By Greg Melita
The quicker you mess up, the quicker you will succeed.
The learning curve in Jiu Jitsu,
and ANY other endeavor for that matter,
is quicker if you make your mistakes sooner.
This doesn’t mean you have to make every mistake there is, especially common sense ones. It means the mistakes you DO make, seek out the best way to correct it.
And in Jiu Jitsu, the best way to correct mistakes is to tap, and then work both the attack AND defense of the technique.
When you get caught, explore the technique it in its entirety.
While rolling, a lot of beginners do everything in their power to defend with power and strength. They don’t grasp the fact that having someone apply techniques against them while they resist and they’re forced to tap is the key to learning how to defend it. Sometimes actually getting close to the point of tapping is where you have to be to successfully defend a submission.
If you escape with pure strength, yes you got out of the attack at that moment, but defend 3 or 4 more times like that and you will start to tire. Eventually, you will tap to the same exact attack, because you were too fatigued to employ your strength-biased escape. You will consistently get caught by higher belts, and you will have no idea how to defend.
You’re learning curve gets longer and longer the more time goes by with each roll where you defend by muscling out of everything. All because you would rather not tap and submit your ego.
While you may think you succeeded, you’re just playing a game of “ha-ha you can’t catch me”. If all you are doing is successfully defending, then yes you didn’t get submitted at that moment, but don’t mistake that for becoming better at Jiu Jitsu and advancing your technique.
A lot of defenses to positions and submissions present other opportunities that you would never see because you wanted to muscle out and avoid it altogether. The correct escape utilizing technique will actually save energy and lead to other submission, sweep, or passing opportunities.
Bottom line: you are going to make mistakes. You can try your best to learn what mistakes others did so you can avoid them. But you have to make those mistakes in the first place to learn what not to do. You have to physically experience the technique from the losing end.
“In an average 5 round training session I will get submitted 15 times. Take that information and ask yourself if you really have no ego.” Garry Tonon
Go ahead, give it a try. It’s liberating.
Fail as fast as you can…
