Shots

 

Covid landed on the world like a bomb late last year. The first cases were in China. It started arriving around the rest of the world early in the new year, and the USA had its first death early in February.

Canada has since lost over 11,000 lives; the USA just under a quarter of a million, and the entire world has lost 1.33 million.

This all took significantly less than a year to happen.

What do those numbers mean?

Let's take the US figures, and imagine an absolutely average small city of 100,000 people. That group would have had 3,366 known to have been infected with Covid-19, and out of those infected 75 would have died.

Now imagine the USA divided into 3,282 such groupings. That is how many people live in that country. In each 100,000 person group there would have been another 3,366 infected and another 75 dead.

In my own country of Canada the numbers are somewhat better, but still very grim. Each 100,000 person block of Canadians has had 29 deaths.

That's why the world has reacted as it has.

This is why my own little life has had to change.

I wear a mask in the grocery store and we haven't seen any member of our family since this thing started.

Normally, Helen is off at some kind of music get-together almost every day. This has stopped. Normally, I am off doing Jiu-Jitsu almost daily. This has also stopped.

Normally, we travel a lot; almost 1/3 of the time we are away. Covid actually exploded while we were off on a holiday. This was cut short, and we headed home. A big trip to Europe arranged for autumn was canceled, and there were no short trips to go see friends and family. We have never missed a Christmas with family in Victoria but will be staying home this year.

This hasn't really been a hardship, but it all is a major change. We are happy Covid hasn't had any greater direct impact on us. Nobody in our family has gotten sick.

There have been pandemics in the past. Spanish flu jumps to mind. It was a weird one, seeming to spring from nowhere, and then it vanished again all on its own.

Other diseases stuck around and were just part of the landscape, such as polio and smallpox. Whatever happened to them?

Silly me; how could I forget? What happened to those killers was the introduction of vaccines. As a kid in the 1960s, I was one of many who received polio and smallpox vaccinations. Both diseases vanished from the western world, and by 1980 there was no smallpox left on the loose anywhere on the planet. It was systematically hunted down and wiped out.

That's why I was hoping that a vaccine would be possible for Covid-19. Not every disease can be attacked this way. Sometimes a vaccine can work, but that the protection is far from ideal, and requires frequent boosters.

Of course, anything along that line would be a good thing. Authorities were shooting for something that would be at least 50% effective and were very hopeful that 70% would not be unrealistic. In either case, a vaccine would be a useful tool, but not a pandemic-ender on its own. By comparison, the smallpox vaccine was 90% effective.

Now researchers are finishing the steps in the creation and testing of several Covid vaccines. After clinical trials, two seem almost ready to distribute and the effectiveness seems to be stunning.

One is around 90%, and the other is even higher than that. In each of these vaccine trials, 30,000 people received injections. Half received the vaccine, while the other half were given a placebo.

In the trial of one of these Covid-19 vaccines 90 people in the group of 15,000 who received placebos contracted Covid, 11 of the cases were serious. Of the 15,000 who got the actual vaccine, 5 contracted Covid, and none of the cases was serious. The other trial hasn't released the detailed figures.

Both vaccines will likely be starting distribution in late December or early January.

This is huge. Until now, there was no indication that there would ever be anything even close to an end for Covid. Now it is possible.

The first hurdles will all be about distribution. Many of the most promising vaccines have already been in production for some time. The bottleneck has been testing and government approval. 

One of these two vaccines is extremely difficult to transport and to store. It has to be kept at an extremely low temperature. The other is far better in this regard. There are also dozens of other vaccines hot on their heels.

There will be priority assigned to certain groups; health workers, care-home residents, and people with high-risk conditions. For a while, it will seem as if it is taking forever to be available for everyone, but then suddenly it will be everywhere in large quantities.

Then the saddest and most exasperating phenomenon will happen. A shocking number of people have stated that they will be in no hurry to get vaccinated, and many of these don't plan on getting the shots at all.

Vaccines have been getting a bad rap. There has been all that nonsense where they have been falsely linked to autism. People also fear the list of ingredients, or distrust drug companies so much that they are sure it's all a big conspiracy.

Let's put the importance of vaccines in an easy to understand form. Three of the biggest killers of the 20th century were the First World War (about 20 million dead), Spanish Flu (50 million dead), and the Second World War (about 80 million dead). Those three accounted for 150 million tragic deaths. In comparison, smallpox killed 300 million. That's twice as many. Imagine how many more would have died if nobody had been willing to be vaccinated against smallpox.

But let's look at the future instead of the past. What if Covid kills as many in 2021 as it has so far in 2020? With no end game in sight, let's say it keeps doing so for 20 years. That would mean the deaths of around 25 million people that could easily be avoided. That would put it somewhere in between the death tolls of World War One and the Spanish Flu.

I plan on getting vaccinated as soon as I can. This will likely require two shots several weeks apart. I'm good with that. It also isn't an issue if the immunity is short-lived. If yearly shots are needed I won't mind at all.

People talk about wanting things to get back to normal. It strikes me as a fine desire that we should all work towards. It won't come true just by wishing.

We should all wear our masks, and keep our distance. We should not have social gatherings, and when a vaccine becomes available we should all get our shots.

History of No Threat

 

I really don't understand why the American right is always so terrified at the prospect of having a Democrat for a president. The best that I can figure out is that they are scared Democrats are going to take away their guns and that they are all socialists.

I am pretty old, and the first president that I really became aware of was Lyndon Johnson, a Democrat.

He came to power after Kennedy was killed, and got elected one term after that. He never went after people's personal firearms and didn't do anything commie at all.

He had two big legacies. The right-wingers seemed to love his Viet Nam war but still hated the guy.

The other big thing he did was to powerfully push for civil rights. In case you don't remember his "Great Society," was aimed at rights for Blacks.

Then along came a Republican named Richard Nixon. He got elected twice, although he was forced to resign before his 8 years were up.

Ford was Vice-President when Nixon went down and became president for about 2.5 years. He lost the office to a Democrat named Jimmy Carter.

Strangely, Carter never got around to rounding up people's guns or making the USA socialist state.

He was followed by 2 terms of Reagan and one of George W. Bush; both Republicans.

Next came another scary Democrat, Bill Clinton. The right really, really seemed to hate that guy. Luckily, he only had 8 years in office, which I suppose meant he didn't have enough time to get started on his secret cunning play to strip the American people of their guns or to pull any socialist nonsense.

Then it was 8 more Republican years under a second George Bush.

Then another Democrat took over, and this one was a Black guy named Barak Obama.

He also had 8 years in office, and he left people's guns totally alone. He did try and create a plan whereby all Americans would get medical insurance. The Right seems to think this was the thin edge of the wedge of creeping communism. Really it was an attempt to arrange for all Americans to have access to medical care.

Then it was 4 long years of Mister Trump.

Just days ago, he lost the presidency to Joe Biden, another Democrat.

And what are the right-wingers whining about, other than the loss in general? They think Biden is after their guns and is a socialist.

So, to recap, there was Johnson, Carter, Clinton, Obama, and now Biden.

None of them have banned guns or set up a socialist state. In any other modern, industrialized state they would have been considered on the right-wing side of the spectrum, but in the USA they are evil lefties.

Covid Days

 

It is the time of Covid-19.

For my wife and me, it has meant a smaller life than usual. Everything is still very pleasant, but we do less.

Since things started getting bad in North America we have not traveled at all. Normally, between April and the end of October, we would have gone to Victoria at least once, and also to Vernon. There would have been a week or two on a cruise to Alaska with friends. We already had a Mediterranean trip for a month partially booked, but that got shut down as well. In those 7 months, we would have been away at least 20% of the time.

There would also have been a few Vancouver trips for shopping and such, and I would have gone there probably 20 times for training. We've only been over once to get our car serviced.

Around home, there is less of everything as well. Helen is normally with her music groups for at least three sessions per week, and I would be on the mat at Jiu-Jitsu even more than that.

During the good weather, Helen went to a few outdoor, socially-distanced, mask-wearing music sessions, but those have gone into hibernation.

I had a few sessions with a friend on the mat I have at home, but when his life opened up a bit had to end it. More recently, another friend and I have been getting together a bit. This will be ending as well as he has a medical procedure happening in a few days that will shut him down, perhaps until the New Year.

So what do we do? I run, Helen sews, and we walk daily together. I play more video games, and we both watch more TV. Things are very quiet indeed. I don't even write much in my blog.

There will be no change in November, or in December. Our normal Christmas for almost forever has been to visit with dear family in Victoria for a week or two. We may still go over, but our current leaning is to stay home. Nothing is carved in stone.

January will be the same and on through the winter and into spring.

We can't see things going back towards normal until vaccines become readily available, or effective treatments.

On Hold

 

Looks like I'm waiting again for a stripe again. Usually, this is a happy thing, as it means that there has just been a promotion.

I've been expecting to get a stripe at the normal 8-month interval after receiving my Brown Belt back on December 21st of last year. That would have been sometime after August 21st. Nothing has changed with my rank, and now we are in September.

There was always a chance that this could happen. Every so often there are clerical tie-ups with the system. On the Gracie website for some reason, my last promotion is listed as February 9th. I have no idea why.

Most likely this means a delay until sometime in October.

It's hard to say if this matters at all. Things are hard enough to predict in our previous reality. Covid makes it much harder.

Before Covid, a delay of 2 months would have sifted a theoretical earliest completion of my 4 strips happening in October of 2022, instead of August. Not really a big deal. Invitations for Christmas Black Belt exams go out in the first quarter of the year. Likely I would receive one by March of 2023, for testing the following December. That's about the same either way.

With Covid? Who knows? Certainly, everything would get pushed back, but how much?

I will need to get back to real training for any further promotions. Even should my instructor allow me to progress while solo, it wouldn't seem valid for me to do so.

That will depend on getting vaccinated against Covid-19. Let's say that happens by the start of next summer. Of course, this is just a guess.

Starting from zero, the earliest I could get my 2nd stripe would be around the end of 2021, meaning the 4th would be done in April of 2023, likely somewhat later. Can't see how I'd get included in the invitations of that year. That puts my invitation realistically off until March of 2024, with Black Belt evaluation the following Christmas.

I did the math both with and without the current period of delay that I seem to be in. It didn't seem to make a lick of difference.

So I wait.

Google Trends

 

It's hard to know what is the "biggest" martial art out there.

Does this refer to how many people train in it, or have trained in it at some point in their lives?

Is it how interesting it is to the population in general?

I don't know. How do you measure such a thing?

Taekwondo is a big martial art, perhaps the biggest, and its participants are registered into worldwide organizations.  Based on this, they claim 30,000,000 current participants. However, even in this highly-organized Olympic sport, this is somewhat misleading.

In most countries, there is nothing mandatory about Taekwondo practitioners having membership in any governing body unless their school wants to be involved in authorized, recognized competition.

So how accurate is the 30,000,000 estimate? Your guess is as good as mine, and keep in mind that this is the most organized martial art that there is. The others don't even try and venture a guess.

Therefore, I decided to cheat. Google allows regular folks to access some of their data. You can give them up to five words or phrases, and they will tell you how they compare in the number of people who have searched for Google for them in the last year.

For example, I am going to enter Baseball, Basketball, Football, Hockey, and UFC. How many times have those terms been searched for on Google in the last 12 months? What are your guesses for how they compared in the number of times they were Googled? The score was;

Football 31

Basketball 15

Baseball 6

UFC                4

Hockey 3

How did you do in your prediction?

Now let's see what Google has to say about martial arts. This time I put in Jiu Jitsu (in this article I am using this slightly incorrect spelling. Doing it this way is more effective when using Google Trends, as opposed to the correct version Jiu-Jitsu.), Karate, Kung Fu, Taekwondo, and UFC, and got;

UFC 30

Karate 5

Kung Fu 3

Jiu-Jitsu 2

Taekwondo 1

This is interesting but weird. UFC isn't a martial art at all. It is a sporting event, company, promoter, and brand. If you think I should have entered MMA instead, you might be surprised. If I put in UFC and MMA the result is;

UFC 30

MMA 7

It would seem that the public considers UFC to be the relevant term for that type of sport.

All the real martial arts on my list tend to have sporting aspects, but typically these are painfully boring for the general public to watch. They are NOT spectator friendly.

So how about removing UFC from my list of martial arts, and putting in something that is often touted as the most practiced martial art on earth; Tai Chi? Many are involved in this slow-motion activity, but most are quite willing to admit that it has nothing to do with fighting whatsoever.

Karate 59

Kung Fu 41

Jiu-Jitsu 21

Taekwondo 14

Tai Chi 11

Let's drop Tai Chi. It just isn't getting searched to the same extent as the other items listed.

This is fun data, but very limited. It doesn't address what people thinking when the entered the terms into a Google search.

When searching for Karate,  did they mean the Japanese martial art, or simply any kind of punching and kicking activity?

Probably, when they entered Kung Fu they were thinking of some type of Chinese martial art, or maybe they were trying to look up the old David Carradine TV show, or perhaps the genre of cinema that includes Bruce Lee movies.

Taekwondo is pretty specific, but perhaps they were looking for information about it and had mistakenly searched Karate instead, and so it didn't show up in the Taekwondo results at all.

Jiu Jitsu is Bazilian, also has a Japanese cousin. There may have been some confusion, but the Japanese variant is usually spelled Jujutsu.

So what can we tell from the results? Consider the currently prevailing opinion in the martial arts community that the hot item is Jiu Jitsu. Really.

Let's compare Jiu Jitsu's Google search score of 21, against that of the striking arts Taekwondo, Karate, and Kung Fu. The total for striking adds up to 114, which shows more than FOUR times the interest of Jiu Jitsu.

This seems counter-intuitive. It has been proven many times that grappling works better than striking in terms of true self-defense skills, and this result clearly shows that the public in general doesn't care.

I then checked Google for the results of other grappling methods. I wanted to include wrestling, but it means just too many things. There is no way to single out "real" wrestling (freestyle, Olympic, Greco-Roman, etc) from "Professional Wrestling?"

Instead, I ran Jiu Jitsu against Jujutsu, Judo, Catch Wrestling, and Sambo.

Jiu Jitsu     72

Judo     25

Sambo     10

Jujutsu             5

Catch Wrestling  1

Jiu Jitsu alone scored almost three times as high as did the term in the number two spot; Judo.

So conclusions have to be that Striking outscores Grappling in the public consciousness, but that within the category of grappling, Jiu Jitsu dominates.

Lie to Yourself

In my last two blog entries, I pretty much explained how to get your rank to progress steadily within the Gracie Jiu-Jitsu system.

The first one pretty much said, "keep track of your attendance and time in rank," and make sure your instructor knows where you are regarding them.

The second said, "don't trust the system and make sure that you check and find out what the rules officially are."

Today should seem a little less paranoid. This entry won't be about how the world is out to get you, but rather how you are out to get yourself.

Let's look at the important rules for the four horrendous Gracie Jiu-Jitsu technical exams. I am only listing one tiny part of the rules, that being to list how long the three curriculum section recordings must be.

The first test is called BBS1, and the rules are that there can be no breaks in any of the videos. In the three recordings of the curriculum sections, the relevant material must be completed within 15 minutes.

At the next level, BBS2, the three curriculum sections can be as long as 20 minutes, and it is even stated that if the third one goes a little over it is acceptable. 

BBS3 rules are identical to BBS2

In BBS4 the three curriculum sections each have their time limit raised to 25 minutes, or slightly longer for the third.

Have you got all that? There are 3 different sets of rules.

If I am working with a partner to get ready for any of these tests, it would be counter-productive to be doing so incorrectly. Getting it wrong when actually doing the test would be even worse.

What if we are working on BBS1, and I remember the limits wrong. We might practice for months thinking that each of the three drills only needs to fit into a 25-minute limit. What if we actually record the videos under this assumption? The test will be rejected, and all the recording efforts wasted, and the testing fee flushed down the toilet.

It would be equally bad to work on BBS4, thinking the limit is 15 minutes per video. We would go crazy during the workup for the test trying to get everything to fit into an unreasonably short time span. During the recording, we will fail over and over. If we actually do the impossible and cram everything in, it will look like crap. It is very likely that the number of errors made would far exceed the limit for a pass. The test would be a fail, all the effort to no avail, and again the fee wasted.

In my two earlier blog entries I say, in effect, don't trust anybody else.

This time I am strongly advising you to not trust yourself. Go check the rules. It takes almost no time and can save hours of work, and make success far more likely.

The worst that will happen is that you will find out you had remembered everything correctly. However, the upside could be that you will make things both easier and more successful if you find out you had been in error.

Another example is that almost everybody knows what the attendance requirements are for rank progression. You have to get at least 100 classes, right?

Well, yes. But there are rules about that, too.

Ten of them must be of a type called Reflex Development. Once you have accumulated ten of this type, any further such classes do not count in any way.

Ten others must be advanced classes that qualify as being "fight simulation." This means that during sparring padded gloves are worn, and participants try and whack each other. Once ten have been accumulated, any further classes count as "regular" advanced classes.

The remaining 80 must be regular advanced classes, or extra “fight sim” ones.

A lot of people don't get this, and just let things merrily roll along. Let's say you've just been promoted, and want to get your next stripe as quickly as possible. There is a rule that the minimum time is 8 months.

So maybe you do the math and figure out that 8 months works out to a fraction over 34 weeks. You normally train 3 times per week and so are pleased to determine that you can get 100 classes in that amount of time, and even have a small buffer (2 extra classes). You figure you can make it right around the 8-month mark. You are proud of how clever you’re being.

But, you don't actually check what the rules are. The months roll by, and you rack up "fight sim" classes easily enough, and plenty of regular advanced classes. However, you don't know about the Reflex Development rule. That class is held at a different time, and you never attend. Eight months roll by, and no promotion, then 9, then 10.

You might get all pissed off and just quit, or maybe you'd ask what's going on. It is explained to you, and you start attending Reflex Development religiously. In most schools that class only happens once per week, so the soonest you can catch up would take an extra ten weeks on top of an already delayed promotion.

Or maybe you just let it slide, and don't quit, and don't question it. Maybe your instructor will notice and bring it to your attention, but maybe he won't. You might go years without getting that coveted stripe.

You trusted that you knew the rules, but your brain lied to you.

I make mistakes like that all the time. Luckily I don't trust myself.

Every time I've worked with anybody on their technical exams, I check again to see what the requirements are. That isn't my job but I do it anyway. About half the time it turns out that the person actually working to complete the test is confused about some part of the requirements for their level.

Their brain had lied to them, and maybe mine was lying to me. Don't trust them. Brains are evil tricksters.

 

A Tad of Distrust

My proudest moment in Jiu-Jitsu isn’t the kind of thing that you’d expect.

I mean, I’ve done pretty well for myself, and have a lot of fun, but that isn’t it.

It had to do with a guy I met back in 2014, in a big Jiu-Jitsu school. I was a 1 stripe Blue Belt at the time, and he was a Blue with no stripes. He was also about ten years older than me, and I’m ancient.

In 2019 I trained with him again. In the intervening years, his rank had gone up by two stripes. In that same amount of time, mine had increased by 8 levels. Something was clearly wrong.

I had seen him during visits on some of the intervening years, so he hadn’t quit and recently restarted. In any case, it bothered me.

He wasn’t the kind of guy who would gain attention for being outstanding, and had some physical limitations. There wasn't anything significantly wrong. He is the kind of guy that a good system should identify regularly for normal rank advancement. I couldn’t imagine why it hadn’t noticed that he’d only received two stripes in five years.

I politely informed the school of the situation as I saw it. A few evenings later, I was partnered with my old friend. When the class ended, we were all lined up and told that there were a few promotions. One of these was my friend

He didn’t even notice that they were calling his name, and then went into shock and joyfully went forward to receive a new stripe. I was so pleased for him.

I never heard anything more, but assume that an eye will be kept on him from now on.

Clearly, this promotion was in partial restitution for an error that had been made by the system.

It should never have happened in the first place.

Did he then continue to receive rank promotion? I don't know. Did he receive promotion at an accelerated rate to make up for lost time? I don't know.

Keep in mind that this particular school has what I would have thought was a perfect system for tracking student progress. Somehow, even this failed in my friend's case. Has it failed any others?

Never trust the system, at least not completely.

I learned this back in my university days. I was trying to complete my degree in the most efficient way possible, as my home was a thousand kilometres away from the school.

There was a requirement for a certain number of total course credits. Of those, a minimum number needed to be upper-level courses. Of those upper-level courses, a certain number needed to be from the student's focus area. It was implied, but not directly stated, that the remaining upper-level courses should be taken in areas outside of the student's focus-area. Nowhere did it say this was mandatory.

For me, it would be far easier to do ALL of my upper-level coursework in my focus-area. When I was next on campus, I visited the appropriate authorities and asked if I could do ALL of my advanced work within my specialty. They clearly didn't want to say that I could but were equally careful not to say that it was forbidden.

I, therefore, did all of my upper-level work within my focus-area, and earned my degree.

What should this mean for a person working within a structured system?

It means, take nothing for granted. Assume that there will be screw ups, or organizational bias that works against you. There may be none, but it will cost you nothing to pursue a more pessimistic strategy.

Keep track of everything. Make sure that your official records are correct.

For a Jiu-Jitsu student this can be as simple as keeping a tally of your class attendance on your own. Track with your computer, or on your phone, or even on a piece of paper stuck on your fridge. If the official tally doesn't match your own, get it fixed.

Check the rules, especially those that are written down. Get your own hard copy of what they say.

For example, a bunch of students at our school are working towards a big technical exam. I have heard an assistant instructor say that they have to score 90% to pass, and that the maximum allowed time for each of the three drills is 20 minutes. A quick trip to the association website shows that the requirement is actually 80%, and that the actual allowable maximum drill length is 15 minutes each.

It took me about 3 minutes to check. 

What happens if all four gentlemen were to submit their exams with drills that were over 15 minutes in length? Their exams could all be rejected.

And the problem could easily be avoided with just a tad of distrust.

Regular Advancement Keys

 

There is something that I do better at Jiu-Jitsu than anybody else I’ve ever met.

It isn’t one of the cool, flashy things, or really anything that anybody else ever notices. It is important to me, and I’ve been doing it for years.

I progress in rank faster than anybody else. This has nothing to do with being a particularly awesome practitioner. It does have everything to do with getting  something very right in my training.

I started training at the innocent young age of 55.

It has always been my belief that I had a relatively short amount of time to accomplish anything in Jiu-Jitsu.

Back then, there was really no possibility for a student in an outlying school to progress in rank very far, but in 2014 the entire system got revamped into pretty much what they do at Gracie University itself.

The rules were strict, but fair.

Every stripe beyond Blue Belt would require a minimum of 8 months in rank, and to be considered for promotion the student must have accumulated at least a hundred classes of appropriate types. Promotion to entirely new belts would require evaluation by one of the Gracies, or by a designated Black Belt.

This lit my fire. I was already attending every class possible, but for promotion to proceed smoothly I started paying very close attention to my attendance card.

I had noticed that every once-in-a-while, an attendance check would get missed. I would point this out, and it was always corrected. After a while, they let me correct my own.

The message here is that instructors are human, and make mistakes just like everybody else.

For them to actually authorize a promotion, they would go online. The Gracie website would have a place to click for promotion of every student at a school. If 8 months hadn’t passed, clicking would do nothing. That makes perfect sense. A flaw to the system is that an instructor has to remember when to go online to see if it’s time to promote a student. The system does not send the instructor a text, or an email, or any other form of notification.

So, there were two problems already. Were all of any given student’s classes getting recorded, and would they be considered for promotion at the correct time?

When this started up, I was a 2-stripe Blue Belt, and was 58 years old. An added difficulty for me is that my wife and I are off travelling about 4 months a year. As fun as this is, it can play havoc with attendance.

I had two more Blue Belt stripe promotions to earn, and four at Purple Belt since then. The fastest came in exactly 8 months, and the slowest took 9 months and 10 days.

To pull this kind of thing off so regularly I have three secrets.

The first is that I train a lot more than most people. This seems to work pretty well at nullifying the holes our travels create. For many this isn’t really an option.

The next secret is that I keep precise track of all my attendance-worthy sessions, and make sure they get properly accepted.

The final thing is that when I have my attendance set, and my date is good, I publicly pat myself on the back about it. This reminds my instructor. In my case it works to post something on Facebook.

My instructor also knows that as an old guy I am concerned about my speed of progress.

I do not cheat, and probably train more per level than any other student at our school in any given promotion period. If I have trouble with my totals, I also publicly post about that. An example is the Purple Belt level that took me 9 months and 10 days.

There is also another requirement that is involved with all this. Let’s say 8 months have passed, and the attendance goal is met. It is at our instructor’s discretion whither a student gets promoted or not.

If he were to decide that I needed to work more on something before a rank award, I would be happy as a clam about it, and would make the effort that he recommended.

So why not just let it all slide, and trust the system to work as it should do in theory?

The reason is that things don’t always work out the way they are supposed to.

That leads me to my next blog entry, which concerns my proudest moment in Jiu-Jitsu.

Words and Labels....

Language can be terribly important.

I was watching some fake Jiu-Jitsu instructor on Youtube the other day. He was trying to give a lesson about something he clearly knew nothing about. He didn’t even know the correct names for what he was trying to do, and had come up with his own labels for everything.

He kept calling things holds, and pins, and locks.

This struck me, as absolutely nothing in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is called a hold, or a pin, or a lock.

There is one exception, but I’m going to ignore that for now.

What do you think of if we are talking about people wrestling around, and somebody says that one of the people pinned the other down, or had him in a hold?

Likely, you imaging that they had grabbed hard, and made it impossible for the other guy to move at all.

We don’t use those kind of terms, because we don’t want our people to ever think that is the goal of any technique.

One of the principal ideas of Jiu-Jitsu is defeating somebody while using the smallest effort possible.

Grabbing somebody and keeping them from moving would require a crazy amount of effort, and there is absolutely no need.

So you lay down, flat on your back, and a Jiu-Jitsu person sits on you. This is not called a pin, or a hold. Their position is called Mount. You try and get them off.

You buck and struggle and push. They remain planted on top of you. They have not held you motionless, but rode along with everything you tried. You will be insanely tired, more so than if they had managed to totally pin you down. They are not tired at all, which they would have been if they had tried to turn into a rock holding you motionless. Not only are they still on top of you, but you have been working very hard and achieving nothing.

How about if somebody wraps their arm around your neck. This is commonly called a headlock. The person holding the headlock typically clings on as hard as they can, again wasting effort. It is also very easy to get out of, no matter how hard the effort of the holder.

Interestingly, Jiu-Jitsu people call this a headlock when it is done to them, but whenever they do something that seems similar, it is called a neck hug.

Does a neck hug sound like it should be held with every ounce of strength that a person can muster? Of course not, it’s just a little hug.

Jiu-Jitsu is a mobile thing. We want movement, as people who can move can also make mistakes. If they make errors, it is easy to exploit them.

Let’s say you are being sat upon, and are thrashing about trying to get out. A very, very common response of an untrained individual is to roll off of their back and onto their hands and knees.

If you do this and are super observant, you will probably say to yourself, “why did that seem to be easier than what I had tried earlier?” The reason is that the Jiu-Jitsu guy on your chest got most of his weight out of your way; he wants you on your hands and knees. He is now sitting on your back, riding you like a pony.

Suddenly his legs entangle yours, and his arms clamp down around your neck. If done properly, you will still be fully able to breath, but within seconds everything will be turning black as blood flow to your brain is cut off.

The guy on your chest was controlling you, helping you tire yourself out, and when you made a rookie mistake, he let you do it and capitalized on the mistake to end the confrontation.

The only exception to the non-rigid language of Jiu-Jitsu labelling comes in the names of some of the final submissions.

There are lots of things called leg locks and arm locks, but it is aways very clear that the name has nothing to do with any sort of rigid position. These moves all relate to when a joint is extended as far as it can go, and then maybe a bit more. The word lock describes the condition of the extended joint under attack. This naming does not lead to confusion.

Jiu-Jitsu contains no pins, or holds at all. Everything is fluid, and is related to energy consumption. That’s one of the reasons that smaller size or strength are not unsurmountable disadvantages.

Balance, coordination, and speed are just as important, and they are all less important than skill.

It is what make’s it all so fascinating, and addictive.