Wednesday, 25 November 2009
As you may already know I’m going through a big grappling phase at the moment. I’ve been to
Rio and off the back of that, I’ve started my competition phase. I took a NoGi bout – which I didn’t perform too well in. The event got the better of me more than anything else. I never took time to consider the arena I was going to be fighting in. So consequently when I walked through the doors and into the main hall BOOM!! it hit me and I never really recovered from it. My head was out of step with my body and my game quickly fell apart. The mind and body do need to be in sync and that was proof. But hey you live and learn and that is why I compete, so I can get better. I will win far more fights than I loose so I don’t care about one loss other than to pick up the valuable lessons that can be learned from my mistakes.
SO!! this got me thinking back to something Ben said to me when I was in Rio –little Victories - and I think it’s really valid. Not so much when you compete because in that case you want big Victories but during your training in BJJ or any other system for that matter. When you are learning new drills and techniques you can’t always do them right away. You need to train your body to do what it is you are being shown and as we all know, at times, our bodies have a mind of their own!! This is where small Victories come in to play. Specifically, Ben was helping me and the rest of the crew with our BJJ sparring/rolling. We were rolling with extremely good BJJ guys and we were getting submitted - often. What Ben started to help us do was not look so much at the bout as whole because quite often we lost on points or submission, but at us doing certain moves successfully. For example, he managed to pull of returning to guard from a bad position or he swept a brown belt or even just managed to get into the correct position for a submission attempt. With this new view on the roll with the high level guys, we were coming out of the roll (after tapping twenty times!!) with little Victories of our own and feeling great for it. “Hey Ben I did the Godfather sweep on Tocco and he said good!! HAHAH”
When you train, whether that’s in Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai sometimes it’s best to work for the little Victories and make them happen more and more often. Remember to pivot that foot on the Thai round kick, keep your hands up, keep your chin down, don’t put your hands on the mat in the guard…… Come out of training session or a sparring session knowing that you may have tapped or been tagged but at least your hands were up this time, all the time. Now you can move on to the next little Victory.
So when all the little Victories are in place – that’s when the BIG VICTORIES come!!
Good Luck
Keep training hard, safe and use your head!!
Rio and off the back of that, I’ve started my competition phase. I took a NoGi bout – which I didn’t perform too well in. The event got the better of me more than anything else. I never took time to consider the arena I was going to be fighting in. So consequently when I walked through the doors and into the main hall BOOM!! it hit me and I never really recovered from it. My head was out of step with my body and my game quickly fell apart. The mind and body do need to be in sync and that was proof. But hey you live and learn and that is why I compete, so I can get better. I will win far more fights than I loose so I don’t care about one loss other than to pick up the valuable lessons that can be learned from my mistakes.SO!! this got me thinking back to something Ben said to me when I was in Rio –little Victories - and I think it’s really valid. Not so much when you compete because in that case you want big Victories but during your training in BJJ or any other system for that matter. When you are learning new drills and techniques you can’t always do them right away. You need to train your body to do what it is you are being shown and as we all know, at times, our bodies have a mind of their own!! This is where small Victories come in to play. Specifically, Ben was helping me and the rest of the crew with our BJJ sparring/rolling. We were rolling with extremely good BJJ guys and we were getting submitted - often. What Ben started to help us do was not look so much at the bout as whole because quite often we lost on points or submission, but at us doing certain moves successfully. For example, he managed to pull of returning to guard from a bad position or he swept a brown belt or even just managed to get into the correct position for a submission attempt. With this new view on the roll with the high level guys, we were coming out of the roll (after tapping twenty times!!) with little Victories of our own and feeling great for it. “Hey Ben I did the Godfather sweep on Tocco and he said good!! HAHAH”
When you train, whether that’s in Jiu Jitsu or Muay Thai sometimes it’s best to work for the little Victories and make them happen more and more often. Remember to pivot that foot on the Thai round kick, keep your hands up, keep your chin down, don’t put your hands on the mat in the guard…… Come out of training session or a sparring session knowing that you may have tapped or been tagged but at least your hands were up this time, all the time. Now you can move on to the next little Victory.So when all the little Victories are in place – that’s when the BIG VICTORIES come!!
Good Luck
Keep training hard, safe and use your head!!
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