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.