Caution and progress are mutually exclusive. You can only have one to the degree you’re willing to let go of the other.
I say it all the time in martial arts. Turtling up is a great way to defend being punched (caution). But when in the turtle, you’re not doing anything to make the punches stop (progress).
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The truth is what it is. This is a science. Airplanes have gone through SIGNIFICANT changes in the last 20 years, but, aerodynamics have not. We can play with placement of the wings on the body, but the teardrop shape of the wings don’t change. No one has built a plane that looks like you’re pushing an open umbrella! It wouldn’t work. All science is the same. BJJ is no different. Although we make constant improvements, they are changes that the untrained eye may not even see. I have changed a lot of things from the way I learned them. But most people would be hard pressed to notice them if we held them up side by side. There’s a delicate balance. Find the improvements, without straying from the scientific essence of the art.
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See, the problem is that there’s training, and then, there’s testing. And they aren’t the same. Testing, is when the outcome is important. Self defense, tournaments, etc., but on the mat in the gym, that’s training. That’s where you want weaknesses, and holes in your game exposed. That’s where you try moves that you’re not good at yet and pay the price. And that’s awesome. Every time you get beat, you have the chance to improve something. You have the chance for your Jiu-Jitsu to grow! That should be exciting. Awesome, in fact.
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Long before the media craze, BJJ was involved in MMA. Back then it was called Vale Tudo (anything goes). No protective equipment, no weight classes. There were very limited rules, no eye gouging, no biting, and that’s about it! In this realm (when I first started fighting), BJJ reigned supreme. People were amazed at the unprecedented superiority of BJJ. As far back the late 19th century, the root arts of BJJ were untouchable in the world of real fighting.
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First part of self defense is target selection. Weakness draws aggression. Caving in to peer pressure is a huge public display of weakness. It means avoiding awkwardness is more important than you making your own decisions.
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I want the person that is almost sure they can’t. There’s just this faint glimmer of “maybe” buried in there. I want the not athletic. The not strong. The people who aren’t sure if they “can” but can’t stop daydreaming about it!
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I was watching a group of our students spar the other day, and could just tell……. Nobody was working on anything. Sure they were sparring (a tad too hard), and they were certainly trying to “win”. But, after a few rounds, I called everyone in, and said “What’s your point, in this training session?”.
Stares.
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Anyone that knows me, knows my character IS my identity. Every fiber of my being was shaped in this place. How I see the world. Who I am inside. My character. My honor. My loyalty. All made on the training floor.
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So, if I know I may only have a few months……. I need to prepare you as best I can. So, in the Basic Curriculum (White Belt stripes 1 & 2) everything is about basic defense. In the Intermediate (stripes 3 & 4) it’s more about attacking. Hell, I used to call it “Self Defense” and “Fighting Fundamentals”, because that was a more accurate description of the concepts in each. One was about “not getting beat up”. The other was a little more in the “beat them up” vein.
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I can’t tell you how often I pose this scenario to “advanced” BJJ people, and hear “replace guard”, or “go inverted guard” or some such nonsense. Yes, that shit can work. And yes there are dudes in the world that can sweep me on my head with it. But that’s not the fucking point. Christ, Liberace made an excellent living playing the piano, and wearing bedazzled jumpsuits. Doesn’t mean you tell you kid to do that instead of going to school!!!!
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And don’t fool yourself into thinking “oh, I woulda…..”. Courage is not an accident. You develop it, and keep it sharp, or you lose it. Develop it now. Here. Don’t let yourself be one of these people.
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Don’t get me wrong…… I’m not blaming HER. I’m blaming society at large. She probably has no idea that a woman her size could legitimately beat the shit out of a guy his size with the right training. To me this is kind of like seeing a group of people watching someone at the edge of the grand canyon. All the people know the rail is busted, and NOBODY tells this person. And they all watch as they lean on the rail, and fall over. That’s not the victims “fault”. It’s everyone watching.
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Several people have been asking me the outcome of the Pink Numchuks post from a few days back. Well, I’ve been curious myself. I only see the star of that story by chance in a gas station by my house, so I have been without the ending to that drama too!
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BJJ made sharks……. Pure and simple. And that’s where we stepped in and fucked it all up. We got so interested in the “sportive” applications of the art, that we literally changed the selection process. We have World Champion ELITE level BJJ competitors getting disqualified for NOT engaging?!?!? The analogy in that quote still holds dead true. The ground is still the ocean. And most people still don’t know how to swim. But those animals you see swimming around. Those aren’t sharks. They can swim like motherfuckers, but they are no god damn sharks. I want to save the sharks. Please…. Please be a part of this movement. Please stop “polluting our oceans”. Yes we need other fish in the sea. Diversity is a good thing. I don’t want the tuna (or whatever the fuck sport BJJ’rs are supposed to be) to go extinct either. I just don’t want to see the all the sharks die off.
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