The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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BJJ Thoughts
— I’m coming to the unfortunate conclusion that I have a punchable face. I keep getting bruises. Sunday I had a good roll, but after I got home my wife looks at me and tells me I have a black eye. I think I caught either an elbow or an ankle to the face when passing someone’s guard, but whatever it was I barely noticed it in the moment so I’m not sure when it happened exactly. But this is the second time I’ve gotten a visible facial injury, and everyone was roasting me about it. I must just have one of those faces, I do kind of look like the bad guy in a romantic comedy who the female lead inevitably leaves for a local townie lumberjack with a heart of gold or something. I feel vaguely ridiculous walking around day to day with a shiner, though I’m glad I got into the gym again so I could show it off.
— The week before the 4th of July I was really down on my BJJ practice. A new guy showed up, L, a big strong black kid. We drilled together and he really didn’t seem to know anything about BJJ technique, so I went into the open mat portion of the class to roll with him feeling pretty good about it. Which meant I was quite surprised when he immediately fired off a beautiful, explosive single leg and slammed me, drove a shoulder into my jaw, and tried a series of clumsy guard passes and subs. I was able to get back to guard, and ultimately take his back as time ran out, but I was getting beat on pretty good most of the round before that, my jaw hurt eating after. And I got kind of down about it, feeling like, man it’s been seven months, and I’m still not really beating anyone who either knows a little and is bigger than me or anyone who knows more than me, I’m not making any progress, maybe it’s time to wind this experiment down, maybe jiu jitsu just isn’t for me. I wasn’t thinking of rage quitting, but maybe stepping back, fading out of it, prioritizing other things…then we had an open mat the morning of July 4th, and it went the complete opposite way. It was around two hours straight of rolling, and I got stomped by the upper belts as usual, but I finally got exactly what I was looking for. I rolled with a guy who had been going for a lot longer than I have, and who had typically beat up on me, and I got the takedown, landed in half guard and started working on a knee slice, he shoved his knee in to block me, and without thinking about it I wrapped his leg dropped back into a straight ankle lock and tapped him. One of the few times I’ve hit a leg lock successfully (more below). We restarted the round and I passed his guard and stayed in mount until the bell. Then I rolled with L again, and this time I was ready for him, he hit a single leg immediately and while he got me to the ground I caught him in half guard which I knew he wouldn’t penetrate easily, I hipped out and got him into closed guard, got him into a shoulder crunch sweep, and popped right to mount, it was the best sweep I’ve ever hit, his strength wasn’t as useful once I was in mount. Suddenly, I’m feeling good about BJJ, I’m excited to go into practice every day, I’m thinking about how to fill the holes in my game to keep progressing. I tell these anecdotes just because it’s amazing to me how I can swing so far in my assessment of my abilities in the course of just a few days. One loss and I'm sure I suck so bad I should think about quitting, one success over expectations and I'm loving it. So much has to do with the expectations: when I think I'm gonna lose I don't mind too much, but when I think I should win losing hurts. I should probably work on moving past that.
— In terms of moving forward with BJJ, I do feel like I’m finally approaching something like a style. When I first started, my strategy was nonexistent, entirely reactive, trying to survive what my opponent was trying to do, stalling and hoping he made a mistake, I got submissions or sweeps when I got lucky, and frequently I found myself in positions for which I had no answers at all and either flailed aimlessly or just tried to lose slowly. Now, I don’t necessarily win a lot, but in the vast majority of positions I do know what to work on, and have a move or two to attempt to hit. Which means I’m no longer just passively trying to survive and avoid my opponent’s efforts, I’m at least forcing them to react and defend, I’m not totally surrendering initiative. I have a few moves from open guard, from closed guard, from half guard, from side control, from mount. I still badly need to improve my game from back control in either direction, and work harder on sealing submissions up. But I think the biggest thing I need to work on now is seizing control of my own training and education. I am, by nature, a teacher’s pet and a rule follower. So I come into each class and I pay attention to each move that each coach teaches and try my best to follow instructions. Typically each coach tries to teach 2-3 moves around a theme or a position, and pretty often (depending on the day and the coach) there’s one or more moves that I look at and immediately go “I’m never gonna do that.” Either because the move involves too many too intricate dance steps, which I know I’m not going to execute; because it involves things I can’t do (front rolls into kimuras and chokes never work for me) or won’t do (throat posting/rape chokes, which I don't do because I have to think too hard about modulating pressure on my opponent to not hurt him during sparring, and that means I can't execute it live because I never practice it right); or because I already have a move I like better there. So if we’re working on three or four moves in a day, it’s often that I like one and two, but three and four I know right away don’t fit me. I think I need to work on being more willing to give up on moves that don’t fit how I roll quickly, and instead talk to my partner and use that time to drill the simpler moves that I might actually use day to day.
I always found that focusing on principles more than technique helped me link things together better. The move of the day stuff sometimes lines up with what you need, but not often. It's worth learning that stuff, but my advice is to focus on things that connect to parts of the game you already know decently well.
So, if you're confident defensively in half guard, maybe try learning a couple sweeps and subs for that position, preferably ones that branch off each other. That gives you a simple choice matrix for that position.
My own progress really took off when I started to focus on staying in and advancing the control position. Six months I learned to sit in mount, six months on back mount. Still working on Kesa/Side Control. Once you understand how to progress the position, submissions sort of fall out of the process. About a third of my subs now are unintentional, before I start chasing anything.
I absolutely agree, but that's how they teach at the school that's five minutes from my house. Even if the one ten miles from my house taught more in line with my pedagogical preferences, I'd value getting into the gym more often, which given my tight schedule I can do so much more often with the short travel.
What I want to start doing is focusing on, during open mat periods, doing more limited rolls with guys. Start in half guard and play "Pass/sweep" for a whole round. I should probably start studying outside of class, but I never end up having the time.
I'm definitely similar, I'm very much a station-to-station or move-the-chains kind player, depending which sports metaphor you prefer. If I'm in bottom mount I'm trying to get to bottom half, from bottom half I'm trying to sweep to get to closed guard, from closed guard I'm mostly trying to sweep but I'll grab a sub if it's offered, then I'm only trying to finish a sub if it's on offer when I'm in mount or side. Hell, depending who I'm rolling with I spend most of my time in mount or side control rapidly transitioning positions trying to stay on top. I just try and stay calm and stay in my game. If I don't lose too quickly in the takedown phase, I can normally get to half guard top or bottom and work from there.
Of course, part of this is just a matter of depth of experience, and just the luck of who shows up. Some days it's still just nothing but guys who kill me, because I'm not very good.
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