Three Week Testing Trap

There is a trap waiting to spring on Madeline and I in our Gracie Jiu-Jitsu exams.

To get it finished before our instructor is unavailable is an important goal. It wouldn't be impossible to perform the exam without him, but much harder.

To get done in time, we have to finish the six exam segments in the next three weeks. That seems so easy. Three fifteen-minute technical drills, and three five-minute sparring demonstrations. We will be starting on the sparring this week.

The danger is in testing too slowly. Let's say Madeline and I get the first of the sparring sessions done. Let's say each of us need three attempts to get good recordings. That's 30 minutes of sparring time each. Add in breaks, and discussion, and setup, and it's easily a full hour. We will be exhausted by the end, and have eaten up a lot of mat time that is normally used for other training.

There is a very good chance that we'll all be happy with having completed that much for the week.

There's the trap. One test segment per week isn't enough. We must complete a minimum of two, especially if they are sparring segments. The sparring segments only take five minutes per attempt, and are marked on a pass/fail basis. The technical sections are fifteen minutes long per attempt and are precisely marked on all movements. As a result they will likely require more do-overs to be as perfect as we can make them.

In my previous example, a sparring segment was completed with one hour of effort. Getting a technical segment done with only three attempts each would burn three times as much effort and time. They are an entirely different kind of beast.

This is where the trap turns grizzly-bear deadly; with steel teeth dipped in poison.

Actually, even if we completed all three of the sparring segments this week we will have already fallen behind.

If we each do three sparring segments this week, and a technical one next week, and another technical one the week after, we will run out of time with one technical segment left to go.

I'd say we must beat down a technical segment every week to get this done. The sparring is almost insignificant. We could knock of one of those each week as well, or even do them all this week. In terms of difficulty, effort and time they are relatively trivial.

Must bang off a technical section every week to finish on time.