I'm pretty sure it's not broken, but that isn't the proper colour.

Session 5 of my BJJ Journey. 

This week was a bit tougher and easier at the same time. I'm in a fair amount of pain. Mostly because I'm out of shape but also because I seem to be losing chunks of skin from mat burn, joints are being stressed, muscles are being used in ways they don't care for and my fingers are stiff from desperately holding on to my partner’s gi. That all sounds bad when I list it out like that, but I am honestly feeling better about this experience.

 

Last night was first time my Budoshin training came into play. Two of my partners repeated got to their feet while rolling. One of them obviously had never rolled with someone who had judo training and was quickly dispatched several times. The great advantage of many judo throws is that one almost always is in a dominant position at the completion of the throw. My second partner clearly has played this game before but between the two of us we negated each other’s attempts to take the other down and we spent the entire round deadlocked with neither of us having a great advantage.

I felt pretty good about my performance until I rolled with one of the black belts who showed me why he was a black belt and I was a white belt. Every move I made was not only countered, but exploited and put me in a more compromising position. The entire time I rolled with him I felt like I was being controlled. A few minutes into the round he began to guide me and coach me through some techniques, but all the things he walked me through, while effective, were not things that I would have thought to do on my own. It was much more than post out with your hand here or tighten your knees there. It was, “now (blindly) roll into the choke here”, “now flip your body this direction”, again, effective for that scenario, but not something I would have likely figured out on my own. Later I realized that because I didn’t fully understand what was happening to me, I could not properly counter it.

Daniel’s chess analogy comes back to me. In chess tactics unless one is able to recognize that the opponent is setting up the Boden’s Mate, they are in no position to properly defend themselves against it. Without a comprehensive knowledge of what techniques or theories were being used against me, I would be at a significant disadvantage to defend against them. Like my first opponent that did not have a background against someone with judo training was unable to properly defend against throws, my second opponent understood the theory and was able to prevent me from exploiting a weakness.

The moral of the story: This is a journey unlike my pervious training. The goal is not for me to grasp a specific technique or throw but to understand how my partner’s movements and body positions effect my ability to execute a movement. It does me no good to be able to perfectly execute a scissor sweep, if I can’t get myself AND my partner into position. My partner is unlikely to set himself up to the ideal position for me to perform a compromising move on him. I need to understand how to get myself and my partner into the right position, but also be able to modify my plan on the fly if another opportunity or road block presents itself.