I recently was contacted to be featured in the US Combat Sports “Grappler’s Spotlight.” I was happy to do it, and was asked what would I like to focus on for the interview. I decided to share my journey, particularly as it pertains to the difficulties of maintaining and progressing my training in such a geographically-challenging area of the country as the Midwest, especially at the time I began my training when there were few resources for Jiu-Jitsu instruction anywhere in the states, not to mention Kentucky! Here is a link to the article:
I haven’t posted anything in a while on this blog. Mostly because I have been busy teaching every day, and today is no exception. I just finished a lesson with a 61-year-old Marine veteran. And I am truly humbled. Again!
The most exhausting thing about teaching and training to the degree I do isn’t the physical expenditure or even the mental – these are both extreme at times, but I can handle each much more than the emotional toll it takes on me. I try to give all I have emotionally to my students, and in the process I take on a lot of what they bring in with them emotionally, which is oftentimes a lot of negativity or pain in one form or another. To call it an honor to meet and train with and teach the people I get to is a gross understatement.
Whether it is my student with epilepsy who struggles daily in a battle with her own bodily control, or the autistic children who a few months ago could barely follow a 3-step verbal set of instructions, or the gentleman I just mentioned from this morning, I am humbled and privileged to see what real strength and fortitude is, when there are so many others in the world that fall victim to self-pity, whereas these folks who overcome so much. This veteran, who is twice my age with more holes in him from bullets than I care to mention, including in his head, arms, legs, abdomen, and all points in between, showed me the utmost respect upon meeting me. At his age and in his condition, to walk in the door and sign up is amazing to me! And it motivates me to be the best version of myself and to polish my understanding of the art so as to give him the best representation of what has affected my life so greatly. There is no doubt that what we do at Three Rivers Martial Arts is extraordinary and life-altering, but if ever there were question to it, it would quickly be extinguished by the evidence of our students’ accomplishments.
These are not things that they hand out trophies or medals for (though plenty of our students have those too), and these accomplishments are not things that are widely publicized (though Three Rivers has made quite a name for itself). Rather, the quiet achievements of the unsung champions of our academy scream a brilliant emotionally-charged primal scream that resonates through the universe and advances a shift in consciousness that is inextinguishable and unstoppable.
So today, like most days, I am humbled. I bow in completed deference to the wave I am riding, and I am proud and elated to even be associated with what is going on here! I will do my best today and pray it is received by as many as possible.
This is an example of the videos posted at Three Rivers Martial Arts Academy YouTube channel. You can see me, Jason Hawkins, Jared Jessup, Brad Lynn, Derik Perry and all our other instructors and many students training, teaching and more. Check it out and come back to my blog often for updates.
It has been a while since I posted, so I would like to update you on some stuff:
Firstly, my first-ever Charity Workshop event went great! The generosity everyone showed by coming to it, training, and giving extraordinary amounts was heart-warming! We collected tons of food, clothes, toys and cash. The donations were distributed like this:
Thanks again to everyone who participated and donated!
Now, on to Jiu-Jitsu! I posted a little while back about the new 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu site, and the updates to that site have been great, so far. Technique-wise, it is one of my favorites to visit for cool new tricks. Here is the link to the site 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, and here is a video for a sample of the system Eddie professes:
An even more exciting site that has launched since last I posted anything is the brainchild endeavor of Marcelo Garcia and Josh Waitzkin. If you don’t know who Josh Waitzkin is, read about him! Talk about an amazing guy! You remember that movie “Searching for Bobby Fisher,” about that kid who was a chess prodigy? Josh is that kid, all grown up now, and has since become a chess world champion, Tai Chi push-hands world champion, and now a brown belt in BJJ under Marcelihno! He came up with the idea to make an interactive BJJ learning tool website based around Marcelo. Here is how they describe the site:
Nightly access to Marcelo Garcia’s classes and sparring sessions in his brand new NYC Academy.
Watch Marcelo teach, roll, and break down his BJJ philosophy just like you were in the school.
A growing database of Beginner and Advanced techniques all categorized to allow for customized study based on your level and repertoire.
An innovative navigational system, drawing technology from elite chess training, that will allow you to search for submissions, sweeps, escapes, transitions, competitive principles, all the while weaving back and forth between lessons and rolling footage.
Watch Marcelo teach a technique you like—you are one click away from seeing all the examples of him applying that technique while rolling.
Watch Marcelo slap in a crazy submission while sparring—one button and you can see him teach that lesson in class.
If there is a technique you have seen in the rolling footage that is not taught in a lesson yet, send in a request and we will ask Marcelo to break it down.
Now, the site is a little pricey, in the range of $25 a month. I suspect it is worth it, but I can’t bring myself to pay that right now, because it is not where my head is in my training. But I do think it is pretty genius, so here is the link to the site MGinAction.com. And if you don’t know much about Marcelo…well, you are probably not reading a BJJ blog if you don’t know much about Marcelo…but anyway, he is multiple BJJ champion in Gi and No Gi Mundials, Abu Dhabi multiple champion, and probably owns any other highly-coveted BJJ title you can imagine. Here is a highlight video of him for your viewing pleasure, also followed by him vs Xande Ribeiro (whom is regarded by many to be the most technical BJJ competitor out there). I had to include the second one, because it is so beautiful that I thought I would cry…seriously:
Insane Marcelo Highlight:
Marcelo vs. Xande
Lastly, and something I will promote more in the near future but thought worth mentioning already, is the IQ Athletics website. My BFAM (brother from another mother) Jared Jessup has a business called IQ Athletics that deals in not only Jiu-Jitsu, but kettlebells, personal training, and other fitness/wellness endeavors. Jared is a brown belt under Royce Gracie, and an awesome Jiu-Jitsu man and teacher. His site is up here at IQAthletics.com, and will be updated more soon. On it you will be able to find contact information for Jared, find out about his services, and see other resources as well.
Here’s looking forward to an exciting new year coming up, and I will tell you my resolution in the next post!
Below you will see the poster for my upcoming, Free Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Workshop. It has all the information you need to find out how to attend. However, please read below the poster, as I have a couple thoughts to share with ya. Thanks.
Free Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Workshop!!!
I have been working on ways in which I, and my Three Rivers Martial Arts family, can give back to the community that has made us what we are. Beyond that, I have been trying to come up with as many ways, qualitatively and quantitatively, to give back to the community on a global scale. This is a simple and complicated task.
The easy part is doing: Give to charities, spread joy and kindness, harm no one, live the Golden Rule in everything you do.
The hard part is the direction and organization: How do you make compassion contagious? How exactly do you get others involved? I found what may be the most perfect answer at the most perfect time for me. I came across a TEDTalk (which are always awesome and you should check out by clicking here if you’ve never seen these before), by a woman named Karen Armstrong. She came up with an idea/initiative called The Charter for Compassion. I checked out her lecture, was blown away; checked out some videos on the topic, was amazed; and read the Charter on the site devoted to it, and was overwhelmed! This Charter has some meat to it. It is not an empty, vacuous set of ideas floating with no direction and saying “Hey guys, can you please be nice to each other if you get around to it?” No, rather, this is a mandate of sorts, it seems to me, stating that if we cannot spread compassion, and disseminate the true nature of what it means to be compassionate, then we are headed for misery and downfall.
I will explain another time what the hell Jiu-Jitsu has to do with Compassion, if you don’t already understand, but for now it is just simply my vehicle to promote awareness and get people involved with the charitable principles of compassionate awareness. Like Edmund Bourne said:
“Despite our differences, we are all in this together. No act of kindness or compassion goes unnoticed. To change the world, take compassionate action within your immediate sphere of influence. To change yourself, start by being still and making time just to listen.”
So it is in that vein, that I invite you all out to my workshop, where I will show you some of the best Jiu-Jitsu that I can, get you excited about learning such an incredible system, and hopefully (my greatest intention) create an atmosphere that breeds so much compassion that it is palpable. Bring what you can: food(canned, packaged, not highly-perishable), clothing, toys, and of course cash. Every bit of it will go to local charitable organizations and help out families and individuals in need.
If, you don’t have anything to give when you show up, I will not turn you away. You can participate in the workshop for the admission price of one promise. You must make me a promise that you will, on that day, affirm the Charter for Compassion on the charterforcompassion.org website, and also that you will do some compassionate, selfless, altruistic act of kindness. That is all. But you have to mean it.
I have been doing Jiu Jitsu half of my life, and for anyone who knows my real age they know that is a pretty long time. For this reason, it becomes more and more interesting to me to look at people beginning their training and their motivations. Likewise, it interests me to watch my peers’ motivations grow and evolve, as does mine. Jiu Jitsu has become a lifestyle for me, and I would like to pass on a few ways in which I mean this.
I first came to Jiu Jitsu after some previous martial arts training that was somewhat lackluster. I had various reasons for wanting to learn, but a major one is that I saw the “magic” of martial arts training, and Jiu Jitsu offered a new brand of magic that appealed to me at the time. I was not very strong or fast or otherwise athletic. I was introverted, but I was artistic and imaginative. I enjoyed the outlet for a new expression of creativity that Jiu Jitsu gave me. However, there wasn’t anything I could clearly articulate was my direct motivation. And I think this is common. I often hear people, upon being questioned about their reason for starting their training, say things such as “I am just interested in it” or “I saw it on TV and thought it looked cool” or some variation of these responses. Others may express an interest in defending themselves or in the competition aspect, and most all students are drawn to these aspects to some degree.
As an instructor, it has become a responsibility of mine to figure out the true motivation of individuals, in order to help them in their journey. “Journey” sounds a little hokey, but that is what it is or what it has to become, if it is to amount to anything at all. Most initial responses to the question of motivation are superficial, because the individual has had no exposure yet to the benefits of training. As they proceed in their training, their motivation changes and vacillates. Eventually, if they stick with it, their motivation becomes muted, effaced, and aloof. “Motivation” as a term for why they continue training becomes outmoded, and they progress to a constant state of just “training for training sake.” Everyone knows that they are in some way trying to better themselves with their training, and the fact that they are drawn to do this is a wondrous thing. It only becomes more wondrous as they continue.
Back to me: I have had moments of doubt and uncertainty. I have questioned my motivation, as well as the amount I have sacrificed to continue my training. “What am I trying to accomplish here?” I said on more than one occasion. What a dangerous question that we are all guilty of asking! Luckily I stuck through plateaus and climbed out of valleys, as well as I fortunately survived the rush of being high on peaks. It is easy to want to give up when you are feeling poorly about your training; especially if a single or few bad events knock you off of a pedestal of superiority you may have accidentally wound up on. And I am now more thankful than anything that I have the ability to say to students, with genuine conviction and reinforcement, “This too shall pass, so be thankful for today’s training.”
You have to develop the ability to take pleasure out of the sheer state of presence that training allows you. If you come in with worries from outside or regrets over earlier occurrences, you diminish, if not completely destroy, the joy and value of the training you are about to partake in. This is one of the highest principles from training that you can apply to all your life: be present and taste every detail of the current situation, painful or splendid. No amount of worry over a late bill will pay it! If you are at your daughter’s play, watch the play! If you are cooking a meal, cook the meal! Chop wood, carry water! When you allow your mind to live in another instance not the present one, you have separated your mind and body, and no harmony can follow that. In Jiu Jitsu this is immediately obvious, because if you are not paying attention, then you get caught in a choke. And you deserved it!
These are the very important aspects I see about living a Jiu Jitsu lifestyle – these metaphorical ideas. Metaphorical in the sense that they present themselves in tangible form in training and then render marvelous abstractions in daily living. Once we are able to settle ourselves into our practice and quiet some of the noise that runs through our heads, we can hear subtler things we are not as attuned to in daily bustle. We begin to “hear” our bodies instructions on how to to treat ourselves. How far can this muscle stretch comfortably? How fast does our heart beat before we have to breathe through our mouths and not just our noses? How much weight can I comfortably support in this or that position? How sluggish or energetic do I feel in my practice when I eat an hour before? Two hours? Most of these are fairly easy to answer if we can get ourselves present and quiet enough to be receptive.
I know my purpose now. I have learned it through my training. It is not about accomplishments, although I can outline these if I want. It is not about any willful direction I have forced myself into, and it is not about proselytizing, although I do plenty of that (that is what this blog is kind of about after all). My purpose is manifest, and I try only to nourish it with love and give it space to flourish. Jiu Jitsu tells me this is the right thing to do. So I consider Jiu Jitsu my purpose.
In closing I would like to include a nice segment of a video related to this topic:
So…you have been training 6 months to a year, you are starting to tap people at your gym/school, that blue belt just arrived, things are going awesome! But it’s just that damn 50/50 stalemate heel hook position that is giving you trouble. You need a new move, some trick to get you out of it, right? You already figured out how to work into that cool standing inverted triangle you saw on the Bellatore Fights the other night. Got a lot of cool tricks, some that work and some that don’t, and you are always on the hunt for more.
Here is a secret for you: Tricks are for kids. Better yet, there are no tricks. I just watched Phil Migliarese on a video, showing a tip for getting out of the 50/50 heelhook position I mentioned. It was a great method, and Phil is a master level instructor. I enjoy doing the same thing he was doing (not placing myself in any way in a category alongside Phil Migliarese), which is taking questions about jiu jitsu and helping with solutions. But here is the thing: people want fixes or tricks to help them out of their sticky situations, and learning these types of tricks can actually be ineffective and obfuscate the bigger picture of how they need to be training.
Oh no, not another one of these damn “Stick to the basics” soapbox speeches! We get it already! Blah, blah, train the basics. I know, I didn’t like to hear it either. Still don’t. I am a trick collector, too – ask anyone who knows me. I am not taking the blanketed route of saying train your basics and nothing else. I think that is the wrong (and boring) thing to say. It is also confusing. What are the basics? Aren’t there basic and advanced versions of the same moves? When do you learn the advanced stuff?
Firstly, what are the basics? Base, posture, position, etc. Whoa, whoa…you can’t throw “etc” in a statement like that! Yes I can. I just did. And the reason I did was because people sometime have to develop certain basic principles in different order. So, ETC! Deal with it! Drill and drill. Apply the basic principles everywhere. Something I preach to noobs is to operate in the familiar positions when you first begin rolling. If this means you get into a strange position that feels as if it may be dominant but you don’t know how to use it, then back off it into a position that you actually know how to work from. Example, if you are lost in half guard, let your opponent put you into the guard if that is where you actually know an escape from. This way you get to work on your techniques rather than having to ad hoc a transition or position.
And as far as those tricks go. By “kids” I mean newbies. Kids are excited by shiny, fancy things, and so are the tiros new to jiu jitsu or any other class. These are the ones wanting to know how to do that thing that guy from that fight the other night did. And to them, it is a trick in the truest sense of the word. It is a case-specific, independent movement to get them out of a certain difficult situation. The problem with noobs learning these tricks, is that they have a limited frame of reference for applying the sound basic principles to them. Tricks are fine if you can pick apart the principles at play within them, that make them work.
This is where the tricks come from; someone uses basic principles to apply a technique that gets them out of an unconventional situation. Dissect the situation, remove the technique from the context, and poof, you have a new trick. Here is the only real problem with tricks: when guys sit around and think up new things that might work, force these half-brained moves into a situation that is impractical or unrealistic, and anything but battlefield-tested. I could sit down and think up exciting new ways to choke someone with my toes, and if they sit still for me I can make them work. Hell, I can make crazy shit work very effectively if someone holds still for me. People do this all the time, and because they can demonstrate it on a cooperative partner, it appears to have as much validity as “real” techniques. Some people make whole careers on doing this shit (George Dillman?!).
My recommendations: you don’t have to be a cynic about everything you see in martial arts (that is my job), but you do have to establish some accredited sources you trust, and still keep a healthy level of skepticism over much of what you see. Half of what you see and none of what you hear is a great maxim for martial arts. Seek out those pure basic principles and use them as a barometer for any new trick you encounter. And train! Nothing filters bullshit better than exposure to the truth, and truth comes through experience.
And just to spice things up, I thought I should give you some examples of things I would consider “tricks” in the negative sense of the word. In other words, these tricks have either so very little basis in reality or are so isolated in their application that they benefit nearly no one. Enjoy, until I get in trouble for posting these and have to remove them:
“Don’t hit at all if it is honorably possible to avoid hitting; but never hit softly.” – Theodore Roosevelt
My instructor once gave me a necklace with a coin on it. The coin was a Chinese coin with markings from the i-Ching on it. Accompanying it was a small sliver of explanatory paper saying “Enthusiam.” Now, since I am maybe the least ostensibly enthusiastic person you may ever meet, you can understand my initial confusion. However, beyond that first word, it also said, “certainty that the present action is the correct one.”
My teacher (one more reason he is the greatest teacher and still my teacher to this day) had recognized something in me. He had recognized perhaps years before I had, that training had done for me what nothing else ever had, and what I had been lacking all my life to that point. Determination. Beyond that, though, the training I was receiving was instilling in me confidence and convictions in my actions. Which brings me to the first quote I put at the beginning by Roosevelt. I love that quote because it represents so much of what I feel martial arts has done for me. I have especially found my niche in BJJ because it allows me to live out my pacifistic principles while simultaneously dealing with the thousand natural conflicts that arise in life in a forthright manner.
Couple it with this quote: “There is almost no reason in the world to fight, but every reason in the world to know how to fight.” My instructor read this one at my black belt ceremony years ago and it resonates to this day. The idea to me is, among other implications, if you are going to do something then do it.
Others have said everything already, and much better than I ever could, so I submit to you a final quote, which when combined with those previously mentioned complete the circle in many ways: “In any moment of decision the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.” – Again by Theodore Roosevelt
That’s the thing with BJJ for me. It has taught me that you cannot have teeter between two actions in an exigency. In Jiu Jitsu, if you pause too long deciding if you want to move a certain limb in a certain way, your opponent has more time to complete his action, which in turn makes your situation worse. In training, it is a great thing to make mistakes; it is the ultimate learning device you have at your disposal. You get choked, you learn; you get caught in an armlock or footlock, you learn. What do you really learn from flawless execution of your plans beyond the first time it happens? Something, but not nearly as much, and not in such an urgent way as getting caught will set you on a path to discover how to avoid that situation in the future.
Be bold. Take baby steps when you are in the infancy of your training. But, just as children eliminate unnecessary, onerous steps, do this in training as well. The technique that took you 10 steps and lots of minor adjustments a year ago should only take about 5-6 now. And those stuttering little adjustments you had to make should deliquesce into smoothness. If only we reach the level that we can apply this to life! How much more enjoyable a life would be that, as it progresses, becomes more effortless and difficulties fade rather than accumulate.
All right, last quotation, I promise: “Don’t quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.” – Muhammad Ali
And because I think most blog posts look boring, here are some techniques I have uploaded on YouTube over time:
