Cycle-time

I get a kick out of Jiu-Jitsu people who just can’t keep straight how much we really work on. New stuff must be learned, but it is just as important to re-polish what has already been learned.

Often, even experienced practitioners estimate it takes as little as a month to cover a chapter, or perhaps a year for the entire cycle.

It never, ever goes that fast, and if you try to do so you are robbing everybody in the gym.

Consider who long the headquarters school of Gracie University in Los Angeles takes to cover the curriculum cycle.

Down there, they break each of the seven chapters or positions into various chunks, such as “Mount: Submission Counters.”

Altogether, there are 27 of these chunks in the entire cycle. Gracie University invests 3 weeks of training in each, making a full run last 81 weeks. On top of that, they add a week of review on to each full chapter, or 7 more weeks.

Therefore, not counting school closures, a full cycle at Gracie U takes 88 weeks, or about a year and 9 months.

Even so, not everything is covered in each time looping through the cycle. 21 months to get through.

What I can’t tell you is how long the entire cycle takes us now at my home school. We don’t stick strictly to any timetable.

I would pick the Gracie Headquarter’s cycle speed if I were in charge of such things. Slow and thorough is my motto.

There is also a simple alternative for more speed whereby the chunks that HQ does in 3 weeks get covered in 2. That tightens up a full cycle to 15 months.

I don’t need that kind of acceleration, but many feel that the cycle just takes too darn long.

The issue with a longer cycle shows up best if an example is created with a student new to the advanced class. Let’s say Edward gets promoted to Combatives Belt, and joins the day after we finish review on Leg Locks. Let’s say his school follows the Gracie University Headquarters model.

He never misses a class, and starts learning the standing chapter. After a time, the groups switches over to Mount techniques. Edward will receive his promotion to Blue Belt about the time that the class leaves Mount and gets going on Side Mount. 

A year goes by, as the chapters on Guard, Halfguard, and backmount are covered in turn. It won’t be until after Edward has been in the advanced class for almost a year-and-a-half that he will receive his first instruction regarding Leg Lock technique.

During all of that time, he will be helpless in this area. The same will be true for every student who joins the class; they will have weaknesses that takes a very long time to be addressed.

So rush through, leaving out the depth of material, just to get a dusting? That’s not good either. My vote is always for better coverage.

It the Edward in the example wants help in some particular area, such as Leg Locks, he can draw on the help of his seniors. Our school has open mat sessions, and there are always people willing to help.

Let’s say he gets tired of being caught by techniques that he knows nothing about, and doesn’t want to wait, he can make a few dates with, perhaps, a Purple Belt.

They can train together on whatever he needs. Not only will this make him happier about his rolling, but when the class finally reaches his weak area he will be better prepared to absorb the lessons, and higher technique will make much more sense to him than if he’d just patiently waited.

The only real weakness in a slow cycle is that it encourages people to take more responsibility for their own training.

No, wait! That’s a good thing.

Black Belt on the Mat

I get such a kick out of Jiu-Jitsu people thinking they’re awesome.

It’s easy to understand why. You train for months and months, and you roll hundreds of times. How could you not get better? Of course, you do.

In amongst all those rolls, you will get a solid feel of where you fit in the local pecking order of ability. A new move is learned, and applied, sometimes with effect right away, and other times it will take effort to gain ownership.

You’ll meet some beginners who think they are something special. They strut around, and their seniors giggle at them behind their backs.

If some beginner wants to roll with me, and they are a genuine learner, it will all happen in a gentle and instructive manner. I let them try out what they know, and if they do it well, let them score.

There have also been some who wanted to validate how awesome they are against a Purple Belt, especially if he’s old and an easy target.

With hot shots, I let them try, and I use technique to prevent them finishing anything. They find themselves gently reversed with slow-motion sweeps and escapes. Usually they settle down a bit. If they do, then I treat them the same that I do the genuine learners. If not, they spend the entire roll getting nothing at all in a manner that lets them have no illusions that they were not really so awesome after all.

It is all mainstream Jiu-Jitsu technique learned over years of learning.

There are plenty of people who compliment Purple Belts on how much they know. It’s easy to get a swollen head. I know that I sometimes do.

A very cool thing about Jiu-Jitsu is that the mat doesn’t lie.

It only takes seconds to discover you are not as awesome as you’ve been telling yourself. It doesn’t even have to be a roll; sometimes the training itself lets you know.

I had that happen to me on Saturday. That is my usual training day in Vancouver.

The class started, and the instructor told us to pair up and get started with a review drill. If anybody there approaches me, I happily take them as a partner. Otherwise, I wait a bit, letting them pick amongst their preferred buddies, and pair up with somebody else that gets left alone for whatever reason.

It was the biggest group I’ve ever seen there. Even so, in an instant, it seemed that everybody was taken; but there was one guy left making his way towards me through all the working pairs.

I’d never seen him before. He was half my age, big, and definitely looked Brazilian. He was also wearing a worn Black Belt.

We started.

Unlike some sessions, we stayed with the same partners for the entire class. I had a Black Belt guy.

I have had Black Belt partners before, but only for maybe five or ten minutes. This time it was for an hour.

We took turns doing whatever the instructor directed, and occasionally my partner would help me do it better, or in a slightly different manner. It was all incredibly valuable, but the vast difference in our knowledge level was clearly visible. It was similar to me being a partner with a brand new beginner in the White Belt class.

The hour went by in the blink of an eye, and it became time to roll. Traditionally, the first roll is with our training partner.

The difference in our levels became even more obvious. Non martial arts people tend to think that in such a situation the low belt will get their ass kicked. This certainly could happen if the high belt should wish it so, but why would they?

Does the low belt represent any kind of challenge? Perhaps they are a threat, and the high belt destroys them out of fear. These are both nonsense.

Just as I don’t crush or humiliate beginners, my partner was generous to me. Without speaking, he showed me where I made several mistakes.

I have rolled with Black Belts before, but it is a rare opportunity for learning, and I tried to make the best of this one.

When the end of the first roll was called, I thanked my partner very much, shook his hand, and headed for the change room.

This week I am playing partner for two friends who are working through their technical exams. These have to be finished by Friday, and any sort of injury on my part would cost them both their chance to finish.

I had decided not to roll at all for the entire week, just in case, but the chance to roll with a Black Belt took precedence. I was probably safer with him than with anybody else.

I don’t think my head has been particularly swollen lately, and needed correction. My next promotion will be to Brown Belt, and I’ve been struggling with a way to make that transition that would be the most valuable to me.

In no way do I consider that I deserve it.

Even if I should receive such a coveted award, it wouldn't move my skill level to anywhere close to that of my Saturday partner.

The mat never lies.

Technical Exam Era

Ryron and Rener Gracie have created a pretty wonderful program of Jiu-Jitsu self-improvement.

The parts that I am referring to at the moment are their curriculum technical levels.

These are exams covering a great deal of upper-level material. Instructors are expected to work through the process, with the work being “optional” for everybody else. Getting them done for instructors and non-instructors alike goes a large way towards smoothing the route to gain Purple, Brown, or Black Belts.

All of those ranks are earned only after in-person evaluation by the Gracies themselves, or by authorized Black Belts, but showing up for these gradings with technical exam levels in your pocket carries a lot of weight.

There are 4 of these bloody huge exams at present. Each represents mastery of about 150 to 200 techniques and variations. To pass a technical exam requires performing over an hour of material non-stop, along with a quota of free sparring.

Our instructor has completed 3 of them, I have done the 1st, Koko also has her 1st, and nobody else in our school has done any.

This is all changing as we seem to be in an era of getting them done. Rob and I are helping Shawn complete his 4th level.

At the same time Rob is working to get his 1st level with my help.

In April, there will be a group of Blue and Purple Belts who want to also get their 1st level done. I will also be involved in helping with that. Some are becoming instructors, and some are looking at future Belt evaluations.

When Rob and I complete his level 1, we will carry right along and earn level 2 for the both of us.

This is so easy to say, but Shawn will be working for his for about 4 more months.

Running concurrently, Rob’s level 1 will take about 2 months, and Rob and I working together to get level 2 will take about 3 months more on top of that.

The group starting in April will probably take about 3 months to get through level 1.

That’s as far into the future that I know anybody else’s plans. My own are that I recruit a helper or two, and carry right on through level 3 and level 4.

The best that I could hope for on that front would see me finishing the entire lot off just over a year from now, but the best isn’t likely to happen.

It will get stretched out by the travelling that my wife and I love to do. Looking over the calendar there seems to be enough away-time that a potential year will stretch into more like a year-and-a-half. It could be much more.

My impetus for me wanting to scoop up all of the levels is that I am due to be evaluated for a Brown Belt soon. I would rather that it be mostly based on a large body of work that was undertaken to greatly improve my abilities and knowledge as a student of Jiu-Jitsu, rather than a single-day evaluation based on a limited range of material.

I could become a Brown Belt as much as a year faster by not focusing on the technical exams at all, but other than chasing a belt it doesn’t really make all that much sense.

Let’s say I were to split into identical twins. The first twin works on the technical levels and managed to complete them all in a year-and-a-half. The other works on stuff that he knows would be put into a one-day exam. He goes on to get a Brown Belt much faster, and by the time the technical twin gets his, will have earned a nice stripe on his own as yet another promotion.

The technical twin will have put in months and months and months of intensive study and training than the faster-Brown twin will have done. Of the two, the technical-level twin will be significantly better at Jiu-Jitsu than his higher-ranked sibling.

That makes more sense to me.

Pity it can’t be both.

Clothes Make the Art

When Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu started up, all the practitioners wore the traditional Judo-style uniform known as a gi. This made sense, as Judo is where the new art grew from.

The new art spread, and aged. Eventually, an offshoot arose that questioned how realistic the gi was for training.

The reasoning was, nobody in the real world wears martial arts uniforms, so it would be much better to train without them.

Personally, I like training in a gi, but certainly understand the argument.

So, the rebels switched to training without wearing the gi. Over time, they settled on a standardized nogi style of dress.

You would think that they would have analyzed what people typically wore in the real world and adopted that to sync with their argument that the gi was too unrealistic. The strange thing is that they didn’t.

They chose clothing that is fun to grapple in. Almost all wear knee-length slippery nylon shorts. On their top halves they almost universally wear skin-tight, slippery rashguards.

If they were practising some sort of striking art, this wouldn’t matter, but in grappling it does. Grips are even more difficult than they are on bare skin. Participants slide around over top of one another in a truly remarkable fashion. It’s as if they are not only fighting naked, but also coated in a layer of vegetable oil.

Somehow I don’t consider learning to defend myself against naked, oily assailants a priority.

So just what would be realistic? The closest I’ve ever found have been the high-school students that I used to help train in wrestling.

They were all very body conscious, and would all practice wearing baggy sweat pants and sweat shirts. Some would get too hot, removing their sweatshirts, and make do with tshirts. Everything that they practiced in was exactly what people really wear. Heck, they even wore a form of running shoe.

Of course, they were’t training for real fighting, but were the best I’ve ever seen in dressing for the part.

Why does it matter? If you only practice in a gi, you will get far too used to doing things like collar chokes against people only dressed in exactly the same fashion. If you only practice in typical nogi fashion, you won’t be learning how to use clothing as a weapon at all.

Here are two fun, and interesting videos related to street technique related to clothing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WkmgQQhVSw&t=98s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlCZ2xqReLU

Now, I’m not saying if I think gi or nogi is more realistic. Both have strengths and weaknesses in that regard. What I am saying is that everybody should just shut up about it. What I’m saying is  that it doesn’t matter.

Train in gi to learn how to use clothing as a weapon, and train nogi so you can fight without using clothing. Neither is better, or worse, but they are certainly different. If you don’t train both, then you are voluntarily allowing a gap to exist in your game.

I train both, but don’t enjoy nogi nights anywhere near as much.

Cunning Plan

Every so often the Universe gets things right.

You see, the UFC decided to get rid of the mens Flyweight division. This all seems to be some great idea of headman Dana White.

Standard wisdom states that smaller fighters generate the least interest, and therefore the least money. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it isn’t.

If shutting down the division is a smart business decision, wouldn’t the right thing be to announce that publicly, and above board. That isn’t really Dana White’s way. He is one of those guys who thinks he can manipulate the fans’ reactions the way he wants.

Cutting the division would be controversial, and some fans would get really angry about it. That translates into less profit.

Why would fans care, especially if it is the least popular division?

Well, the Champion at that weight was Demetrius Johnson. He won the belt back in 2012, and had an undefeated string of 12 championship victories. This made him by far the very best fighter that the UFC had.

How do you delete the division that has the best fighter.

Then, last August, Johnson lost to Henry Cejudo, and promptly left the UFC to fight for another organization. That’s when Dana White and the UFC made their move against the Flyweights. They started terminating fighter contracts all over the place.

There was some fan kickback, and that’s when Dana White’s “brilliant” plan to quash the discontent arose. Why not prove that the Flyweights were irrelevant by proving that the real best small fighter was actually the champion from the next bigger division.

The guy there, Dillashaw, is one of Dana White’s Golden Boys. He is excellent in every area of the game, and had just recently twice defeated another of White’s Golden Boys in a pair of superfights.

The plan was, Dillashaw would challenge Cejudo for Cejudo’s Flyweight belt, win, and then return to fighting at his usual weight but with two Champions’ belts in his trophy cabinet.

Then the UFC would officially terminate the Flyweights altogether.

It seemed likely to go exactly as Dana White wanted, and for a change the Golden Boy of his choosing is actually a wonderful fighter, unlike most of White’s favourites.

So it all got set up, with the fate of a division being left in the fighter’s hands.

The problem with the plan is that Dana White is nowhere as smart as he thinks he is.

If it all went exactly as expected, Dana White would get his way, and feel smart as the dickens. The problem was, what if the outcome went another way? What if Cejudo not only managed to beat Dillashaw, but beat him in a way that demonstrated total dominance?” Would that not return to the way things seemed when Demetrius Johnson ruled the Flyweight division; that the smallest Champ was perhaps the best fighter in the entire organization.

Round one started, and then ended 32 seconds later when the referee stepped in to save Dillashaw from serious injury. Flyweight Champion Henry Cejudo had not only crushed his much larger opponent, but also totally overturned Dana White’s cunning plan.

Immediately after the fight, Dana was in the ring waiting to award the winner with a new belt, and seemed far less than pleased with the outcome. He seemed more put out by Dillashaw’s loss than did Dillashaw himself.

Thank you, Universe.

Low Injury

I recently hooked onto a Facebook page dedicated to old people in Jiu-Jitsu.

On one recent posting, people were putting up their ages. Keep in mind that these all self-identify as “old.”

I am too lazy to scroll through the hundreds of responses that poured in, but did look through the first set of 49.

There was one guy who is in his early 70s, and two of us in our 60s. Forty five had ages spread pretty evenly though the 40s and 50s, and even one guy who is only in his 30s.

They all think they’re old.

The page itself is full of questions, often related to how much they seem to get hurt.

Jiu-Jitsu is pretty rough, and things happen, but if somebody is going home hurt all the time there are only three possible reasons.

The first possibility is that their training partners are a bunch of jerks. The second cause is that the student is just rolling wrong. The third and most likely cause is that both conditions are in action together.

I am 62 years old, and have been doing Jiu-Jitsu for over 7 years. That’s easily over a thousand classes, and several thousand rolls. I have been hurt, but only on a very few occasions. After any typical night of training and rolling, I go home with no damage in particular.

How do I manage this? Well, the first thing is that my partners are not jerks, at least not many of them. But let’s say I’m off travelling, and run into Mister Aggressive somewhere that I’m a guest. I’ve run into situation number one, and have done so many times in my travels.

There is some risk in this situation, but nothing major. It will become a problem only if I insist on acting in a way that multiplies the danger.

Recognize what is going on, and react accordingly. Strategy one is easy. Do not match what Mister Aggressive is doing. He wants the top position, and goes after it like a charging rhino. If you self-identify as “old” and you try and match him, you’ll likely get squashed. I don’t care if you are big, or strong, or whatever. You just might succeed, but you’ll pay for it. You’ll get hurt, or exhausted, or both.

What is the upside? There is none. The downside? You end up walking funny, or you are so tired that you get hurt with what should have been a pleasant roll later.

So what exactly do I do with Mister Aggressive? I defend, like Helio Gracie did as a young man, or Royce Gracie did underneath Dan Severn.

And as I defend, I keep in mind that this guy might get a submission on me, and he might apply it fast. To prevent injury, I keep myself ready to tap. If he gets me, I want to tap well before any damage. Usually, this isn’t necessary, but remaining ready is only prudent.

Try it. It sounds easy, but for a lot of folks it isn’t.

Some groups don’t value defence, and the culture there pushes people to meet opponents head on, even younger, bigger, stronger, and psycho ones.

Lots of folks also consider tapping out to be some sort of disgrace. It isn’t, unless you do it too late and get hurt as a result.

Let’s add up how many days of training I’ve lost due to Jiu-Jitsu injury in the past year… it was… none. There were a ton of rolls in those 12 months, against opponents of every size, strength, and skill level. The only constant was that every single one of those opponents was younger than me; most were 30 to 40 years younger.

That’s not quite true. I did roll a couple of times at Gracie University in Los Angeles against a friend named Bill, who is a bit older than me. All of the rest were younger.

You don’t get better by missing training. You get better by being on the mat. You don’t get better getting hurt. You get better by surviving, and being on the mat. You don’t even get better by getting exhausted, as that can lead to getting hurt and missing training. You get better by being on the mat.

Of course, I might be underestimating how important it is for somebody to “win” a roll on their school’s mat. Perhaps there is a wager involved regarding a million dollars. That might encourage me to push harder. Maybe the person being rolled with is a lifelong enemy. Maybe that will do it. Perhaps the winner will get a shiny trophy or championship belt. Maybe your partner is a maniac, and is really attacking you, and you must crush them in order to survive.

I suspect none of these things are true. Rolling is a learning tool, and maybe you learn better when your neck gets seriously cranked, but I don’t. I like learning to be fun. Getting hurt is about as un-fun as anything can possibly be.

None of this means that I lay there on my back like a lump. It’s only with the craziest, most potentially dangerous opponents that it will look something like that; 100% survival. With trusted folk, you wouldn’t even know that is in my mindset. Most people fall somewhere in between, and I roll accordingly.

Some of my very favourite rolls have been with bigger, stronger, and aggressive partners.

I remember one school in particular. The instructors were great, and welcoming, as were most of the students, but there was a cadre of tough Blue Belts who seemed to take my presence as some kind of double-dog dare, and who really, really wanted to dominate me, even though my belt was Purple.

Each would come at me hard, and I would defend. Without exception it went just like Helio Gracie said it should. They would push really hard, and I would fend them off. They would start to gas out, even though they should not have let that happen against an old man. I would play at escapes just enough to keep them from slowing down, and by the end of the roll I could control them with ease. Survive, exhaust, control.

It was fun as hell, and it was also pure Jiu-Jitsu.

Let it Go

Let’s look at some big future dates for me in Jiu-Jitsu.

The earliest I might get a Brown Belt is less than 8 months away, and a Black Belt is possible in 5 years.

What can I be doing right now to get ready for these two events?

For the further away evaluation, there isn’t much, but for a much closer Brown Belt there is a lot.

A Black Belt friend in North Vancouver would most likely be carrying out my Brown Belt evaluation. He has told me that he would expect a candidate to demonstrate any of the available curriculum that pertains to street self-defence. He has also said that students who have passed any of the relevant technical exams would not have to be tested on those aspects.

To me that means I either work like a lunatic on self-defence material, or make sure I have already passed all of the technical exams. Neither is an attractive prospect.

I think am perfectly competent in the area of self-defence, especially if my lifestyle is considered.

I have a Karate Black Belt, and a Jiu-Jitsu Purple Belt, earned during 36 years of martial arts training. I am involved in no high risk behaviours, and live in a very low-crime area.

However, to pass a one-shot, in-person exam covering the specific Gracie self-defence curriculum material, I’d have to train those techniques ad nauseam. I’d have to become almost perfect at the least entertaining part of Jiu-Jitsu.

If I work on the technical exams, there would actually me a lot more work involved. I’d have to be able to perform about 5 or 6 times as much material, including the all of the self-defence stuff. The difference is that the exams involved are neither one-shot, nor done in-person.

After training the levels and being able to correctly perform every technique, the candidate video records the precise exam material in chunks that take about 20 minutes to perform. If anything gets screwed up, a new attempt is started over with a fresh recording. This is quite unlike trying to demonstrate material at a live exam.

So what do I want to do? Shall I learn my least favourite part of the curriculum to the point of mastery, and then demonstrate all of that skill on test day, or learn the much broader curriculum to a point of competence and then record videos covering everything.

A point in favour of the video exam is that of the 4 test levels, I have already completed and passed the first, and that I have a partner lined up already to work with on the second.

How would either of these routes fit into the time-line for a Brown Belt about 8 months away?

The live-test self-defence route certainly could be done in that time. I’d need to get going on perfecting all of the material, and could use any other students who are willing to help.

The bigger video route is more difficult. In the coming 8 months, I will likely be unavailable for as much as 2.5 months, leaving only about 22 weeks to get all the work done. I would say that the second level would be the quickest to complete by far; perhaps 6 weeks. That would leave about 8 weeks per level for each of the other two.

However, for those two levels, I don’t even have a potential partner currently lined up. That’s a problem. It might well be that the hurdle will be insurmountable. No partner for a technical test renders it impossible.

It is a puzzle.

Or it was until I shifted my thinking.

Which of the two routes would actually make me better at Jiu-Jitsu?

Should I choose the video route, I would have to do tons more work than I do now. It would require that both I, and several partners, put in long hours on top of regular training. We would be honing a wide range of skills, across several levels, and in all chapters.

I would predict that at a minimum, doing the video route would add at least a hundred hours to my practise. That represents an approximate doubling of my training for the next 8 months.

Doing the self-defence test-day option would also see me doing many hours of work, but it would be a different sort of thing. Most would be grabbing other students before and after class to be my partner for whatever self-defence move I would be working on. This isn’t extra training, as it is currently time that gets used for other Jiu-Jitsu work. It is more of a redirecting. There may be some added time, but nothing like the video route.

This means that while my self-defence skill will certainly improve, in a very real way it will be at the expense of other Jiu-Jitsu skill. Doing the heavy-homework video route will improve my overall skill level, as there will be a huge amount of work done that would not be taken from existing mat time.

So, it boils down to getting better within a narrow spectrum, largely at the expense of my skill level in general, or a general, wide-spectrum improvement done outside of current mat time. This makes my decision clear.

Video seems like the answer.

There is a major flaw with doing the video route. It needs dedicated partners to be found. I already have level 1 completed, and a partner lined up for level 2. Getting 3 and 4 done look to be needing a lot more time that I have before possible Brown Belt evaluation.

A few years ago, I assumed that getting beyond a Purple Belt was highly unlikely. It is wonderful that I’ve made it this far. If I do the video route, and it takes me a few extra years, so what? I am actually a firm believer in the method that Gracie Jiu-Jitsu has used up until just this Christmas down at the headquarters school. A student’s next belt was awarded if and when they were ready. Ryron and Rener Gracie knew their local students so well that any sort of exam was superfluous.

I sort of got in on that for my Purple Belt evaluation. I went to LA for two weeks. On the first day, Rener Gracie rolled with me, and selected a couple of other people for me to spar with. After that, they may or may not have kept an eye on me for the time I was there training, and on the very last class of my visit gave me my new rank.

Now it is all about tests. Either I do the one-day test, and not actually improve overall, or I improve generally, do three massive video tests, and experience general improvement, but take several years doing it.

Best to just do what is right for my Jiu-Jitsu. So what if I do the superior-for-Jiu-Jitsu video route? Are there potential issues?

There sure are. If I could do it within 8 months, a Brown Belt on time could still happen, but completion that swiftly is extremely unlikely. If it takes longer, new instalments of curriculum will get released, and have to be worked up and video-tested as well, making the finish point recede farther into the distance.

I think the only plan is to work away at things, and forget about Brown Belt altogether. I’ve made it to Purple as I had hoped. It might be fun to refuse to do an exam for a new belt.

Maybe after a few years or decades they’ll give me one anyhow.

Maybe not.