Monday 30 April 2012

Cart before the horse...

Firstly, today was Troy Flugge's birthday and in memory of him, we got hammered at class tonight, constant push ups and squats until we were ready to collapse in our warm up. Troy Flugge was one of the founders of the Submission Factory, was a BJJ black belt and passed away suddenly last year. The advanced class (which is after the beginners class that I take) was going through a deck of cards, with the corresponding number and colour that came up being the number of squats or push ups...insanity. Apparently that was one of his trademark exercises...

Tonight was one of those nights where I just got smashed by everybody.
There are so many skilled and strong people that I take my BJJ class with I sometimes feel like I'm not moving forward or improving at all. But I'll persevere. I think about when I started and how much I've improved and changed since then and there's a world of difference. I'm just at the beginning of my BJJ journey and there's so much to learn. If it was that easy to master, everyone would be a black belt by now!

I think the worst thing that I've done and is screwing with me a bit mentally is that I watched a bunch of videos about some of the more advanced techniques (Rubber Guard, Hurricane Sweep etc) when really what I need to be focusing on improving is the basics and building solid foundations. Otherwise I'm putting the cart before the horse! This includes things like:
  • Escapes from Mount and side control
  • Holding and maintaining a good side mount and mount
  • Transitioning between positions
  • Passing Guard
  • Controlling and managing other guards like butterfly and spider guard
  • Defence against submissions
This surely isn't an exhaustive list and it isn't in any particular order, but these are the main goals that I want to work towards. I also note that none of them are actually submission based, rather positional based which I think is actually more important at this time. If your position is weak, going for your submission will also be weak and allow an easier sweep and change around. That being said, a lot of stuff I read indicates that attacking is the best form of defence. So a bit of a balance is required then.

Tonight after our warm up, we worked on the arm bar from guard (see my previous post), transition to a triangle and if that doesn't work, an oma plata. Oma plata is new and I'll make a separate post about that later! (perhaps tomorrow!)


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  1. Anonymous8 May 2012 at 16:27

    Although I'm no expert on BJJ, I've often struggled with the same sort of helplessness and frustration at the slowness of my progress. It can be disheartening to see how little you know compared to others, and how slowly you improve compared to how fast you wish you could. You've made some excellent observations- there are some things that only experience can teach, and regardless of how quickly you pick up concepts, sometimes you just need practice in order to apply them (rather than assuming that since you understand the concept you can immediately master the application). There's a saying: it takes about ten thousand repetitions to get an action sort of right, and about one hundred thousand repetitions to get it "perfect". I guess patience and humbleness are your friends here- keep applying yourself to the basics and the advanced techniques will become easier and clearer over the years.

    That's a really remarkable warm-up exercise. I wonder if it's copyrighted, or if I might try and use it some day.

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