A Year of Purple Prep

So what do the Gracies look for when somebody tests for Purple Belt.

First off, they look to see how familiar you are with the official curriculum. For example; there is nothing about body triangles in the material released so far, so they don't expect people to demonstrate this. They only test what the students are supposed to have learned.

Even so, cannot possibly test all the material released, either. There is just too much already.

There are 35 Combatives techniques, as well as 60 from BBS1, 60 from BBS2, plus 8 released from BBS3. You would think that would add up to 163, but as each has on-average more than three variations, it is actually well over 500.

If they wanted to test all of them (at the average speed of current White Belt, BBS1 and BBS2 exams) at 15 seconds per variant, that would take over two hours, and the candidate would collapse from exhaustion long before they were done.

Instead, they thoroughly “spot check.” Candidates must still know it all, even if they only get called on a couple of dozen items.

The rest of the exam is dedicated to the student's comfort and ability in sparring. Here's where you can throw in stuff from outside the curriculum, but again, you don't have to.

They say that they know within minutes if a candidate is ready or not when they see him roll. They also say that they don't let him know until a significantly later. They want to see you push on. Ryron Gracie says that's fun.

There is no time to waste; Purple Belt preparation for me starts now.

My 4^th and final Blue Belt stripe promotion should come in a tad under 3 months, and after an indeterminate amount of time at that level, I will be testing for Purple.

Let's call it at least a year from now; likely more.

So how do I prepare for so distant a test?

Simple; I need to solidify my technique the best that I can, and to do whatever will make me seem as awesome as possible on that distant exam day.

Every candidate wears a Blue Belt with 4 stripes on it. That is the prerequisite. Most have nothing plain white stripes, which is fine.

Some people have 3 plain stripes, with the other being a bid fancier. That difference represents all the effort that went into passing the optional BBS1 exam.

A few might have 2 of the fancy stripes. That would tell the examiners that these people not only did the BBS1 exam process, but that they were both dedicated and psychotic enough to go through it again at the even harder, but still optional, BBS2 test. Currently there are no higher tests in the BBS series.

This can't hurt. In martial arts evaluations both effort and dedication count, and these funny little belt decorations show these characteristics in spades even before the actual testing begins.

That means that to suck up to the Purple Belt examiners, I should get myself a BBS2 stripe in addition to the one for BBS1 that I already wear.

Doing so also forces you to greatly tighten up on knowledge and understanding of the curriculum, which is exactly what they try and catch you up on during a Purple Belt examination.

To get it all done might take me as much as a year of very hard extra work, but that's alright. I will likely be done before any Purple evaluation for me will happen.

The only trick is in finding training partners through all of that.

My Canada

When the next election in Canada comes, I shall vote for whoever in my area is most able to beat out the Conservative incumbent.

My Canada is going away, and it makes me very, very sad.

My Canada is the country that invented peacekeeping, and did more of it around the world than any other nation. Now it does not.

My Canada is the country where every citizen held the right to vote. Did you know that in some jurisdictions civil servants didn't used to be able to vote? Judges couldn't vote, nor could prisoners or people with mental disabilities, as recently as 1982.

This was all changed because...why the hell not? Did you know that people in all of these categories pretty much vote in the same patterns as everybody else?

Even if all the people in jail managed to vote as a single block, they make up only 0.12 percent of the population.

So we fixed it, because not to do so would be denying people a basic right of citizenship. It would be as evil as the denial of voting rights for First Nations People in earlier years.

That basic decency is now starting to ebb the other way. Our government has decided to deny voting rights to expatriate Canadians who have lived abroad for more than five years. What is the point?

This takes away a right from approximately a million Canadian citizens, even though only about 6000 of them vote in any given election. Why deny them this basic right? Is the government scared that none of them will vote Conservative, and they are expecting the election to be so close that 6000 votes could swing it?

Perhaps 23 years of universal suffrage is more than we deserve.

In my Canada that the only way citizenship could be revoked is if a naturalized Canadian were convicted of fraud on their citizenship application. In my Canada, if you were born Canadian there was no way for your citizenship to be taken away at all.

There is “anti-terrorism” legislation recently passed permitting the government to revoke the citizenship of Canadians convicted of certain crimes. It can be done to any naturalized Canadian (born elsewhere), or to any Canadian who holds dual citizenship, or to any Canadian who would be automatically eligible for citizenship in another country upon application.

My friend Bernie was born in Canada, and holds only Canadian citizenship. However, as Germany will automatically grant him citizenship should he so desire as his parents were from Germany, his Canadian citizenship could be taken away under the current legislation.

So could my wife's citizenship, as she is in exactly the same situation.

My Canada was lead by a Prime Minister who served at the pleasure of Parliament. Our votes went to all the members of Parliament, and that is where the power sat.

Since the current PM has been in office, the power of the Prime Minister's Office has been steadily increasing, at the expense of Parliament. This is the opposite of what has made Canada a wonderful country. We used to limit the whims of a single man.

My Canada was a leader in environmental protection, rather than one that denied climate change; one that chooses to seek solutions, rather than supporting short-term corporate profiteering. Our government now does everything it can to muffle the voice of Science in this matter.

I want a return to environmental responsibility, universal suffrage, rule by parliament, irrevocable citizenship, and to being a nation of peacekeepers.

I do not call for a change, but for a return to what we were.

I want my Canada back.

Belts in a Bag

Last night just about everybody at Jiu-Jitsu was present. I don't know if it was a fluke, or because our instructor Shawn was back from training in Los Angeles.

There must have been a dozen White Belts, and 14 Blue Belts.

It was a sparkling evening.

There were a pile of promotions, which is always nice. Two White Belts received stripes, and Wan received his long-sought-after Blue Belt. As cool as all that was, they were all normal promotions.

Then came the special ones.

People from the start of the Gracies' long-distance program have been a bit screwed over when it came to rank. Cosme, for example, received his Blue Belt back in August of 2011, has never taken any significant breaks in his training, and has been promoted as far as our instructor could according to the rules. That's four years of training since getting his belt, and in all that time he's only been rewarded with two rank stripes.

A new Blue Belt who were to train steady for four years now would probably get to Purple Belt. Last night this discrepancy was addressed in a symbolic way.

Richard and Scott were each awarded a stripe, bringing them up to 2 stripes and 4 stripes respectively. Cosme and Koko each received two, bringing his total up to 4 stripes, and hers to 3. They are still behind, but it was nice that some symbolic correction was made.

It's funny, you very often hear the words that “rank doesn't matter.” Interestingly, it is more usually a Black Belt saying it, and not a White.

It gets said, but the evidence is quite the opposite. Let me give three reasons.

Down at the Gracie Academy, there are nights when gi are not worn. People dress in shorts and rashguards. Without a gi, it would be logical to not wear a belt. The strict rule is that you wear your belt even when training no gi. The reason is that it is important for people to know your rank so they know how knowledgeable their partner is both in training and in rolling. Clearly rank matters in that instance.

My next piece of evidence is that if “rank doesn't matter,” and students desire it so much, why isn't it just given to them. Why not just hand belts out willy nilly? After all, it doesn't matter.

If “rank doesn't matter,” is true, it should be easy to test out. At some big, advanced-class session at HQ, let's ask everybody to decide if they really believe if rank matters or not. If they say yes, or can't decide, they are dismissed. All of the others put their belts into a big sack, and then everybody blindly picks one out. All of the ranks are entered into the computer as that person's new, official, real rank. You'd see Blues becoming Blacks, and Blacks becoming Blues, for real. I don't think you'd see many former Black Belts being happy at what had just transpired.

I contend rank matters, or there would be no system for it at all.

It is meant as motivation, reward, and visible gauge.

Right now Koko is working like a crazy person, trying to complete a rank exam before she heads back off to university. She is drilling hard before and after class, as well as in the corner during the White Belt sessions. I have unlocked the door for her several times so she can put in hour after hour of extra practice. Certainly her knowledge and skill are growing significantly, but it would not be happening if she were not pursuing that tiny little belt stripe.

The compensatory stripe promotions last night were given as reward for the many long years put in by some of my friends without any corresponding increase in rank. They put in the hard work, and it just felt wrong the way it was standing.

We wear coloured belts at all to provide a system of letting one another know our approximate skill level. There is, of course, some variation, but if I am about to roll with somebody wearing a Brown Belt, it will be a significantly different experience than if they are wearing a Blue one.

All in all, it was a fine evening.

Best Dressed

In many martial arts uniforms are worn. The traditional one is called a gi. It's the one that looks kinda like a pair of Japanese pyjamas.

That is what we wear at our Jiu-Jitsu school. As Gracie Jiu-Jitsu people we are mandated to only wear white ones. This is exactly what I like.

There are many opposing ideas out there. Some people complain that wearing a gi is unrealistic, or they do wear gis, but of all sorts of colours. There are good reasons to stick to a plain old gi.

Let's talk uniform colour first. I recently visited a sport Jiu-Jitsu school where they wore whatever colour they wanted. Some wore white, but the rest were in a mix of blue, black, and even purple. Being an old timer, I noticed something there that I didn't like.

Some of the uniforms looked as if they had not been recently washed. This is a big deal in a grappling activity. It's hard to see this in a dark gi, which is a problem. In a white gi, you can see it from across the room.

In a class like ours, where a dirty gi stands out like a sore thumb, there is no problem. The expectation is that we wear a fresh uniform for each session. A gi soaked in fresh sweat is not an issue, but one that has been sweated in for several days in a row is. It's just gross, and stinks.

If you can't be bothered to train in clean clothes, stay home.

Score one for wearing white gi uniforms.

As to gi training being realistic, I can understand that logic even if I disagree with it. The idea is that if you are ever attacked out in the real world, it won't be by somebody wearing a gi, at least probably not.

So far the argument makes sense, but the next step in the chain doesn't. To keep things real, proponents of this view therefore train wearing shorts and rashguards. In case you don't know, a rashguard is a stretchy-material shirt that is worn skin tight, and that is quite slippery. It is meant to represent someone not wearing any shirt at all.

I suppose the logic for rashguards is that out in the real world, an attacker is most likely to come at you either A. Wearing a rashguard or B. Bare chested. Somehow, I don't believe that gangstas out there are ever A. Wearing rashguards or B. Jumping people while bare-chested.

Most likely they will be wearing something like a shirt, or hoodie, or perhaps a jacket of some sort, or at least a tshirt. While none of these things are the same as a gi, nor are they the same as a rashguard and shorts.

If you're talking competition training, that's different. Of course you should wear what you'll be competing in.

But getting back to self-defence, if you are a grappler you'll probably want to be good at using your opponent's clothing against them. Personally, I love doing collar chokes. They work great if the other guy has on a gi, but also if he has on a ski jacket, blazer, sweatshirt, or hoodie. The counter argument is that if he's only got on a tshirt they won't work as the shirt will just tear away.

No question that a tshirt might tear, but it will rarely rip away altogether. If you use it to choke, it will tend to all twisted up around your hands and your opponent's neck with any tearing being around the edges of the vital area. What will likely happen is that the bad guy will end up unconscious, and have a wrecked shirt as well. Just the other day at my school some people did an “old clothes” training session. Scott was sure he could rip his way out of a tshirt choke, kept going beyond where he would normally tap, and actually blacked out. He's goofy that way. By the way, the shirt was trashed.

But let's chat about another issue altogether.

I used be be involved in the coaching of a high-school wrestling team. Wrestlers compete in a garment called a singlet, and are forbidden from doing anything even approximating a choke. You'd think that they would want to practice in their singlets, but they hated them. They mostly wore baggy sweatpants and baggy shirts. In effect, they were dressing in a fashion nearer to what gi people train in, rather than what no-gi people prefer. Why would this be?

Let us imagine that there were a group that wished to avoid use of clothing in their training as much as possilbe, and therefore chose to train naked.

Would you want to train there? I wouldn't, but perhaps that's just silly. Nobody would train naked. Let's say they wear speedos. I still wouldn't want to train there.

I don't much like the feel of rolling around with some big, heavy, sweaty guy wearing a rashguard either, but I do it sometimes. We train here no-gi once a week. It's just creepy, and I'm not being sexist here. Rolling around with under-dressed women is just as creepy.

There is something about big, baggy clothing that eliminates the creepiness as much as is humanly possible.

If you disagree, let's try the following experiment. Towards the end of a vigorous workout, you lay down on your back. I lay down with my naked, hairy, sweaty chest crushing down onto your face. You give the experience a yuck rating. We repeat this with me now wearing a rashguard. Likely you will consider it more pleasant. We do it yet again, with me wearing a gi. I think the gi will get a definite thumbs up. If it doesn't....ew....

In less intense situations it still gets a thumbs up from most people. In general rolling around, hands and faces and armpits and groins and boobs are all constantly getting smushed up together. In light clothing it somehow seems much more blatant. In a gi, it's almost as if you're fighting another person, but that neither of you have any private bits at all. Your brain just edits it all out effortlessly, and allows you to train properly. I think about inappropriate contact as much when I'm working with a grappling dummy.

Plus, a gi makes you look like practitioner of a mysterious Asian art of some kind, and that's always cool. A rashguard and shorts just makes you just look like a surfer, but without the tan.

How lame is that?

Next Goal

Was out of town for a while, but back and on the mat in time for the start of the training week on Tuesday.

Did two classes that day, and also on Wednesday and Thursday. That's the end of our organized group classes, but I was training Friday at open-mat time, and again on Saturday.

Sometimes I run out of steam when training on my own. I'm way better with a partner, which is why I love it when my friends have found Jiu-Jitsu goals for themselves.

Saturday Cosme came, and wanted to run through his final BBS1 exam technical drill. That kept us fully employed for the entire time doing quite intense training.

The school is normally closed down totally on Sunday and Monday, however this is not the case this week.

Yesterday, Sunday, Koko and I got together for a couple of hours to work on her BBS1 exam first drill. We are doing so again today, and hoping to get it filmed and done.

After that, it's Tuesday and the regular class schedule kicks in again. I think it will be 11 days in a row of training for me.

I love it when other people have goals that get me more quality mat time.

I'm trying to come up with one of my own. Exams like Koko and Cosme are working on are totally optional. I did the one they're on back at the end of 2013. That was the highest exam available then, but a little over a year later BBS2 was released. Instructors have to do them, and I was part of the team that helped Shawn get his successfully completed through January and February.

I think I should get started on that thing for myself, although I don't have to.

The one I did do was the hardest exam I've ever taken. I trained with the exam in mind for over a year, learning each technique as we cycled through in an intense fashion. It's different than when we work on something in class without that motivation.

As hard as that test was, the BBS2 exam is worse. It covers about 20% more technique, and those are of a higher and more difficult level.

I've been once all the way through the BBS2 training cycle, and part way through again. I think after Koko's test is done, I'll switch over into pre-test mode.

The BBS2 test is divided into three parts. Perhaps I'll get right to work on the first drill. I've been through that stuff twice. It shouldn't take too many weeks to get it all reviewed and made sparkly. If that works, I would film it even though the entire process will take from now until well into next year.

Getting a successful film can take up to a million attempts. The weird thing is that it becomes relatively easy to do after that. If I get one done in say, October, I would keep right on doing them. I feel it's a bit of a cheat to do the drills months apart and submit them together for grading, although it isn't forbidden.

I would keep making recordings of drill one every couple of weeks until all of the others are done, too.

The class will finish the second drill material in our current cycle (my second time through) in October, and then I'll get that stuff ready, and filmed. Like drill one, I'll keep recording it every so often.

We'll finish the cycle before March, and then I'll give the final third drill the same treatment. The only difference is that this one will only get successfully filmed once. It, and the most recent versions of the other two will get bundled up along with the three mandatory sparring videos, and all uploaded to HQ for grading.

That will fill up every spare moment of training for me for a long time. It changes the way I learn in class, and I will be unable to “not get” any part of a technique. I'm pretty good at using open-mat time productively, but this will see me hurrying to get going and then doing so at a focused and intense level. It will see me practising things on unwitting bodies before and after every class.

Then, after an incredible amount of effort, and paying the $135 fee for the privilege to try, I just might pass the exam.

That would get me a little white piece of cloth with a few words on it which would replace one of my dull, boring, plain white belt stripes.

Can't say it's really about getting a different stripe.

and add fun

My last blog entry was all about my belief that martial arts schools should focus their beginner training towards self-defence, rather than sport.

The counter argument is that to do so would alter the fundamental structure of the martial arts. How silly is that? I can see how that is how such a change might feel to somebody raised in the sport style, but it just isn't true of martial arts in general.

Take Judo. Before it became accepted as an Olympic sport, it was mostly focused towards real fighting. Real fighting and sport fighting cannot be the same, nor should they be.

For example, in competition there are rules that penalize or disqualify players who throw their opponents in an unsafe manner; on their head, for example. This is good in competition, and even in daily training in the dojo. In self defence, this is the exact wrong thing to do. Spiking the evil-doer headfirst into concrete would most likely end the confrontation quite dramatically, and even leave one free to concentrate on not getting beat up by his buddy.

Many Judoka train for decades without spending any time at all practising how to do this. I'm sure they could improvise something on the spot by doing what they would never consider doing in either competition or in the dojo, but that is nowhere as effective as doing something you've trained in. There is a strong likelihood that they'll throw their attacker flat on his back, which is one of the least damaging ways to get thrown. You tend to do what you've practised.

Too dangerous? Find a way. There are wonderful throwing dummies that don't mind getting spiked on their heads at all. Even if it isn't trained this way all the time, at least it would be part of the Judoka's repertoire.

Want more? A very effective way to get somebody to violently hit the ground is by grabbing their legs. In current competitive rules this is illegal. I have no idea why. In many Judo dojo, these techniques are no longer therefore taught.

There are many examples of martial arts creeping farther and farther away from real fighting.

All I'm really suggesting is to put the goals of the curriculum back where they used to be.

What I'm not suggesting is that the methods of instruction be rolled back as well. If anything, I would like to see them modernized.

Old-timers in Karate, like me, get all dreamy-eyed as they tell the younger folks how they used to stand for hours in horse stance, or how many thousand punches they did without stopping, or weeks of beginner practice with nothing more than break-falls. We sure weeded out the weak back then.

Really? Is the goal to weed out the weak, or to create the strong? If somebody is already able to pass all the hurdles to be permitted to learn martial arts, they don't much need them. The people that need them are the exact people that a weeding out process would eliminate.

So I say, bring back the good old days when the goal of martial arts had nothing at all to do with scoring points. Teach the grizzly art of beating people up in a non-rule-restrained fashion.

And while we're moving back to teaching real fighting, let's chuck our all the educational methods that are counter productive.

People learn better if they feel they are succeeding, or good at what they are learning, and not when if they think they suck. Lessons should be aimed at an appropriate level of difficulty, and then broken down into component parts that can be clearly demonstrated, easily understood, and then successfully performed by the students.

They should be praised for their success. That alone would just about kill some of my Karate instructors. Also, if correction is needed, don't flood the student with so much that they interpret it as all meaning that they royally stink and can't do anything right at all.

Bad example; "your punch is too high (push students arm to correct height), and off centre (further physical correction), and when you punched your arm left the hip too soon, and your elbow should have travelled closer to your body, and your thumb is sticking out, and your fist was loose....."

Good example; " that was good. One thing would make it better. Your fist was a little loose. Squeeze as you do the punch, as it would really hurt if you hit something solid. (student does another punch) Much better. Your fist was perfect." (a few minutes later the teacher returns, praises the tight fist again, and this time mentions another "one thing" that would make it better.

There also needs to be some fun. People are coming to martial arts for many reasons, one of which has to do with enjoyment. This winter 4 of us went to pickleball lessons. Bernie loved it. Lola loved it. Helen loved it. I would rather have been in a dentist's chair. Bernie, Lola, and Helen all look forward to playing again. After that single lesson I announced my pickleball retirement. Point being; if you don't find it enjoyable, you won't want to do it. Neither will your students.

A lot of Karate instructors don't want them hitting anything solid until students have developed at least passable form. Fair enough. Have them take turns holding pool noodles out as targets, and trying to punch those. If you think that's stupid, I kinda agree, but it took me maybe 15 seconds to come up with that activity. Spend few minutes and figure out some better ones of your own.

Or how about this; fun in another way?

I remember the first time somebody really scarey ended up in front of me for step sparring. We could reproduce that feeling on purpose. Line up all the new students to practice the only block they've learned while stepping back. Have them do it slowly, then when they can do it at least halfway well, have them do it a little faster. So far, it's just good, regular drill.

Now have scarey people line up in front of them. Who? You know; Brown Belts, Black Belts, or maybe the instructor. The scarey people put on their best poker-style dead face, and they are postured ready to attack, and at the perfect range for a one-step forward attack..

The rookies are told, “imagine this person is about to attack you. They are going to launch exactly the attack that you've been preparing to defend against. The difference is that they are going to COME AT YOU FASTER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE. Are you ready?” They will be terrified of this. “Higher belts, move back 3 feet.” They do. “The only difference between this and a real attack is that they will not be able to reach you, even if you forget to step back.”

“Ready....GO....” This is repeated a couple of times. At this distance there is no contact between attacker and defender at all. It becomes a race. Of course the form of the newbies will pretty much collapse at that speed. This can be pointed out as an expected outcome, but that it will become less over time.

The next time this drill is done, the newbies will feel confident. After a couple of long-range attacks, the higher belts should be moved close enough that if the defenders don't move at all they could be hit. The higher belts should be ready for this possibility, and to abort their attack if necessary, but it shouldn't be needed. It will seem much more real. Again a race.

What you have is people moving fast, with a terrifying opponent. It's a bit like a roller coaster; safe but scarey. Fun. If you think it's a big waste of time, so what. The whole thing might take up 5 minutes of class time in each of two classes. I'd call it a wise use of time, not a waste. The high belts will likely get a kick out of terrifying the beginners, too.

So why not have a self-defence curriculum as the focus, taught using modern methods, and with a sprinkling of fun activities?

Unless the goal is to have as small a class as possible.

They don't want a sport

You need to give people what they pay for, and I'm not just talking about money.

People pay for things with time, effort and attention.

So just what do people want when they walk into a place that offers martial arts instruction? I've never met one who's said they want to fight in the UFC, or to compete in a Karate tournament.

They usually said that they thought it might be fun, or maybe that they think martial arts are cool. Fair enough. I do a lot of things without knowing what my goals are either.

If asked to pick off a menu what they were after, I bet they wouldn't list competition at all. More likely, they would say they want to learn how to fight for “real”. Let's call that self-defence.

Shouldn't beginner courses therefore be aimed towards self-defence if that's what the majority of new students say that is what they are most interested in?

I recently saw a first-day new student at a sports-oriented Jiu-Jitsu school. The very first thing they had him doing was attempting to pass somebody's guard. He had no idea what a guard was, or why he might want to pass it, or any clue as to how to pass it. It also has absolutely no relevance to self-defence.

If somebody grabs you in a parking lot, and there's a scramble, and he ends up on his back with you wrapped up in his legs, it would be crazy to try and pass his guard. You should start punching him in the head, or perhaps a sprightly downward elbowstrike to his genitals. The inverse of this is that if, in the same situation, you end up on your back with the bad guy in your guard, you don't need to worry about him passing. You need to be mostly concerned with him hitting you with considerable enthusiasm.

Passing a guard is useful, as is defending one, as long as nobody is allowed to hit anybody else. In other words, in an orchestrated sporting context.

My guess is that if that new student doesn't promptly quit, he will train for many months on various sport Jiu-Jitsu techniques that will be useful in rolling with his new buddies. I bet that isn't his objective. If he'd spent the same amount of effort and time and attention and money learning a carefully structured self-defence curriculum he would be much closer to his true objective.

So let's imagine a hundred beginners coming in the door (and assuming that the instructors don't die of shock). Out of those 100, there is one guy whose dream is to win big tournaments. The 99 others are all there because they heard it was fun, or good exercise, or good for self-defence.

They should be set up to train for several months in a program that fosters success during every class, and that focuses on self-defence rather than either on competition or on techniques designed for better in-dojo rolling sessions. The techniques that are taught should all be 100% street applicable, and simple to use. No flying triangles or spider guard no matter how much the instructors like those things. At the end of the course, students are given an exam that tests exactly what they have been learning. Rank is awarded.

Of the 100, perhaps the sport fancier has moved on, but most likely a majority of the remainder will still be there. However, even those that may have left will have a good feeling about the experience and the school involved. Compare that with what happens now at a great many locations. People leave injured, discouraged, and humiliated. Most leave after having had a very negative experience, usually within a very short time.

Having 100 people out there spreading the good word is itself worth all the effort involved. With a decent curriculum, even those that quit early will have trained in simple techniques that might save their butt someday, which is what they really wanted in the first place.

Let's say 50 continue until the belt test, and that half of these then quit after receiving their shiny, new belts. That leaves 25 who make the transition into the advanced class.

This would be the proper time to introduce sparring and all its conventions and rules. Sport competition can start being a component in the lessons, along with everything else.

The counter argument is that all that is what should have been taught right from the beginning. Really? Do you seriously think that teaching to the 1% that wanted sport is better than to the 99% that wanted to learn how to fight for real? Perhaps you think it's the exact same thing, in which case why not do it my way? If sport is the same as self-defence, isn't self-defence the same as sport? I actually think they're worlds apart, which is why I say teach the component that is desired, first.

In any case, after a few months a sport place will have catered to and retained their 1%, while the beginner-friendly school has 25% still on the mat. My guess is that most of the 25 who attempt the transition into the advanced class will do so successfully. They already have a number of skills useful to a beginner in sparring, and already know that they don't suck, and that they enjoy their martial art. It is an infinitely smaller jump to arrive from a beginner class than it is to come in as an absolute newby. The odds of injury are vastly reduced.

This doesn't mean that every beginner-class graduate will suddenly want to get involved in the next Jiu-Jitsu, or Judo, or Karate tournament. The vast majority never will, which is also true of the vast majority in traditionally structured martial arts groups.

How many golfers compete? Are they expected to. Would you expect any golf course to be successful if they managed to weed out every person that didn't want to go pro?

I'd like to say this is all my idea, but it's really the basis behind Ryron and Rener Gracie's Combatives program. They figured this all out in relation to their own school. There had always been the same struggle that schools everywhere have to retain students. They build a self-defence beginner curriculum, built a structure around that, and rolled it out into the Gracie Academy down in Los Angeles. Their beginner numbers soared, and once the first grads started moving into the main group, so did numbers there.

I don't know how many total students they have, but they run 9 beginner classes a week, and they all run with 30-40 people in them. Assuming that they all train twice a week, what would mean they have 150-160 White Belts. Their advanced classes are about the same size on average, and they have 13 of those, which would mean a similar number of students of Blue Belt and above. Who wouldn't want 300 students.

You might say, “of course they have many students; they're Gracies.” They only had a fraction that many prior to the introduction of their beginner program.

...but I think I explain it better...

“Meet the training demands of the many, instead of the few. Most schools have it backwards.” -paraphrased from Rener Gracie

OK...maybe I didn't explain it better.

They have a video where they explain all this;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgb1Attfm-0

Shawn-less-ness

I hate it when Shawn our instructor is away. He likes vacations, which I certainly understand, and sometimes he has to go down to LA for instructor stuff which I also get, but I still hate it.

When he's gone, Scott steps up and does a good job keeping things rolling, but it isn't the same.

Silly of me, really, as I lose much more training time each year due to my own travels.

So far this year, I've spend several days driving down the American Pacific coast, about two weeks in LA (training with the Gracies, so I don't count this as downtime), a month in Arizona, about a week in Vegas and driving north from there, a week in Victoria, two more weeks in Victoria. That adds up to being gone about 20% of the time. This is actually down quite a bit from the year before, when it was over 30%.

Sometimes the breaks Shawn and I take overlap. When those happen I somehow feel like they cancel each other out, which is stupid. It still is time off the mat, but my brain does stuff like that sometimes.

But getting back on topic.

Shawn is away. That doesn't mean that lots of interesting stuff doesn't still happen.

Tuesday, at Combatives it seemed that Cosme was going to teach. Cool. He started the class off, directing the students to begin their review period. Everybody started rolling around. Then it turned out that Cosme was leaving, and Scott was going to teach. Cool. He came up, lined everybody up, and directed the students to begin their review period, which they did. The class had two complete start-ups. Nobody minded, but we all smiled.

So far there have been four Shawn-less adult classes, and all were well lead.

In the White Belt classes it was really interesting to see that Nathan has been assigned Tobias as his tutor. Tobias is working towards instructor certification, so it is a mutually beneficial relationship. He has exceptional potential as an instructor. I predict that Nathan will have his Blue Belt in record time.

In the advanced classes, I got to work with a lot of different people. I don't usually pick my partners, but work with whoever points at me. We switched up many times. I was with several people for single moves, and multiple pairings with Rob, Wan and Koko on Tuesday. Wednesday, more single-move partners, and repeatedly with Rob, Tobias, and Koko.

In many ways this is perfectly normal, but also not so much. Rob, Tobias and Wan are all amongst my most usual partners, so that much was ordinary. Koko never avoids me, but as I am helping her with her BBS1 training she wanted to work with me as much as possible, which makes sense.

What was weird was who didn't partner with me. There are three people who seem to like picking me as a partner more than anybody else does. Two of them are away right now, and I must have done something to alienate the third. I only ended up with that one once when there was nobody left for them to pick.

There has been less free-sparring than usual; none at all during class time. My only roll was with Than after class yesterday.

He is our strongest and heaviest guy. Can't hold that against him, but he always rolls as if he were the strongest and heaviest guy. He shouldn't, even if he is.

He also really, really likes to “defeat” his partners. I would love to see him rolling with the real giants down in LA. Anyhow, his movement has greatly improved since the last time we rolled. His attendance is kinda spotty, so that was quite a while ago. He also tries to pick up weird stuff from non-Gracie sources. This can be either good or bad. None of the weird stuff he tried last night caused me any problems at all, so I'd say in his case it's bad.

What was good was less reckless movement. If we were clamped in a neutral position, he used to do anything possible to advance, which usually involved massive expenditure of energy to no purpose. This time he was content enough to hold a neutral spot, sometimes causing me to try and get out and wasting energy. He used to be so wild that there was no reason for me to ever be the “burner”.

He caught me two or three times in our roll. They were all still strength submissions, but maybe that will mature, too.

It would be really cool to see him do a roll with a “referee”, whose job would be to point out whenever he is using raw strength. I'm sure he doesn't know he's relying so heavily on strength. As soon as he starts letting that go, his technique will become even better.

I wonder what interesting thing will happen tonight?

Is trans sport a thing?

Did you know that there was a transgender athlete who tried out for the 2012 US Olympic team. How cool is that?

He used to be a she, and his sport is hammer throw. That's the one where you spin around holding onto a rope that has a big cannonball on the other end. The goal is to see how far it can be thrown. He was competing in the male division, now that he is a man.

Do you think he qualified? What factored into your assessment?

He did not make the team, as he was beaten by too many male-born competitors. Why?

My own guess would be that he was facing some form of skeletal/musculature disadvantage. Either that, or they had better form, but I'm going with the structure angle.

Did this put him at an unfair disadvantage? Should he have been permitted to compete instead in the female division? I don't think so. His current body is a product not just of intensive training, but also a cornucopia of pharmaceuticals and hormones. If a woman tried to compete in the same condition she would have been banned-for-life after failing the drug test. Therefore, to be fair, he certainly should not be competing in the female division. Do you agree?

Is it unfair that he have to compete as a man? Don't think so.

Unfortunately, I've twisted the story to prove a point. It's all true, except the female-to-male transgender athlete involved did not compete in the male division, he competed as a female.

Now what do you think? Should he have been allowed to compete against women with his chemically modified body? He did and, thank goodness, still didn't make the Olympic team.

I don't know of any other transgender people who have tried to compete in the Olympics, and Dr de Mars says it's the only example she's found, and she's a university professor.

There is, however, a transgender athlete fighting in mixed martial arts. This person was born male, and is now female. She fights in the women's 145 pound division.

Do you think this is right?

In the Olympic example of a transgender woman-to-man athlete competing in the female hammer throw division, there is no evidence that anybody was put in danger due to his participation.

If a transgender male-to-female athlete wants to take advantage of perhaps being allowed into a female division of a weight-lifting competition, there is still nobody put in harm's way.

A male-to-female fighter being permitted into female divisions of fighting sports is not so harmless. The transgender fighter mentioned earlier in this article has had 5 victories, none of which were by decision.

I have watched some of her fights. Her technique is nothing special, and she often powers her moves through. She fights the women she faces much as an abusive male would.

I have a solution. Until there are enough transgender athletes to warrant separate divisions for male-to-female and female-to-make competitors, all transgender athletes should only ever compete in male divisions.

The only exception should be transgender female-to-male individuals who have not undergone male hormone reassignment therapy being allowed to continue within female divisions.

People shouldn't be put at risk

Yeah, but can she beat a man

Ronda Rousey is the UFC's Womens Bantamweight champion. She pretty much tosses her opponents around like rag-dolls, and typically twists their arms until they pop off.

The most ignorant comment that people make about her is usually the question, “yeah, but could she beat a man?”

Of course she can, she trains much more with men than with women. This is usually countered with, “yeah, but those guys aren't going full out. It's training.”

In her mother, Dr. de Mars' blog of July 10, 2010 she mentions in passing about Ronda doing two tournaments of which she, her mother, disapproved.

Keep in mind that this blog was a month before Ronda's amateur mma debut, and 8 months before her first pro-mma fight.

It seems Ronda fought in a local Judo tournament in the men's 180 pound division a few years earlier. At the time, Ronda was about 150 pounds. She won. Granted, it was a local tournament, but the guys in it were all trained, Black-Belt Judoka who were certainly going full out.

She had also fought in a local men's mma tournament shortly before the blog entry, this time in the 170 pound division. She won.

Does this mean that she could beat any man? Don't be silly. Even at her own weight I don't think this is likely, but there are guys in the top-ten at 135 pounds (Ronda's current fighting weight) that she could whomp.

I think what the, “could she beat a man,” crowd are saying is that if there is even one guy out there that can beat her, then it means women can't beat men.

It somehow hurts their masculinity to think such an outrage could even be possible.

The female 100 meter record is 10.49 seconds. That means that she was faster than every man that lived prior to 1921, and damn near every man since then. Does it somehow comfort neanderthals to think that because the male record is 9.58 seconds that somehow men are superior to women?

I'm pretty sure that elite female sprinters can outrun those guys, and Ronda Rousey can certainly kick their butts.

The harder I work the luckier I get

"The harder I work, the luckier I get."
                                       - Samuel Goldwyn

I've been enjoying the Judo blog of Dr. AnnMaria de Mars lately. I found it a few days ago while looking for information on uchikomi. She was the first American to win a World Championship, and also just happens to be Ronda Rousey's mom.

Anyhow, the quote that I opened with today is from her blog. She writes a lot about success in top-level Judo, but what she says also applies to Jiu-Jitsu folks like me.

She is a big advocate of lots of training, and of not holding back while doing it.

This is pretty much the secret of my modest success.

In our school there are 8 sessions per week for adults. Three are for White Belts, three are for advanced students, and two are open-mat for anybody doing anything. I attend all of them.

Less than half of our advanced students ever attend the White Belt classes, and even fewer show up for open-mat.

If anybody wants to get together to work towards a belt exam after hours, or anything like that I'm always game to help them out. It gets me more hours of training.

Even when present, there are people who only want to do a couple of reps of whatever technique we're working on. Some of us try and do as many reps as possible within the allotted time.

During sparring, if there is an odd number present somebody has to sit out during each match-up. Some rush to be the odd person out. I try and avoid having a turn sitting doing nothing.

In short, I get more time training than anybody else, and try and squeeze more value out of each hour than most of my friends.

I also do something the others don't. I try and plan my progress.

Each time I've gone to the Gracie Academy in Los Angeles, I did so with recently awarded rank. The last time it was just chance, but the first time it was carefully planned.

I wanted to get as much out of the LA training as could. To do that I wanted to have as thorough a preparation as possible. If you know a bit about what you're being taught, it is easier to understand the more complex stuff.

I wanted to complete all of the BBS1 material before heading south. I would have been about 20% short of completion by trip time, and so went that much faster than the normal pace over the preceding year-and-a-half.

I could have done all that without also doing the BBS1 exam, but I wanted to know if I was good enough, and so earned a belt stripe along the way.

So what has all this extra effort gotten me?

I know the available curriculum as well as anybody here, and better than most.

I am also able to spar as well as any student in our school. This is actually pretty remarkable, as I am 59 years old. Most of the others are still in their twenties.

Going full out, there are three guys here who it would be a coin-toss to fight. I tap them sometimes, and sometimes they get me. I can pretty much tap the remaining dozen at will.

If I didn't work harder and longer there is no way that would be true.

How did I get so dedicated?

Well, I don't want to suck, and I don't delude myself. Without the extra effort, I would not be anywhere as good as I am. I could do less work, and tell myself some kinda justification, but it would be a lie.

It's just easier and more gratifying to push.

no one wants to see you naked

     Judo is just about the most fun you can have without getting naked.

     And, at my age, no one wants to see you naked. 

                                                                          - Dr. AnnMaria De Mars

I don't do Judo, but the quote works for Jiu-Jitsu just as well.

A typical Jiu-Jitsu day is pretty awesome. My drive down takes about half an hour. Most of the way there are no alternative routes, and any kind of snag is a big deal. They are pretty rare, but I allow lots of extra time.

I arrive at about 5:30pm, while the kids class is still running. After a bit of watching, I head to the change room to get all gi-ed up. The kids always finish with a dodge-ball game, and then the mat is turned over to the adults.

I stretch, perhaps chat a little, or sometimes roll with somebody. At 6pm, the Combatives class starts. This is the Gracies' fancy name for White Belt classes.

There are usually about a dozen White Belts, and maybe 2 or three Blue Belts who are there to help. This class runs for about an hour. If the number of White Belts is odd, I am often tagged as the extra partner. If not, I help with correcting the students.

At 7:00pm, the White Belts leave, and it's time for Master Cycle, which is the Gracies' label which means “Students Blue Belt and Above”. There will be about a dozen of us, and all are various levels of Blue Belt. Like the White Belts, we will be shown the day's material and we'll go off to work in it together.

After about 45 minutes of this, it becomes sparring time. Our instructor will let us know what the expectations are for that session (position start-up, intensity, or any weird rules <one hand>) and off we go. After about five minutes, we switch partners.

I really like sparring, and enjoy all types of partners. We currently only have two guys who are significantly larger than me, and I wish we had more. It is important to have people around whom you cannot beat with force.

You might think that rolling with a really bit, strong guy might be unpleasant, and it is for maybe the first dozen times. After that it becomes no big deal. They usually get on top, and squish down with their mass, making escape difficult. You just get used to having your face crushed between a chest and the mat. The part of this that I enjoy is defending, and waiting unconcernedly for them to leave an opening. Then it's bang, reversal.

We also have a few folks much smaller than me. I have been accused of using muscle on them, but really try not to, nor to crush. All are really fast when they want to be. Rolling with the very smallest is like trying to pin down an eel. Her movements are incredibly unpredictable, and she gets away with the strangest things.

All the rest or the students are vaguely my size, although only one is an old fart like me. OK, he's a decade younger, but still.

Anyhow, all of this is just wonderful fun. I have a friend, Pete, who plays rugby (non-contact) and is about a decade older than me. I think that for him, rugger is just as much fun.

There are lots of other, more suitable old-folks physical activities, but they just aren't as intensely fun. Golf? Tried that. Yoga? Pleasant enough, but not actively fun. Walking? Is anything duller?

Anyhow, that's why I so enjoyed Dr. De Mars' comment that I used as a quote earlier.

Meathead

There are meatheads out there, hiding everywhere; sharks waiting for the newby

I've trained at the Gracie Academy, and they have an atmosphere of care and cooperation. They do everything possible to discourage meatheadism by word, and by deed; by example and by direction. There are still meatheads there.

Meatheads are the guys who don't seem to care if their partners get hurt. They push, and crush, and try and brute things through.

I don't find them fun to roll with, or particularly challenging. Let's say Mister Meathead goes for an armbar, and I defend it properly. He'll keep on pulling, long after it is clear that the thing just isn't going to work, but he can't let it go. This is really common with Mister Meathead. You need to be really ready to tap when you're with these guys, as they go hard and fast, but getting “stuck” is a more likely scenario, assuming you know what you're doing.

Suppose you were a brand-spanking new student in a Jiu-Jitsu school. Would you want to roll with one of these guys?

At a lot of places, newbies roll on day one. They might get a lovely, gentle, helpful partner, or they might not. It will also be likely that they will rotate through several people.

They might get Mister Lovely, Miss Gentle, Billy Helpful, and then Mister Meathead. Through the first three partners nothing really goes wrong, but the newby will be getting rolled and swept all over the place without a clue as to what's happening.

Then Mister Meathead shoots for something hard and fast and bang.... injury. Likely it will be minor, but it will likely be scary; an arm a bit overextended, or a neck crunched. No way the newby will ever return, not if he's smart. What if the injury isn't minor? Then he can't come back.

Even if there is no Mister Meathead, would the newby still want to come back?

I am a retired teacher, and have spent many years trying to present educational material successfully.

Let's present math in the same way that Jiu-Jitsu is often taught.

A new student arrives, and is put in with a bunch of students of varying levels of expertise. The new student knows nothing about math at all. A lesson is presented about trigonometry. After the lesson, the students are given a number of problems to solve as practice. The new student cannot even begin to do them. Students are then paired up, and race one another to get problem solutions. The new student can't even begin to solve the questions. After the class, the new student is asked if they want to sign up and pay a significant amount of money in order to continue lessons.

It is remarkable that anybody ever comes back, what with the basic educational model involved; with a layer of meatheads layered on top.

There needs to be some kind of provision made for the new student. A successful school might hold separate beginner classes with a curriculum geared just to them. Many schools don't have enough new students to justify separate classes, so a tutor program might be employed.

The point is, to treat the beginners well. Give them a chance to experience success right from the very first day. Protect them from injury until they have been sufficiently prepared to protect themselves.

I am proud that this is something our school does well.