Breakthrough

Competition drives change and innovation. The way I have pushed myself on the mats in preparation for a tournament, is by far the hardest I have ever worked in my life. There are people that outpace me by miles. Scattered around the world are a number of ambitious individuals all vying for that number one spot in their respective divisions, developing their games and reaching new heights. Heights that would take the average practitioner twice as long to attain, but we say that as if it is a bad thing...

I don't even remember why I started training, but I do know that it was not to compete. Now competition is my main driving force. If I was to look at it deeper, defeating another man for the chance to stand on a podium and have a piece of metal placed upon my neck, is the real driving force. I have become a collector of techniques, with no real understanding or perspective as to how they work or fit in the bigger picture. The need to win has forced me to figure out methods to make myself better in the shortest amount of time possible, no matter what it takes, while making as few mistakes as I can. Sure this has allowed me to improve faster, and if asked to do so I could show you a million sweeps from spider guard...but at the end of the day, I feel lost on this long journey we call jiu-jitsu.

I have spent the better part of two years convinced that competition was the answer. Testing yourself against another opponent who was equally as skilled, or better. If you defeat him, you are superior...one man you can scratch off your list out of billions. If you are defeated you are less of a man, and need to take more extreme measures to get em' next time. The unique thing about jiu-jitsu though, is that you can test yourself daily in the gym with your classmates, as most of them go hard if not harder than someone in competition. In fact, just training with someone who is preparing for competition can rub off on you. So what is it...pressure from the school? The need to feel like a billy bad ass? Impressing a new lady friend? I haven't quite figured it out yet, but what I have realized is that I am missing something greater from my training.

In all that training, conditioning, weight cutting, and stress of competition the true reason as to why I started training in the first place has escaped me. Competition is amazing, please don't let my cynicism frighten any of you who are thinking of competing...but I am finally understanding that right now it is just not something I need to focus on. I really love jiu-jitsu. I feel like a day on the mat without drilling is a wasted day, but I also feel like a day on the mat without learning something about yourself (not just your technique) is also a waste. I have come to think of jiu-jitsu as process oriented, not result oriented. I am more interested in the long arduous journey filled with hardships and pain, rather than the short, rushed, make as few mistakes as possible road. I want to help other people grow, because I feel like it is more rewarding than stepping out on a mat under the bright lights and "proving yourself."


Competition is not the only way you can raise your level in jiu-jitsu. Becoming a better person and training partner on the mats will work just the same. We all start martial arts out of self-interest, competition to me intensifies that...the most down to earth people I have met in this sport are the ones that have not stepped foot in a competition. Yet, I have looked to the medal chasers as my inspiration. To better myself, its time I change that. Not saying I won't compete ever again, but my training will no longer revolve around it. Let the spiritual breakthrough begin.

Thanks for reading,
Jei
http://www.facebook.com/JourneyBJJ

Hard work makes a fearless heart

My last tournament I competed in I was literally shitting bricks. I walked in the venue at least a pound overweight and weighed in at 190 with the gi, lol. I tried to keep a calm demeanor, but inside I felt a fear that I have experienced only a few times in my life...and usually it involved some sort snarling animal running behind me or a bully getting ready to pound my face in. My first match I went in the ring so scared that I literally told myself I wanted this to be over as soon as possible...I was choked unconscious within a minute. The next two matches I did fairly well in, but that was not good enough for me, it is my nature to analyze...and I desperately needed to know why my skill in the gym and in my mind does not translate in tournaments. 

So I asked a few close friends, and they all gave me the same answer, that it was all mental. 

No Shit.

So I realized that only I know me, and therefore I was the only one who could figure it out. I needed to take my own advice, because it had to be something deeper! I began to think of my childhood and attending church every Sunday, and I remembered a little word called faith that gave people the utmost confidence that there life was going to turn out well. The preacher said that with faith a man could move mountains. But how does this apply to jiu-jitsu? 

When you step onto the mats to compete you have to believe you can win, that is number one. Till this day I still feel inadequate, and I feel like I am never good enough. I have no faith in myself (that is changing). And if you don't believe in yourself, who else will?

As I began to take this concept along with the knowledge of my shortcomings further I looked to current world champions for inspiration and ideas...and what I found that many of them have that I lack is a work ethic like no other. That was the key.

Hard work makes a fearless heart.

Why is it that a world champion is a champion in the first place? Because when he walks out to meet his opponent he believes deep down inside that this man has not worked harder than him and therefore does not deserve to continue. He is fearless, confident in his ability, and knows that the hours that he put on the mat will not be in vain.

My work ethic is good for the gym. If I want to be a gym hero, I should continue to train as I do...just enough to scrape by. However, if I want to be great than I should exceed my limits, train like a mad person, and want to win more than I want to breath so that when tournament day comes I will fear no man...because I know I will be capable of destruction. It's time I stop being a sugar bear. 

"Sometimes you only get one chance to be great at something, don't let fear stifle you!"

Back to square one...

My first blue belt tournament went down last weekend at Sumner High School at the Revolution. Now for those of you that don't live in Washington, the Revolution is kind of a big deal around here (wow I sound like one of those redneck dudes from Texas talking about HS football). We don't have any fancy IBJJF events, Grappler's Quest, or even a NAGA tournament, what we have is an awesome brown belt by the name of Jeff who has built an event from the ground up and has given us an outlet to compete in BJJ. This one was no different. I have to admit that after 9 tournaments as a white belt, this was the most nervous I had ever been, but I didn't let anyone know this. The main reason being was I didn't know what to expect. As a white belt, I knew what my skills were and I knew that my opponent more than likely had just about as much experience as me (give or take) or far less. However, this does not work at the other levels where the guys could range anywhere between 2-5 yrs of experience. How do you compete with that or even prepare? So I went into my first match with the knowledge that the guy I was fighting has beaten a few of the guys at my school that can beat me. Thanks Alex! :) He also had four stripes on his blue belt. The match started out well with me controlling him in my guard, but I didn't have a strategy or coach so I winged it and needless to say I lost via bow and arrow. The second match I came back from a 4 point deficit to lead 6-4, but also was overcome by experience with another choke. The main point I guess (just thought I would update you guys), is that I am back to square one. I recently had a talk with a friend of mine about this and his exact statement was "welcome to being the bitch white belt all over again!", and he is exactly right. In fact, at this stage in my blue belt I am just a glorified white belt. I can trounce on a white belt all day, but by lack of experience the same will happen to me from a competent and seasoned blue. The thing I learned as a blue belt is that you can learn tricks and beat a white belt with them...my spider guard was dominant, but more than likely a good blue will know how to handle it. Meaning you can rush a lot of things as a white belt and even bypass some basics to win, but as you reach those higher levels it all comes down to mat time and experience. Fact! I am back to being the little pup, against a whole heap of Great Danes...and nothing is going to change that but time on the mat and hard work. Good thing about that is I am ready for it, and will be getting it in this summer at least 7-8 times a week in preparation for the next Revolution, Boston Open, and the US Open. I know I am back to square one, but hard work will eventually allow me to get to the top in no time.

A good ol' fashioned ass kicking...

Today I got my ass kicked by a brown belt named Yuki. It seems that every time he tells me I'm getting better, he kicks it up 8 notches. I am beginning to learn that once you get to that level you almost have a infinite amount of levels. But back to the point. It is important in jiu-jitsu that you get your ass kicked, plain and simple. In a sport that involves technique to succeed, it is very rare that you find a natural talent in the art of jiu-jitsu. And even if the person is a natural, they probably won't have technique. So the most important part of learning jiu-jitsu is getting beat up. You can come to class 7x a week, eat, sleep, and poop jiu-jitsu and still not get good if you aren't getting whupped up on. My professor once told me that if you're going into the gym daily and you're always beating up on people, how will you learn what to do when the guy you go against cannot be beaten so easily...this was a profound statement because for awhile that was my only purpose in the gym, try to beat people. This was done to improve my aggressiveness, but still for a good two months, it killed my progress. To some this may be pretty intimidating to hear, but in a sport that involves live sparring/training...it is imperative that you get beat up. In fact, the more you get beat up...the better you get. Besides, if you don't get beat up, how else will you learn how to dish it out when you're a brown belt? lol

Why I...

I have wrote a couple of "Why I" pieces before, in fact, I have wrote a piece on the exact same subject I will be writing on today, only this time an effort has been made to really delve into the reason I do things through deep thought and reflection. Today's two questions I reluctantly asked myself (to answer truthfully) is why I do jiu-jitsu and why I compete. The reason why these questions have come up (again) is because I was forced to question myself after a conversation I had with my professor and thoughts of actually quitting jiu-jitsu scurried about my head.

Most of my life I never really had a choice in anything I wanted to do or how I wanted to do it. I went to a total of about 5-6 schools in 4 different states, and I never really made solid bonds with people. I barely played sports until high school and very rarely was I ever doing anything remotely outgoing (I had a very sheltered childhood). I was also bullied beyond belief for me and my mother's financial situation, a very debilitating stutter, and the fact that my father was not in the picture at the time. My mother was also very religious, which like i said kept me from doing anything remotely outgoing (except boy scouts, which was through the church...lol).

I joined the military after high school to try to shape my own path for a change and get away like I did so many times as a child. Packing up and leaving was very easy. But then my military career was cut short by a lot of bad decisions on my part, I completed 3 yrs. I kicked a few rocks around for a bit, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and how to go about doing it. I got married, had a kid but still had not accomplished anything in life worth noting. I had let anxiety and fear of being a failure control my life for so long that I was actually becoming a failure. That's when I dropped all the excuses, all my past mistakes, all the bullshiet I have gone through, all the tears, and pain...and I started jiu-jitsu.

It's so funny when my old friends (ones who remember me as a crybaby that used to get beat up and "punked" all the time) hear that I do jiu-jitsu. First thing they say is, I would've never thought you would do something like that. Not trying to make myself out to be a tough guy or anything, but just trying to prove the point that doing jiu-jitsu is so unlike me.

I hear a lot of people saying that jiu-jitsu saved their life, and I am honestly one of those people. There used to be a time (and there is still some of that old me left) that I would never put myself in a position where I could get hurt, talked about, laughed at, or fail. Which is why it took me 2 years from when I first heard about jiu-jitsu to even start it, even then I loved it. From the start I knew that jiu-jitsu would help me get over some of the issues that I was dealing with, in a way it was kind of like therapy. Most of the people who do it, know the feeling I am talking about, but they attribute it as some sort of addiction.

The way I did jiu-jitsu, you would think it was an addiction though. I showed up to every class I could and tried to soak up as much as I possibly could. I can guarantee a lot of people thought I was going to burn myself out, but the information they lacked was critical to knowing why exactly I train the way I do. You see, in my gym there are doctors, lawyers, IT's, programmers, you know people who have something else outside of BJJ that says...look I did something in life, I made good decisions. I don't. So I train like a madman and hope jiu-jitsu can take me somewhere.

I was talking to my professor the other day and I told him, I hate competing. He sort of laughed and said, " Then why do you do it so much?". I gave him the short and dirty and just said I want to get better and be high level. Nobody wants to hear the whole story, and the only reason I am talking about it on here is because its my blog and 10 yrs from now I am going to look at this and say, I did it. But in reality the reason I compete is because I am scared. The anxiety I feel before a competition cannot even be put into words. The pressure, the intimidation, the crowd scares the shiet out of me. Until those feelings go away, I won't stop competing.

Jiu-Jitsu will help lead me to reinvention.

I'm Back...12 goals for 12 months in 2011

So this not so regularly scheduled program lately is back on air, after a brief hiatus I will be bringing you my thoughts on the daily. Well maybe not daily (school is going to tough this semester), but as often as I possibly can. I am noticing that the new blog craze lately has been resolutions, well I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have none. My jiu-jitsu game is that of the Gods, and I will win the Europeans, Pans, Worlds, US Open, and every local tournament in every state because that's how disgustingly good I am...and I am a cyborg. Sike. As you can see I am in one great mood, besides the nagging shoulder injury that will not go away, I have reason to be. This year I feel is my year to evolve and although I may come out of every tournament win less, I could careless. Tournaments are no longer my focus because I realize that in my current situation...bjj level, age, marital and child status, lack of health care, and school; I will never be a world champion level jiu-jitsu guy. Yes, I train 5-6x a week (sometimes more)...yes I eat well, and yes I work out. But there is 1,000 guys at the least who are doing it 30x better than I am. With that, I do not stand a chance. Maybe I will shoot for another goal of being a good instructor, and live vicariously through my daughter who will be starting jiu-jitsu very soon at the tender age of 2 3/4. Lol. With all that being said this year I want to make very small goals in order to work my way up to the big un's. Here are 12 goals for the 12 months of 2011:

1st Goal: Win some local tournaments. I feel that if I want to compete at the top level, it would be dumb and pointless to do so if I can't win the local tournaments. I now look at it like high school sports. Not everyone makes it to regional or state, and in order to do so you have to win district. If I cant win the local Revolution tournaments here, I will not go and embarrass myself and my coach at Mundials, PanAms, or US Open. Case closed.

2nd Goal: Make my guard impassable, or as close to it as possible: Jiu-Jitsu is guard. No doubt about it. If people can't pass your guard, there is not much they can do except get frustrated, breath hard, and wipe sweat bullets from their brow. I have improved my guard a lot over the last few months, but it is not where I want it to be. I'm not a blue belt yet, but if a blue belt can easily pass my guard I don't deserve it yet.

3rd goal: Get my blue belt. I was obsessing over this thing for months, and when I was passed up, I realized that maybe I wasn't there yet. So I began to work harder, train smarter, check my ego, and help people. Over the last month I have made strides in my game. Amazing how much weight lifts off of you when you don't worry about those stupid little things. Yet, in order to reach other goals...I need to move up. So it is not necessarily a goal I am working towards, because I feel I am there it is just a goal I am waiting on, that will keep me working hard.

4th goal: Lose the nervousness, it ain't cute. Anyone who has seen me roll or have rolled with me knows that I do not lack skill. You can clearly go to competitions and see who prepared for the test and who didn't. My problem is I am weak mentally. I put so much pressure on myself that I completely lose focus when I am out there on the mats. I am always thinking what people think of me, what my coach is saying in his head, and wondering how long my opponent has been training that I completely forget jiu-jitsu during competition. Because of this I almost quit competing completely, because I hate that feeling. How am I ever going to do well if I'm afraid to put it all on the line? Something I am working on within myself.

5th Goal: Cross train more often. We have a total of 5 Gracie Barra's in Seattle, and I have only trained at 3. We have a few other gyms like Foster's and a new one (on of our purple's is doing the damn thing) too...all full of great people to train with. Our gym has really been stagnate lately, as majority of the people who train there don't really train to maximum potential, and more so do it just for fun. So I need to get in my car and go train at the different academies so I can get some better rolls in here and there. the more games I see, the better I will become.

6th Goal: Work on going for the kill. A couple months ago you could say I had a very lazy spider guard game, and this little period of time may have hurt my game a bit. I was not attacking with submissions as I was a sweep machine. Yes, I could sweep dust of a ceiling fan in a cathedral, but I wasn't really focused on finishing fights. Now whenever I roll, I am looking to end it and even time myself in my head. That is the point of jiu-jitsu right? defend yourself first, but go for the kill and end the fight as soon as possible. Although people say jiu-jitsu is a chess match, they must not watch the matches below black belt, because those lower belts are constantly trying to pass and finish at an unbelievable pace. That's what I need to work on.

7th Goal: Work on flexibility. This is something I used to be upset about. Every time I came to class I would say to myself, look at your leg...that is pitiful you can't put it in that position. I would try to sit in Indian style and say, wow Jamel you have the flexibility of an 80 yr old man. Now 9 months later I am noticing dramatic improvements. I am no idiot though. I am a guard player. I have pretty much been labeled and packaged as one, so I know I need more flexibility than what I have. I have kicked enough people in the head and face to know I am not there yet. I have had to grab my leg and put it somewhere enough times to know I'm not gymnast.

8th Goal: Tap more often. I was going to write a whole post on this, but I thought I would add it in here and kill two birds with one choke. I need to tap more. It's all about saving your limbs and I have had nagging shoulder pains in both shoulders for months now, because I refuse to tap to armbars early in practice. I know how to get out of armbars, so there is no reason why I should be using all my might to get out of them in practice. Just give it to the man/woman, no skin off my nose. I guess that's just a little residual ego, but I will learn.

9th Goal: Drill more. Everyone says this, but most of us don't do it. Well I do, but not enough. The only reason I don't like it is because I hate being the drillee. Getting arm barred 40x is not fun, but doing 40 arm bars is. Any who, I need to do it more because seriously it is an important part of the sport, and if you don't do it...you won't be ready when the opportunity arises to do that move.

10th Goal: Get Stronger, Faster, and more Endurance. This is the big un. I need to literally kick my ass outside of class with the workouts. Right now I have a 4 fight maximum, and in my weight class that is piss poor. I need to be at a 10 fight maximum, or better yet just not get gassed at all. That may take a little while, but like i said, little goals first so I can reach the big ones.

11th Goal: Teach more. I have a thing I am starting. My last roll of the day will always be with a lower belt of my choice, and I will work on getting them better. Simple goal, that will help me in the long run.

12th Goal: Make this blog into something great. I would like this dinky little thing to actually help people out. I read a lot of blogs, and a lot of them don't say much of anything. I really want to make sure the content is always authentic and from the heart. I know that if I put the time and the effort in this blog will shine just like my jiu-jitsu. This year I want to reach 100 followers and actually start doing interviews (not with big names, but the small folks who make a difference in the sport that nobody cares to pay attention too.).

Thanks for reading folks, this year is going to be great.

Wife-Jitsu

So either I am just plain lucky or I am a telepath,
because not only did I manage to get my sister to join jiu-jitsu last week,
I managed to get my wife in a gi and learn some jits tonight.
It was an awesome time.
I may just be the luckiest man alive.
Also,
she did a forward roll.
The End.

Another day of crappling...here is how I feel

Remarkable training day...

Like the title says today was a remarkable training day. I decided last night that I was going to do no-gi in the tournament next weekend, and even though I am not confident, I am excited for the new experience and direction I am going. Today, everyone was exceptionally helpful. Not saying they aren't usually...its just this time it was exceptional. I began my training day at 10am...it was the kid's class and it was my first day as an assistant instructor. It was pretty fun and the kids are great, although I do see how it could be a challenge in the future when our program grows. Once that class was over Michelle taught a really good side control escape that I REALLY liked. I hope to be incorporating it into my game from here on out. We then went into the no-gi portion of our class and since I am doing no-gi it only made sense for me to participate. It was awesome. Micah taught a few really good techniques that seem to naturally fit my game anyway. After class Micah set up a little takedown corner for the guys that were competing. This was fun, but I was still in no-gi attire and let me tell you my takedown game is something that needs to be worked. JB sort of noticed this and with the help of Andrew worked some takedown drills with me...it was a treat. Then came the rolling. Dave our new black belt from Tejas, rolled some no-gi with me and I learned a lot of new holds and techniques that seem to get the job done. I rolled with Jeff afterwards, and thus the mopping up continued. I thought for my relatively short time in no-gi that I didn't do half bad. Gi is definitely where I shine. I rolled a little gi afterwards and finally burned myself out working take downs again with JB...today was a good day. Got a smoothie and went home conked out. After today, I know I'm in this for the long haul.