Unexpected

I’ve been coming to train at Gracie University every year since I retired.

That first year the visit was 8 weeks long, and the following five visits were all 2 weeks long. This week it’s visit number seven, and I’m halfway through two weeks of training.

There have been milestones along the way; one year I did a few private lessons with Jordan Collins; in 2016 I was evaluated for and received a Purple Belt promotion.

In general, it has all been good, rock-solid training.

This year is just a little different. A lot of the lessons have involved defence, where suddenly the defender abandons everything that they’ve spent years learning, and does what seems suicidal, and suddenly is out of danger.

This is very good for me, and is making me think differently about rolling.

Compared to just about everybody I train with, I am a dinosaur. Certainly not one of those sprightly velociraptors or t-rexs, something significantly more lumbering.

My basic assumption, almost always proven totally correct, is that my partner is faster than me, and stronger than me.

I can only manage to survive with technique.

With significantly less experienced partners, this is just fine, as almost anything I do will be a surprise. With those around my level of skill, all I can usually do is defend and try and survive.

Those guys know everything that I do, and are still faster and stronger. It hardly seems fair.

Therefore, it is really nice to be learning some techniques that turn all of an opponent’s expectations upside down. With these kind of moves being exactly the opposite of what is expected, I will seem crazy fast, even if it’s only an illusion. These also go exactly where the attacker they want things to go, therefore making a strength advantage into a handicap.

And there is something even better than the techniques; this is the mindset of looking for them.

If it were just the moves I’m being taught, then I’d head home after two weeks with maybe 4 very specific tricks to use when caught in very specific situations. Focusing on the mind set means that, while I’ll still have the specific tricks, I’ll be looking to create others of my own.

Let’s say I figure out a couple more, and am back home pulling this kind of stuff on my rolling partners. This will annoy the hell out of them, and they will likely get much more careful about everything they try to pull off. Does that seem like they’ll be slowing down to protect themselves from the tricky old guy? It does to me.

That in itself is a great form of defence.