The only thing easier than the physical part (of self defense) is the intellectual understanding of the physical part. And that is sometimes a trap. Knowing the words is not the same as knowing the music. Knowing something with your head alone is almost useless when it comes time to apply those skills with your body under stress. But people often believe that knowing is the same as understanding, and that the ability to talk about things or answer questions is in some way correlated with the ability to do those things. It is not.
–Rory Miller
Thursday evening BJJ in Bellevue.
Short warm-up roll with Casey.
Standup, judo grips. With your sleeve-grip hand, slide fingers down opponent's sleeve to your own lapel and briskly snap lapel out of hir hand while you turn out slightly. Kneel between hir feet, turned slightly out toward your lapel-grip hand (which grip you have retained) and use that lapel grip hand to yank opponent into your fireman's carry. Carlos stresses that you must not curl into a "c" shape when you kneel- body should remain upright. Don't dump to the back or front- dump hir right on hir head.
Same, only opponent sprawls. Transition to single-leg. Peter was praising my single-leg effusively, which was weird since I've struggled so much with it and continue to do so.
You are under side control, opponent has both arms on hir own side. Buck up slightly and place hand nearest opponent on your ear. Now push and shrimp; shove your other arm under opponent's armpit as far as you can. As soon as you have room to do so roll on your belly. (Note that if you fail to control opponent's other arm, s/he will crossface you and force you back down.) I have always resisted rolling onto my belly in this technique. I feel very vulnerable. Carlos demo'ed how it is actually pretty impossible for the opponent to prevent you from moving from belly-down to turtle no matter how much s/he sprawls.
Next, tuck right up beside opponent, shove the knee nearest hir in there and force hir over into side control. As you slide on, switch to scarf.
KOTH starting from side control: escape vs mount. I was on top of (huge, brown belt) Jim- whom I rarely work with- at one point. He commented afterward (admiringly, not critically(!)) that I was "the meanest one of all" because as soon as I took side control, I shoved my forearm bone against his jaw and made him turn his head. Good thing Cindy was not there to hear that comment. YES, this is the same technique that I did to E-man some three years ago which causes her to STILL TODAY run around telling everyone that I "neck crank little kids". It is not the least bit mean- and I have such a low bar for "mean"... it's not painful at all, it's just pushing the face away in order to make it more awkward to see what I'm setting up. When I came through the line and got Jim a second time, he looked up from the floor, saw me looming over him, and whimpered, "Oh my God!" It was pretty funny. He also had good things to say about my sprawl.
A long, pleasant roll with Chris.
I have been putting a lot of thought into the defeatism issue that I discussed after Proving Grounds. It has become impossible to avoid the reality check that I routinely surrender every single roll before it even starts. Anything I might get, I assume it's because my opponent was being nice and gave it to me. If they praise me- as two people independently did tonight- I can't accept that. I assume they are just saying it to be nice (probably because I suck so horribly that they feel sorry for me). I have mentioned this before... it's not like I wasn't aware of this all along... but I didn't really see that I am doing it EVERY.....SINGLE.......TIME. Tournaments are disturbing because it somehow feels less acceptable to meekly resolve to lose every roll in a comp than it does to meekly resolve to lose every roll on the practice mat. I think that terror of "escalation" is a factor as well in comp- it feels like the situation is dangerously and intimidatingly "escalated" right from the get-go, so instead of rising to meet the challenge, I am simply "struggling" (as opposed to "fighting"), being defensive, and trying to "de-escalate".
Also a factor, of course, is the fear of failure. If you don't try, you can't really fail- because you can still tell yourself, "Well, I *could* do it, if I was really trying." How unthinkably awful it would be to REALLY try and find that you STILL couldn't do it. That's just the endpoint of it all. There ain't noplace to go from there.
I have not yet come up with any constructive ideas for trying to work on this.
It does occur to me that blowing off positive feeback from my training partners is actually a form of disrespect to them. Feedback from your training partners is a gift. Presumably they are trying to help you, and not just coddling you and blowing smoke up your ass. If you respect that person as a martial artist, one should respect their viewpoint and advice, and assume that they know what they are talking about.
"Also a factor, of course, is the fear of failure. If you don't try, you can't really fail- because you can still tell yourself, "Well, I *could* do it, if I was really trying." How unthinkably awful it would be to REALLY try and find that you STILL couldn't do it. That's just the endpoint of it all. There ain't noplace to go from there."
ReplyDeleteSo, I hear you. (And it's interesting to note that kids who get praised for being smart get caught up in this trap a lot, whereas kids who get praised for working hard at things tend not to.)
But this also seems like almost the reverse of how you'd go about getting better. Because avoiding trying to avoid losing for real is kind of the other side of the coin of the guy who does a ton of forms work and qi gong and goes on and on about how powerful he is and his qi is and never actually fighting. (Y'know, the one who when his technique doesn't work on you think it's actually meaningful to say, scornfully, that you're not sensitive enough.)
I mean, the approach outlined above is a bazillion times less obnoxious - and doesn't leave me wanting to introduce your face to the wall, which the above does pretty consistently - but the core of not actually being present to learn from the fight is similar between them. I'm kind of surprised that actually trying in a fight, for reals, and losing, is portrayed as an end point. I mean, sure, if you're training with people who are either assholes or are unsafe (and from what I've heard this does not in any way describe most of the people you train with) losing might really suck. For me, what I treasure most about sparring is that the stakes are low, but also that it's real. I'm not fighting for my life, but I am putting myself out there. Kind of a rubber meets the road thing, except sometimes that's the slap of my face on the road... The people who are better than me are the people I can learn the most from.*
Wrapped up in that, there's a lot of trust of one's opponent, and openness to the fight.
Bah. I hope this isn't too obnoxious. It's one of those things that's absolutely key to why sparring is important to me, but when I write it out it sounds like the pompous mouthings of someone who wants to be seen as wise.
CK
* And here's where it overlaps with Chan practice the most, because they are collaborating with me in defeating my ego. Of course, for that to work my ego should be as exposed as possible.
Part of why my subconscious is seeing it as an endpoint is that it seems to be evidence that if I was in a real self-defense situation, I would be destined to lose, which truly COULD be an endpoint: ie death. Right now I feel like if I was attacked and fighting for my life, I would feel fairly insecure about my ability to defend. Which might result in "struggling" instead of fighting, and possibly Kitten Effect. Which would garantee the poor endpoint.
ReplyDeleteHm. Which probably plays into your tendency to have a lot of trouble relaxing on the mat, and to try and power through things when powering through isn't likely going to be a good strategy for you. Both of which are likely to contribute to the self fulfilling prophecy bit.
DeleteThe best thing about sparring is that it isn't a fight - but it can teach you how to respond to one. It makes sense that your tendency to be super aggressive is rooted in part in fear (and also that you tends towards the rougher sort of adrenaline dump - and I know you've been working with that, and it's the kind of thing you can probably only change so much). But if you adopt a style of straightforward muscle and aggression, along the lines of "I'm bigger, stronger and scarier than you..." Well, you can get full marks on the scarier, but you have the body that you have. And that's just not the most efficient way of using it.
(I'll admit, it's an easy thing to say as an internal stylist built like a tank.)
-CK
I try to look at it as a matter of whether or not a particular train of thought or emotion is really serving to help me improve. For example, if I'm about to start rolling with someone that regularly hands my ass, I can't go into it thinking "Oh Jason is going to smash the crap out of me again today". I don't entirely believe that you can manifest something just by thinking it, but I do know that if I don't go into a roll with at least a neutral attitude, I'm going to be crushed AND feel like crap about it.
ReplyDeleteI think logically that we know what serves to help us improve and what doesn't, but *doing* something with that knowledge is the hard part. I've found that some very to-the-point straight talk with myself works best. Also remembering that this is a passion and one of the few things that I do that is just for me and just for the enjoyment of doing it.
Some of this issue likely comes from the idea that upping your resistance or pressuring for a technique turns into aggression and escalates the roll. You have to replace that with the idea that you are ASSERTIVE. You deserve for your technique to succeed, so make it succeed. That doesn't mean you have to play mean, or go 110% or anything. You just roll with the expectation that you will succeed because you deserve to succeed.
ReplyDeleteBe Assertive with your jiujitsu!