok I’ve been slack and haven’t posted in awhile.  Two things have played on my mind and that is motivation and acceptance for my existing gym.  Since starting privates I’ve noticed my attendance for my gym has been declining, and that my motivation for going there is also declining.  I’m just getting so much out of my privates that I feel like my old gym is just not progressing me in any way. I don’t feel accepted at the gym.  So I’m thinking of making the switch permanently to the Rickson (and Kron) Gracie affiliate school.

It’s a lot further away – 45mins to 2 hours depending on how bad traffic is – each way. Still I think overall the change will be for the better.  It’s a personal thing, sometimes you start BJJ at one school but you just don’t click there in the same way. I don’t think it’s bad to change schools as you can never know what another school is like when you first start BJJ.I got into this art because of Rickson Gracie, so really that’s where my heart is telling me to go.

On other topics I’ve been working a lot on sensitivity to movement and balance.  Interesting enough I just happened to come across a Rickson Gracie video of him doing a private lesson on a Swiss balls.  He demonstrating some great exercises that I think can directly apply to Jiu Jitsu. The three main exercises were:

1. Lie flat on the ball and try to keep balance without touching ground.
2. Put knees on ball and then stand up on the ball and do squats (that’s right…squats) without falling off.
3. Lie on back on ground and put a leg on the ball, elevate your hips off the ground and keep balance.  You can even practise going to your sides if you want.

All of these sound easy, but for me they work so many aspects of sensitivity, balance, muscle and timing.  I’m starting to incorporate these exercises into the Gynastica Natural exercises.  I think they compliment each other very nicely and will help my Jiu Jitsu.

Rickson Gracie demonstrating some balance sensitivity.

I can’t last 3 seconds in the first exercise without touching the ground.  The second exercise I finally got both of my feet onto the ball after a couple of days.  I can’t stand yet.  As for the last exercises: I don’t feel I have enough power or more correctly the power isn’t being directed correctly onto one leg.

Anyhow it’s a great video showing just how much body awareness he has…

Everyone needs a Survival Plan

After attending a Jujitsu coaching accreditation course (NCAS) I was reflecting on parts of the course that I liked, parts that I didn’t and parts that were a big hole in my own development.  Part of the problem is that I’ve internally placed too much importance on letting my instructor develop me as a BJJ practitioner.  Until this blog I never took ownership of my development – besides just showing up.

During the coaching course, a section was dedicated to vision, goals, planning and monitoring progress – the examples were shown in a generic sports sense.  However I started thinking about how I don’t apply this to my own BJJ.  I had a vision and I set goals, but I never created plans for those goals.

That is a plan outside of showing up to class and doing whatever technique was being displayed.  I don’t have a coach as such that gives me that direction.  So my approach is if I can’t have that I’ll coach myself.  It doesn’t mean I’ll learn technique and make it up myself.  It means I’ll give my training some structure.

My vision is simple: Make my Jiu Jitsu as effortless and effective as Rickson Gracie’s.

That’s a huge vision,  but that’s what a vision is suppose to be.  Something far off the drives everything else you do.

So my immediate goal this month is this:  To feel relaxed and safe when underneath all belt colours and sizes.

I added a monthly plan on how to achieve this goal.  This stuff, is the extra stuff outside of class drilling.  It’s my own session by session plan that augments whatever is being taught.  Perhaps I work on it during live rolls, after class, or during open mat.  I still will work on what is being taught.

The idea is for every day I have a specific requirement that I have to work on in training. Which leads me one step  towards achieving the current goal I’ve set.   I then just go back the next day and mark (either green or red) whether I completed my planned drill/exercise or not.   I also update my training log with how the night in general went.

My plan for last night was to get under SC, S-Mount and Mount and just work survival skills without even worrying about escapes.  I didn’t get much time in Mount as people generally got stuck in SC or went straight to S-Mount.  So I accomplished most of my plan for the night.  My plan has me doing this particular thing for the next 3-4 training sessions.

Example of my training log.

Example of my Training Plan

The plan doesn’t tell me how well I did things – I have the training log for that.  It’s purpose is just to ensure I’m following the plan towards the goal.  If you don’t have an instructor that actively participates in asking you for your goals and setting out a specific plan then I recommend you give something like this a try.  Otherwise you are like the guys that go down to the local weights gym to workout without any direction – what are they really achieving in the long run?  I don’t want to be a great competitor or anything,  but I do want to be getting the most out of every Jiu Jitsu class I attend. 

Happy rolling

Dan

Drilling Resistance

I’ve been thinking recently about how much drilling I do.  I worked on a simple sequence  last Saturday that involved an action—>reaction—>action—>reaction round trip sequence.  While in cooperative drills I noticed one of my partners would do the moves, however when we moved to in the hole resistance drilling to train the timing etc he would not perform the moves required so I could get my timing.

I noticed that this actually stifled my ability to train working out the timings for reactions etc.  I’m of the camp that believes in repetition to increase muscle memory, and I’m starting to think that’s what I need to do to improve my reaction timing.

I sometimes feel a step behind in a live roll. I  know what to do, but I’m just not anticipating peoples reaction.  So I end up resisting their reaction instead of using it against them.  I want to make the other person feel like they are one step behind.

So I’m going to see how my strategy of focusing on resistance drilling develops, so for each of the ways we can resist I can feel comfortable in the transition.  From now on I’ll be asking my partners to use resistance, but limiting it to 4-5 options.  So that way I can practise my counters and timing as well.  Over time I hope to bring in more options to the drills.

Hope that makes sense!

Dan

Get a Grip

Sometimes choice is a bad thing.  Ever gone to an ice-cream store and been inundated by choice,  so many flavours and textures.  The saturation of choice often leaves me confused,  over-whelmed and unable to make a decision.  Needless to say I’ll branch out to include chocolate and occasionally mango or a berry flavours…and that’s it. What you won’t get out of me is choosing the pineapple chunks with Rhubarb choice! So I choose chocolate except there are 5 different types of chocolate which involves even more choices and decisions,  if I take the “World Class” one I’m then left feeling that I might have missed the better “traditional” choice..

As you can see, where I’m from ice-cream selection is serious business.  Jui-Jitsu is similar,  often times I will flounder in guard trying to break the guy down and just not get anywhere.  I was taught this was step 1, but my breaking down had zero focus on grips and so I floundered.  I didn’t think about grips or have a go to grip, and because of that I stalled and never committed to one. I was left with whatever grips fell into my hands so to speak.  This lead me to have a very hard game for me to analyse and improve on.  I had zero consistency and for a long time couldn’t figure out why.

As such, I’ve gone back to basics in this area.  That is I will try to get either the same gi or no-gi grip and that’s it. I only train with Gi btw.  I am slowly finding this is a good way to really delve deeply into the details.  It’s far less confusing as I know what my choice is and I can focus on getting it reliably and what the likely problems are that I will encounter.  The great thing about this is, if a person is really stuffing my grip I’ll ask them to show me what they are doing and can we drill it, then I ask them to help find the counter to the counter!

It’s slow work for me,  I don’t have time to dedicate to BJJ every day but I do want to improve.   Another aspect is that I previously thought of grips as just my hands/arms.  Also, I now realise that my legs/feet are grips too, often equally if not more important than my hands.  I now look at closed guard as a grip with my legs, or mount as a grip with my legs and feet. 

So my basic tip is this.  Pick a grip, a fundamental and basic grip and make it your go to grip. Use it, explore and understand every nuance of it and every counter to the counter-grips people might employ.  Above all else, get a grip!

Dan