Sunday, 31 January 2010
I received an interesting article this week from a friend of mine. The article was about Brazillian Jiu Jitsu and in particular how belts and the expectations of performance associated with them, can cause you 'difficulties'. Essentially, the problem being that a higher grade belt should not tap or struggle with a lower grade belt. Or in fact if your surname is Gracie, you should automatically be better than everyone else. Of course this isn’t true, because we all develop at different stages and within the complexities of BJJ different parts of our game are at different levels. For example, you maybe a blue belt but there will be aspects of your game that are perhaps better than blue belt and other aspects that are at the level of white belt. Overtime as you head towards your black belt these tend to level out. But if you are rolling as a blue belt against a white belt and your guard game is only as good as a white belt and the white belt has passes as good as a blue belt. Then you will probably get passed. If you were playing the guard pass game for instance then you’ve just lost to a white belt. You will then proceed to beat yourself up and others might comment that a white beat a blue on the mat. Should this lead to the blue belt giving up and not return to training. Of course not. The explanation above should help you understand what may have happened, with the lesson being the blue belt needs to work a certain area more. In other words every defeat is an indication of an area that you must work harder on to improve. This is one of the great values of contesting your martial arts skills and you should also understand that just because you are a higher grade belt doesn’t mean you will automatically beat any lower grade belts.
So after reading the article it got me thinking that this problem is not restricted to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu alone. As a Jeet Kune Do student I cross train many different systems and I can see the 'difficulties' associated with achievement in any system. In particular, when you get promoted to an instructor level, be it apprentice, assistant, stand-in or whatever, you gain this usually because of personal achievement and merit. Whatever the reason, you are now thrust in front of the rest of your peers and students to lead the way for a particular class or session. Here is where the problem can begin though, as there are two types of instructor. Those that instruct the entire class and those that set drills and also take part. In my experience, the best results for students is when the instructor chooses to only instruct, demonstrate and assist and most instructors tend to do this. Thus choosing to train at other times. The problem manifests itself however, the more you teach because this normally leads to training less. Over time this has a detrimental affect on the instructor, whom if you remember got his instructorship through merit. The effect on the instructor is that his skills becomes r
usty, his fitness and strength slowly evaporate and he becomes a shadow of his former self. Now the instructor avoids sparring and any contested training because he can no longer deliver the results he once did and his students can get the better of him. Thus the instructor begins to avoid all contested training and only teaches, often supplementing his knowledge through DVDs, youTube and the like but not actually training and contesting his abilities, to develop his knowledge and experience.
This to me is the Disease of Instructorship and is something that is far worse than a higher grade being tapped by a lower grade. It is something that every instructor should carefully guard against. Wearing your jeans whilst your students start to roll is not the way to grow and become better!
I particularly like BJJ and the way it works because the black belts can do and teach, due to the fact belts are not generally give
n unless there is competitive merit as well as teaching ability and knowledge of the art. Of course, BJJ is not the only art that takes this approach but for me it was one art that springs to mind.
My instructor, Sifu Marc McFann is one of the best examples I know, of someone who has great teaching abilities yet still contests his skills with his students and through competing after more than thirty years training and learning within the arts.
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