“The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one’s deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
These are: 1 The Moral Law; 2 Heaven; 3 Earth; 4 The Commander; 5 Method and Discipline.
...By Method and Discipline are to be understood the marshalling of the army in its proper subdivisions, the gradations of rank among the officers, the maintenance of roads by which supplies may reach the army, and the control of military expenditure.
These five heads should be familiar to every general: he who knows them will be victorious; he who knows them not will fail.”
- The Art of War, Written by Sun Tzu,
Translated from Chinese by Lionel Giles (1910)
Do your life choices off the mat support the effort you expend on the mat?
Sun Tzu’s conditions of Method and Discipline describe the supporting factors for an army, the things behind the scenes. Without the supporting logistics, an army cannot wage war for longer than a battle or two. Without attention to life outside of the training floor, the modern grappler can’t maintain his competitive edge for more than a few sessions.
Grappling is a demanding pursuit. The bare-minimum commitment for a “hobbyist” black belt is perhaps 2 hours per training session @ 2 days per week for 10 years. And that’s only 1/5th of the way to the proverbial 10,000 hours to mastery. All that time in training can take its toll on a person, and there is definitely such a thing as too much time on the mat. You absolutely can train harder than your ability to recover, and further effort won't make you recover better, no matter the extent of your will power or how much you psych yourself up.
The support structures that Sun Tzu describes allow the army to function with consistency at a high level of performance. Without proper subdivisions, orders cannot easily be given for which soldier should go where, and when. Without gradations of rank, verifications of orders will be cumbersome and time consuming. Without maintenance of roads, the fields of battle will quickly run out of supplies to support the combatants. Without the control of expenditure, the costs of one battle will quickly inhibit the effective conduct of the next.
None of these support structures deals directly with the primary function of the army, waging war. But without them, the army cannot fight well, or for long. The same is true for the grappler: hobbyist, professional, or otherwise.
An analogous list of support structures for the modern grappler might include:
Bodily Durability
If the body is overused or overtrained, it will become less effective at both the learning of new tasks and the performance of known tasks, this will impair the efficiency and enjoyment of your training.
If the body is overused or overtrained, it becomes more prone to injury. Getting injured is the easiest way to fail at whatever your goals may be, so prevention of injury should always be at the top of your list of priorities. When assessing or developing training plans, some of the first questions asked should always be “How could this lead to injury?” or, “How am I mitigating the risk of this practice causing me injury?” or, “What can I be doing in my off-mat time to recover from the wear and tear of training?”
Both processes, wear-and-tear and recovery, are non-linear. It may not be enough to rest one hour for every one hour trained. You must be realistic about the impacts of your training and rest enough that you’re able to perform up to the standards of your goals for the entire season.
Finances
Everyone who has trained jiu jitsu long enough has dreamed of quitting their job and training full time. But Peter Pan doesn’t have a mortgage to pay or a child’s college fund to save-for. The people who make this lifestyle work go all-in. Are you prepared for the myriad sacrifices that “going pro” entails?
For the less radical grapplers, mat time cannot be prioritized ahead of income time. Work more efficiently = more time to play. But beware the trap of making everything too efficient. Keep your training enjoyable. If you treat your training like work, you’ll need stress relief from your stress relief.
Social Support
Family and friends are two-way relationships. Did your mom showed up to cheer at your recent competition? Maybe buy her some flowers or carve out an hour and call her up just to listen to her speak about whatever is important to her.
Is your friend’s baby shower scheduled for the same time as open mat? Go to the baby shower, open mat will still be there next week when your social obligations are met. And bring a gift, something thoughtful, like an infant-sized gi.
Sleep
The training session itself doesn’t make you stronger, better, or more skilled, it’s the rewiring and reinforcement that your body and brain do during the downtime that makes for lasting change. Sleep as much as you can. If you’re already sleeping enough, sleep even more, consider napping.
Nap after training, after weightlifting, after eating. If you can sneak a nap into your busy day, your recovery will be better for it. If you can build naps into your regular routine, you’ll be the envy of all your training partners.
To support your activity on the mat, you must recognize and maintain your priorities off the mat. Your family, your job, your health, these are among the many pillars of off-the-mat life that support your on-the-mat efforts. Ignore them, allow them to fall into disrepair and you’ll wind up putting in ten times the work to get them right that you would have spent just to maintain them. Quality method and discipline off the mat leads to more and better time on the mat over the long run.
It is not enough to attend to these details just once. Military engagements are often described in terms of campaigns, of series of battles that build one upon the other over months or even years. Success or failure in one battle has a direct effect on how the next battle will be waged. This is the progressive nature of the campaign. The wise grappler conceives of his training time and support structures in a similar fashion.
If you do not structure your training in a progressive sense, you will find yourself spinning your wheels, never effectively building one technique upon the other or connecting the dots between. On the other hand, if you do approach your training in a progressive sense, but you don’t break it up into “seasons” you will outpace your ability to maintain your support structures and wear yourself down. In grappling, the military campaign can be analogized as a tournament season on a long time-scale or perhaps as a fight camp on a shorter time-scale. Lacking these landmarks, the hobbyist can structure his training cycles around the seasonally shifting priorities of his everyday life.
No matter how tough minded and focused you are, everyone has their limits to attention. By changing your primary focus seasonally, you refresh your attention span. The wise grappler assesses his environment, both on and off the mat, and maps the seasons of his training accordingly.
Your training seasons do not need to correspond to the 4 seasons of nature either in exact timing or in length (though they do provide a good analogy from which to draw inspiration). But each season will have different priorities just like each season in nature has different qualities. You might increase your training volume when work is in its slow season or decrease your training volume when your new child is born. You might focus on one aspect of the game for a month and another for the next month.
Regardless of how you conceive of your training campaign, be sure to remember the old aphorism, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Or as Mike Tyson famously rephrased it, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” The wise grappler plans the work, then works the plan, but doesn’t let the plan work him.
Make adjustments according to changing circumstances and don’t be self-destructively attached to the plan.
Success,
Charles Batey