One of the errors that’s always plagued me, both in life and in my Jiu Jitsu, is my gut level reaction to the first wrong turn. I’m not talking about the casual Sunday drive when you’re out for the scenery and the wind in your hair and you welcome the opportunity to get a little bit lost. I’m talking about I left late for the interview, got off at the wrong exit, and kept moving forward–an instant Columbus on a mission to find a shortcut to the Indies. An intelligent man would embrace the wonderful thing about the wrong turn–realizing he made a mistake, he’d pull a u-ey and be right back on track. Not me. I don’t like admitting mistakes. Instead, I use the opportunity to express my resourceful nature. I look up at the sky and start making my navigation by the sun. Then when I scream into the parking lot with thirty seconds to spare, sweating bullets and on the verge of an anxiety attack, I at least have the satisfaction of knowing I didn’t make a mistake, I just traveled the road less taken.
When I was younger and even more stubborn than I am now an old shop-boss used to tell me, “You start right, you end right.” But that was never my way. Too inartistic. What was the point after all if you didn’t have to reinvent the wheel? I began Jiu Jitsu in the same way. When I asked, “Why not do it this way?” my early instructors, John Machado, Jucao Brites and Marcelo Garcia, often shook their heads in that same tired rhythm I had seen in my periphery from Lester, my old shop-boss, as he watched me anxiously rework a piece that had not ended right. I didn’t really want to learn Jiu Jitsu as much as reinvent it as an art that was all my own.
“The way a man does one thing is the way he will do everything,” goes an old Zen saying that has proved true enough in my own life. My early Jiu Jitsu depended almost entirely on athleticism. In the same way I had managed to scrape through an early life of missteps and errors with apologetic smiles and a basically good nature, I was able to often come out on top in rolls against more technical opponents because of a higher level of athleticism and a powerful competitive streak. I could make a battle for position feel like a matter of life and death. I don’t deny that the competitive drive is somewhat of an alchemical necessity in Jiu Jitsu. Without it we would not have a true game, and no opportunity to refine technique in heated physical debates. But my drive was not about observing and refining my own performance in conflict with other ideas. It was about vindicating myself of my errors and proving my point. When my opponent wouldn’t listen I simply spoke over him, yelled louder, talked faster. I became that guy who, when the balance of an argument tips, makes up statistics and cites studies he doesn’t really understand. Whether I was ignoring a wrong turn on the road, or in the shop, or in the school, my impulse to cover my error, even from myself, was the same. It was the way I did everything.
One can play a Jiu Jitsu game lacking in technical integrity and win through will and athleticism against white and blue belts, and even some purple belts. Lightning can strike and, god forbid, he might one day catch a brown or black belt off guard and get a lucky submission. God forbid, because this is all the proof he will need that he is on to something hot, and it will become increasingly impossible to convince him of the necessity of proper technical progression. I know. Had I not injured my back six years ago and been stripped, overnight, of my previous athleticism, I would never have really begun studying the art Jiu Jitsu. I would have insisted on doing it my way until the end.
Now that I teach, I see that my approach to learning was not unique. Most younger people progress through the belts in this same way, scrapping and scrambling through white belt and then relying on athleticism or idiosyncratic and unconventional technical styles through blue belt. It seems to be at purple belt that most students begin to focus on doing things right. There doesn’t seem to be a whole lot to do about it. Sometimes I see a strong young guy leaning way forward over a closed guard, grabbing at his opponents neck and shoulders and falling into armbars and I say, I can save you a lot of time and energy… Everyone nods their head, but very few people listen. I don’t take it personally though–I had some of the finest teachers in the world and they couldn’t convince me of anything either, so who’s going to listen to me? I suppose it’s just a matter of time, a matter of acquiring technical or psychological maturity–one or the other, because I also notice that students approaching the age of forty seek to develop technical integrity from the beginning. They don’t waste time fooling themselves.
Nowadays, I spend a lot of time trying to refine my perception of and reaction to that first wrong turn. Time is just more precious, and I don’t want to waste anymore of it driving around the boondocks and pretending I’m not lost. In Jiu Jitsu this means a lot of time working with grips and breaking grips, refining hand positions and entries, passing the guard and retaining the guard. It means identifying problems and solving them before moving on, rather than ignoring errors and egotistically trying to turn my own mistakes to my favor–to collect my pound of flesh from anyone who catches me in an error. It means resisting the urge to conceal simple errors by developing sophisticated solutions.
It pains us all to take step backward, to make a strategic retreat, to disentangle ourselves from a bad situation and start over. Moving backward is too much like admitting we are wrong, admitting that we came up on the losing end of a negotiation; so we often soldier forward to vindicate ourselves, to prove we were right all along. Usually, some semi-conscious part of our psyche knows what’s going on—when we find ourselves suffocating in our opponent’s sweaty armpit with darkness closing in, or squirming with arm extended to the breaking point we can usually recall that first wrong turn.
I’ve spent countless hours of my life in that desperation, wishing I could find my way out of a maze of my own making, one I entered full of cavalier and confidence in the moment before things started to fall apart. And what do I want at that moment? I’m not hoping for victory, or to make a great technical discovery, or to achieve some dramatic reversal of fortune. I just want to manage a simple escape. Just to get flush. Just to start over, get back to my guard. Just another chance to do it right. If I can only get back to that first wrong turn, get one more chance, I tell myself, I won’t take the freshness of that moment for granted. I will be more careful.
In the game of Jiu Jitsu, even in the worst case, a new beginning is always just a tap away. If we find ourselves at that conclusion we should seize the opportunity to start again–and really try to do better. But it’s important that we also train ourselves to recognize finer and finer errors—and correct them as they happen, rather than always push on, deeper and deeper, until indefensible positions draw to inevitable conclusions. Often, by the time we find ourselves feeling through that dark maze of our own construction, we discover we took our first misstep with some foolish point of pride. If we are honest with ourselves, we can flush out the initial thought or gut level reaction that leads to that mistake. Then we know something of value about ourselves, something informative in a conscious, unreactive way. It’s as if we have recognized a tell in an opponent across the table. The smoke screen of the reaction signals something deeper–in this case a mistake that we can correct before it further degenerates our position. When we learn to do that—to correct our errors before we begin investing our energy to defend them—we won’t always have to tap-out to get a fresh start. The right track will always be one step back from the first wrong turn.
Aaron
November 21, 2013 at 8:52pmI’ve put some more thought into this. I’m not going to dispute the value of admitting your mistakes. But I will point out that there is MORE value in quick and creative thinking. That won’t save you, but it will allow you to take bold action and turn a stalemate into a win or an advantage into a spectacular victory. On the other hand, a static mind-set or a lack of confidence can lead to in-action and cede the initiative to your opponent. This could waste a positional advantage – an opportunity – and give one to your opponent.
For example…In the spirit of the sesquicentennial of the Gettysburg Address I present to you three battles of the civil war – ALL of them were decided by leadership. Compare especially the leadership during the battles of Antietam Creek and Vicksburg and make special note of the grit and toughness required to turn the battle of Shiloh from a defeat into a victory.
Antietam
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/antietam/maps/antietam-animated-map.html
Shiloh
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/shiloh/maps/battle-of-shiloh-animated.html
Vicksburg
http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/vicksburg/maps/vicksburg-animated-map.html
Dan Caulfield
November 22, 2013 at 12:02amThe problem here is that creative thinking, powerful as it is, is fairly useless without a focus. Prerequisite is the understanding of the problem or situation to be solved, and the value of the creative solution will be relative to the depth and breadth of that understanding. I’ve seen high levels of creativity from white belts and my hat is always off to them–they get in over their heads and they keep on trying to fight their way out. It doesn’t usually end well, but I recognise that the will to fight and the willingness to keep on trying no matter how lost and in the dark one is, is an essential ingredient in the alchemical recipe of good jiu jitsu. I won’t lie, this kind of fighting spirit is probably the thing that gets me most excited about a student or a potential student.
That is not because it is the most important thing, but because it is the more innate quality. A student might discover it, recover it, or find stand-in supportive qualities to complete the recipe, but it’s not really something that can be taught. It can, however, be refined, and focused, and that is what I am talking about here. A person doesn’t sacrifice his aptitude for creative problem solving when he develops his strategic ability to recognize and correct (or attack) errors. Rather, as precision is acquired, problems are solved and creative solutions are reached at a far higher levels.
It’s similar to how great chess players know exactly where to look on a chessboard. Mental energy does not have to be wasted examining the great majority of possible moves, because those moves would be erroneous. Great generals, like great chess players, make good decisions–sometimes brilliant decisions–because they know where to look. They know which problems demand their focus and which don’t. They don’t waste their energy following roads to nowhere. They are keen to mistakes, both of their own and of their opponents. –It’s not about action vs inaction, but about (*)action vs correct action.
The brilliant creativity you talk of, on the battlefield or in the competitive arena, isn’t some magical force that one calls upon when in need, but a skill that one develops through methodical training. This point has been made over and over using Pablo Picasso as an example of how one has to first live and understand the rules before one can break the rules successfully. We tend to heap praise and admiration on the “spontaneity” of rulebreakers without considering the years of grueling and fastidious work that created the foundation for these moments of creative brilliance. Artists (and chess players–and perhaps even generals) can be prickly about this. There is a story about the great classical guitarist Andres Segovia. He was attending a party where a couple of older, aristocratic women asked him to settle an argument. “Does great guitar playing emanate from the head or from the heart,” they asked him. “No,” he answered. He held up his hands. “It is from the fingers.”
Aaron
November 20, 2013 at 10:15pmVery well said. I think you hit the nail on the head with this piece.
Ian Durling
November 19, 2013 at 10:09pmI like to use paper maps, I don’t even own a gps device. The reason being is that I find profound joy in devising alternate routes to destinations. I believe that the given routes given by modern devices may be the easiest to navigate, but are not the best routes to travel. That being said I have found myself on my motorcycle traveling a road that appeared as thin line on my map that would magically cut miles off my journey or replace the monotony of a highway with the beauty of bucolic pastures while only adding a few minutes to the trip, only to find that road slowly disintegrate into a cow path and force me to return to the main road. Yet most of the time I am rewarded with an experience that all those others that merely followed the direction given to them from that disembodied voice could not even begin to conceive or appreciate.
It seems to me that in jiu jitsu the consequence for error is so immediate and pronounced that it does not allow for one to follow the wrong path for too long until it crumbles under foot (or armbar or choke). That is not to say that we don’t travel down it again and again looking for the turn that we missed that will get us to our desired path.
In my first year of jiu jitsu I have found the experience less like planning a bike trip and more like being plopped into the middle of the Atlantic. At first you are just swallowed by the waves. You thought that you could swim, but soon realize that you had no idea what a wave felt like until it was on top of you. All you can do is struggle. Soon, hopefully with enough practice, you are able to stay afloat, and not panic when the swell threatens to crush you. In this chaos are voices giving guidance, and these swimming along side are at ease with the churn of the ocean and some seeming to be floating above it.
It is faith that drives me forward. Faith that I am able to achieve what those around me have already achieved by following the course that has already been set. A course that through the passing of it has already charted the reefs and rocks to be avoided. Left to my own devices I would have started in the wrong direction and long ago succumb to the boil, or worse yet never jumped in the sea at all.
Dan Caulfield
November 22, 2013 at 3:49pmThanks Ian, Beautiful reply, as usual.
I think the paper maps vs.GPS thing is stylistic. I love maps and back roads too–not much makes me happier than a nice map, a big table and a cup of coffee. I look for routes and natural landmarks I wasn’t aware of and plan to travel them and visit them someday. Some people like the main roads and short detours. They enjoy figuring out the most efficient way to travel, ways to shave minutes off a trip by adjusting the timing of their travel and understanding precisely when one of the short detours is demanded.
I’m thinking, in jiu jitsu, of players like Ciao Terra vs. someone like Roger Gracie. I think the important thing to note here is that, whether on back roads or interstate highways, both are traveling routes well known to themselves, and when they veer off course they look for a landmark, a known position that will put them back in their “game.”
A good friend who spent a lot of time fishing in the open sea and among the islands of the Caribbean used to refer to these known positions as beacons, and I like that you brought the sea into this because it is fitting to that life and death feeling of urgency we get in jiu jitsu. If you imagine yourself in a boat blown off course by a storm–no GPS–you have only the lights of the beacons to guide you into harbor, or to a mooring point. Properly identifying those beacons becomes a life and death scenario. If you get it wrong, your paper charts are no good. They’ll mislead you and you’ll get hung up on the coral. So the moment you feel lost, you start geo-locating by searching for beacons.
Of course, as you learn the land (or sea) scape of the game of jiu jitsu, you have more and more beacons, and the closest one is never far off. You can stray further and further off course and still find your way back. But, with few exceptions–Bushecha might be one–this is not what you see at the highest levels of jiu jitsu (in competition). Instead, you see players trying to drive a match into their own well known territory and keep it there. When they get pushed off course they try to find their way back by the shortest route possible. Most blue belts know the majority of gross technical movements Roger Gracie uses in almost every one of his matches. They just don’t know how to properly shepherd that game to keep it on course.
I can’t claim to know how Roger Gracie trains, but I can’t imagine that he plays this competition game at all times in the academy. It would be boring both for him and for his training partners. Obviously, if we are to improve our jiu jitsu we have to spread out the maps and plot some excursions. This is what I am advocating in my post on flow rolling. If we think of our “game” as a sort of mobile base camp, when we flow we get to explore the surrounding territory. This is our time to ferret out impulsive mistakes and learn to shepherd our opponents through our game.
I think the criticism of flow rolling comes from people trying to play too far away from their base camp, getting lost, and then trying to bushwhack and scramble their way back with a little too much inventiveness and fervor. That’s why I think it’s important for the more experienced practitioner to act sort of as a Sherpa. I think the more productive flow rolling is what you described nicely in the beginning of your second paragraph–the opportunity to go back when the stakes are low and explore the territory where we keep losing our way.
And as you said, thank god for those who came before us–our professors, our maestres, our training partners, and all those people who stepped into the stormy seas of the ring and learned to navigate, got blown off course, explored new territories, and provided us with the maps that you and I both love to sit and pour over while we imagine those beautiful and rugged territories we might one day explore.