Grading, John Will seminar
On Saturday I completed my second grading in BJJ. I now have a second blue strip on my belt. I had to complete the white-1 and white-2 gradings to get my second stripe, and next time I'll do the white-1, white-2 and white-3 gradings. It carries on like this all the way to the end.
Something I learnt only recently is that the number of stripes available at each belt reduces towards black. This means there's four blue stripes you need to get on your white, and three purple stripes on your blue, and two brown stripes on your purple, and one black stripe on your brown.
I have a long way to go, but I'm on schedule. It normally takes about two and a half years (of training 2-3 times a week) to get your blue belt. That's my intention.
On Sunday I had a two and half hour seminar with my coach's coach - John Will. He comes over every four months to coincide with our gradings so that he can award the coloured belts.
We spent the first hour doing escapes from back control, starting with the ideal situation where you've managed to start the escape early on and they don't have your neck, and later progressing through to the worst case scenario where you're about to get choked out. I really liked how we progressed from best to worst case with a few in-between situations. Things are never cut-and-dry on the mat so knowing that you can get out of a situation regardless of how deep in you are is powerful.
John gave a really good analogy about the differences between white belt beginners and more experienced BJJers. It was in relation to a comment that someone made about the escape from back control when they have your neck (worst case) being "hard". He said that it wasn't meant to be easy, and that a black belt has to work just as hard to get out of that situation as a white belt, the difference being that the black belt is less likely to let the situation get that bad to start with. It's one of those things that makes sense when it's pointed out to you - because they've got a coloured belt they don't get super-human strength, so if they have to hip-escape away from someone who's 100kg it'll be just as hard for them as it is for me.
He likened it to boggy ground. The white belt takes a few steps and ends up wading in up to their neck before realising "hey, wait - this isn't good". The blue belt goes in up to their waist, the purple gets their legs wet. The brown puts their foot on the ground and doesn't like the squelch so backs out immediately and the black doesn't take any steps because they just know it's boggy.
The second half was guard passing and I found this really useful. I always get caught with an arm left inside when I perform a basic guard pass which means I get triangled easily. As a result I'm looking to expand my guard passing techniques and Adam's shown me a few from the blue belt syllabus which have helped. It was interesting because we were learning foot locks and legbars which are usually reserved for blue and above. As a white belt you don't have the control to apply these locks safely so you're not taught them. You have to be a purple belt to use a leg lock in a competition. From the taste I had though I think those locks will be a lot of fun to learn.
I bought a DVD that John and another black belt from the US have produced which focusses on Mastering Armbars. It gave me a good opportunity to learn how to rip a DVD under Linux, because I wanted each DVD chapter as a seperate file on my Xbox. In the end I used dvd::rip which worked a treat, even through the interface is clunky. My CPU sat at 100% for about 6 hours but I now have 33 individual AVI files totalling 1.4GB ;)
Where do you train? John Will was at our (my old) school, Progressive, on the weekend, my bro-in-law got his blue belt (but Progressive don’t do gradings they do the old “when you’re ready, you’ll get your belt from John” - it takes ages but I was told this is the old skool way of doing it, sounds frustrating!).
Congrats on advancing away from muddy situations! :)
Sorry, but I have to say it “karate bad, cause much ouch to practitioner, less so to opponent”…hmm, maybe I’m biased though, all those years of kickboxer brainwashing…
BJJ has two main “styles” being Gracie and Machado. If your club trains in Machado then John Will is the kingpin of your club, and it sounds like that’s the case.
A lot of our higher ranked belts (purple, senior blue) are the same in that they don’t get stripes; it’s a solid colour at a time. My coach Adam Metcalf has never had a stripe, instead advancing full-colour at a time.
The problem with white belts jumping straight to blue is that in competitions you don’t know a person’s “real” position in the rankings. It doesn’t make much difference once you hit the mat, but sizing up your opponent before the match is harder if you’re sure what skill level they’re at. Granted, any white belt without tips in a competition is probably of a higher grade.
I still think Karate is a great art if you’re lining 100 people up in rank formation and “holding the line” defending against an oncoming line of opponents. Unfortunately this isn’t practical today, and you’re right, a lot of the actions involve completely extending the arm/leg which causes locking and nastiness over a prolonged period.
Ah, I see, didn’t realise. Fair enough. Although my bro-in-law took sev years to get from white to ?green to blue. Our principal instructor (he rocks in terms of being a true mixed martial artist) has been training in BJJ for 6+ years and is only a purple belt. I thought that system was the standard, glad to hear about other ways too, keep sharing!
I basically did a grand total of two grappling seminars before my violent lifestyle (6+y kickboxing, 1+y kobudo, any other seminars/one offs I could get to) and having hyperflexibility combined to create stress fractures in my hip, so I am trying to get back to boxing, and eventually back to “real” training, but it’s a long way off, just happy to live vicariously through other people sharing and of course watching lots of UFC!
Another fine analogy from JBW. Always helps put BJJ training into perspective. Thanks for sharing.
Phil