Whilst I make no pretensions of being anything other than a novice in my chosen area of study (Jujitsu)… I have had another one of those ‘light bulb moments’ that I would like to share with the class… errm …so to speak.
During a Saturday training session I went to the JJ class, we where going though some basic controlling techniques to deal with a front strangle and a blow to the abdominal area from a right hand strike. The implication with the strikes being that they could involve either a broken bottle used as an improvised weapon or something else sharp and dangerous - so in all of these getting your body the f**k out of the way fo danger really was the first move…
And quite frankly, I was making a right royal mess of it all…
My footwork was all over the matting, it was more like a day at a tea-dance than a technique drill… so cluttered was my little noobish noggin’ focused on recalling every single little hand movement of the sequences 100% text-book correct and proper that my feet became an afterthought - just a means of locomotion a forgotten link in an ever increasing chain of (somewhat needless) thoughts…
:5bomb:
After all I thought… you don’t spend time cogitating and considering every single dammed step you take do you?
Fortunately - the instructor saw my vexation rising, due to my total lack of success (unless there’s such a thing as a successful fail) they stopped me before this got out of hand and showed me where I was going wrong.
And lo and behold! shock horror… It was my footwork that was the issue… so many steps, yet so little really needed for what was actually required to get the ‘bones’ of each technique right.
They went thought the foot work for each method … and that’s when the light bulb lit up above my head, because almost all of the methods had the same fundamental foot positions to actually work effectively.
From that - it simplified the whole process to the point where I could let my feet get on with getting me in the most effective position and actually focus on each part of the (very short, sweet and sometimes slightly sadistic) methods we were going through to get them down cleanly… without doing then that crappy nooby ‘robotic-step-sequence’ kind of way.
Result?.. I needed less guidance from the instructor, aside from a little advice on refining a few things and I could focus on getting/giving feedback on how well stuff was working for each technique (or not sometimes) with my training partner.
In short, I turned some basic, effective methods into useless fussy bulls**t by over-thinking and over-complicating what I actually needed to do…
TBH I kind of owe a small debit of gratitude to Vieux Normand, who created this article:
PAY ATTENTION OR GET POUNDED - Please read it.
Between that and my little light bulb moment - it helped me get closer to understanding not just why BS gets so easily made and can become part of our methods without a good solid guiding hand… but also how (sometimes frighteningly so) easily it can f**k you up…
Then, light bulbs started going off all over quicker than a paprazzi’s camera outside George Michael’s bedroom when there’s a young guy called ‘Kiki’ handcuffed to the headboard…
look at any kind of full contact match, be it judo, boxing, MT, Katate MMA or whatever… there’s a few things that might look ‘rough & ready’… but the one thing that you will see a lot of across several disciplines, is that these ‘uncomplex’ manouvers… work. A techninque which is pretty-looking-but-overly-complex has no place either in the ring or used to look after yourself when s**t and fan are coming to a stage of convergence…
After a few moments driving back from the JJ lesson -the sad thought also popped in there: The really sad thing people earn money from that ‘overcomplicating’ kind of crap in all walks of life… pick one and see… ‘secret & deadly ninja techniques’… ‘too deadly for the ring’… the list goes on and on and on.
Let’s put it in context simply:
Imagine if you will… you have a ‘d34dly str33t t3chniqu3’ that involves a ‘mere simple’ 10 step sequence to make it happen… but hey, it sure did look cool when it was demonstrated in class… the instructor made it look so easy too…
Now - imagine you’re in a situation whereby you have to recall those 10 steps correctly under pressure (EG an attempted attack to your person).
If you knew a more basic 2 or 3 step technique you had been drilled in that you could apply in the situation…
Which one would you actually use?
When put like that, we can start to see the dangers of BS techniques and ‘clever’ methods… Which ironically can end up using making the person trying to use them look dead stupid… Sadly, sometimes ending up putting an ‘and’ between those two words.
