Do you have a white belt or black belt mentality?
White belt
In 2009, when I first started “live training” jiu jitsu, (aka: randori, rolling, sparring) I remember a feeling of overwhelming power: being able to control someone who was attempting to control me, and in some cases submitting them. For months afterward, I’d come home with a variety of small injuries: fingerprint-shaped bruises on my neck and chest, swollen ears, a bruised trachea, an arm that wouldn’t move right, a sprained joint. I didn’t know it at the time, but those injuries were nothing to be proud of. They were outward reminders that I was training like a white belt.
About 8 months in, when I started training with purple belts and above, the bruising lessened and the pace slowed down. During randori, I’d get handled like a pillow case by people a lot smaller than me. I knew right then and there that I wanted to be able to do what they were doing to me: controlling and submitting people as though it were effortless. To my unending disappointment, I had to sweat profusely and breath really hard to only occasionally achieve similar results – and only on other white belts. It was embarrassing. In my mind, my mat time with the purples and browns was a calculated foray into the jiu jitsu frying pan – a place where I could become a killer, so that when I returned to my regular white belt cohort, I could become the frying pan. 🤦🏽
Some of the senior students tried talking to me; tried explaining the concept of the right way to train, using the proper resistance – technique, not strength. I shook my head in agreement, but honestly none of it computed. I just tricked myself into thinking I understood. What I wanted above all was to exhibit my hard won mastery of jiu jitsu in a way that was decisive. I needed to be able to submit people, to validate that I could do the things I was learning in class when it really counted. And this required effort. I thought all the people telling me to slow down and go easy were in fact, jiu jitsu cry babies who couldn’t accept the fact that I was a bonafide up-and-coming badass. I’d get tapped out sure, but my defense was improving, and once in a while, I’d get close to submitting one of them. In my mind, they couldn’t stand it. I was on my way.
Black belt
If you’re fortunate enough to earn a jiu jitsu black belt, it just means you’ve earned the distinction of being acknowledged as a serious student. That’s it. It doesn’t mean you’re undefeatable, or that you’re in a secret fight club, sworn to uphold the honor of Helio Gracie. A black belt mentality is one that adopts longterm thinking when it comes to the training. It’s not about having perfect technique – it’s about being dedicated to the process of improvement. When I apply that thinking to randori, I think of the awesome advice my friend Matt gave to me shortly after he received his black belt.
“Even though you’re a black belt, your entire toolset doesn’t have the same belt ranking. Maybe your guillotine is only at a blue belt level, your darce is at a purple belt, and your arm bar is approaching black belt level. When you train with an actual blue belt, you should use the techniques that are at or below that person’s level. I mean... if you want to get better.
Same goes for defense: maybe your open guard is white belt level. If that’s the case, you shouldn’t be avoiding it – you should be training it as often as you can... with everyone.”
Do you understand why you train jiu jitsu?
Years ago, one of my friends told me a story about training at a new jiu jitsu school. He was rolling with a guy who was pretty evenly matched with him – a blue belt I think – and my friend decided to sit back down during a transition. The head instructor shook his head, and later said: “You just gave up 2 points. Never do that.”
Personally, I don’t understand how jiu jitsu point scoring works, and am not curious about learning. I’m pretty sure my training habits are not shared by the top ibjjf competitors, and that those people would steamroll me. But the way I look at it, if someone breaks into my house, they’re not interested in passing my guard. They’re there for something else. I train for that scenario. I point this out not because I frown upon people who compete. If your priorities are the same as mine, don’t conflate your training imperatives with those of point-scorers.
Are you working from bad Positions?
Doing only the things you’re already good at (from a neutral or dominant position) has little value when you need to operate under pressure. A lot of times, I deliberately do something sloppy to organically allow my partner to put me into a bad position. Then I pay attention to what happens: what does he/she do; what do I do. I do this to explore my reactions under duress; or to step through a systematic escape from that position. Sometimes, things don’t work out. Occasionally, I get tapped out. That’s OK. I’m trying to surface my weaknesses and work on them, not deny that they exist.
Are you giving the the right level of resistance?
Resistance should rise to the level where both people can continue to work on their goals with a clear mind. It shouldn’t push the pace to the point of frantically moving around and reacting. You don’t want to be a spaz, but you also don’t want to be a dead fish. Be useful to your partner. Ask yourself:
How big | strong | injured is my training partner?
What’s my partner’s skill level?
If my current level of resistance is stifling the roll, creating long periods of inaction, or just causing me to be sloppy, I lower it. If I think that both my partner and I could get more value out of an increase in resistance, I do that.
Are you only training with people your own size?
If you can survive five minutes with a skilled practitioner who outweighs you by 120 pounds, that is no mean feat. I want to be able to reliably escape the mount from that kind of person – maybe even threaten a submission once in a while. If I can do that, the prospect of escaping the mount from a person my own size is about as daunting as parallel parking. If I can’t train with someone a lot bigger, I try to simulate it by withholding my strength. Doing this forces me to rely on skill, not physicality – and I think this approach will age well as I move into my fifties and beyond.
Are you using an appropriate yardstick of measurement?
Once in a while, I ask myself a simple question to get a read on whether or not I’m improving: could the current version of me defeat the version of me from a month ago, a year ago, etc? Given a large enough time sampling, the answer is always a yes. From week to week, it sometimes feels like I’m moving backwards, but improving at jiu jitsu isn’t a sprint; it’s a marathon.
Are you mentally keeping score?
Don’t. Lots of people with 5+ years of jiu jitsu training think that the world will collapse if they get submitted by a blue belt. I can understand that thinking, and believe it’s a logical extension of a competitive mindset: one that tends to view outcomes in terms of a zero sum game. It’s tempting to think that this mindset is useful if you want to be a successful competitor. But even if that’s you, it shouldn’t be the dominant mindset during training. Training is not the same as a tournament. There are no award ceremonies at the end of class.
Effective training should be empirical, not emotional. It should attempt to exhaustively identify your weaknesses so you can actually work on them. I find that this is best done when you’re mentally and physically relaxed – not panting. Improving your Jiu Jitsu is a bit like software development in that you want to be able to try new things, experiment, and collect data – when the stakes are low. To me, that’s what training is for.
Are you overly worried about being tapped out?
If you’re constantly worried about being tapped out, or losing top position, you’re automatically dis-incentivized to try anything risky. You might say: “that’s not me. I don’t even compete.” But if you keep score of guard passes and submissions, that is you. You become more focused on the outcome, rather than the process. It’s as if each training “round” is the last 3 minutes of a submission tournament that is occurring 100% in your head. If you do this, you run the risk of putting on blinders to your weaknesses simply because you’re avoiding them. Stop giving a crap if you get tapped out during randori, and become more interested in collecting data.