It’s hard to believe but I’ve been doing Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for a year now. Looking back over the year it’s hard to remember who I was when I first stepped on the mat. A year ago I weighed 230 pounds. Years of driving a desk had turned me into a festering mass of nagging yuppie ailments. Running four miles was an agonizing mental test for me. Today I weigh 190 pounds and my overall fitness is better than it’s ever been. Mentally I’m a lot tougher and that discipline has carried over into every other aspect of my life.

While there are many positives, I do have regrets about the past year. For someone who trains five or six days a week my Jiu Jitsu is appalling. I think there are a lot of reasons for this but the main reason is that I didn’t train with a specific goal until recently. When I did narrow in on a goal, it turned out to be the wrong goal. Here’s what I mean:

After months of training with marginal improvement I decided to just focus on one thing and get really good at it. Since back mount is the most dominant position I decided to focus on obtaining back mount. For four months this was all I worked on, and I really improved. Unfortunately, I neglected my guard game and as a result I can’t fight off my back well. I can count on two hands the number of times I’ve submitted anyone from guard. That’s pretty sad. In my last tournament I had to pull guard out of desperation and I could not threaten my opponent at all from my back.

For people who are just starting out at BJJ, I think it’s important to train with a specific goal, but not to “swing above your weight.” For example, if you’re not good at passing guard, you’re not likely to be in a position to take someone’s back. If you’re not good at take downs how often are you going to pass guard? And so on.

In my own case I think I need to stop swinging above my weight by focusing on the following things over the next year:

• Escape from side control (but not the single-leg attack which is all I do now)
• Escape from mount (but not the bridge because I don’t want to take on the complication of guard passing)
• Full guard
• Half guard

When I feel comfortable with those things, maybe it will be time to develop other positions.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 4:03 am and is filed under inspiration. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.