Do It Nice, Or Do It Twice

Lets put it this way, when you first start out training Bjj you might think you know a thing or two if you did other martial arts, you'll soon realise that there is little to no cross over from other martial arts to jiu jitsu (there can be some crossover with spatial/body awareness or sensitivity training from other martial arts yes, but practical knowledge crossover is minimal at best. as someone who training other martial arts for around 15 years before starting in jiu jitsu, its both refreshing and intimidating.

so what happens....... you start you realise you dont know much so you try and find shortcuts, not shortcuts in a cheating way, shortcuts in moves or techniques that you think will help with your submissions, cause lets face it, when you first start and you are constantly getting subbed we dont think how can i get better at not being subbed, we think about how i can get better at beating other people (this is a lesson to learn in itself that we should focus on escapes first).

what do we do ? we turn to social media, we turn to youtube or instagram to find some fancy looking stuff that will "look cool" and hopefully help us get subs. So whats the problem with that ?? if we dont understand some of the core principals of jiu jiutsu its hard to incorporate these things. its like not knowing your ABC's and trying to write a fictional story using your imagination (its easier writing a storey on something we experienced just as its easier doing a move we have already done then attempting a "fictional" move we have only seen and never attempted)

When we dont understand space, balance, timing, frames, structure, how to disrupt structure or the mechanics of the submissions we are trying to do, how can we expect to do something we barely understand.

the notion that you are always a white belt or you should keep the white belt mentality regardless of how long you have been training a martial art is somewhat relevant but also a bit daft.

on one hand a white belt is new, you walk into a jiujitsu gym regardless of doing other martial arts (like myself) or not and you quickly (VERY!) quickly realise that all means nothing (well, not nothing but very little depending what other arts you did).

a white belt knows nothing so is open to learning whats infront of them, but! they are usually always too keen to "know stuff", so are always looking for short cuts to get better, short cuts to retain knowledge, short cuts on how to get more taps.

meanwhile i like the notion of growing with your grading, why do we get graded ? some would say belts are irrelevant and only really came along because western people needed something to self acknowledge their progress, whatever reason, i like having a physical representation of progress, that could be new skills, new defences, a new stripe or a new belt, we dont chase the belts but being handed them along our journey is pretty cool.