4 YEARS IN

Celebrated my 4th year anniversary of the day I started BJJ 4 days ago. I say "celebrated" but really, that should read more like, "completely forgot until last night when a CMD client asked me how long I'd been training".

It feels a bit weird, me typing this, like I'm moving my fingers for the sake of doing so and little else. It's really interesting for me to go back and read my old posts. Nostalgia and memory lane and such. Doesn't do anything to make me want to write new ones. Got a lot to say and nothing I feel compelled to blog about. Except this, I suppose it's good for future reference. Ah well.

Teaching has likely been one of the best things to ever happen to my BJJ. And as it turns out, I've got everything I need to work on what I need to work on. Which is nice.

Still enjoying training, still loving Jiu-Jitsu.

NOTE TO SELF

From this link. Emphasis mine.

I feel like I’ve been fortunate to have the opportunity to train with a lot of different people and to compete a lot, but honestly what I try to do and What I really believe helps me the most is that I try to break Jiu-Jitsu down to a fundamental level and really work to understand what determines success and failure, kind of on a body mechanics level, to really understand that there are correct and incorrect ways to do things.

There are plenty of reasons that people have success with a given technique or a given strategy, yet often times they are succeeding in spite of doing things improperly. I know I was. You can win a match and still have done 10 things wrong. Maybe you’re the vastly superior athlete or maybe the other guy was hung over…or you could do almost everything right and still lose. In any event, the idea is that if you can get down to a fundamental level of body mechanics and understanding, you can kind of distill your Jiu-Jitsu down to something that’s very direct, very simple, allowing you to be able to operate on a higher level of efficiency in many, many positions, all positions really, instead of just drilling just one series or just a couple series of moves and becoming very strong [in that particular area] while neglecting other areas.

Many guys I know, they’re very tough at their specific areas. Like so-and-so has a great De La Riva guard; they can use this sweep to this sweep to this sweep, and they know that series in and out, but if you can drag them out of that series, they’re far less dangerous because their Jiu-Jitsu knowledge is more superficial. On a more fundamental level their movement as a whole might not be great. Rather than focusing on specific techniques, I feel what’s been able to help me and my students succeed pretty rapidly has really been trying to focus on how to move rather than a series of techniques…I’ve noticed a massive change for the positive.

-Ryan Hall