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.