Buna echipa.
With us being in lockdown again I didn’t expect that this month would be so good. It’s been a great month training with you all at The Bunker, so to start I want to say multumesc mult! to everyone who have kept training. We covered Escapes all month looking at escaping mount, side control, back control, half guard, closed guard and knee on belly… phew!
I’ve decided to change our newsletter a bit as we have quite a few great conversations in the gym pre and post training sessions and a lot of them give me things to think about. What I hope is to give you an insight into how I think about grappling and also provoke more conversations. For the first one I am going to cover a conversation I had with Robi.
Progress as a Spectrum
When I think about progress I think about grappling* as a spectrum. Which follows thus:
Stage 1 - Grappling happens to you.
If you can remember your first lesson you will remember just constantly being overwhelmed by people who had even just a little bit more training than you. I think this is the first stage of grappling where things just happen to you and you spend all your time just trying to stop them. This is the beginner stage but it also occurs when you meet people with significantly more skill than you.
At this stage the grappler needs to focus on defence. If you are hard to submit or are comfortable being uncomfortable you can begin to relax and think.
Stage 2 - Grappling happens
This is where most people are. Once you have some technique you will be able to make grappling happen. Neither person has absolute control and the exchanges are pretty equal. To be honest I think for most people this will be where they get to. Some days you’ll be the hammer, somedays the nail but overall you can apply your grappling knowledge to make things reasonably equal.
I sometimes reference this in training when I am watching sparring as opportunistic. When a submission or position presents itself one grappler capitalises but there was little forethought leading to the action.
Stage 3 - You make Grappling happen
Anyone who has been lucky enough to train with someone truly high level will recognise this in the same way that the novice does after their first lesson. Expert grapplers will make their opponent input 99% of the effort and will direct them towards the mistake that they want to capitalise on. At this point you are making the other person move in a way that will allow you to complete the technique you want.
I’ve been talking in training about the idea of limiting your submissions or working a specific area of your grappling. I think this is one part of making grappling happen. If you can be disciplined to work towards a predefined specific goal you will improve your grappling overall as you will be able to return to a position or submission from any phase of the match.
Why is this important?
I think that you can use this as a guide to your own progress. Try to think about your grappling as on a spectrum where the absolute novice has grappling happen to them by everyone they face and the expert makes grappling happen to everyone they face. As you progress you can check in with yourself by asking, am I making grappling happen or is it just happening?
*I use ‘grappling’ here as I have found this is the same for other grappling arts; wrestling and judo not just jiu jitsu.
ATTENDANCE LEADERBOARD
Congratulations to Alex ‘Crazy Horse’ Valea this month who only missed a single session (and that was because he had already attended one that day) in the whole month of April. His progress speaks for itself.
1. | Alex Valea | 22 |
2.= | Razvan Catilina | 11 |
2.= | Robert Kis | 11 |
3. | Razvan Mihonesc | 10 |
4. | Andrei Molnar | 8 |
5.= | Alex Enache | 5 |
5.= | Bianca Todo | 5 |
6.= | Raresh Pa | 2 |
6.= | Andrei Lazar | 2 |
7.= | Darius Imbrea | 1 |
7.= | Octavian Margineanu | 1 |
Finally
We are back in the gym on luni 3 Mai. Next weekend sambata 8 Mai we are heading up to our friends in Cluj-Napoca JiuJitsu so it would be GREAT to have you join us.
I’ll leave the final words to Mr Valea!
