Tour GAME is your COMPASS

In BJJ, your 'Game' is your compass. It is your plan - should everything go well. It provides you with direction and clarifies your 'intention'. Your 'game' is like the tip of the pyramid - but let's not confuse that with your 'foundation'.
Therein lies the quandry.
Do we focus on the foundation or do we focus on trying to achieve a very specific goal? Going into a match with a specific game-plan, in some ways, robs us of the ability to 'adapt'. So we need a correct mix of the following ingredients:
- intention (game-plan)
- ability to adapt
The most basic model that seems to work well, is to first provide a foundation (basics) and then have the student focus on their particular 'game' - thereby developing a certain amount of 'intent'. As more and more techniques are introduced to them over time, these techniques are added on top of their 'basics' - so with the pyramid analogy in mind, we can picture the foundation upon which all future techniques are 'stacked', giving us more ability to 'adapt' should the need arise - along with the tip of the pyramid which represents our 'intention' or the small group of techniques we are trying to finish with.
My coach Rigan Machado once explained it to me in this way:
"Your game is very focussed like the end of a funnel - with endless amounts of techniques and new ideas being poured into the much larger 'opening'. All these techniques serve to help you better achieve your ultimate end - which is to finish the fight at the pointy end of the funnel.
I hope I havn't confused. These are concepts not easily captured in a single sentence.
Best wishes,
JBW

Fresh from the USA ...

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MY FRIENDS? THEY HAVE WAY TOO MUCH FREE TIME ON THEIR HANDS!
FUNNY STUFF THOUGH.
JBW

Emotion helps hardwire

People tend to be hard on themselves.
I see this on the mat all the time; someone makes a mistake and they beat themselves up over it. Whenever I can, I try to eradicate this response. The culture on my mat is actually the opposite – if someone makes a mistake, I encourage them to ‘purge’ it immediately from their mind; I don’t allow students to berate themselves over a mistake. In fact, if they get it ‘perfect’ – then I give them permission to stop for a second and ‘celebrate’ the success. We do NOT celebrate mistakes – and by that, I mean I discourage any kind of ‘emotional’ reaction to mistakes.
Studies have proved that we tend to ‘hardwire’ responses to specific situations much more readily if we experience a strong emotional reaction. When we take a moment to think about it, it makes sense:
Our early ancestor goes down to the river to get water; sees a crocodile burst out of the wet stuff and pull a wilderbeast in to it’s death – powerful emotional response. So now we REMEMBER – beware the water’s edge! We only need see something like once and ‘learning takes place’. Powerful emotion makes for powerful memories and hardwires our physical responses.
So when a student makes a mistake, I don’t want them to indulge in an emotional response to that mistake – I don’t want any reaction to it at all. Conversely, when they do something the way we want it to be done - we do want to attach an emotional response to that experience – we do want to hardwire that success.
So never ‘beat yourself up’ over errors – but do ‘celebrate’ success. Strong emotion cements learning. Check your habits.
JBW

Martial Arts Values ...

A few days ago I had a nice discussion with Mr Chuck Norris about the importance of 'values and ethics' in the martial arts training environment. It was my contention that as forward thinking martial artists, we want to embrace new developments emerging from the MMA trend but without the 'attitude' and 'lack of values' that seem to come with them. Chuck agreed wholeheartedly, as did several hundred black belts who were present - it seems that I am not alone in looking ahead to a time where we see a martial arts landscape that embraces a healthy marriage of MMA training and traditional martial arts values (respect, loyalty, integrity, etc).
In fact, I feel strongly that the most succesfull martial arts schools of the next decade will be those that embrace this very concept.
Today's public is a highly informed public. They know what MMA and BJJ are - and they are walking into their local martial arts schools expecting these things to be on offer. MMA has permeated our culture - and here I am talking about our non-martial arts public. You can walk into a fashion clothing store in an upscale American mall and buy Tapout shirts and other MMA branded clothing. It's everywhere. The world is changing rapidly - how martial arts school-owners respond to these changes will impact strongly on how well they survive in the future.
Interesting times.
JBW

The underlying structure

Yes - it's true - I am a self confessed learning junkie. I love learning and I love teaching. The martial arts is really just the subject matter I fell into - but it just as easily could have been something else - ultimately, it wouldn't have mattered - my approach would have been the same.
I look at the structure that lies beneath the technique. The trick is to understand that particular blend of bio-mechanics, leverage and strategical elements that make a thing work. All this is not necessary if you just want to 'do a thing' - but if you really want to understand it, you have to start really looking, really noticing.
With BJJ for example, pick thirty techniques - just thirty - and tear them apart until you really understand each and every element that makes each of them work. Understand the angles, the leverage, the mechanics, the 'firing-order' of those mechanical elements - do this - and you will easily be able to understand any other physical technique you ever see.
I see it all as a kind of language. A language of 'movement'. And like any language, once you understand how the grammatical rules work, then you have it for life. Once the underlying structure of the language is understood, it's just a matter of expanding your vocabulary over time - indeed, over the course of the rest of your life.
When I am teaching BJJ (or MMA for that matter), I always try educate the students in as many elements of the underlying structure as I can. The earlier they acquire the habit of 'understanding' (as opposed to just looking and copying), the better off they will be. It all starts with 'noticing' - 'noticing' and 'thinking'. A part of my job as a teacher of the martial arts is to have my students do just that - notice and think!

Well - I'm of to Vegas early in the morning for the UFAF convention. Time to head into San Fransisco and get a few chores done and buy a few trinkets for my family.
Best wishes all,
JBW

Another day - another mascot!

At last - the Century Supershow is over. After packing away up our mat and booth, we said goodbye to lots of friends before heading to dinner with nice mix of Aussie and American martial arts mates. My new Alpha MMA program was a monstrous success - I would have to say probably the most successful new product at the show. MMA is definitely the fastest growing sport in the USA - and so school owners are scrambling to get on board early. Already we have around 35 schools that are making their MMA start with this program. I expect their will be hundreds within a year or two. I am pumped.
I get on the mat with a stack of school-owners tomorrow, who are using the BJJ program that I have been promoting here for some years now - that will be great. After that, I get two days rest in San Fransisco before heading on up to Las Vegas to teach for Chuck Norris. These conventions are generally not a load of fun, at least not for me; they are long and gruelling days, no time to eat properly, or sleep properly for that matter - they certainly tale their toll. If anyone out there has illusions of this sort of thing being a fun-filled and jet-setting lifestyle - think again - this is WORK, and not the exciting and interesting kind, like ACTUAL training - this is talking, and listening, business and politics - a far cry from the things I like most about the martial arts world.
Still, there are some very nice people sprinkled in amongst the ego's - and there sure are plenty of those. It's a weird scene. I didn't have time to take any shots thins trip - with the exception of this cute one with one of te mascots stalking around. I think it's a dragon - not quite sure.
Well, time to tie up a few loose ends before hitting the hay early (before midnight). A huge day tomorrow. Stay well - I promise more intersting blogs once I get through this weekend.
JBW

Deep South

Here in Orlando, Florida. I am manning both the mat and the booth at the MAIA (or should I say Century) Supershow. it's pretty good - nice to have a few Aussie mates here, Frank Monea, Rachael Birmingham and Fari Saliveski to keep me sane. Did a seminar for Brett Bannister and Steve Hammersley (one of Chuck Norris top instructors) somewhere out in Swampland (New Smyrna) last night - it was very fun - both of my hosts were generous to a fault; extremely nice people who I enjoy spending time with.
Got a good five hours sleep last night, after traveling 30 hours to get here. felt pretty good today - drank nearly a half a jar of honey to keep me going. Talking to so may people at the show that I have nearly lost my voice. I think my new MMA curriculum is going to be a big hit.
Brian Johnson, a Black Belt student of mine (and David Meyer) is down from Seattle to help us out - as is Jeff Robison (from Cinncinatti - Ohio). So the work load is not so bad.
More of the same tomorrow - then we have a blue belt testing for some of Chuck's people before heading back to San Fransisco for a day of rest - then it's off to vegas for the UFAF convention, where I will be teaching hundreds of Norris Organization (UFAF) students for couple of days. The beat rolls on - best get some food into me before I hit the hay - I think I may have overdosed on honey.
Be well everyone - I shall try to get down a more interesting blog over the next few days.
JBW

Rough Hands

My eight year old has calloused hands – I love that! And eight year old SHOULD have callouses on their hands. Kids should be swinging off the monkey bars, climbing trees, jumping, grabbing, leaping and flipping. I show my age I saying this – but when I was a kid we were out scavenging in the local dump for bits and pieces to make a billy-cart; we would be out catching lizards, crawling through caves, and climbing trees. Today it’s very different. The dumps are council-run – god forbid a child be found playing in the muck there; lizards and native species are protected and no-one is allowed to go catching them (probably a good thing??) – kinds are more likely to be found finding their way through a nintendo or playstation maze than an actual cave – and as far as trees go; we now all live in the suburbs.
I’m not saying it was a better world thirty years ago; there are many advantages of living now (travel opportunities, information availability, better medicine, etc) but there are some great things that have ‘gone out with the bath-water’.
The rough and tumble playing style of yesterday, built healthy kids. I love rough play with my boy Felix – as a result – at eight years old, he has no trouble standing on a ball and balancing there for five minutes – no trouble running six laps of the school oval – no trouble doing chin-ups or push-ups – no trouble being the natural athlete he was naturally engineered to be.
Callouses on the hands – love it!
JBW

Walking the tightrope ...

This blog could well have been entitled 'the chicken or the egg?' - for I want to talk about the order of things, in terms of how we acquire new skills. Again, I am flying in the face of mainstream thinking here but the vast amount of empirical data/experience that I have acquired overs the years tells me that what I am about to suggest is absolutely the way it really works - read on ...
If we want to learn how to do something new - like, walk a tightrope for example - we will need to have/acquire a new kind of balance right? I mean, it's a tightrope - it's not going to be easy! When I look around at teaching models the world over, far and away the most common approach is to try to wait until you have this new set of 'balancing skills' before you tsrat practicing on the tightrope. This can work - eventually.
In my experience though, I more often see it unfold the other way around ... it's when we get on the tightrope and try to walk it, that our brain says ... 'Oh, you need THOSE kind of skills, THAT kind of balance ... no problem, here it is!'
In other words, we do the thing and THEN we learn the skills. I think this is true of many, many things. I see people Do 'property' - and after they have DONE it, they then learn more and understand more about doing it - about what it is they have done. I think that the UNDERSTANDING comes after the DOING.
In the world of BJJ for example - I don't wait until my students have 'sticky hooks' before I teach them a swag of 'hooking sweeps' - they learn the sweeps and then they GET the sticky hooks. The way I see it, we have to let our mind/body machine know clearly what it is we want by the DOING before it will provide us with the necessary skills to do it.
I hope this makes sense to everyone - it is pre-dawn here right now, I just arose this morning very early to get this and a few other bits and pieces done before the sun gets up and the serious part of the day is underway.
Best wishes all - I hope this gets you thinking.
Final words - to borrow the nike catchphrase ...
JUST DO IT!

JBW