Specialization: Tokui Waza, Tai Otoshi, Judo, and 10,000 Hours within Training Methodology

We do a lot of drilling at my new academy, Zenith BJJ. Most of class time is spent drilling, actually. Morning class is almost exclusively drilling. My coach has a wrestling background. I started grappling coming from Judo. The concept of tirelessly grinding out focused repetition on a set of positions, submissions, and transitions, or throws was how I started in grappling.

When I was actively competing in Judo, I logged at least 300-500 uchikomis or "fit-ins" as we call them each day (outside of class time/practice). In class when instructed most of my mind capacity/focus is on fit-ins or set-ups for my chosen throw, Tai Otoshi. You can practice against a wall, with a partner, with rubber tire tubes (the way I did) or with elastic bands.  The throw which I have unequivocally and undoubtedly spent more time and energy studying and trying, failing, and attempting is Tai Otoshi. I enter with a modified, almost Sei Otoshi grip, rather than the steering wheel circular kazushi motion often taught classically. I'll let hardcore Judo purists debate what to cal it.
Whatever it is, this is my speciality. I can explain how I set it up against a right handed player, against a left handed player, in a circular motion, going sideways, diagonal...whatever. No matter what I am doing on my feet, if I am playing my A game, everything has this throw in mind as the end goal. It took me roughly 3 years of practice and failure to begin scoring and winning with this technique in competition. I have acked any black belt with whom I have trained how they do it, how they were taught, and how they teach it and I take it in and balance it with my current knowledge.

This is mastery. That is not saying that I have this throw mastered, or that I know everything, or that I am the best.
To me, "mastery" is the deliberate, methodical pursuit of progressive improvement.

 

Who I'm watching, What I'm learning, What I'm training....

Been studying a lot of Lucas Lepri and his passing lately. In fact, I've watched every match of his I can find on youtube/the internet. In particular looking at how it's changed from his worst appearance in the finals of the mundials (2007 against Vinicius I think), his repeated matches over several years with JT Torres, and culminating with his matches against Satoshi and JT at this years Mundials. He's become far more insistent in how he passes and his passing game appears relatively narrow (in a good way) with the positions he gets to and the manner in which he breaks down the open guards of those he faces.

I've been working on my mentality toward competing by watching a lot of Malcolm Gladwell and reading research regarding expert/skill acquisition.

Ericcson in addition elaborates on the tenants of what that 10,000 hours actually means: notably things like desire, time spent honing your craft consistently, and deliberate practice (along with expert feedback/mentorship).

The takeaways (among others) are that mindlessly training hard is not the best use of training time. Forming a systematic approach to training and being open to feedback and match analysis, however, are ways to optimize training. Training one way, or just grinding in the same drills are also not the most effective use of your training time.

I've been going back and rewatching matches for my entire year at purple belt. Looking not only for mistakes but also where I've been effective: namely with a few exceptions my open guard sweeps have been considerably more consistent than my open guard passing. Where I've gotten caught and/or where I've lost matches has begun with being swept while passing with only about 3-4 matches where I was not able to get the sweep. In the matches where I couldn't get the sweep, I didn't chain together my open guard sweeps and various types of open guard, ala DLR, Reverse DLR, deep half, spider, et cetera.

I made some hard choices and quit my weekend job to be most rested for my referee and competition opportunities and also not mix up my sleep schedule by working downtown weekends then back to my full-time job during the week.
I've begun drilling 3-4 days a week in the morning for about 90 minutes in addition to training at night and on the weekends.

Phsycially, I've been drilling my guard passing and combining my knee through guard passing with a backstep pass and some other nuances to my guard passing. I've been logging anywhere from 60-80-100 reps at a time in sets of 20. 

What I'm Watching/Reading/Learning

Ryan Hall is big on concepts and ideas as opposed to just a list of moves or even a series of movies presented as an approach to say guard passing or closed guard or whatever.

He's big on trying to articulate the "why" not just the "how" and after hearing a purple belt and brown belt at my gym saying things they attributed to Ryan Hall, I've begun listening to the man talk.
 

Lucas Lepri guard passing: Lepri recently won the Mundials in 2014 at black belt/faixa preta and defeated the licks of Roberto Souza and JT Torres and in those matches his guard passing in particular was on point. The man has been nigh close to beating Leandro Lo in the past but Leandro has moved up a division and in Lo's absence, Lepri took the gold and the world championship. He runs roughshod over Souza's guard here. Lepri ties together his torreando, to his underhook/knee through, to his hip/forearm control/knee through pass for a swarm that just simply crowds and overwhelms Souza's guard ad nauseum.
 

Hannibal Barca: if you're going to fail, "do so while daring greatly."

 

 

Something I've been reading and re-reading lately is the work of K. Anders Ericsson. Rather than rely on our own taught and acquired through the social construct of life preconceived notions of how we get good at things (often we fall back on the "they must be a natural" myth), I've been seeking out research and data on what it takes and how someone becomes good at something. A lot of the research shows and utterly disproves the socially accepted concept being "a natural". That historically, we lack perspective in judging the genius of most innovations, and historically, in those times, the so-called experts also lacked the ability to discern what was novel from what was just plain poorly conceived. The data and research also goes on to clarify the real qualities you will find in almost anyone who attains a high level of skill and elite level performance has an innate drive to mastery/rage to master as it is called, access to qualified instructors/feedback of a specialized nature, and the will to engage in deliberate/isolated practice that far exceeds their peers.

It also goes on to relate that it's roughly 10 years to mastery, and that virtually no amount of time less will suffice. It's good in the sense that it truly does level the playing field mentally, or perceptually for those of us who have bought into this socially constructed-accepted belief of "naturals" and that natural ability account for a very tiny deviation in actual skill acquisition. It's bad in the sense that what it truly shows is that the only route, the only true path is long, intense, directed and deliberate practice and thousands of hours on the grind of learning, but tied to a will and desire to learn/master.

Onto the raw information/published materials -

Science of skill acquisition, click HERE.

More science of skill acquisition and expertise, click HERE.

And then.....more science of skill acquisition and development of expertise/mastery, click HERE.

 

Kit Dale: Fast Tracking Jiu-Jitsu Progress

I first took note of Kit Dale when he fought a very close match against Keenan at brown belt *last year I believe?* and up until then, had not really heard about him. In the mean time, he's acquitted himself quite well including an appearance in the Copa Podio Middlweight Grand Prix.

I'm actually not one to rush when it comes to getting good. I'm a big advocate of deliberate and measured practice computing into incremental progress. Coming from Judo, where my competition game is predicated on perhaps 2-4/several throws and the multitude of set-ups, getting really, really good at a few positions and then progressing from there appeals to my Judo sensibilities.