Tag Archives: practice

Performing in Competition as Well as in Practice

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biggest-wave-surfThe picture on the left is of Garrett McNamara setting the world record for the biggest wave surfed.

It reminded me of a mental hurdle I often come up against when competing. I’ll try to describe it first with an example of practice vs competition…

Practice Example

I’m not a good runner, but I like to use running as an example because it’s a purer form of mental struggle than grappling (where the struggle involves a lot more factors). Right now my best mile time is probably hovering just below 6 minutes. So if I went out to the track for a cardio workout and told myself to run the fastest mile I can, I would probably run a 5:40 minute mile. I would probably hit a wall at 800m and would have to fight to keep the same pace for the last two laps. This is always tough, but I always enjoy the hell out of it.

Competition Example

Now put another runner next to me on that same track, and call it an official race. The winner gets a gold medal, the loser a silver medal. I know his best mile time is 5:40. He is a strong starter, but doesn’t have a kick at the end, meaning he will probably run in front of me most of the race. There’s a small crowd of people around. I’ve been posting on Facebook for months how excited I am about this race.

My job is to push myself in the same exact way as I have in practice and ignore the fact that I’m falling behind at first. It takes a tremendous amount of will to run the 5:40 mile for me in my current shape. In fact what it takes is to focus on one step at a time and meditate over the pain in the lungs and legs. What competition does is it forces me to start thinking about the race a whole: “Oh shit, I’m falling behind. I have to speed up. I’m really exhausted. I don’t think I can hold this pace for 3 more minutes. And so on…” Of course, in reality, just as I have done many times in practice, I can hold the pace for the next 3 minutes no problem. But the prospect of 3 more minutes can sometimes break me. It can break anyone if you don’t practice silencing those thoughts. The solution is to focus on the moment and forget about time, forget about the opponent, and run NOT the fastest I can, but the SAME EXACT WAY as I have in practice many many times before.

Grappling Competition

I bring all this up because I often find myself not attacking aggressively off the bat in a competition match. I like to get a takedown, and that sometimes requires a scramble war that can last a long time against a good opponent. Moreover, when I do take my opponent down, I’ll attack the guard pass way too casually. But in practice (in times when I’m going 100%) I have no problem going very aggressive off the bat. I get excited when it’s a battle against someone with a similar skill level, because I believe I can wear down my training partner with pressure and relentless passing. Even if I’m wrong, I always have fun giving it my all in trying to do it. I don’t watch the clock. I’m not worried about running out of gas. I’m much more “in the moment” like a little kid playing his favorite game. Even the times when I’m taken to that place where I have trouble breathing because the pace has been so intense, it’s still fun as hell.

There are time when you want to strategically pace yourself in competition. That’s good, but you should never do it because you’re scared of running out of gas. When I step on the mat and I believe my best strategy against the current opponent is to go all out right away, I want to do just that, as I would in practice. It’s easy to say, hard to do, especially for a guy like me who spends most of the day staring at math equations or C++ code.

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.

Breathing for Warriors

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I went to a seminar on breathing (aka the breathing class) today. It was hosted by Osagame and run by Dr. Belisa Vranich (pictured left).

To me, some of the most interesting ideas that she touched on related to the “warriors” part of “breathing for warriors”. She often works with combat athletes on the physiological and psychological aspects of dealing with immense stress in competition through controlling breathing.

Since the audience of this class today ranged from zero martial arts experience to those that practiced jiu jitsu for 10+ years, I think Dr. Vranich adjusted to a slightly more general discussion and practice of breathing. So more than the many cool ideas she explained, the most important thing I took away is how important breathing is, and that breathing exercises have to become a daily part of my training.

Some Ideas on Breathing

She went over the basic anatomy of how we breath. From that, stemmed the discussion of using our diaphragm to get the most oxygen from every inhale: to breath with the whole body.

There are too many things to talk about here. The ideas are simple, but what makes them powerful is that most of us never think about it. We take breathing for granted. If in a tournament, I am driven to exhaustion and panic, I’ll blame poor cardio. While that’s partially true, getting control of breathing (this requires physical and mental practice) could’ve really helped make “bad cardio” less of a factor.

I will definitely write more about this subject in the future as I start practicing the various exercises she pointed me to. There is, of course, a close tie between meditation, breathing, and yoga. They help gain a better understanding of my mind and body. But at the end of the day, grappling is about kicking ass. The breathing just helps maintain focus and clean technique.

Combat Breathing

One of the cool things Dr. Vranich mentioned is “combat breathing” or “tactical breathing”. It’s a simple 4 count technique to gain control of your breathing after it speeds up due to intense activity or a stressful event.

So, in the world of grappling, it could be something you do between matches, or even in between aggressive exchanges. When I’m passing someone’s guard, I imagine that my heart rate must at times jam up against 200 rpm. And once I pass, I often get 3-10 seconds to regain my breathing and composure before going in aggressively for a submission. I don’t mean that I stall, but I think that a lot of the techniques I do from side control often require less energy than the chaotic process of passing guard.

Holding Your Breath for Time

At the start of the class, and again at the end, Dr. Vranich had us hold our breath for time. I’m sure there are many reasons for doing so, but for me it was fun because I’m competitive as hell. Surprisingly, I held my breath less than almost everyone else in the class, but I did improve a good amount after the long mediation session.

Matt (pictured left) beat almost everyone (probably to show off). I believe he was using performance enhancing drugs, but I can’t prove it yet ;-)

In a way, not breathing made me more aware of how much my body needs oxygen, and how powerful this autonomic process is. It seems that gaining some control of it may pay off big in the competition.

PS: Thanks to Alma Qualli and everyone for putting this thing together.

Two of the Best Judoka in the World Practicing at the Kodokan

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The following is a video of Ilias Iliadis and Teddy Riner in a randori session at the Kodokan in 2011, who are two of the best in the world in their respective weight divisions.

Iliadis is a -90kg player and Riner is a 100+kg player (actual weight of 129kg). So, there is an 85 lbs difference between the two men. However, Iliadis is probably one of the most powerful judoka to ever fight in 90kg.

It’s exciting to see two world class judoka at the top of their game practicing together. It’s almost as if they are both relaxed enough to not take the whole thing very seriously, and yet the natural competitive spirit definitely takes over at times.

Here’s a video of Iliadis practicing:

Here’s a short Riner highlight:

Both are some of the greatest judoka of all time, but if I had to pick one to watch, I’d go with Iliadis every time ;-)

 

Wrestling Mindset and The Perfect Practice

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Mike Denny ran a hell of a good (tough) wrestling practice Tuesday. Emphasis on pressure, always hands on the opponent, pushing him and yourself.

Live training didn’t have “sorry”, handshakes, rest breaks. Pushing the cardio, and yet (at least the guys I went with) didn’t use much muscle, all crisp technique.

Of course, my favorite part was the non-stop drilling, for about 30 minutes. Shot after shot. I went with Tom who is a tough no-bullshit guy, and again doesn’t use muscle, just clean technique. I don’t think he said a single word to me the whole time, which is perfect.

That brings me to the idea that I’ve been after for a while which is what makes a good (and even “perfect”) practice:

  1. A short warm up (not too taxing cardio-wise, but breaks a sweat), followed by a quick stretch. I usually do my own stretching before hand since I have a few specific problem area I need to loosen up (shoulders, neck, groin, lower back).
  2. Drills of fundamental techniques. Keep the pace up, but no muscle, technique has to be 100% perfect. No talking, no breaks, no questions (except if you’re completely lost).
  3. Live training. If I’m going hard, I like to keep this part short (only 3-4 matches of 6 minutes), but if I’m relaxing and focusing on learning then I can  just roll forever.

My criticism of any practice, even one Mike ran is not enough time for drills! I like to get high number of reps in. That’s where I start enjoying a technique, the more and more I understand every little details of it, the more it becomes effortless. For me, there’s nothing like the feeling of pulling off a technique without using any muscle, purely based on timing and leverage. That’s when I know I only have 10,000 reps to go ;-)

Another Rant On Drilling

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It’s remarkable to me how few people want to drill. I won’t claim to any expertise in jiu jitsu or judo (obviously), but I really believe if you want to win in competition you have to drill your A-game A LOT. I mean thousands of repetitions, regularly: every time you step on the mat.

What is drilling good for?

First, it develops confidence in the technique. I mean real confidence. For example, for passing guard, confidence is the belief that you can pass anyone’s guard. I don’t have this at all yet, but that’s the goal. This belief is essential to put the kind of power and drive behind a technique that’s required to make it work.

Second thing drilling does is fill your mind with the technique you’re drilling. If you drill enough, it’s all you think about. You start to understand all the intricate details of it. You start to visualize different possibilities of counters, counters to counters, counters to counters to counters, and so on. And so when you do live training, all of that information gets integrated into a complete system around the technique.

Third thing drilling does, as is commonly know, is it develops muscle memory so that you can execute it cleanly at a speed and with a timing that nullifies the possible counters and defenses. Moreover, it develops the strength, power, and endurance of the muscle required to execute the technique.

I won’t say anything else. I’m pretty frustrated about my inability to get regular drilling going. I know when I played piano and guitar, practice was essential. Practice with a clear purpose. Which usually meant doing stuff that wasn’t at all pleasant, and would be considered incredibly boring by most folks. It’s the end result that I’m after, and I’m willing to pay the costs of hard work in order to win, in all aspects of my life.

Drilling with White Belts

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Like many BJJ competitors, I put in a lot of hours live training, which is good as long as its focused, with good technique, and an open mind. But drilling is where it’s at. You have to get it in. It’s the broccoli of a jiu jitsu diet.

I enjoy practicing the same thing over and over and over. I don’t mind doing thousands of reps of something, day after day, month after month. For me, the idea of a good jiu jitsu class is where I don’t say a single word and just get 40-50 reps of a technique or chain of techniques in. I guess I’m introverted in that way, but for me conversation breaks the focus of practice.

Many people far better than I approach jiu jitsu slightly differently. They will occasionally have a conversation about a technique, breaking it down, discussing why it works or why it doesn’t. That’s very useful, but too often it can slow the pace of drilling it. For me, at this stage of my development, the way I “discuss” a technique is by drilling it over and over, and attempting it in training over and over. The jiu jitsu itself is the conversation, as lame as that sounds.

Anyway, given all that, here’s where the topic of this post comes in. I find that I can get more reps in (and less conversation) drilling techniques with a white belt. I’m not sure why that is, perhaps they haven’t seen the technique before so there’s a greater focus on trying to get it right…

Drill on.