Challenge those that are better than you

           I remember playing a game with one of the blue belts at my gym.  He called it, “where’s your arm”.  Every thirty seconds or so he would ask me, “where’s your arm?” precisely before he locked in an armbar.  I had left my arm out of position.  I always left my arms out of position.  And Jason never snatched the armlock up quickly. He had already established control over me, so he took his time finishing the armbar slowly and gracefully, while I thrashed around before finally accepting the submission, and tapping.

It seemed like everyone I trained with was extensively better than I was. Like every round of training was spent getting smashed and tapped out repeatedly; any moment of relaxation given to me out of pity.  My presence of mind and attempts to rework gameplans meant so little when compared to the experience of my fellow practitioners. Those were the days of immediate development.  I had more information thrown at me than I could process.  Each day was a new person to learn from. Every partner was immaculate in their abilities, and the constant uphill battles brought me repeatedly to peak performance.

It is easy to forget those days.  Now, as an upper belt at my gym, and an instructor to many, I am the one playing “where’s your arm”.  I get to be the hammer, instead of the nail. It is to be expected after years of dedication and work.  Improvement comes at a rate equal to how much time you put in, and I have put in time.  With this improvement, though, a new choice has been given to me.  It is a choice that was unavailable to me as a beginner.  Do I fight the hardest fights when training, or take the easy rolling sessions?  I know I will be comfortable, able to relax and do well when rolling with a beginner.  I also know that I will get smashed and feel uncomfortable if I challenge the brown and black belts, or at least have a difficult time ahead of me.

The longer you train, the easier it is to fall into the unchallenging fights.  As you become more experienced, you also become one of the better practitioners at your gym, and the more training partners become available to you that are below your level.  You are forced to search for the difficult sparring partners more and more; the best black belts that I watch are constantly having to reach out to training partners.  

It can be simple to fall into the stagnation of training primarily with less experienced partners.  I don’t mean to say it is necessarily inadequate to train with lower level partners.  Learning to flow, to combine attacks, to teach through movement, to guide and halt and lighten, to play and attempt the new; that is all important.  But to never be the nail, to never be seriously threatened from start to finish, to not be forced into a defensive mode; those lacks will deteriorate your progress both on and off the mat.

Worrying about how you compare to your training partners is a misunderstanding of what it is to train.  When you were the beginner you could not care about who tapped you, because you lost count.  ‘Defeat’ stopped being ‘defeat’ and became purely existing.  The only other option was not existing alongside jiu jitsu.  The acceptance of being ground down can get lost along the journey.  It can be a hard choice, to challenge the superior partner; to accept not dictating the pace or the position or the movement; not being in control and relaxed but controlled and dominated.  It is those choices that better you though. Having partners that push you is what improves you.  Being able to view your guard, your game, from the outside gives an important perspective.  It allows you to learn where your holes are, and what bad habits you have built up.  

While training with lower level partners, you might get away with sloppy technique and slow responses.  Those weaknesses are exposed against superior partners. And that exposure is how you continue to grow.  It is the continuation of playing “where’s your arm”.  At some point you learn to keep your arms in, and after that you have to learn to keep good posture, and to grip fight, and more, all from more advanced partners.  

Never challenging those that are better than you is fear of defeat.  It is a fear of having weak techniques exposed; of being shown that you have work to do.  

But at the depth of the matter, holding onto the fear of being beaten in training is oxymoronic.  You can’t be beaten in training, because you are training.  

You are training in order to learn and progress. Not fight to the death.  Why do you train Brazilian Jiu Jitsu?  Every tiny achievement is a beautiful experience.  The first armbar you hit, the first fan sweep, even the first hip escape, they all leave you feeling proud.  What would jiu jitsu be without having to learn those movements?  It is not the end moment, when you are the best in the world, that makes jiu jitsu fun; it is the time training that you put in to get there. It is the process of learning and improving that makes jiu jitsu an enjoyable outlet.  So worrying about defeat in training is truly a backwards thought; it is contradictory to the reason you are there in the first place.

Acknowledging and expressing that has brought my game forward.     

The ego has a hostility to being pushed down.  Receiving a humbling lesson can be difficult for the mind.  The loss of that ego is necessary when training.   Remembering to challenge those that are better than you is necessary as well.  Fixating your mind, accepting that fact, and appreciating the hard rolls when they are in front of you is easier now than ever. The longer you let your ego be built, the harder it will be to break, and the harder it will be to learn.  

So challenge those that are better than you, constantly, consistently, always.