Violence Prerequisite

After class last night, I went out for some post-recovery beers with my friend Joe and we ended up on the subject of self-defense and how most people walking around have no situational awareness at all. And from there, we got very philosophical (read: half in the bag) with a variety of subjects dealing with personal security, self defense, and the lack thereof in today’s society. Joe works for DHS, but he is also a Doctoral Candidate studying Behavioral Sciences at NYU. His primary duties revolve around the development and implementation of training programs dealing with pre-violence queues, non-violent compliance, and violence prerequisite among other things.

What’s violence prerequisite? It’s the theory that for anyone to be aggressively violent towards you, they must possess 1.) the opportunity to hurt you, 2.) the intent to hurt you, and 3.) the ability to hurt you.

However, there is a lot of wiggle room there.

For example, the argument can be made that everyone walking the planet has the ability and/or opportunity to hurt you. I can grab a stick and poke you in the eye. That guy over there can trip you as you walk down the side walk. The naked guy across the street; the one chanting and waving the K-Bar knife around? Yeah, he can probably hurt you too.

Even intent is open to interpretation. I can seriously ruin someone’s day by running a stoplight. I didn’t mean to hospitalize the driver of the car I just T-boned; I just really needed to get home to set the DVR for that Golden Girls marathon. My primary intent pushed everything to the side, including not caring about endangering anyone.

So I’ll say that for someone to do violence against you, they mostly have to have opportunity, intent, and ability. But out of all of that, what interests me the most is how we deal with it all.

It seems to me that most martial arts (Krav Maga and to some extent BJJ being notable exceptions) concentrate only on one side of this triangle; the ability to hurt you. Opportunity is rarely ever addressed and intent is always implied. The focus is always on removing the ability for someone to cause harm as quickly and as violently as possible. I feel like I am constantly crapping all over these guys, but I’ll offer up the Combat Hapkido school that rents space from us as an example. Painted on the wall of their room is a motto that goes something like ‘If they can’t breathe, they can’t fight. If they can’t stand, they can’t fight’ and so on and so on. Their overall emphasis is placed on disablement by producing as much physical damage as possible in the least amount of time.

And while that is certainly a valid way of dealing with violent people, it’s just a tad overzealous depending on the situation. I mean, if a guy is getting in my face in a bar my first reaction is not going to be ripping off his bean bag while head butting him in the throat. And yes, I’ve seen the Hapkido guys drilling this with no contact. Monkey steals the peach, or something like that…

But what about the other two facets of the theory? The intent and the opportunity? If I can get biblical for a moment, we need to be working on making ourselves the kind of people that other folks have no reason to intend to hurt (Romans 12:18). And in my opinion that includes learning the ability to thwart other’s ability to do us harm. As far as opportunity goes, I’ll just offer up this article from a BJJ blog I stumbled across last week. So if the intent or opportunity is diffused or disabled, coupled with a way to neutralize the ability, then there is no need to disable them. In fact, if any of those three can be effectively removed then you are much safer overall. And if not, just check out the video CS from The Patient Grappler put up in response to this post.

To me, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the other grappling arts seem to be mostly about dealing with opportunity. In the Combatives class I’ll occasionally drop in on, as much time is spent on neutralizing someone’s ability to cause harm as is taking away the opportunity and intent. Sure it has the ability to seriously hurt someone, but I’ve found that most people who train BJJ will hold that in reserve in case the opportunity and intent cannot be stopped. Well, unless you’re talking about the “I train UFC, dawg!” type of guys…

Aggression: Part II

I’ve posted before on how my instructors want to see more aggression out of me while on the mats. At first I had some trepidation about this because at the time, I equated being aggressive and being an asshole on the mats to one and the same. Most of the guys (and one gal) that carry the “aggressive” tag in my club can sometimes cross that line.

But after marinating it in my head, I think a large part of the aggressiveness in Jiu Jitsu actually comes from having a plan. There’s that 1-2-3 transition 2-1 reset 3-1-2 that has the ability to get you from inferior positions to better ones, from fantastic or familiar positions to finishes. I would like to think that this is obvious. But once you step on the mat, nothing undermines the obvious more than reaction and anticipation.

So, as I tend to think very mathematically, the trick is to turn the quantum physics of Jiu Jitsu into 6th grade algebra. What can I do (or even better, what do I need to do) to corner and reduce all these variables?

I think that the biggest constant in the equation is this: Knowing what to do just simply makes it easier to move from one attack or defense to another. Knowing makes it far easier to be aggressive, even if being aggressive is against your nature or your “style”. Sure, you can pick up the pace a little; even show a little more determination and all that. However, more than anything, I think the trick – the real technical trick – to being aggressive is just having a ridiculously detailed topographic map of the terrain… and a gyroscopic compass to get you back on course when you find yourself high-centered in a ravine.

I see this most with my half guard. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, you know that I absolutely love my half guard and will do most anything to get the fight there, sometimes to the detriment of things that are right there for the taking. With the half guard, I have that voice activated, differential GPS start-to-finish map of what I want to do. Other things are contained in a leather bound Rand McNally Atlas. A goodly portion of the rest of my game is an old Windows XP Map Quest printout. And some of it is a street map crudely drawn with crayon on the back of a McDonalds wrapper. There’s still this start-stop, look around, where the hell am I, set of reactionary movements from different positions and/or situations. That start-to-finish coherency, the elusive flow, is hard to find. That demarcation line between need and want is still far too strong. And with Jiu Jitsu, we all know there’s a difference between need and want during a match.

Trying to incorporate different things into my game, like I’m currently trying to do by dicking around in X-Guard, only goes to show me what’s lacking in the things I feel competent with, and in the half guard that I feel I’m more than competent with. But in order to make anything really work, and especially against the bigger/better/faster guys (and gals) that I’m consciously seeking out to train with, I need to find that problem solving equation that will allow for that clear route on the mat, to allow for some aggression to creep in, and to simply help in creating better opportunities.

Four Ways to Win, Four Ways to Lose

This afternoon a couple of guys from the club and I competed at Mission: Submit, which is a local submission only tourney hosted by a relatively new school just across the river. The tourney itself is going on its second year. Myself and three other guys going was kind of a spur of the moment thing. A few of my teammates preregistered and when they got there this morning they found out the “day of” registration fee was significantly reduced, practically to the point of just letting everyone through the door, and they weren’t all that strict on gi or weight. The tourney itself is still trying to find an audience and the hosting school was just trying to get butts through the door to break even. I initially passed on this tourney as last year was a nightmare in terms of logistics, organization, and the quality of refereeing and I imagine that’s why it has yet to catch on. This year was no different; the start time was pushed back three hours, the bullpen was outside of the building, I had an almost 30-minute wait between my first and second match, and all of the bathrooms were out of commission for remodeling.

I did ok, tying for a bronze in the bracket I competed in (Blue, Master, Super Heavy) and got mauled in the Absolute, losing by kimura from the closed guard about 50 seconds in. As usual, nobody showed up that was even relatively close to my age bracket (Senior 5) so I passed on just taking a medal and instead opted to compete with the kiddies. It was a great experience… but it was pretty obvious there was a ringer or two from a certain lower Manhattan academy prowling around on the mats.

Sitting in the stands of that filthy municipal gym and watching the rest of the guys, Yoda made an astute observation about how a few of the kids competing were missing the most important moment in any competition. And that moment happens the second you step off the mats; the moment of reflection.

Whether you’ve won or whether you’ve lost, I think some people lose sight of how helpful it is to immediately reflect on what happened while it’s still zinging around in your head. Yoda, one of our competition coaches, likes to tell us that there are four ways to lose. But you can also easily reverse them and think there are four ways to win too.

1. The other guy/gal was just plain better than you. This is just a fact of the mats. There is always going to be someone out there better than you: Better technique, better conditioning, or maybe a better mind-set. But if you can learn from that person, if you can figure out what they did to beat you or recognize a new set-up to a technique, like the set-up that caught me in that kimura, you win. And if you can fill that hole in your defense from that, that loss definitely becomes a win.

2. You screwed up and made a stupid mistake. That happens too. And it happens to just about everyone once in awhile. Just recognize that it shouldn’t have happened. The other guy didn’t just “get lucky”. Recognize the mistake, do what you need to in drilling to fix it, and get some ‘win’ out of the loss.

3. Bad decision. This also happens, but to a lesser degree than #1 or #2. Sometimes your referee just sucks ass. Just don’t be all eager to blame the ref. At least don’t until you’ve assessed #1 and #2.

4. You step off the mat without considering what just happened. You, my friend, are a dumbass. If you haven’t given any thought to the how and why you lost, or you do nothing but point fingers and lay blame, and in turn don’t do anything to fix it… that is a total, unmitigated failure. You didn’t win, and you sure didn’t learn anything. You are a dumbass.

The good thing is that all four of these are easily avoidable. #3 is the one you have almost no control over… but that one is easily voided out by taking action on #1, #2, and #4.

The Neural Network of Jiu Jitsu

Towards the end of last night’s open mat, my buddy Tim and I were watching one particularly fast-paced match up where two of our brown belts were just in the zone and positively flowing from position to position. They were playing ‘catch and release’, each giving and getting, and it was a thing of beauty. Watching rolls like that always inspires me.

But perhaps more importantly, watching those Teflon smooth, almost effortless rolls also gets me thinking about reflexive combinations and timing.

The importance of timing cannot be overstated in Jiu Jitsu. Once truly mastered (if ever truly), that elusive, effortless Jiu Jitsu can just flow from you. Take this for example. We regularly go through position-specific sparring just before open mat, starting in mount, side control, turtle, etc. Most schools do this but we will sometimes add the wrinkle of limiting one person’s options; they can only pass by stacking, only escape by the back door, only submit by arm triangle, and so on. This does three things; it keeps you cognizant of properly setting things up, helps in developing a game plan, and brings the importance of timing to the forefront. If you can only escape mount by upa, your timing has to be spot on. And it’s not that ‘keep-the-beat-while-dancing’ timing. It’s that split second reaction timing. Reflexive.

A reflex is nothing more than an action triggered by an outside stimulus. That stimulus can be almost anything. Probably the most common example of a reflex is when the Doc smacks your knee with that little rubber mallet and you kick the bedpan across the room. Or it could be something like blinking. Or, it could be when you jerk your hand away after receiving a shock from touching something after walking across a carpeted floor while wearing your Power Ranger footy PJs (I have the Black Ranger ones).

Reactions like the Doctor example are unlearned and involuntary, we just do them. But what about the reflex a drag racer does, mashing down on the go-pedal when he sees the green light? That’s not involuntary, so clearly, reflexive action can be learned. Depending on where you currently are in your Jiu Jitsu, you might have already recognized yourself reacting reflexively or seen it in others.

And by looking at the drag racer example, an interesting phenomenon occurs with reflexes. The more you practice them, the quicker they become. Why is this? In theory you aren’t able to detect the action any quicker, nor is your body becoming faster, so why does response time improve? The answer, of course, is your brain.

The brain is essentially a computer network. I’m not going to get into neural networks and all that, but when you want to do something like, say, tapping your finger, a message is sent down from the brain to the requisite muscles and your finger taps. It’s comparable to sending an email tasking somebody to do something, but with one very big difference. Computer networks have a fixed bandwidth – the speed in which things move – whereas it’s practically unlimited in your melon. In fact, the more you do something, the quicker you are able to do it.

Obviously, for whatever reason, we will hit a wall with speed at some point. But, by continuously practicing something over and over again, both as a motion on its own and as a reaction to our opponent’s action, we will improve our reflexes and lower our response time.

Let’s say you’re learning something for the first time. We start of slow, learning the mechanics, and then gradually start to increase the speed and complexity, right? What we’re doing is building connections from one thing to another in our head. The more we do it, the stronger that link becomes, and the faster the messages travel from your melon to your butterfly hook (or whatever). And over time, the brain will begin “hard wiring” some of these paths in an attempt to streamline and economize it’s processes. Just like breathing, you’ll complete the action without much conscious thought. This is the vitally important role that drilling plays and once you gain a modicum of proficiency, a huge component of that should be combinations and/or transitions.

Why, you ask? If your drill remains simple, your attacks and defense will be too. They will be single-faceted and static. By our very nature as humans, we can have multiple reactions to the same action. One way of doing things simply isn’t enough. By practicing combinations, you’re just broadening that pathway in your brain.

Taking a specific starting point and drilling, drilling and drilling again various combinations off that point, the classic being the triangle/armbar/omoplata for example, your brain will learn the appropriate response in reaction to an action from partner. After some time, your body will do it like you’re not even thinking about it. It’s moments like that which really get me pumped, where I’ve successfully swept someone, or thwarted a sliding lapel choke, before I realize I did it. Lost in the moment so to speak.

The bottom line is this; keep training and before you know it you’ll begin to amaze yourself.

Doppelganger

My instructor closed the class last night with something that, as always, has been bouncing around in my head ever since.  He said, “If you want to be good, just work on your strengths. But if you want to be truly great, work on your weaknesses.”

Makes sense, right?  But lets take a look at this way.  Say you were preparing for a tournament.  You also have an evil Doppelganger, complete with evil goatee, that knows everything about you and your Jiu Jitsu.  Let’s take it one step further and say that your ruggedly handsome Doppelganger then went to all the competing schools and spilled all your dirty little secrets to the guys or gals you’ll be competing against.

Try this little exercise: What, exactly, would they tell them?

Sure, you could use generalities like ‘He has trouble working off his right side’ or some other nebulous thing.

Generalities are not the aim of this exercise.  You need to be really honest with this because it will bring to light those things you need to work on NOW.  There are no perfect players.

For example, if my incredibly manly Doppelganger where to walk into a competing school and waive my dirty skivvies around, it would go something like this:

“He experiences a second or two of panic when you first go knee on belly.”

“He is slow in identifying the entry into any kind of leg lock attack and has no defense against them anyway.”

“He struggles mightily against the DLR and X-Guard.”

And you don’t really have to be as restrictive as I was in my examples, concentrating on only the technical.  You’ve got the physical and mental aspects as well.  You could easily substitute “He’s left-handed and will always try to pass in the direction of his strong side”. Or “Massive aggression right from the hand slap will shut off his brain for a second or two.”  “He’ll recoil hard if you get all Berimboloey and acrobatic.”

Gaining awareness of your weaknesses is the first step in eliminating them.  Give this little exercise a try, you might just be surprised in what it reveals.

But remember, you must first kill your Doppelganger before it decides to murder you and take your place…

 

Relax and Breathe

When I first started Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, all of us newbies did all the usual break-fall techniques until my professor was satisfied that his insurance rates wouldn’t skyrocket every time we stepped on the mat. That is, we drilled correctly falling over and over to minimize the risk of injury to ourselves or others. And out of all of that, I think one of the most important aspects of learning how to fall was the importance placed on relaxing and breathing out when you hit the mat.

Why do I bring this up you ask?

Last night I was partnered with the class cutie, and I mean nothing derogatory by that. She’s just effervescent and cute as a button (and ferocious when she wants to be). We were working on setting up a basic hip throw, turning into the throwing position and loading your partner up on your hip nine times and then executing the actual technique on the tenth rep. My partner quickly and efficiently moved through her reps and then came the fateful tenth. She absolutely ripped me to the ground.

The thing is, I had lost count of her reps and was meandering around in my own head. The tenth rep came out of nowhere for me. And as it’s completely natural when someone plants you into the mat to say “Oh shit…” then hold your breath and tense up in anticipation of having your spine discombobulated, that’s exactly what I did.

I hit the ground stiff as a board with my lungs as full of air as I could get them. As soon as I hit, back completely flat and face turned towards her, about a gallon of snot, slime and God knows what exploded out of my nose and completely coated her. Do you remember the movie Ghostbusters? Yeah, it looked like I slimed her.

But get this; her reaction was completely not what you would expect. She wrinkled her nose while inspecting the goop running down her gi top, and said “Hmph.” Then, without missing a beat, she just wiped as much goop off as she could using one of my schools omnipresent towels and matter-of-factly held her hand out to me and said, “Your turn, Gramps.”

The moral of the story is this: Relax and breathe, and maybe you can avoid looking like a dumbass.

Minions

Anybody ever read an interview or view a presentation with someone a generation or two removed from you and wonder, “What the hell is this guy talking about?”

Or maybe you’ve been part of project group at work where one member was so specialized in one little facet that when it came time to discuss the project as a whole you weren’t even sure they were speaking the same language as you.  Sure, there were words and stuff.  And they were arranged into sentences that for the most part seemed to abide by a few of the rules of grammar and syntax.  Even then you still weren’t able to draw much understanding from them.

Basically, the ideas being expressed were not passing from their head to yours through the medium of language.

I’m finding that when I’m helping out with the really little kid’s class, the exact same thing is happening… and I’m on the causing end of it.

It’s not that I cannot relate to little kids.  The Wife and I raised triplet boys and I am currently aging prematurely trying to do the same with two teenage girls (Side note: Never have hot daughters, it will kill you slowly).  I have crawler/toddler grandkids.  Kids love me.  But there’s these disconnects when I’m trying to explain something that doesn’t involve the nuts and bolts of a technique to the “Elmo” set.  Explaining the concepts behind Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and the martial arts in general, is proving difficult.

My professor is BIG on tradition, and one of the things he has mandated for the little kid’s class is that they be quizzed gently on the general knowledge and history of BJJ, Judo, and so on.  It’s sort of a catechism-type Q&A deal while they’re stretching after warming up. 

One of the standard questions is, “What were Jigoro Kano’s two mottoes?” Now, if you’re not all that familiar with Mr. Kano (the founder of Judo), he was often quoted as saying that Judo was “for the mutual welfare & benefit” of the two judoka trying to flip each other like an omelet.  The second was that Judo was the practical application of “Minimum Effort, Maximum Efficiency.”

Try explaining those two concepts to a five-year old.  So, for the purposes of the kid’s class the answers are slightly re-worded to be: “You and me both win” and “Find the bestest way for you and me to both win.”

I’m not going to get into the ‘everybody wins and there are no losers’ thing, which I personally find to be ridiculous, but this approach has actually worked pretty well.  But occasionally a bump in the road pops up.  For example, if we both win, why are there are other games and contests we do in class where there are definitely clear winners and losers?

I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain this to the six-year old brain, and hadn’t figured out how to phrase it right.  That is, I was having trouble before I downloaded a copy of As We Speak, written by Peter Myers and Shawn Nix.  Through the concepts explained in this book, I’ve been able to take how my cranky old-man brain works and distill my messages down to the partially ADD-riddled six-year old brain, even though that’s not the work’s primary goal. 

But even then I wanted to make sure that these two concepts were getting through so I posed this question to them: “How is it that both you and I win if we have a tournament and one kid wins and the other loses?”

Seven-year old Aidan, who I will admit is one of my favorite kids in the class, piped up and said, “One kid gets a medal and feels good and the other kid gets to learn new junk and stuff.  Both kids win.”

And I have to say that I was totally floored by that.

Creating an army of genius minions well versed in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, whose sole reason for existence is to subjugate the world and bend it to my every whim, was #23 on the bucket list. 

I just never thought I’d be able to cross it off this soon.