Necks and Backs

Some Jiu-Jitsu techniques terrify me. The funny thing is that being on the receiving end isn’t the problem, it’s being the guy who performs the move.

Let’s say that your partner is supposed to do something to you, and as the good guy, your response is to back-roll out of the situation. I really don’t like that.

The move will look cool, and work, and not even be particularly difficult. For most people there is no risk at giving it a shot.

The worst thing that can happen is that during the back roll your weight doesn’t rest fully on your shoulder, and your head takes part of it. That means that your neck will get scrunched to one side under some measure of pressure.

For everybody else around here this is no big deal. If it happens to me, my neck is instantly hooped, and will be so for a long time.

I can do the move, and perform it without injury probably 19 times out of 20. The problem is that the value in the technique is less than the chance of significantly compromising my neck.

I either modify the danger out of a neck-threatening technique, or I don’t do it.

Luckily such things are quite rare, and therefore no big deal.

However, there is another large category of technique that is much harder to avoid.

They make up a significant proportion of all throwing techniques.

My back used to cause me grief fairly often. I would be barely able to move for at least a week, and this would be followed by a month of restricted activity.

It no longer does this, but the threat is never all that far from the surface.

Out of the entire menu of throws, only a few carry risk, but for me it’s very real.

A good example of the danger in throws happened to me during my first visit to the Gracie University headquarters school.

It was a very large group that day, with several instructors who all just happened to be in their 20s.

The technique was demonstrated, and very well explained. In it, the opponent gets lifted, but, “don’t worry. Just keep your back straight and it is all just a lift with your legs.” You know, like doing a properly-aligned squat, except it wasn’t.

The opponent’s weight was being held by the good guy with arms somewhat uneven in height. This meant that even with the lifter’s back being kept perfectly straight there was a rotational action happening. It was not obvious.

After a couple of attempts, my back was seriously warning me. I told my partner I was done, and happily played victim for him. He got double reps, and my back got a vacation.

After class it was time to roll, but I wasn’t about to with a half-sprung back, and I noticed something interesting. About a third of the class were above the age of 40, but during the rolling they had all vanished. Normally the proportion participating is about the same as it is during class time.

Every single one of the old guys had hit the change room and left. That’s a lot of wrecked backs to happen in a single class. At first I couldn’t believe it, so I stayed and watched the rolling. Not even one older guy remained.

This taught me that I have to take full responsibility for self-injurious techniques, and not to trust an instructor who says it will be OK.

There are a couple of throws I have to get really good at for an upcoming exam. I am super lucky that the list of throws included has been curtailed greatly, but there are still a couple of nasty ones.

Two spring to mind.

I’ve been studying the online videos very carefully, looking for ways to limit the risk. It’s a conundrum; to get good enough for the test, I have to practice, and by practicing I put my back in danger. Hurting my back means cutting back or eliminating all practice which will hurt my performance overall.

The first of the questionable techniques involves a weird, lifting, twisted-hip-thrusting, back-bending movement. Doing it with light-weight training partners might be OK.

The second technique looks nasty if done the way it is normally presented. However, in the last few moments of the video lesson, there is an alternative version presented, almost as an afterthought. It isn’t a throw at all, but rather a trip. My relief upon seeing that version was palpable. This is the version I will be drilling and performing on test day.

There may be other nasty techniques that I haven’t really identified yet. 

You’d think I’d be worried about getting hurt during the rolling on test day, but I’m not. I never use self-injurious moves when fighting. If I’m going to get wrecked, it will be the other guy’s fault.

It is the techniques that must be presented that I cannot avoid. They will need just as much practice as all of the lovely safe ones.

I don’t even mind getting hurt on test day itself, as I’d likely still be able to bull on through, and recover later. The totally crippling reaction to back injury never happens to me immediately.

It is more the injuries during practice. Having my back go boing in the week before the test would mean no exam at all.

Maybe it should be a written exam.

A Rare Day Off

Just updated my spreadsheet.

I went back to the day almost two weeks ago when I was told that my test was coming shortly before Christmas.

By the time I arrive at my Brown Belt exam about 7 weeks from today, I will have attended about 26 classes at my home-town school, and about 5 more in Vancouver.

In that same period, there will also have been 25 times on the mat doing test preparation.

That’s a lot of work towards getting myself ready, and that doesn’t even include the many hours spent watching the available instructional videos.

The funny thing is that even with all of that last minute training, placed on top of over 8 years of Jiu-Jitsu, I still feel rushed.

To be ready to handle whatever I might be asked to do, I have to get four levels of advanced self-defence material up to a level of acceptable fluency.

The first couple of levels are no big deal as I’ve been doing them for years. I drill those in a manner that gets them ready to demonstrate. I don’t think I’ll make any significant mistakes there.

Level one is the easiest, as I’ve been doing those techniques since 2012. Since then we’ve gone through the level one curriculum in class about 7 times, and I’ve already passed a humongous technical exam that included exactly that material, and acted as tutor and victim for a number of other students who’ve also done that test.

Level two is almost as familiar. Our class has cycled through that about 6 times over the years. I don’t know it as well, but there are no mysteries.

Level three is the highest material I’ve been doing test prep on so far. I think we’ve done that part of the curriculum only twice in class. I am far less proficient on this segment, but am working to make it as much my own as are the previous levels.

Level four may or may not be on the test, but I have to assume that it is. This will be hard. We’ve never done it in class, so I will have to learn these babies from scratch using the online instructional videos. They will take a disproportionate amount of work, and will still be the ones I will be least able to perform acceptably at test time.

All of this focus is having a down side. Free rolling is also a part of the exam, but I have cut down on this significantly. Neither minor nor major injures can be allowed to happen. Losing test preparation time is just not an option.

There are a few trusted partners that can help me with rolling here, and I’ve recruited four that I trust in Vancouver. If my trusted crew isn’t available, I won’t roll. Even with their help there will be some measure of ring rust, but hobbling onto the mat on test day with the help of crutches would be much, much worse.

One thing I’m very glad of is that most of the throwing that is actually included in the self-defence part of the curriculum is not part of my exam. I suck pretty bad at throwing in general, and my old body can only handle so much practice as either the throw-ER or the throw-EE.

Today, it was one of my rare days off. There are no classes that I can reach on a Tuesday, and there were no playdates with my test-prep helpers.

Tomorrow it’s back to work.

Until Christmas

My last self-indulgent blog about my upcoming Brown Belt evaluation was back on day 53.

At that time I was wondering if there would be 36 items on the test, or 27. The difference of 9 techniques was making me apprehensive, as those were all new to me and would have taken a great deal of time to prepare on my own.

Now it is day 50, and this seems to have been largely answered.

My instructor says he is 99.9% sure that the offending 9 techniques are not to be included. He did counter this a bit by saying that I should go over all of the Gracie Philosophy videos, which I certainly will do (a total of 10.5 hours of viewing). He also wants me to look over the Master Text. None of this is actually added to the exam itself, and is more than counterbalanced by the loss of 9 techniques.

Doing those added educational tasks will not require any mat time, and only eat into frivolous television viewing.

I now feel quite able to work things up for my mid-December evaluation. I might even develop a more jaunty style of ambulation, and start smiling again.

One thing I will have to watch out for is high-risk sparring or partnering during class time. That is easy to do here, as I know which folk are the safest to play with.

I will be in Vancouver six times between now and test day, and I don’t know folks there so completely. Maybe I can get a hold of one of those that I trust, and get them to commit to being my playmate until after my exam.

So instead of struggling to get totally unknown techniques figured out and trained to a level of fluency, I have been reviewing and refining material I know, and learning unexpected details.

I am also about 3 hours into my Gracie Philosophy viewing assignment, and have been thinking on strategies to avoid training injuries for the next 51 days. After that they don’t matter.

All in all, this entire test preparation process has been incredibly educational, and not merely in the area of Jiu-Jitsu technique.

Around here I’m pretty much the guy who is always helping out others.

For example; a month ago I was part of a team helping my instructor with his technical exams, and hosted a weekly session aimed at helping out the less experiences of our advanced students. Rob and I were just completing the work on his first level of technical exams, and starting to work together to earn the second level for both of us.

Now, with the pressure on me, this has all changed about. I didn’t engineer any of it. All was at the willing instigation of my friends.

My instructor’s sessions are now focused equally on preparing him for his own Black Belt exam and on mine for Brown Belt. My weekly group has also switched themselves to helping me drill for my test. Rob and I are not currently working on our technical exams, but also working on test preparation.

In addition, I’ve been accepted into a special training group at the Vancouver school aimed towards precisely what I need at this point.

So you see, besides all the study and drill, it has been an education to see how wonderfully everybody has shifted things about to help me along my road.

It’s all going so swimmingly, that I’ve actually started looking past the exam itself.

The first thing coming up at that point will be the trip that Helen and I always make to be with family for Christmas. Usually, I go with mixed emotions. As much as I enjoy the holidays with our family, I also severely dislike the break in training.

I imagine that after all of this recent focused work I’ll be glad to step away for a while, whether I pass or fail.

It's just math

I recently did a blog entry about how counting up classes and dates helped me relax about an upcoming Jiu-Jitsu exam.

This is how I’ve been handling my training for a very long time.

There is a philosophy that suggests the best course is to ignore promotion, and to focus on training instead. This sounds good, but the reality is quite different. The best course is to get yourself onto the mat as much as you can, and that whatever motivates you to do that is great.

In the Gracie system of rank progression, there is a definite link between rank and time spent on the mat.

When I first found out how it worked, I did a quick calculation out of interest, and found that if I did extra work, I could get my first promotion by June. If I didn’t, the date would be late September. That isn’t a large difference, but it was actually more than that. Between those two dates, I would have two full months off of the mat. That would have made me very rusty in September, and needing a lot of brushing up; at least a couple of months. The test itself would drag on, as they always do. The no-extra-training completion date would turn out to be 6 months after what I actually managed.

I did the work, and got the Belt.

The promotion after that would add a dandy little stripe onto my belt. In those days, the only way to earn one was to do a horrendously difficult technical exam. I earned one in 18 months by putting in a great deal of extra work outside of regular class time.

If I hadn’t been “chasing rank,” I wouldn’t have done that extra work. Instead, I would have attended classes, and not received my first stripe until the new rank system was put in place in 2014.

At our school’s first mass promotion that year, I would have received my first stripe, instead of earning my second.

With those promotions the new rules stipulated that the fastest a stripe could be earned was 8 months, and only if a student had attended a set minimum number of classes.

For most people, the promotion period averaged out at about 10 months. I rarely missed class, except when travelling, and did better, but it wasn’t easy.

I got my Purple Belt in April of 2016. If I had been relaxed all along the way along, it wouldn’t have happened until October of 2017.

Until recently, there really were no students training at anything like my rate. Good students are those that regularly make 3 advanced classes per week, and maybe show up at one open mat.

I am at 3 advanced classes per week, as well as 3 beginner sessions, and 3 open mat times. I also travel to Vancouver on Saturdays to get in another advanced class as well as an extra beginner sessions. There is also a Sunday group that I’m involved with, and a couple of other get togethers during the week.

I now have a Brown Belt exam staring me in the face. It’s due to happen in December of 2019. If I’d taken the simpler, no-rank-chasing route, my Brown Belt exam wouldn’t be happening until 2 years later.

The relaxed-twin version of me testing for Brown in 2021 would have completed over 1,200 sessions. Conversely, I will actually have been on the mat more than 1,800 times (not counting beginner classes) by the time of my exam, two months from now (2019).

I’m not saying that having trained 50% more than otherwise has made me 50% better than would otherwise be the case, but there certainly has been a significant improvement due to all that rolling around.

But what might counting classes to for other people? That’s hard to say, but let’s try.

We have a big crop of White Belts right now that have reached the halfway step to a minor milestone.

Beginners get to attend twice per week, but there is a point where having been to 40 classes earns them the right to attend a third, slightly more advanced class.

That will be happening for our crop in January.

If they keep training diligently, they will complete the requirements for their first promotion exam before the end of April, and could receive a Combatives Belt in May.

If they do that they gain access to 3 advanced classes per week (many at that point stop attending the beginner sessions, but they can continue those if they wish).

Good attendance at the advanced classes will earn them a Blue Belt by November (after 6 months, the only variation on the 8-month theme).

Let’s say at that point that they either become regular good students (averaging 10-month promotions) and being eager ones (getting promoted every 8 months).

An eager, extra-motivated student will be a Purple Belt 4 years and 5 months from today, a Brown Belt in 7 years and 9 months, and a Black Belt in 11 years and 2 months.

A regular student will be a Purple Belt in 5 years and 3 months, a Brown Belt in 9 years and 5 months, and a Black Belt in 13 years and 7 months.

In another example we have an individual who wants to become an instructor, and who should be getting his Blue Belt next month.

On the faster path he can be a Purple Belt 3 years and 5 months from today, or in 4 years and 3 months if he takes the slower route.

It’s all about information, and lifestyle, and about making conscious decisions about how much to train.

Countdown

Counting things makes me feel better, so I’ve done that for my upcoming Brown Belt exam.

From what my instructor has said, the test will likely be on December 14 or 15, unless he agrees to a date a month later.

That means there are at least 53 days left.

In that many calendar days, I’ll have attended a couple of dozen White Belt classes, and an equal number of advanced ones. None of those will have any direct impact on improving my test performance. There is always a very small chance of injury when training, and a not insignificant change of damage during free-rolling.

To be fit on test day, I will be curtailing my free-rolling. All I’d need now would be a busted ankle or blown knee. I will still partake of the activity, but only with the very best of my free-rolling friends. I like wrestling around, but caution is wise in this situation.

In those same 53 days it looks like I’ll have three dozen sessions working on the Brown Belt test material. These will include general self-defence practise with the Sunday group, work with Rob on the more advanced material, sessions in Vancouver focused on precisely what the examiner wants, and times with my instructor where a small group works on Brown and Black Belt exam material.

That feels like it will be enough. Seeing the actual numbers helps me understand this.

So far, the Gracies have released curriculum that contains 276 techniques and all of their variants. We are allowed to know that only the self-defence material will be covered. That brings the tally down to 87 techniques.

If it were to be a test on all 87, the test would be crazy long and exhausting. Some of us do huge technical exams, where sets of about 20 techniques are recorded. These take between 12 and 25 minutes to perform, and are absolutely exhausting. I can’t even imagine what a test of 87 would look like. Might it be and hour-and-a-half of non-stop motion? If it is they better have oxygen and stretchers available.

Don’t get me wrong; I like them all the techniques and enjoy working on them. The point is that with 53 days left, this isn’t really the time to be doing general training.

My instructor and I were working on the list of material for his upcoming Black Belt exam, and he let me have a real look at it.

I totally ignored the first 36 items (the easy ones) that might be on the test, other than to notice that there won’t be much from that at all. It was the other 51 (the hard ones) that might be included that I wanted to know about.

Of those 51, there were only 36 included. That is already making a huge difference. By knowing that the list is 15 techniques shorter, it’s as if I’ve managed to find 30% more training time.

The other issue is that of the remaining (hard) techniques, there are 9 that I have never experienced in class. A bit of a bummer being examined on stuff that I’ve never learned. A friend of mine who is also being graded for a Brown Belt hasn’t even seen them.

These are all of the highest, hardest, and most recently released layer of curriculum, called BBS4. This is where the majority of all my training time will have to be invested.

The online instructional videos for this stuff adds up to a hair under 6 hours long, and that’s without all the stopping and rewinding that actually has to be done to gain understanding. Of course, that doesn’t include any of the drill that is necessary to actually gain any sort of competence.

So I have 53 days to get ready. The goal is to be able to fluently demonstrate an insignificant number of easy items, along with 27 hard ones that I already have some competence at, and 9 more hard ones that I need to learn up from scratch.

I won’t work the easy ones at all, as I already do them on a very regular basis. They are covered in our beginner classes, which I always attend, and sometimes teach.

The 9 hard ones from BBS4 will demand far too much of my time and effort, but they are on the list. I will need to spend many hours studying the related videos, and teaching them to myself. I’m sure that my instructor will help when he can. It is this section that is of the greatest concern.

The 27 remaining techniques will have to be polished up with less training time than would be ideal.

Overall, the amount of time that I have available should get me to a level that will likely be enough for the examiner. Conversely, due to the necessity of learning material that I’ve never been taught, I won’t be able to perform at anything like the level I would prefer.

I would like to be really fluent in what I am asked to perform, not merely barely competent. That, however, is not up to me.

I better not get the flu.

What's on it?

Things have been going pretty well. Since word about testing for Brown Belt landed, I’ve managed to get in 3 sessions of preparation, and will have another tomorrow. In 6 days there will have been 4 times dedicated solely to getting ready, and that’s on top of 5 regular classes my level (one of which I taught, so it doesn’t really count).

At that rate, there should be a total of 40 hours dedicated to test preparation by test day. That might be enough.

Actually, I politely suggested to my instructor that the middle of January might be better than the middle of December. He said he’d think about it. That would give me an extra month.

I want to feel ready.

It is already altering most of my training.

They have sessions for exactly this stuff early on Saturdays in Vancouver sometimes. That is the day I go in to train anyhow, so it’s perfect; sort of.

The transit that gets me there is a little shaky on the weekends. I can’t guarantee getting to the gym, and don’t know which Saturdays are scheduled anyhow. My plan is to get my butt there on time.

If it turns out that nobody is there, or if the buses let me down, I’ll just revert to a usual Saturday. That will mean sitting around in Starbucks for a couple of hours, and then going to help out at the White Belt class, and then attending a class for my level.

If the early training is on, that would be great. It gets followed by a women-only class, so coffee time for me. I did this on the only day I’ve been to that session, and then returned for the Whites and advanced. Three classes was a tad too much, and my tired brain wandered a bit towards the end. Didn’t like that so from now on I’ll be dropping the White Belt sessions so my attention will stay frisky and clear to the end of the material aimed towards me. Selfish, but there is a test coming.

At home, my partner for technical exam work has graciously suggested that we put that on the back burner, and focus instead on Brown Belt preparation. That is helping a lot.

There is also a small Sunday bunch that meets at my house to work on whatever they want, or technique in general. They’ve also volunteered to change the focus to stuff I need to drill.

It seems I have a lot of friends willing to help me along this road.

My instructor is also working towards a huge test of his own, and the stuff covered is the same as mine. Get togethers will happen, and help us both.

The actual stuff that needs to be prepared is quite specific, and interesting.

The Black Belt exam includes a lot of the Combative self-defence program, as well as most of the self-defence aspects of the 4 levels above that. There are restricted-access videos and printouts related to exactly what will be on the test. This is the exam that my instructor is working on.

The Brown Belt exam I’m up for on is based on that same material. I’ve seen a partial listing of the material once, but don’t have access to it, and have never seen the video. That means that whenever I’m working alone or with my helpers I have to work up everything that could possibly be on the test.

My instructor is also going to ask my examiner if I will need to work up Combatives and all four levels above also. Most students have never even seen the top level stuff at all. I’ve never done it in class, and my only contact with it was within the last couple of months when I was the caller for my instructor and another guy drilling that material.

We have another guy expected to test for Brown Belt when I am, and he’s never seen that material at all. How is he supposed to prepare for that?

It would be a huge relief if the gentleman who will be doing the evaluations decides that the Brown test will not include those techniques, and even helpful if he says that it definitely will.

Need an example? In the highest level of material that I’ve never done, and that my friend has never seen, there are a bunch of techniques that relate specifically to police work and handcuffing suspects.

Going in blind, it will be necessary to study all of the related hours of video lessons, and to understand them. Time will need to be invested to try the motions and understand the techniques on an intellectual level. Of course, that in no way means they would be test-level ready, so there would have to be a great deal of drill, at a number of separate sessions to really get them ready in even a rough fashion.

Cool techniques, to be sure, but they don’t really relate to the exam’s proclaimed “street self-defence” focus, or to Jiu-Jitsu in general. If that level isn’t included, all of that time can be invested in actual test material.

There is also a good chance that the handcuff stuff is not included in the Black Belt test list, even if that level is. That would mean it won’t be part of a Brown Belt test either. That would also free up time to focus on test material, but I can’t know that at this point.

You could say that I should just bite the bullet and learn the handcuff stuff. If it were a single technique I would, but it’s actually a whole series of moves, each with a number of variants. Just watching the related videos would likely take 3 or 4 hours, and easily as much doing early run throughs, and as much again drilling. Let’s round down and say that handcuffing in or out makes a different of ten hours work. 

And that’s just the handcuff stuff. What about all of the other 4th level material?

It makes me glad that I’ve at least gotten to see them.

It’s a major reason that I asked for an extra month before the test.

Yikes

Well, my little Jiu-Jitsu universe just shifted.

Currently, I am sitting at the last level of Purple Belt. That means no more promotions until I pass a test, and earn a Brown Belt.

I have been this rank for ten months. There is no set amount of time to wait, and no specific attendance requirement.

I have not really had a belt exam in my field of vision at all. About the same time as my last promotion I started helping a friend work through his 1st level of the technical exams. This is an activity pretty much unrelated to belt promotions. It took us nine months to get it done.

Since then, he and I have been working on the second level. I was planning on completing all four before changing my focus to a Brown Belt exam.

A couple of days ago my instructor said he wanted me to test for Brown Belt by Spring.

That moved everything up a great deal; perhaps by as much as six months or a year.

However, it seemed both reasonable and doable. A test at the start of Spring would still give me five full months to prepare.

The today, I got called into the office, and my instructor informed me that he wants my Brown Belt exam to happen right before Christmas. Suddenly, five months shrunk down to two. I asked if he would consider the middle of January, and he said he’d think about it. If he agrees, it would give me almost another month to prepare.

The technical exams will have to be put on hold. I’ll have to grab anybody I can to use as my drill dummies. When not working on the mat, I’ll have to be watching the pertinent curriculum videos. I’ll be very busy.

Interestingly, all of my training mates seem very excited and enthusiastic at this news. I seem to be the only one who is less than thrilled.

To me, tests mean the possibility of failure exists.

I quite hate exams.