Today’s question is a big one that touches on every aspect of someone’s life as they decide between college and a career or their jiu-jitsu dreams. While I give my perspective, this topic is too big to be tackled fully by one person. Even my answer shares contrary opinions. Whether you agree or disagree, leave a comment with your perspective.

Q: I would appreciate advice on finding a direction in BJJ. To be honest, I
have tried to approach my instructor with this topic, but it’s a pretty
heavy conversation and with the growth our gym has been seeing he isn’t
really available to talk too much. I’m at a point right now where I am
unsure as to what BJJ will hold for me in the future. In the past BJJ has
meant a couple things to me. To start with, during high school, it was my
goal to just have fun and compete locally. I was able to do that, but then
I injured my back and had to take about a year off of training. I graduated
high school and started to attend college. During my first year of college
my focus changed to recovering from my herniated disc and eventually
getting back into training. Coming back from the yearlong lay off from
training was strange. My body didn’t function the same as it once did. I
was bigger than I was when I left the mats (both from just growing and from
fat) and my back was sensitive. Since then, however, I have been happy with
the progress I’ve made. I have been back to training for probably coming up
on a year and I have been recently promoted to blue belt by my instructor.
Most importantly, my back has been able to withstand the rigors of
training.

So now I have a choice to make. I need to see where BJJ is going to take me
in the future. I somewhat equate this to making a decision about academic
major. To me it is a big life choice. It really is my truest ambition to
own a gym of my own one day as a black belt and to teach and compete. I did
ask my instructor about this and how I might attain it, but I was met with
sort of a shrug off answer. I did not take it personally as it may just be
a result of my instructor’s personality or the current situation of the
gym’s booming membership. Left with no direction in terms of achieving my
BJJ dream I put thoughts of what the future might hold for me on the
backburner and just have been trying to train as consistently as I can. I
was prepared to choose a major that might compliment me owning my own gym
in the future, which was a major reason why I wanted to speak with my
instructor to get some guidance as to how I might make my academic life and
BJJ life align, but I have since decided on a bachelor of science degree in
psychology in preparation for physical therapy in graduate school.
I feel I am in a sort of limbo. I am aware that if I am to make anything of
myself as a BJJ player I must make it out to the big competitions sooner or
later to make a name for myself, but currently I am as broke as any other
college student and can barely afford to compete at local tournaments. I
also might add that working four part-time jobs, one of which on Saturday
(prime tourney time), and doing school does not allow for me to get out to
as many tournaments as I would like. Another thing is I watch a lot of
videos on r/bjj highlighting the amazing BJJ athletes that are dominating
now or who are soon to be dominating. If I continue on the course I am on
now I do not see myself being able to compete at that level. I guess my
real question for you is what can I do in my current situation to set a
realistic goal for my BJJ future and work towards achieving that goal? Is
it realistic for me to think I may be able to medal at the Pan Ams in my
lifetime? What should I be doing to maximize my potential with what I have
to work with?

Thank you for your time. I understand you have received a large amount of
emails like mine. I would appreciate your advice.

A: Your instructor is probably uncomfortable answering your questions because they have big consequences that go far beyond his scope as your BJJ teacher. Your parents or an older mentor would be better suited to guide you on your career and the direction you should take in life. I am poorly equipped to answer your questions too, but I’ll say what I can.

As you’ve noticed, the level of BJJ competition is at all time highs. Even lower belts are training at professional levels. We have blue and purple belts training BJJ twice a day 5-7 days a week, cross training wrestling and judo, doing intense strength and conditioning routines, and eating special diets like Olympic athletes.

You can still win a few medals without going to those extremes at the lower belts, but you run the risk of being knocked out by someone who is fully committed. Your odds drop to near zero once you get to black belt.

You don’t need to be a multiple time world champion to be a good BJJ instructor or run a school, but the credentials don’t hurt. If you have dreams of being a serious competitor, I’m not going to be the one to squash them, but you also need to be honest with yourself about how much you are willing to sacrifice. The days of the part-time champion are over.

Knowing how much a physical therapist gets paid compared to a BJJ instructor, I’d say go with the one that can get you a medical degree and a stable job in a hospital, and not the one that pays very little and will probably make you need to hire a physical therapist. Unless you become a marketing wizard like Lloyd Irvin, you’re looking at earning a poor to mediocre salary as a BJJ instructor that is easily interrupted by injuries (which you are already struggling with).

Money isn’t everything though. Like the cliche goes, BJJ is a lifestyle, and people do it because they love it, not because it’s a prudent investment. If you love BJJ enough to push through the injuries and low pay, then nothing anyone says is going to steer you away from it. Do you have that fire inside you? You’ll have to answer that for yourself.

To give you another perspective, I recently listened to Marcos Avellan, one of Lloyd Irvin’s disciples, give a long talk about what it took for him to become a successful school owner, MMA fighter and BJJ competitor. He would dismiss the advice to play it safe by staying in school as talk of a “well-intentioned loser.” His personal story is about dropping out of college right before becoming an engineer to pursue martial arts full time, despite the protests of his friends and family. He prides himself on going against conventional wisdom and advocates for “burning your boats” so you can’t turn back, making no excuses, and totally devoting yourself with no hesitations. Are you prepared to do that? Should you do that?

Clearly, Marcos and I aren’t coming from the same place, but I think we both agree that you can’t half ass it if you want to become a legitimate competitor and a professional martial artists (that is, someone who trains or teaches martial arts full time). If you want to compete a bit and continue training as you earn your degree and start your career, no one is going to fault you for that either. You can still earn your black belt and be a good teacher. Many have gone down that path too.

You sound like you’re making intelligent choices and working hard to pay for school. Your long message shows you’re giving it a lot of thought. I’m sorry if I couldn’t give you a more straightforward answer, but it’s a complex topic. Personally, I think the world needs more physical therapists than jiu-jitsu instructors, but ultimately its your life, and I’m not going to tell you how to live it. I just hope you find a path that makes you happy and keeps you in jiu-jitsu.

For another perspective, check out How to be a great mediocre BJJ student by Cane Prevost.

Longtime BJJ blogger Can “Slideyfoot” Sönmez (www.slideyfoot.com) sent in a question about everyone’s favorite problem: injuries! We’ll go over how to deal with them and keep training.

If you have a question of your own, hit the “Hey!” button at the top of my site and ask it. You’ll get a reply as soon as I can write one, though with the 30+ that have come in so far, you may need to wait a week or two.

Here’s Slideyfoot’s question:

Hi Matt,

I’ll start off with a basic one. My left abductor is currently messed up,
which makes it difficult to practice back control or closed guard, and
pretty much rules out a lot of sweeps too.

I was therefore wondering if you had any thoughts on how best to train
around that injury? At the moment, I’ve been doing a lot of top side
control, along with a sort of open guard/knee shield thing, keeping rolling
very light.

Cheers,

Can

Hi Can,

Injuries are an unfortunate reality of our jiu-jitsu lives. This popular image is sadly a self-portrait:

So maybe you’re talking to the wrong person about dealing with injuries, but I’m still training somehow, so here you go:

Respect the warm-up, and do not jump into any live training cold. You’re already injured, so you’ve got to do whatever you can to avoid new problems or worsening the existing ones. Being limber and warmed up will help.

If you can’t spar much, drill more. This includes every variety of “dead” and live drills, from simple ones like shrimping and bridging, to slow, thoughtful repetitions of techniques, to speed drills where you do as many reps as possible in a set time, and all variations of isolation training and positional sparring at low to medium-high intensities.

When you can spar or do live drills, be willing to say no to training partners that are too big or too rough. In BJJ, we pride ourselves for being willing and able to spar with everyone, no matter how big or strong, but injuries will force you to be more selective. Even nice training partners can simply be too heavy to safely train with, no matter how unintentional the injuries are that they cause. Felipe Costa talks about this in a video where he explains why he created a training session exclusively for lightweight fighters.

In a recent, rare appearance on the UG, Roy Harris shared this advice:

Learn to set limits, as well as say “No” at times. Here are a few examples:

A. When that new wrestler asks to spar with you – the one who hurts everyone because he doesn’t have as much control over his body as he thinks he does – politely tell him, “No thanks.”

B. When you have an important presentation at work tomorrow, don’t try out the new MMA class and take the chance on getting hurt – or worse, getting a black eye. Wait awhile before trying out the new class. Put what pays the bills ahead of what sounds fun!

C. It’s Thursday evening. Tomorrow night, you and your girl are going out on a special date. Don’t take a chance with sparring. Learn the techniques your instructor taught and then politely remove yourself from class. Don’t take the chance of getting hurt – or getting one of those VISUAL injuries (one that she will have to look at all night. or worse, one that she might have to explain to friends or family members).

Make sure your instructor knows about your injuries so they can avoid putting you in dangerous situations. Some people get injured (or re-injured) because their instructor pairs them up with a rough training partner, and they don’t back out because they are afraid of disappointing their instructor. I’m more disappointed when someone gets injured than I am when they don’t act “tough eough,” so you can hope your instructor is similarly minded.

You’ve found side control works for you, so keep at that. My worst problem is a seriously damaged lower back. That rules out almost all high closed guard and its submissions, which was my best game through my lower belts (and probably a cause for my injury). If I do use those positions, I can expect several days of constant pain and difficulty sleeping. This forced me to redefine my game. What I have found is that passing guard doesn’t aggravate my back, since it’s better to be the one crushing the other guy than to be the one getting crushed.

Find a conditioning activity outside of BJJ that gives you a more balanced workout, or start incorporating those methods into your BJJ training. After my back injury, I have tried physical therapy, massage, chiropractic, yoga and pilates. So far, pilates is the only one that has really helped, and I owe that to being friends with a brown belt who is also a professional pilates instructor. I’ve also had luck with some rubber band exercises, like those shown here.

Here’s to hoping 2013 brings us cybernetic joints and vat-grown replacement vertebrae!

Q: There was a recent video on reddit of a mendes bros. white belt berimbolo’ing everybody
in competition. Everybody was raving about it.

I would love to see a video or post from you about whether or not we’re seeing the death of the ‘basics’ and ‘general skills’ approach and the rise of the specialist.

Are we still holding onto ‘basics’ because it’s whats best or because it’s what we’ve always done?

As a teacher (my profession), I wonder the same thing about making kids “well-rounded.” Do colleges want well-rounded kids over specialist because that’s what’s better or because that’s what they’ve always gotten and it’s what they encourage?

A: The basics are much like Mark Twain in that their deaths have been greatly exaggerated (unfortunately Twain’s did finally catch up with him). This is a perennial debate among jiu-jiteiros. Few have clear definitions of what they mean by “basic” and “fundamental,” instead taking a stance similar to the Supreme Court’s standard for porn: “I know it when I see it.” (Usually this means scissors sweeps and upa escapes.)

Ever since I began BJJ, I’ve heard how the basics are dying, that fundamentals are neglected, that those damn kids need to get off Helio’s lawn. That’s not to say that the basics are getting all of the attention they deserve, but the end of the world never comes.

Do you remember the blue belt Ryan Hall and his inverted guard? Eduardo Telles’ turtle guard? How about when the brabo choke was considered a fancy move? Each of those drew cries of “think of the basics!” That’s only within the past decade. I’m sure if you go back farther, you’ll find people making similar complaints back in the 90′s and earlier. Count Koma probably told little Carlos Gracie to hold his horses and stick with the basics too.

Don’t take this to mean I’m against the basics. Many black belts with far more experience, renown and R’s in their names advocate for the basics, and you’d do well to listen to them.

My own game has become more basic as I’ve gained experience and dealt with injuries and taken the advice of my teacher, Eduardo de Lima. You could probably create a workable definition of what the basics are by ranking moves by how much they protect you from unexpected injuries. Basic moves tend to protect your joints by avoiding silly positions.

Going back to Eduardo Telles, do you remember the chatter before his first MMA match? People thought he was going to go out and crawl around on all fours while he got soccer kicked in the head. Instead of committing suicide, he took the guy down and armbarred him. Each of his wins have come from submissions and strikes.

We had a repeat of this when Ryan Hall fought in his recent MMA debut. People wondered how he was going to use his inverted and 50/50 guards when he was getting his face smashed. The better question would have been how his opponent was going to defend being taken down and punched in the face until the ref stopped the match, because that’s what happened.

Let’s bring Marcelo Garcia into this. In his original rise to fame, he was defined by his armdrags, butt scooting, x-guard and rear naked chokes. That’s what sold his DVDs, and that’s why people flew him out for seminars. Then he started doing north-south chokes, guillotines, wrestling takedowns, smashing top game and armbars. This surprised people at first. We now take it for granted that he’s just good at everything, and seeing his regular training sessions through MGinaction.com has only reinforced this belief.

Do people not realize these are professional athletes who can change how they train depending on their goals? We’re not talking about pre-programmed Street Fighter characters here. They don’t want to get their teeth kicked to the back of their throat any more than the next guy.

Specialists are not new. Neither are “relentless fundamentals” grapplers. We think of fighters in these terms, but those two personas can even live in the same person. What we see in a competition is a slice of the fighter’s jiu-jitsu. True, it’s a very revealing slice, but it’s not the sum total of their knowledge. When someone has been training jiu-jitsu for a decade or two, I hope for their sake that we’re not the full scope of their knowledge by watching a few matches.

Here’s a real basic for you: “If it works, it works.” Until the berimboloing white belt is shut out of his favorite move, why should he stop using it? Don’t try to bring up self defense, because we’re not watching him do the Fundamentals class at Art of Jiu-Jitsu Academy (I checked, and the Mendes brothers teach self defense classes). If he is studying under experienced and thoughtful coaches (which he is), they will have the wisdom to make sure he fleshes out the rest of his game too. These issues self-correct as people train longer and longer. But who wouldn’t want to have been a white belt with a berimbolo built in?

If you survey the full breadth of what’s happening in competition, you’ll see the basics are alive and well. Most matches are determined by simple takedowns (or guard pulls), guard passes, sweeps, and submissions like rear chokes, armbars and triangles. Flashy moves grab our attention but they are limited to a few especially talented competitors.

Leverage and physics won’t change any time soon, unless CERN accidentally Higgs a few too many bosoms and breaks time and space. Humans only have so many limbs, those only have so many joints that move in only so many ways, and if you squeeze the right spots too long, our brains turn off. The basics are safe.

We are lucky to have a very effective martial arts system as laid out by the Gracies (or Luis França) and their many generations of black belts. We need to give respect to the old moves, not out of tradition, but because they prove themselves again and again. These old moves know the deal: if they stop working, we will throw them out and find new ones. The battle between sacred basics and relentless evolution is the history of jiu-jitsu, and its future too.

If you’re itching for more on this topic, you can read longer discussions about “the basics” between The Jiu Jitsu Lab and myself here:

• The Pareto principle and progress: playing the percentages in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu
• What does Pareto know about BJJ?

The revival of aesopian.com continues with another Q&A. Here’s how it works: You ask me questions using the “Hey!” tab at the top of the site. You’ll get a personal reply, and if it’s a good topic, it’ll turn into a post on my site. Over twenty thoughtful questions have come in already, and I’m doing my best to answer each one fully. The plan is to try to reply to two to three per week. Let me know how you like this new format.

Q: What are the most common bad habits/mistakes/wastes of time/etc. that you see throughout all skill levels?

A: Rather than go into specific technical mistakes, let’s cut to what I see as the root of all these problems:

1. Lack of focus and discipline
2. Not enough drilling

Most problems in jiu-jitsu can be solved by improving those two points.

Before we accept that answer, we have to admit that people train for different reasons. My answer is not going to appeal or apply to everyone. Some people go to BJJ for a workout, casual stress relief, and sparring for fun. Those are all good reasons to train, but they don’t usually give you an attitude toward training that will accept my answer.

People often balk at the “discipline, focus and drilling” approach. They work all day, they have screaming kids at home, they have all the worries of modern life weighing on them. Why would they be so strict with themselves when they can finally escape? That’s normal, and in the end, I’m happy with whatever gets them on the mats.

But I also assume everyone who gets on the mats wants to get better at jiu-jitsu. If you show up on my mats, and just want to chat with friends while wearing a gi, then roll around a little, you came to the wrong class. When I train, I want to do as much as I can to develop and deepen my understanding of jiu-jitsu. Discipline, focus, and drilling are how I do that best.

Do I love drilling? Yes and no. If I take a short term view, then no, I don’t like drilling, because I am lazy, and it is repetitive hard work. But when I take a longer view, and look at the results it gets, my real answer is yes, because it makes my jiu-jitsu better.

Story time: when I was in high school, I was not especially talented in math and algebra, but I got A+ on tests. This earned me a reputation for being good at math, so classmates started asking me for help. They were routinely disappointed because I didn’t have any special tricks to teach them. Instead, they heard this advice:

1. Really read the textbook, not glossing over or skipping anything.
2. Try the example problems yourself instead of just glancing at them.
3. Understand the concepts being taught, don’t just parrot the answers.
4. Write with good handwriting, and don’t get sloppy.
5. Check your work.

Other kids hated this. It’s slow, and seems like too much work. Where’s the trick, where’s the cheat?

That had been my attitude when I was getting much worse grades. One day, a teacher impressed upon me that I was doing even more work when I didn’t do it right the first time. Sloppy work meant I had to restudy, retake tests, redo my work, and take extra classes. The change came once the teacher appealed to my laziness, and showed me how I got out of more work if I improved how I studied. That’s when the switch flipped, and I saw how I wasn’t too lazy, just too lazy to do it wrong.

To bring this back to BJJ, people want to have fun, and nothing is more fun than winning. If you can find the direct connection between focused, disciplined drilling and winning, it will take the “work” out of it, and you’ll just be happy with the results.

Speaking of drilling, check out the Jiu Jitsu Laboratory’s fantastic new article and contest Drill to Win: the quickest path to success and a new T-shirt.

Welcome to the first of many Q&A sessions. I’ve added a contact form to the side www.aesopian.com to ask for comments and questions from readers. If you send me a message and it turns into a useful discussion, it will appear on my site, like you see below.

Roy Harris used to be great about answering questions, even boring, basic questions, and I admired that. He had nearly limitless patience for answering questions. Hopefully I can help revive the tradition.

Let me know what you think of these Q&A’s. Most will be written but I’m also filming my replies if your question is lucky enough to deserve it.

Q: We have a small(ish) club at work.  My company employs at my office about 1500 people, and we’re in the midst of creating something on licence from zuffa, so there’s plenty of people becoming interested in bjj.

I’m one of two blue belts, and there’s one purple.  But, me and the other
blue “host” “lessons” on Tu & Th morning to a small group of people,
sometimes only 2, sometimes up to 6.

I am very pro-basics, pro-defense, pro-position.  The other blue is a
little more risque/exotic/avant-garde (e.g. inverted guards, dlr, rubber
etc.).  Which IMO is fine, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with it, I
just prefer basics.

What does bug me, is when these brand new people want to be shown how to do
a berimbolo, or whatever.  Particularly, before there’s any understanding
of basics, let alone the little bit that I actually know.

How do I/we make it fun and motivating when we just concentrate on basics.
Breaking posture / maintaining posture, holding hips and shoulders flat /
moving out on to your hip, etc.

A: First off, that sounds like a fun company to work at. I’m lucky enough to get free yoga at my office, but I haven’t been able to get HR to okay midday BJJ sessions.

Your issue will be difficult to fix because it’s unlikely the people showing up to an informal training session are very serious about learning BJJ. That’s nothing against them; it’s just normal for people in free grappling clubs. Ask anyone who runs a university club.

As you’ve already seen, your coworkers aren’t there to build a foundation. That’s boring and feels like work. They are showing up because it’s “cool” and they want to see cool moves. In these situations, you’re going to have trouble making people do the “boring” (but important) basic moves. You can’t command the same authority as a black belt in a formal school, and even then, those black belts have trouble keeping white belts from going off into goofy moves.

So without being able to use authority or logic to sway them, what can you do? Teach the basics with great enthusiasm, and make good use of live drills and positional sparring (if you can do that at work).

If you are confident that you are showing them good, solid BJJ, don’t ever apologize for it being basic or act like it’s uncool. When you get a question about advanced or flashy moves, maybe show it briefly, then redirect them with “Hey, you know what would be great for you?” and show them a similar but simpler move.

What else impresses people? Getting beat by simple moves. When they try the fancy moves but aren’t competent enough to succeed, and they are instead defeated by simple moves, they will start giving the basics respect. What’s the safest way to do this? Live training.

Live drilling (also known as isolation training, specific training or positional sparring) is my favorite training tool. Take whatever you worked on that day, make a simple “game” for it (like passing closed guard) and let them do it live. Have them reset whenever someone succeeds or if they go off into positions that aren’t part of the day’s lesson. People love these games, and it makes simple techniques more exciting because they get to do them against resisting opponents. A “boring” drilling session can be saved by making everyone get a good workout in live training.

While I’m big on isolation training, I don’t encourage allowing much free sparring for people this new to BJJ, especially not with each other. Two zero belts (that’s even less than white belt) learn very little from flailing around and headlocking each other, and they have high chances of injuring each other in scrambles. The Fundamentals program at my school Gracie Barra Clearwater is big on specific training for this reason.

Here’s my last bit of advice. Stock up on business cards for your real school and shove those into all of your coworkers’ hands. Your club can encourage their enthusiasm and give them a taste, but you can’t (and shouldn’t expect to) give them everything they need.