[irishman301]

Sometimes in training you just have to try things in order to get better at them. Sometimes that may result in losing your position. If you are anything like me, it's hard to accept that you may lose your position, because you want to "win" against everyone you roll with, therefore you may tend to avoid trying new things for fear of losing the position (ie. fear of going for a triangle because you are afraid you will get your guard passed).

This mostly occurs when I face upper level white belts that are about to be blue belts. I know that I'm either slightly better than them, or on par with them. It's these guys that I tend to play it "safe" with. To use the triangle example as in the previous paragraph - I tend to avoid trying to slap a triangle on these guys because I don't want them to pass my guard and get me in side-control. I feel that getting "passed" is a bad thing, when done by someone who I feel that I should be better than.

However, if I would just go for the triangle against these guys, there would be several benefits:

1.) I would get better at triangles
2.) I would get better at avoiding the guard pass
3.) I would get more work on my inferior position game (escape/survival game)

This thought just occured to me tonight, which is why I'm making this post. From now on, I'm going to make it a point to try not to think of sparring in terms of "winning", but rather just "training". In order to do that, I have to completely drop the ego 100%, and accept the fact that even lower level guys are going to "beat" me. However, in the long run I think it will help my game immensely!

[srbjj]

u preach da truth

[brianpbrown]

Thanks for the post. Words of wisdom.

[Moksha]

i like it.

[jackjitsu]

exactly right

[Passenger]

Spot on.

I see it as a major progression even marcelo garcia in a video of him training a while back said he lets people escape so he can learn as much as possible on peoples reactions which is great to take on board once you get something down or even if you haven't. I don't agree with the term "letting people have something" because it's not as simple as that, If someone gets extremely close to a submission I'll go with it sometimes I'll escape at the last second. I used to fear people getting out of my triangle and passing my guard so I learnt how to recover guard and take peoples backs from side control. As much as I agree the top game is majorly important so is the bottom game I find through working so much on my bottom game it's helped my top game a lot, I find sweeping easier, hip movement is better, weight use is better this obviously still comes from working my top game a lot too.


What escapes are they using to pass the guard out of the triangle because if you get a triangle in correctly if they use the single leg pass it only goes in deep if you get the angle and stomp and curl(thanks to ryan halls triangle dvd) of course theres many other escapes but i find this the most common.

I've had the 1 year mark guys catch me with submissions because I've went with it or tried escaping at the last second and failed I don't see it as winning or losing if anything I'm winning because I'm learning as much as I can tapping isn't the issue the issue is my ego getting to me at times and restricting me from learning. I've slowed down a lot lately even if people go hard and I find due to being much more relaxed it's all flowing very well. I find it hard to get someone to slow/flow roll so I have to sort of do it myself.

[buhriyon]

Losing the ego and not thinking about getting tapped is one way to instantly improve your game without having to learn anything new except how to be humble. When I am relaxed, not worried about anything, and respectful of my partners abilities I have the best rolls by far and I also end up having the most fun.

[Girafa]

You learn from movement, not from sitting still.

[GermanGerbil]

I agree. However I feel that there is a kind of duplicity regarding that subject throughout large parts of the bjj community. I can´t remember how often I heard/read "lose the ego at the door" but at the same time there is an enormous peer pressure to "represent" your belt. Just look at the shitstorm whenever someone posts a video of a bluebelt losing to a whitebelt.

[creslinz69]

I agree 100%! When I stopped worrying about a white belt running around saying, "I tapped a blue belt!" I realized how valuable rolling with white belts can be. There's probably no way I'm going to hit a new move or use a new guard on a higher ranking blue belt, I mean I can drill it a bunch, but some of the more complicated stuff I'm not going to get an idea of what pieces I need to refine until I see it against a white belt. It's even more useful if more than one white belt is defeating the same part of it, then I know where I need to improve.