MATREP #5, 2023FEB06
Rest-day Reflections
Aiming to benefit from every training session
With these quick and dirty mat reports, I’m trying to do two things, grow my own jiu jitsu and set an example for how you can too.
I’ve been training long enough that I’ve been through numerous phases of weekly, monthly, or quarterly “game planning.” I’ve long been a self directed learner, both on and off the mat, so its only natural for me to develop a plan for what skills I want to work on, and structure my training accordingly.
There’s a funny trap though. I have to attend class in order to train. I show up early and stay late, so I get time to work on my own stuff, but I still resent having to listen to the coach show something I “already know” or insist on working on an aspect of the game that is of no interest to me (closed guard…).
And yet, I start out with this foolish attitude and then the coach will show some little detail and I’ll be hooked. That one little detail will be worth it. And my frustration simply disappears.
If you’ve read my previous Mat Reports, you’ll see the “Attention to Detail” section front and center. This section is all about honoring those little details.
So I’m trying something new. I am actively developing my own game plan and the training patterns that support it, while at the same time fostering a new attitude toward class, going in looking for that one little detail that makes my game just a little bit better in a way that I didn’t anticipate.
A secret for you, with this new attitude framing my point of reference, I’m often finding far more than just one valuable detail per class.
Change the attitude. Change the expectation. Change the outcome.
Memory is a function of information richness
If you were reading closely, I just gave you two big ways to improve your game, 1 plan your own game/training and 2 go to class looking to learn. Here’s a third way, and for me, this is the big one.
Write shit down.
Okay, easy for me to say, I like writing.
You don’t have to write. But you need to rehash and reevaluate the information you go over in training. That can be thinking out loud on the drive home. Or, add a layer to that, think out loud with your phone’s recorder app on and then listen to it again later. Or you can go home and study competition footage or tutorials that use the class move.
I’m sure that a creative and motivated person could come up with a great many ways to review the information from class. The more times, the better.
Whatever your method, review the information that your body took in during training, externalize it, turn it around in front of you, look at it from different angles, in different contexts. Add labels and names. Connect the dots between various positions. The more information and the more connections, the greater the meaning of the experience and the better your chances of retention.
Here there be dragons
A final rest-day reflection. Don’t be afraid to add emotional weight to your review of your training. I don’t know why, but so many well-meaning people, in the pursuit of being more professional or more scientific try to approach learning as some sort of fully logical, rational thing.
Your emotional response to training has valuable, actionable information in it. It’s okay to like certain positions or certain styles or certain methods of training and to not like others. It’s even okay to feel differently about something than the coach or upper belt or training partner who you admire feel about it.
It’s your jiu jitsu.
But take a lesson from mythology. That dark place, that place that you’ve ascribed negative emotion, that’s the place where you must eventually go if you want to level up. That’s where the treasure lies. The hero goes into the underworld to gain the valuable knowledge that is needed to save the day.
(One day I’ll have a closed guard feared in seven states…)
Good Hunting,
Charles Batey