Shut up and take my money!....A comment on buying equipment.

So, you have made the decision to start BJJ. You have researched schools, read about the Gracie lineage, and even practiced leg locks on your dog. You are driving to your first night and then you have a moment of panic....what should you wear? Should you stop at the local TKD club and get a dobok?

Maybe this is a gym that wears wrestling singlets???

Ohhh my.....

Have no fear, I can honestly say your best bet is to go to your first class and talk to the instructor. Every gym is a little different. At our gym, we are happy to let people try class for a few weeks and then make a commitment to buy a gi. Other gyms don't use gis. Some gyms will have you buy one the first night. The main thing is not to panic.

With that being said, if the gym you go to uses a gi (and in my opinion training in the gi is really important) you will want to buy a decent one to start out. That is not to say you need to plunk down $350 on a used Shoyoroll, but you should get one that fits well.

A couple reasons:

1. A nicer gi (roughly between $90-$175) is going to fit well. It seems odd in a rough and tumble sport that fit is important. However, I have owned a good number of gis and I have had several that fit weird. They quickly were at the bottom of my rotation and the money I spent on them was wasted. Honestly, if you stick with BJJ you will end up with 2-5 gis at anytime. If you have one that just doesn't fit right, you won't wear it. 
2. That money spent is going to force you to commit to coming. I don't like to spend money on useless items. When I plunk down what amounts to 15 - Six Pack and a Pounds, I am going to make sure I use that item. 
3. A new gi makes you feel badass! You are going to wear it around your house when you get it. That is fine, take some pictures, trash talk the mirror, try to choke your significant other out with the lapel, live your life. 

The main thing to remember, you need to ask your instructor what they prefer. Our gym is pretty loose with the type of stuff you can wear. Some gyms only want white or blue gis. Don't plunk down what amounts to 30 - KFC $5 Fill-ups and then have to sell it. If your gym has no rules, talk to your gym-mates, try on their gis. You are going to find they are really excited to share their knowledge. Currently, I roll in a 2 Fuji gis and a 12NV gi. They range in price between $120-$150. I previously owned a $200 Atama and really couldn't tell the difference between it and my cheeper gis.  

As far as other equipment you might want to invest in (probably over your first 6-12 months):

• A mouth piece. I chipped my tooth in June of this year. Like all issues, I just assumed it would resolve itself. It sure didn't, I further chipped it 3 months later. My dentist was impressed with how bad I chipped it! She did not give me a reward for my insolence. She did give me a $400  bill (that is 40 - Drunken Noodles at Ginger Thai). Protect those pearly whites. Most $5-$10 mouth guards will do. 

• A pair of grappling shorts. You can get by with basketball shorts or athletic shorts for awhile. But, eventually they will get annoying. They will slip off, they don't stretch as well. There are tons of different types of grappling shorts on the market. In my experience, grappling shorts below $20ish dollars are crap. Anything above will do just fine. A $60 pair of shorts is not 2x better than a $30 pair. I just got a pair of Jaco shorts from BJJHQ.com . It has some great rolling deals, if you are in to that type of thing.

Checkout my new Jaco shorts.

• Compression shorts, nut-cup, bra with reinforced cups. Mix and match for your primary and secondary sexual trait needs.
• A rash guard/compression shirt. This is one of those things you don't have to drop a lot of money on. I rolled in a $5.99 Champion compression shirt for my first 5-6 years and thought it was great. I upgraded to a $30 compression shirt from Meerkatsu and really like it. You can get rash guards for $60 (if they are blessed by Marcelo Garcia....I hear you will get the power of flight). The upside of a more expensive rash guard are the cool graphics and the quality of the shirt. There are some really neat looking rash guards on the market. The other big advantage of a more expensive rash guard is the quality of the material. It is thicker and holds shape longer. Finally, you will find both long sleeve and short sleeve. I like to rub my arm hair in peoples' faces, so I go short. 

This is my current rash guard

That is about it. You really can get by spending $200-$250 dollars over the course of your first year. You can also drop well over a grand if you have that money. However, the more you compete and the more serious you get, the nicer equipment you will probably want. Also, the more you train, the more equipment you will need...because you will wash your gi. Believe me, the last thing you want to be is the smelly kid. 

F@**@*#*@($(*(#CK…A comment on dealing with frustration

It happens to all of us, we think we are making progress. We have made it to tons of classes, we are practicing moves and then you go up against your “white whale.”

A quick diversion from the initial story, a person’s “White Whale” is a term stolen from Moby Dick. In the book, Captain Ahab is obsessed with catching Moby Dick (a white whale) that took his leg below the knee. See it is apt for the post because a person’s white whale is someone they really want to submit.

Back to the main point, we all have the one person in class who subs us, over and over again. Humility is important in Jiu-Jitsu, but so is a desire to get better. It is Ok to want to submit guys who are better than you, it shows you care about your progression. So, you go up against your “white whale” and POW! 

They submit you. You shake it off and then POW!!! Same move! It happens again and again. You can feel that heat rise up in your cheeks, you start talking to yourself, you are getting really frustrated.

I will be the first to admit, this happens to me. Recently, I have been getting caught in knee bars…all the damn time. It bothers me, the other day I punched a wall after getting caught twice in a roll by the same knee bar. 

Dumb idea, the wall didn’t knee bar me and it didn’t really get hurt when I punched it. I ruminated on the fact I got subbed by the same move on the way home. I Googled, “ways to stop knee bars”, “how to not get caught in knee bars”, “why do communists only use knee bars?”, “Why are Sambo kurtkas red? Is it because they are communists who use knee bars?” Needless to say, I am invested in solving this knee bar problem. Which I think is one of the few times where frustration can really benefit a person in BJJ.

In my experience, there are two types of people who get frustrated in BJJ. There are the people that quit when they reach a level of frustration and people who persevere. The former are not able to handle the fact that they don’t get a move or keep getting beat by a move or the same person beats them over and over. They look for immediate rewards, which come often when you start BJJ. As a person moves along in BJJ, those gains become less frequent. The extrinsic motivation fades and they end up quitting.

Could be worse! Am I right?!?!?

However, the other type of person looks at the issue causing frustration as a problem to solve. They take agency of their problem and look for solutions. Eventually, they will solve that problem and their motivation is reward with a new challenge. In this way, frustration is great, it motivates BJJ practitioners to get better.

If I were to give advice to myself starting out 6 years ago, I would say to try to solve problems for myself early on. This ability to take agency for my own development will serve be a huge advantage when I am one of the top 4 or 5 people at my gym or when I am coaching. At this point, there may be no one at the gym that can answer my question about stopping the inverted guard, I will have to figure it out on my own.  As long as I look at it like a puzzle I can solve, the frustration will only motivate me.

P.S. Still working on stopping that knee bar, thanks Doodles

I got arm bars you ain’t never seen bro….A comment on humility in BJJ

For anyone that has ever attend a martial arts class, watched a kung fu film, or talked to someone who does martial arts, they know that humility is something that is preached.  To be sure, humility is an important part of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as well. However, the road to humility and the vehicle through which it is taught, is a lot different than many other martial arts.

Kanye knows about humility

I have had my fair share of experiences in martial arts. I took Tae Kwon Do and Shurite as a child. As a college student I participated in Judo and Hapkido. 

Shuri...what?

In all of these disciplines respect and humility is preached. Often times a creed is recited before and after class. There are symbols for the concepts of humility and respect hung on the wall (typically in an Asian language). I think this is great, especially for kids. In our school and all the others I have trained at, there is less of an emphasis on overtly talking about the importance of respect. As a result of the structure of BJJ, there is not really a need for this verbosity.

Here are some symbols for humility...or from a take out menu. It could be either.

At it’s core, Jiu Jitsu is an art/sport where people compete against each other every class. As a result, humility and respect get infused into the culture for about 45-60 minutes at the end of class (when we try to choke or break someone's arm). If someone thinks they are the best person on the mat, they will get a chance to prove it. If they submit everyone that night, they will have to do it the next night, and the night after that. Eventually, that person will get subbed. In that moment, there is probably going to be a reckoning with the high opinion they hold of themselves. Often times, participants quickly learn that it is far easier to be happy to have the opportunity to learn and quietly celebrate when they get a submission against an upper belt or congratulate a person when they are submitted. In addition, when applying a submission to a training partner, it is always in my mind to be safe...at some point that person will catch me and I hope they return the favor.

About 4 years ago, we were getting ready to start class when a very muscular ex-service man came in. He had tribal tattoos and lifted a lot at the gym (so he was pretty certain we knew he was for realz). As we were warming up he turns to our coach and says, “I already know this stuff. I have got armbars you guys ain’t never seen. I just want to roll live.” In that moment our coach was faced with two choices, explain the importance of humility and respect. Let the student know that BJJ is a process and takes many long hours of improvement before a person gets better, etc. Or, let him role with one of his students and experience why humility and respect are a virtue. To our enjoyment, he picked option number 2!

Enter my good friend Ned (not his real name). Ned is an outstanding competitor. He is also somewhat of an enforcer for our class. This is a good thing, every class needs a Bob Probert. 

Bob who????

Our coach set the clock for six minutes, the young man made it maybe 2 minutes against Ned. Clearly, he had arm bars we had never seen. The problem was, they were really ineffective.

Essentially, the match looked like this

2 side points: 1) I am categorically against beating up on new people and teammates. That is a dick move, it ruins a club. 2) There is a lot of hyperbole around respect and humility in BJJ. There are pictures of chiseled swarthy men in gis, staring menacingly into the camera, with captions like, "Lions eat elephants which are bigger than them, so be nice.....OSSSS!!!" 

Like this. I want to believe it, it's in black and white!

I don't think we need all that. The beauty of BJJ is that it self regulates egos through challenging a person's skill. After a person gets beaten so many times, they either become humble or become an ex-BJJ participant. This wasn't a case of a new guy getting picked on, it was a person who needed a reality check of their skill level. After his beating, he faked an injury, said he would be back next class and never returned. He could have been a great guy, he could have been Charles Manson, I don't know. What I do know, he wasn't ready to participate in BJJ at that point. 

We have a lot of different personalities at our gym. We have had (at most) one or two instances where someone has had to step between two guys that were ready to fight. Honestly, a person doesn’t need to fight in class to assert their dominance in BJJ. Everyone in class knows that by the end of class that will have taken care of itself.