Tag Archives: drilling

Train Less and Save the Fun Stuff for Last

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It’s been said many times in many ways that “practice doesn’t make perfect; perfect practice makes perfect”, but I was reminded of it with a particularly good phrasing of this concept in a new book Winning on the Ground by AnnMarie De Mars (her blog):

“The difference between being #1 in the world and #100 isn’t so much the hours on the mat. It’s what you are doing in those hours.”

I think this applies to people who train professionally as well as to people who train as a hobby for different reasons. In the former case, your body and mind can only take so much in a day. Anyone who’s ever tried to drill (really drill) a move for an hour will know the wear it can have on you, not physically, but mentally. The focus required to perform a technique to the best of your ability is as draining as trying to solve a difficult math problem (or puzzle for the non-math-inclined).

For the hobbyist, the reality is that you really do have a very limited amount of time per day that you can train. Ironically, with the higher constraint on time, I find that people do less of the good stuff (drilling very specific techniques, transitions) and more of the fun stuff (rolling in jiu jitsu, randori in judo).

rocky-in-russia-in-the-snowI was always of the opinion that you have to earn the fun stuff. To me “fun” is rolling without any constraints on my game, without a focus on a particular position/technique, etc. That’s very good to do a lot of, especially if you have 4-6 hours a day to train. But if I only have an hour (or less as usual), I have to become my own drill sergeant. I’ll get in 30-60 minutes of hard fast paced drilling on a dummy or a partner no matter what, and enjoy a few sets of training. It’s a balance between short term “happiness” and long term “happiness”. Ultimately, I really enjoy getting a better understanding of the art of jiu jitsu, and that requires the not-so-fun process of drilling and rolling with a purpose.

By the way, I’m also realizing that “drilling” is like “dieting”. It’s a concept that is used by a lot of people to describe a wide variety of activities. So I have to be more specific. I do a lot of kinds of drilling, but the one I refer to as “really drilling” is where I do 100-200+ reps in 30 minutes of one technique. This isn’t some new technique, it’s one that I’ve already done thousands of reps of and most importantly have tried in positional training, live training, and competition. Every other kind of drilling is more relaxed. This is hard work. Productive hard work.

Best BJJ Competition Regimen: Strength, Conditioning, Technique, Rolling, Rest

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rocky-in-russia-in-the-snowPeople learn, live, train differently. I’m not going to judge, but for me, the best regimen is just drilling and rolling, approximately twice as much drilling as rolling.

What do I do for strength and conditioning? It’s simple. Here’s my complete training regimen:

  • For technique learning: Drill slowly.
  • For “rest” days: Drill at a medium pace.
  • For conditioning: Drill quickly.
  • For strength: Drill moves that require lots of legs, hips, shoulders, core, back.
  • For rolling: Drill against an opponent who’s resisting at 100%.

When I say “drill”, I mean very specifically designed drills to improve aspects of my game that I’m working on for periods of several months. I don’t randomly switch drills around. I keep doing the same drills for months a time. I do drills with a partner, solo, and on a dummy. The latter two are extremely important because those can be done no matter where you are or what’s going on in your life. Meaning: there’s no excuse not to do it.

Again, when I say “drill”, I mean doing the same move thousands of times for years. My personality is much like that of the the chef in the documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi in that I enjoy exploring the tiniest details that make the same old simple thing work better. Work at it every day, over and over and over. And that kind of exploration can and should take a lifetime.

Evaluating Your Game Based on Rolling with Killers

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Note: By “killer” I mean guys who are MUCH better than me in particular positions. So that might include white belts to black belts.

I spend a considerable amount of time on and off the mat evaluating my game. Every single practice is in fact a process of figuring out details that make a particular aspect of my game work better in a particular situation. For example, any time someone passes my guard, I think about how they did it and what kind of adjustment I need to make in order to prevent that guard pass in the future.

That’s simple enough. The problem comes in with the fact that in some cases it takes time to make such adjustments to my technique. It takes a lot of reps in drilling and training for the details to be internalized. So I have to shut off the skeptical part of my brain that doesn’t give a technique enough time before passing judgments.

The-Black-Night-monty-python-and-the-holy-grail-591464_800_441I had another illuminating experience with (let’s call him) Bob where, through positional training, he armbarred me maybe 50+ times in a period of an hour in the same exact way as I played my favorite guard. I could avoid the armbar if I didn’t play my favorite position and grip combination. But that doesn’t solve anything in the long term. When you see the 50+ submissions, you’re probably thinking “this guy really sucks”. Whether I do or not, I certainly feel like I suck after those sessions. When I get off the mat and walk to work or home, what should be the thoughts in my head? What are my next steps?

I don’t know if it’s the right thing to do, but my solution to that has been to re-double my focus on the position. By that I don’t mean I’ll try harder in training. In fact, I’ll try less hard. All the effort goes into learning (online and through questions on the mat) the little details around the position that make it work. While 50 submissions sound like a lot. From my limited experience, and my faith in the gods of drilling, I believe that those 50 submissions happened because of 1 or 2 details that I wasn’t doing. My job is to find those details. They are probably obvious. They have probably been taught to me many times. What I need to do is to re-discover them for myself.

This process is humbling, putting my efforts in the world of academia in perspective.

The Role of a Coach in Preparing an Athlete for Competion

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A post by Marco Perazzo about what makes a successful competition team got me thinking about the coach-athlete relationship before and during the “competition season”. It may seem absurd for me (a purple belt) to write about the role of a coach, especially given that majority of jiu jitsu tournaments I competed at I attended alone. But I’ve always worked best under a coach, and have gained an understanding of the kind of relationship that works for me. It’s all complicated by the fact that I’m 29 years old with a more-than-full-time career, and am not as focused on sport as I may’ve been when I was 16 on my high school’s wrestling team. So this blog post is about coaching, but from the perspective of a competitor with zero coaching experience.

I think that a coach has three roles in relation to the athlete: (1) on the mat, (2) in competition, and (3) off the mat. That’s in increasing order of time and mind that it takes from the coach. Loyalty, trust, and respect develop with time, and I believe the athlete has to earn the coach’s time through hard work and dedication. A coach’s time is kind of like a father’s approval. Many of us go through our whole life without getting it, especially the  dudes that cry during the Lion King scene where the father dies.

On the Mat (at the School)

The coach sets the mood of the training, provides technical fixes to techniques, and makes sure to push the people that need to be pushed. Not much special one-on-one attention is required here. In many ways, the coach is the conductor/general, and it’s the training partners that really push the competitors to step up their game.

In Competition

I always loved having a coach on the sidelines. I draw a lot of strength from being able to look up and see someone who has been by my side for a long time, who has seen me win and lose tough battles. A coach can provide step-by-step technical instructions, watch the time, the ref, and the score, or most important in my case: yell at me when I’m tired and need to step up the intensity.

Off the Mat

This one is the most scarce forms of a coach’s attention, but I believe it’s one that can have the biggest effect on a competitor. It’s where you sit down and plan out your goals with a coach. Together you outline the competitions, the training regimen, the drilling sessions, the competition a-game, the b-game, the competition strategy. A lot of times all of these things are already known, but they are put on paper, they become hard reality. They become a guiding principle and motivator and a source of strength through the days when the last thing you want to do is drill, train, and watch competition footage.

Coaching an Amateur

1983-dan-gable-with-tim-rileyThe problem, of course, is that most competitors in jiu jitsu, even those obsessed with the sport, are not willing to do whatever it takes. They have work. They have family. They have other aspiration and responsibilities. The following story about Dan Gable as coach is only possible with someone who has a singular unbroken focus on a goal of winning. Coaching someone like that is much easier than coaching a part-time competitor. This is an excerpt from a 1984 Sports Illustrated story:

“You’ll get pinned.” The words snarl and snap as they come from Gable’s mouth. How could anybody allow himself to get pinned? Suddenly, he’s focusing on the efforts of 126-pound Iowa senior Tim Riley, who’s clearly at the brink of mental and physical exhaustion. “Riley,” barks Gable, “you have to move your feet more in order to create openings.” With that, Riley quits and walks off the mat.

“Sorry you couldn’t make the end of practice,” Gable calls after him.

“I could have made it,” says Riley, “I just didn’t want to.”

“Naw,” says Gable. “You just weren’t tough enough to make it.” Gable shakes his head sadly, as if unable to grasp how an athlete—especially one of the best collegiate wrestlers in the country—couldn’t finish practice. The next day, of course, Riley is back with an apology and excuse, and of course Gable takes him back. And Riley redoubles his efforts. But Gable muses softly, “In wrestling, you don’t break down, you don’t quit. See, that’s the problem in life. It’s too easy to turn on the TV and pull up the covers.” Gable has never pulled up the covers. He’d have to be tutored to learn how to quit.

A Quiet Focused Drilling Class

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There are many ways of running a jiu jitsu class. You might start it with a warm up or you might not. You might show the same set of techniques every day for a week or you might switch it up more often than that. You might force everyone to be quiet or you might create a more relaxed atmosphere. You might do positional training or you might not. If there’s a training part of the class you might run it as an open mat where everyone pairs up themselves, or you might pick the pairs. You might strongly encourage everyone to get through a fixed set of training sets or you might let people sit-out or leave when they choose. You might start the training from the feet or from the knees or give people the option. And so on…

There are positive and negative aspects to all of these approaches. I’ve trained long enough (which is not very long) and visited enough schools to know that there is no one perfect system. I believe any approach can be made to work by a student for any goal. Some might be tougher than others, but if you’re willing to experiment, evolve, and work together with your training partners and coaches, the sky is the limit.

book-nerd-in-libraryAll that said, I really enjoyed today’s afternoon class. There were probably 40 or so people. All we did the whole time is drill. 5 minute rounds each person. Three simple backtake techniques. Over and over. We weren’t allowed to talk, ask questions (unless we absolute had to), have lengthy philosophical discussions. We were told to drill and everyone did just that. I felt like a book nerd who got to spend the afternoon at the library.

That’s exactly the approach I like when I drill outside of class. I’m lucky to have a close group of excellent drilling partners from white belt to black belt, and the freedom and support from the school to drill to my heart’s content.

By the way, my favorite sight on the jiu jitsu mat is killer brown belts or black belts drilling. It’s rare, because they’re already good enough to where when they roll, they’re basically drilling. But it’s not the same thing, because the amount of reps you get in a focused drilling session is much higher. Anyway, whenever I see people drilling outside of class (especially the higher ranks) I’m inspired to work even harder myself.

When Thinking is Not Productive, Stop Thinking

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For the longest time, to me, “meditation” was just something on my to-do list that I never got to do because I was busy. It made its way on the to-do list because a lot of people I look up to (in science and sport) practice it daily. I didn’t realize what it was, and perhaps I still don’t, but at least I have a better idea.

Meditation is the practice of controlling your focus, by first emptying your mind of all thoughts and eventually being able to let the thoughts back in one at a time (if at all).

I rarely practice meditation by actually sitting down to “meditate”. I practice it by performing a specific task (writing, programming, drilling jiu jitsu moves, etc) and meditate by not letting any other thoughts except those related to the task enter my mind. I think of it as “productive meditation”, kind of like the state of flow. Josh Vogel writes a lot about meditation, I recommend his blog highly.

There are certain tasks which I do every day that require an exceptional amount of mental willpower, though I’m embarrassed now to admit it. For example, I have started to drill particular jiu jitsu moves at home for about 40-60 minutes. It’s basically a chain of 2 minute solo drills that hit a bunch of different movements that are essential in jiu jitsu and that don’t absolutely need a partner to drill. My mind seems to have an allergic mental reaction to doing these. It’s incredibly difficult on many days to get myself to do them. Here’s what goes through my mind:

Why am doing these drills? I’m really tired and I have a lot of work left to finish for an upcoming deadline. I’ll skip today, because I already trained hard in the morning, so it’s not like I didn’t do anything. (2-5 minute pause in thinking). I’m an f’ing scientist, I should be behind a computer working, there’s a journal paper due in 4 weeks and I’m not close to finishing. This is stupid. How many other researchers are drilling jiu jitsu moves? And so on…

The problem of course is that a lot of this thinking has truth behind it. However, the practice of drilling for 40 minutes is in no way preventing me from accomplishing my goals in academic life. This is clearly just my brain feeding me legitimate-sounding excuses to stop doing something that’s challenging.

I think a lot of us has something like that in our life that we should be doing but find excuses to not do. That’s where “meditation” can really help. The moment these negative thoughts arise, you just let them pass over you. Focus on enjoying the simple challenge of the immediate task at hand. Enjoy the flow of it.

That’s just something that works for me. But I’m always learning more and more about it. The power of mind is incredible. You just have to be brave enough to trust it, and dedicated enough to practice controlling it.

Drilling Micro Transitions to Submissions

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I’ve written a bunch about drilling lately, especially inspired by Jordon Shultz and his recent ebook dedicated exclusively to the subject of drilling. Lloyd Irvin released a nice video on the “micro transitional drilling” yesterday and I can’t pass up the chance to comment on it, even though a few great blog posts have already been written on it:

Analogy: Calories In, Calories Out

For diet that maintains weight, the simple formula is “calories in = calories out”. There’s more to a good diet than that, but the math can’t be tricked. In the same way, for developing good competition jiu jitsu, the simple equation is: you have drill the transition to submission more than your opponent drills the defense to that transition. There’s more to it than that, but once again, you can’t trick the math.

Micro-Transition

In the video, Lloyd Irvin emphasizes the importance of working on the small but critical transition that leads directly or indirectly into a submission. This is different than the way I’ve been drilling. When I work on transitions, I’ll often chain several together. That’s very important to do but it definitely doesn’t sharpen my instinct as much as the micro-transition drilling. I tried it today for several microtransitions into submissions: ezekiel choke, americana, and the teacup armbar.

More Reps, Less Brain

I really liked the result. I didn’t count exactly, but I was able to get over 100 reps in each 5 minute round of drilling without pushing the pace at all. What I also like was that I started to really focus and internalize the flow of the technique. Obviously 100 reps is nothing, but I could sense that 10,000 reps of each technique would make the transitions into these submissions very difficult to stop.

Hard Work is Hard

The above video from Lloyd Irvin doesn’t particularly tell you anything you didn’t already know. He simply reiterates the truth of what breeds success: deliberate practice. Just as he says in the video, whatever good prescriptive advice he provides, most people will take it in, agree with it, enjoy it, plan on doing it, and never actually do it (more than a few times). The challenge is to do it regularly for months and years. It has to be part of your jiu jitsu training.

Drilling Advice from Wrestling: Importance of a Good Partner

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The first, last, and only step in drilling is you just need to do it. Before you think how to do it, you need to shut up and drill. Everything else will fall into place. That’s the rule I follow with most things that are unpleasant in an objective-sense but are good for me in the long run. On any given day: do first, think later. Thinking is easy and fun, so I’m sure I’ll get that part done.

But thinking, planning, and evolving the drilling program is still important. So, I’m always looking for advice from experts on the subject. While it’s of course great to get advice from top BJJ competitors (e.g. Jordon), it’s often good to turn to related grappling disciplines. There are a lot of good wrestling articles on the subject. For example: How to Drill in Wrestling.

I’d like to focus on one piece of advice in the above article: Don’t Lag

One of the worst things you can do as a drill partner is be lazy. Whether it’s getting up off the mat or transitioning between partners/drills: Never take your time. Understand that time is valuable. The more time you waste, the less you and your partner will develop as wrestlers. You should be eager to drill, and try to get as much done in the time you are given. The best wrestlers don’t waste any time, so you shouldn’t either. If ever you don’t “feel like” giving a 100% effort in your drills, it’s probably time to find a different sport.

 

There are two practical pieces of advice here that I think are really important, and that I unfortunately fail at sometimes. The first is that as a partner you should never lag behind. You should almost take pride in being able to return to the original position as quickly as possible.

The second piece of advice related to that is that you should always be eager physical and mentally to drill. Drilling sucks. But it sucks exponentially more when one or both of the partners act like they don’t want to be there. On days when that’s the case, I try to fake it. I try to smile, pop up quickly, don’t act distracted, etc. One of the things I’m learning is that drilling is not just about the specific technique, but it’s also about helping motivate myself and my drilling partner to stick with it, to focus, and to finish the drilling session no matter what.

I don’t think I mentioned this on the blog yet, but I was lucky enough to win the “Drilling for Grappling Mastery” contest with the grand prize of an all expenses paid drilling/training trip to train with world champ Jordon Shultz. The following video is what won it for me. The editing is crappy, and you have to listen to me talk for a minute, but hopefully it’ll inspire you to take on a drilling challenge of your own:

How to Choose Which Techniques to Drill

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I’ve recently put together a video documenting my drilling 1000 reps of a single technique:

The natural question is how did I pick this one technique to drill? I use several criteria, listed below.

First and foremost it has to be a technique that serves some kind of purpose in your “game plan” (whether for practice or competition). For some people, that’s the only criteria. They want to develop a good triangle, so they will drill the crap our of that triangle from many different positions, with varying resistance, against many different opponents, regardless of any other factors.

For me, there are many other criteria that are also important in picking a technique to drill:

  • You don’t naturally get to practice it in training. If you find yourself in position to try the technique in training often, then you can essentially “drill” it by going against people that are less skilled than you in that position. That’s the luxury that black belts have, in that they are often good enough to put themselves in whatever position they want, and then work from there. Roberto Cyborg Abreu is a proponent of this method of “drilling” or rather non-drilling.
  • It doesn’t hurt you or your partner (when you do it 10, 100, or 1000 times). For me, it’s important that drilling can be a good productive workout that both people look forward to, instead of dreading it due to a nagging injury. This is where it’s important to have several drilling partners. Some don’t mind drilling takedowns, and some cringe every time their body hits the ground. You have to work on techniques that both people like physically and mentally. Drilling, after all, is not just about getting reps in. It’s about learning and evolving as you explore the details of the technique.
  • Your body is ready for it strength-wise and flexibility-wise. There are a lot of techniques that need your body to get used to it, before you can start doing 100+ reps. For me, an example of that is the inverted guard. I had to get a lot of reps against the wall before I was comfortable practicing attacks against a live opponent from that position.
  • You get to see the benefits of drilling often in training or in competition. This is more of a criteria for lower ranks (such as myself). But I don’t like to drill techniques that I don’t often get to execute as part of my game plan. Basically, no matter how much I try to see the long term picture, my brain still wants some short-term rewards. So the first 10 or so techniques I really put time into was all guard passes or submissions from dominant positions, because I could put myself in the situation in competition where I could use those. Each time I pull off a technique that I’ve drilled extensively, I become a little more like Pavlov’s dog. Positive reinforcement breeds confidence, and confidence breeds success.

And remember: “Whether or not you can never come great at something, you can always become better at it.” Now go and drill!

Jiu Jitsu “Bitchassness”

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In the following video, Lloyd Irvin brought up the “disease” afflicting the general BJJ population. He calls it “bitchassness”. Basically, it’s the excuses you or your coaches are tempted to make when you lose a match in a tournament.

In the past year of competing, I’ve carefully worked at pushing that need to make excuses out. It comes from the fact that taking full responsibility for being the lesser man on this day is damn hard.

Losing should immediately initialize the same well-practiced process of self-analysis, using video of the match. There is no need to write long posts about it on your blog or Facebook.

So when people ask me how I did at the tournament, I try to limit my statement to: (1) my record on the day and (2) highlighting the fact that I learned a lot from the experience (no matter what the record is).

I try hard to avoid excuses of any kind: being screwed by the refs, going against people much heavier than me, being injured, tired, being stalled against, being screwed by some silly rule, etc.

I say “try” because it’s not easy, as Lloyd Irvin says in the above video. But if there is a culture of “no excuses” in the gym, that certainly helps in the struggle.

In my experience, just because a person preaches the value of “no excuses” doesn’t mean he follows that philosophy in his own competitive life. Again, it’s not easy to do. It’s kind of like drilling. A lot of people preach the value of drilling, but only a small fraction of those people actually drill as much as they know they should.

Anyway, let’s all make less excuses, and honestly discover the problems that lead to the loss, especially the ones that can be fixed through specific training.