Judo is beautiful!

 While I'm not very good at actually practicing it, I really think that Judo is a beautiful art. While perusing youtube today, I stumbled upon one of the greats and figured some of you might enjoy the video.

 Beautiful Tomoe nage and some terrific ground work. The man moves like a cat.

The Art of Defense

 Well, it took a while, but I found a suitably bizarre picture for todays blog post haha.

 I was perusing Sherdog's (www.sherdog.com) grappling forum and came across an interesting thread about what you would pick if you could have any of the best grapplers strengths. Some people answered that they would want Marcelo Garcias guillotine choke, some answered Rodolfo Vieras Guard passing, and others answered that they would want Roger Gracie's defensive and escaping skills. That's what I would pick as well. As per usual, there were people who disagreed with this point, and I thought about posting my argument on there, but figured it would be more useful here.

 Why I am a big fan of spending time on defense and escapes in grappling:

 1. Because no matter what mindset you adopt for grappling (the mind set of the masses usually reflects whatever the current "hot" grappler espouses in interviews), there is always someone that is going to control you and force you to go places that you do not want to go. A lot of people feel that having an aggressive, taking the initiative type of game is best. I agree, I like to get one step ahead and stay there if I can, however, since I am not a perfect grappler, I'm often forced to play differently.

 2. Because I have competed against and rolled with some really really good grapplers. I've had my ass whupped a bunch of times. I have been put in bad positions plenty of times and I have escaped plenty of times. The reason? Because I do lots of positional sparring from bad positions. I have supreme confidence that I will survive and escape any bad position. While there are times that I am wrong and have to tap, I believe that practicing my defense and escapes gives me the confidence to stay calm under pressure and not be forced to make stupid mistakes. The nature of mistakes is that they multiply and spiral out of control quickly. You make one mistake and get your guard passed, you lose your cool freaking out trying to escape and get your back taken. You panic because someone is on your back and leave your neck open. You get choked. I think confidence, calmness and a clear and well practiced knowledge of defense and escapes can halt this downward spiral.

 3. This is one of the most important reasons for me. Brazilian Jiujitsu is a constantly evolving sport/art. There are constant innovations, new guards, new grips, tricks, transitions, sweeps, etc...it's impossible to know everything and it's impossible to get good at everything. It's even very hard to keep up with how fast some new innovations are developing. The thing is that while there are constant innovations in the game, the basic positional structure of Brazilian Jiujitsu remains the same. All roads lead to positional dominance and submission.

 Take berimbolo for example. This is a guard that is wildly popular now because of the Mendes brothers, Samuel Braga and other innovators in the lighter weight classes. It's a super hard position to deconstruct (you can see my attempts in my last post) and shut down. It begins with grips and takes you into a confusing and seemingly complex series of transitions, inversions and controlled scrambling movements. It ends, however with someone either on top of you in side mount , or with someone on our back. Both completely familiar positions in Brazilian Jiujitsu for decades now. 50/50 guard is the same, spider guard is the same, leg drag pass is the same, tornado guard is the same, inverted guard is the same. For the majority of innovations, you will either end up on bottom of side mount, mount, or with someone on your back positionally. Submission wise, you will end up either in an armbar, triangle, omo plata ankle lock or with someone applying a lapel choke from the back. Of course this is a simplification and there are other possible submissions, but those are the majority of things that you have to worry about. Now, if you simplify it further you could even lump triangle, omo plata, armbar all into one group. This is a manageable amount of things to practice.

 There will always be a sweep that catches you off guard. There will always be some slick guard pass that shuts you down with almost embarrassing ease. There will always be someone who is better than you or stronger than you and just shuts you down and makes you play their game. For the most part, while you might not know the road they are taking you down, you will most likely know the destination once you get there.

 4. No one gets any younger. Not even with plastic surgery and tasty chewable vitamins. I want to grapple in some form for the rest of my life, or at least until someone invents something that I think is even more awesome. :) Now, I am 32. I can grapple fairly well some days and I can do well against people bigger, stronger, younger than me because I am fit, flexible and reasonably strong (thanks to my buddy Jason C. Brown). When I am 40, I can reasonably expect some of my abilities to decline. When I am 50 I think this will be more pronounced. I will probably have better technique and understand my game much better at those ages, but I won't be able to get away with some of the stuff that my youth affords me. I may not always be able to bend my legs in crazy ways without getting hurt, etc... There will come a time when my 20 year old students and friends are smashing me on the mat. You cannot always be the hammer, so to speak. Defense and escapes will be my greatest ally in those times and I'm sure I will find it more and more valuable as time goes on.

5. Coming full circle, I think that defensive and refined escaping abilities allows you to play an aggressive game more effectively. When you are forced out of your game, you cannot play one step ahead until you defend the threats and escape. Once you escape, you can sometimes get the jump on your opponent and start off one step ahead. For example. You get stuck on bottom of side mount. It's really hard to attack anything from there. You have to escape, but your opponent is threatening chokes. You turn your back and they start to take your back. You defend your collar and start to scoot your hips out. You manage to get one step ahead while escaping and get to top of half guard. You seize this initiative and run with it, passing their half guard to get on top of side mount where you quickly begin your attacks. A situation reversed. The tables turned. You want to "go first". You want to be one step ahead and push your game or "impose your will" as people like to say. But when you cannot do this you cannot crumble, you have to be able to marshal your forces and weather the storm. If you suck at defense and escapes, then you can be a black belt or whatever advanced grappling title you choose, but when you come across someone who can get past your game, then it's check mate. If you work your defense and escapes, there is always a fighting chance.

 So for me, if I could pick any one thing that I would like to "absorb" from the best grapplers, I would pick Roger Gracie's defensive and escaping abilities.

Dissecting Jiujitsu

 Todays post is kind of a log of todays Jiujitsu experiment for me so I can help make sense of and take apart what I learned today.  My brother and I were spending some time dissecting and figuring out the Berimbolo position in Brazilian Jiujitsu earlier today. Berimbolo is essentially an evolution of De la riva guard, here is an example:

 It's essentially a maneuver where the guard player (person on bottom) inverts (spins upside down) to create almost a whirlpool effect that off balances the top person which results in a chaotic scramble which funnels the top players movements in such a way that they have no choice but to either:

A. Get their back taken
B. Give up a sweep
C. Give up a sweep with their guard immediately 90 percent passed.

 Those are some shitty options.

 It's a fascinating position, and really kind of fun to mess with. When breaking down something new, there's a formula of 3 questions that I follow:

 1. Where do I grip?
-Gripping is always the opening of any grappling maneuver. You have to grab someone to grapple with them by definition and where you make contact with your opponent will determine what the rest of your body can do.
 2. How do I off balance my opponent?
-The principle of off balancing your opponent is the idea that if someone is fully aware of and prepared to deal with your onslaught, they have a much better chance of countering/surviving/shutting down what you are trying to do. If you take someone off balance physically, mentally or emotionally, then their power is fragmented and they are less able to focus 100 percent on stopping you. Imagine how hard it would be to play soccer in a hockey rink (on ice). Someone running and kicking a ball would have a hell of a time trying to stay upright and someone trying to catch, block, or steal the ball would have the same troubles. Similarly, imagine trying to take a college exam with someone arguing with you at the same time, or playing awful music while you are trying to study. All examples of the power of off balancing.
 3. Where is my leverage?
-Finding my leverage means figuring out exactly how I can get the most bang for my buck using my resources. It's finding out how I can make the most of what I have. How can I take my primary Jiujitsu assets (bodyweight, skeletal alignment, sensitivity and awareness/timing) and make the most out of them. How can I position my body so that I can expend as little energy as possible in moving a very heavy weight (such as a 250 lb human being) in a realistic way that makes sense in the context it's intended for. (avoiding the pit falls of stuff working in theory but failing in practice).

 The Berimbolo position is a tough nut to crack for the top player because once the grips are obtained, it feels like there is a constant inexorable pressure taking you off balance and once you are off balanced you are swept into a maelstrom of movement. Then you get your back taken and choked. The most basic set of grips seem to be (if I'm going to my left side) a right hand grip on the belt, left hand grip controlling the top players right calf/shin (depending on if I am underhooking the shin or simply gripping the ankle). As far as I can tell from today, the off balancing begins in two ways:

 A. From the guard players right foot pressing into the top players hip/stomach/low chest area, coaxing them into a back step position.

 B. The pulling of the belt and inverting of the guard player. With or without the right foot in the hip, these things seem to be what help draw the top player into posting their right hand on the mat/going into a half back step position. When you grip the belt and pull on it, your body weight hangs like a pendulum off of that grip and as you lean to your left/invert, that pendulum of your body weight plus the foot pressing their hip in the direction that you want them to go is what makes it really hard for the top player to keep their balance. That combination of belt grip pulling and foot pressing creates a counter pressure on the center of the top players body so you are effectively attached to them.

 The leverage of the center point of the Berimbolo process feels like it breaks down to two things:

 A. The guard player transitioning to a position where they are almost directly under the top players center of gravity.

 B. The guard player inverting and folding directly in half (almost like closing a book) . This creates a spring like tension, much like helicopter sweeps (like Cyborg plays from half guard) that allows you to generate a lot of force when you unfold (opening the book). This creates a catapult. I think the inverting/folding and opening up is responsible for the whirlpool effect. After you invert, your grips change from the ankle/shin of your opponent to grabbing the opposite ankle. This assists the unfolding/opening of your body in "catapulting" your opponents body weight off of you into a position that allows you to get on their back (hopefully).

 I have the feeling that a solution for this guard is to be found in looking outside the box. The obvious rules apply I think (don't let them get their grips, beat them to the punch, etc...) but I feel like there has to be a way to reverse the position. To change the leverage and win the position after the process has already started. Maybe the answer is to know exactly how each of the small mini leverages work and how to nullify those leverages. How do I nullify the belt grip? How do I nullify the foot in the hip? How do I nullify the suction power of the invert? How to I nullify the catapult power of the expansion/kicking away? How do I detach from the person after they catapult me? How do I make this much much more simple than it is right now?

 Haha, I think I have some ideas now, thanks for listening :)

A quick observation

I'm starting to feel like there's no way to truly simplify Jiujitsu. As I prune techniques and strategies out of my arsenal, I find it necessary to replace those things with deeper elements from somewhere else.

What I mean is that if I have an arsenal of thirty moves from closed guard, I can cycle through those moves and catch someone by surprising them. If I trim off some of those moves, that means I become more predictable which means I have to get better at those fewer moves. Getting better at those moves means developing more refined technical detail, better timing, better awareness, sharper thinking,better physicality to support the demands of the movement (more speed, stronger grip, etc...).

So when I prune my tree of techniques, I find that the process of making the remaining techniques more potent is just as complex, if not more so, than learning a whole broad variety of techniques.

The thing that's tough is that digging deeper into a technique can be pretty abstract and hard to measure, whereas learning new techniques is easier to measure. Learning a new armbar is much easier than making your mental clarity and awareness sharper.

What an interesting process!

What do you see when you look in the mirror?

:) , I was at the craft store with my wife today, bored senseless so I decided to have some fun with the toy models they had there and the camera on my phone... Later on I was searching for something to write about so I decided to reverse engineer things and write a post based on whatever pops into my head from looking at a picture.

So we have this picture of a plastic lion looking in a mirror. It makes me think of the way I look at things. The thoughts I use as a lens to look at the world through, my paradigm, my operating system, my attitude.

Right now I'm thinking a lot about how stuff works. I'm really interested in looking at everything through the lens of two questions:

1. What does it do?
2. How does it work?

I'm trying to ask those two questions of everything I can think of and find answers. I've spent the whole weekend doing this and I've learned some interesting stuff. I've learned about how my shower works, how my dish washer works, what the leaves on trees do and a little more about how the Kimura from top of North/south works. All in all a pretty productive weekend. I just love learning stuff.

I like the simplifying effect of examining things by asking two simple questions. I think you can learn a lot by asking good questions and I think good questions can dig up a lot of dirt without making things too messy.

Damn, time for bed...lil write more on this when I have a chance to dig into it a bit. Sorry to cut this short!

Empty space.....

 Believe it or not, I came across an interesting idea on Twitter that reminded me of something I tried before in Jiujitsu. The post linked to an article on Chess and there was a paragraph that stood out for me:

 "I read somewhere in a scientific paper that the eyes of a GM (grandmaster) rest more often on an empty square during calculation than on a piece."

 This reminded me of an experiment that I tried for a couple weeks a few years ago in rolling that proved particularly interesting. When you are rolling, a lot of the game rests on what you are paying attention to and what you are focused on. Sometimes you are focused on a grip, sometimes you are focused on a limb, sometimes it's anticipating a movement. My experiment was to ignore most of those things and spend a week just focusing on the empty space between myself and my training partner. For example, when I was on top of half guard (my right leg trapped) I would pay attention to the empty space between the left side of my torso and the right side of their torso. When I was playing from mount I would focus on the empty space between my partners ears and the tip of their shoulder as well as the space between their elbows and hips. The focus on empty space was of course guided by knowledge of what the crucial spaces neccesary are in a position. Focusing on the empty space below my partners feet in the mount isn't nearly as important as the space between their elbows and hips, or between the inside of my knee and the outside of their elbow.

 What was interesting about this focus was that it made it feel kind of easier to dominate certain positions with certain training partners. Instead of focusing on their limbs or mind, I just tried to observe the empty space and dominate that space before they were able to. I think it kind of helped me anticipate their actions better.

 Just an idea that I thought I would share for you guys to play with....

Book review: The Unexpected Champion

 I just received this book today during the second half of my lunch break. I finished it in 30 minutes and it was one of the best Martial arts books I've ever read. Seriously, this book is about 20 pages long or so, it's the size and shape of your average Pharmacy romance novel and about as thick as two quarters glued together. It's a slim volume for sure. I knew that going into the purchase because on Amazon, one of the reviewers mentioned how small it is, but they also mentioned how awesome it is, so I bought it.

 The books is about $18, so I hesitated to purchase it because I'm kind of conditioned to think that good books have to be thick with lots of text and pictures on super high quality paper. I know this is silly, but it does influence my decisions in purchasing. In this case that is wrong. This book is really small, but jam packed with really really useful training information. It's broken down into digestable and clear parts that make an immediate impact on ones understanding of how to progress.

 This isn't a book about how to do a single leg, or how to do an armbar. It's a book that provides a clear operating system for improvement in any grappling art (or any activity really). It's the distilled wisdom of researchers like K.Anders Ericsson (the expertise researcher that all of the pop psychology/expertise books like "The Talent Code" and "Outliers" is based on) and M. Csiczentmihaly (a famous researcher of peak performance states) and the authors own experience with the study of expertise combined with his grappling knowledge and the grappling knowledge of Wrestling Olympian and MMA fighter Ben Askren. Interesting stuff.

 If you have ever checked out Daniel Faggellas site: http://www.scienceofskill.com/ you will find plenty of excellent blog posts about these subjects and other grappling and sports expertise related subjects. There is info about his background as well, so one can see where he's coming from.

 Anyway, I'm crazy about all of this stuff and pick through K. Anders Ericssons stuff all the time and read up as much as I can about expertise, learning, improvement, and sports and I spent a small fortune on books of this nature. This small volume distills a lot of that information into a bite sized and easy to digest platform. Very easy to understand, you can read it in 20 minutes, then all that's left is to apply it.

 Each section is broken down into an explanation of concepts, personal examples from Askrens training and clear examples of exactly how you can immediately apply these things to your own training. There's nothing vague about it.

 Enough raving, this book is awesome. If you know me, ask me about it and I might be able to explain better, or if you want to buy it directly the link is here

http://www.amazon.com/Unexpected-Champion-Training-Strategies-Unstoppable/dp/0983802394

 This book will not stop a bullet, or even a dart, but it might make you much better at Grappling if you apply the simple concepts in there.