Dear Readers,
My very good friend Master Paul Greenhill wanted me to share some insights on this subject. The timing couldn’t be better as I have been spending this week competing at the European Championships in Lisbon Portugal. While on this trip I have been discussing some of the main points author of the book “Outliers: The Story of Success” Malcolm Gladwell makes about why certain individuals become successful with coach and mentor Julius Park.
I won’t go into details but you may want to check his site for more on this subject : http://www.baltimorebrazilianjiujitsu.com/ you can find very insightful information there and he promised me he will write more in depth about this subject. Today I will write about my own personal experience with the hope that it can help others.
There are certain ingredients that a person needs to become successful:
1. Drive/Passion/Perseverance/Will Power: and a similar of character traits that are found within a person.
2. Intelligence/Decisions/Common Sense/Logic: and a bunch of intellectual traits found in the athlete that will help him maximize the resources around him to the best extent possible.
3. Circumstances/Resources/Mentors: and real world situation based advantages that a person could obtain over his/her opponents.
I personally believe that to make it as an athlete in any sport you need at least 2 of the 3 ingredients above. Why? When I analyze all the possibilities: (1&2), (1&3), and (2&3) assuming that they had extreme advantages in those 2 areas I can find a way in which the athlete can overcome the lack of an advantage in another area. For Example:
Case (1&2) : A hard working individual , training hard, and studying matches, and saving money to buy each years matches of the world championships to be able to research the best moves can make it to the top. I know one person that did this and came up with a system that anyone can do an achieve similiar results. His name is Lloyd Irvin.
Pros.: The student will arrive at a huge understanding of the art that will allow him to become an exceptional teacher.
Cons: The lack of a mentor or good instructor will waste much time in reinventing the wheel and it will be a close race to accomplish certain athlete oriented goals as the lack of time is always a constraint.
Case (1& 3): Is probably the best scenario for a coach that wants to develop the best athlete if he had to pick from the 3 cases. Why because he will listen to the coach like an android. Sometimes athletes that have their IQ’s a bit higher but not high enough to understand that more gains can be obtained by behaving like an android rather that questioning and challenging proven methods will lose the interest of the coach and their own time asking questions instead of learning the basics well. No great coach will waste time with non-believers and doubter versus those that are true followers of the system.
Pros. Athlete will get really good really fast at alarming speeds.
Cons. Bad decision making can eventually put him in deep debts, or other life factors that can jeopardize his athletic career and training. Because everything has been almost spoon fed by the coaches, these group of athletes might experience difficulty later on becoming a successful coach themselves. A lot of coaching is troubleshooting, understanding and relating to what your students are going through.
Case (2&3) : Extreme Intelligence with great resources can lead to deep understanding of the subject. Which means corners can be cut and tricks and gimmicks can be developed to achieve success at high levels of the sport, specially in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in which strategy plays a huge role.
Pros: The deep understanding of certain areas of the art can lead to big success at any single level.
Cons: It is usually short lived as hard work will overcome talent as talent refuses to work hard. In other words the weakness of this type of athlete is arrogance and believing that they know more than they know, and that they have a superior understanding that does not require hard work in areas like conditioning, drilling, etc…
My Personal Approach
I will tell you that I try to improve in all of the 3 ingredients mentioned above at all times. It is essential to improve on those three areas. It is important that as athlete you believe that you are destined to do big things. That your will power can overcome anything, and that circumstances are the creatures of man , and not the other way around.
When I opened Third Law BJJ I did it out of necessity. I was a young purple belt , very naive about what it takes to win at the highest level in the sport. I thought it was way easier than what it is. Anyways I started my school and soon I found myself lacking ingredient #3. I studied instructionals, matches, drilled, trained multiple times a day and I did surpass many peers with better circumstances than me. Nevertheless there those who had all of the ingredients. Even though I thought I was harder working and smarter than them, I could not overcome the mix of their good enough will power, good enough common sense and logical thinking power and great resources. Once you view your situation this way is very easy to really understand what is going on. It can also be intimidating when you know some of the people you compete against are training with Multiple World Champions.
Nevertheless the answer to my problem was always the same: “work harder and smarter than everyone else by doing things more efficiently while at the same time trying to make the resources around you better.” Therefore I started to develop a good team in Naples, FL . As my students get better so did I, but this was too slow of a process and sometimes students quit , determination drops leaving you short from training partners. So this alone was not alone.
Then I tried competing a lot to make up for the difference but then I couldn’t do this while leaving the school behind without falling apart. That’s when I realize that my success dependent on having a functional automated business for my martial arts school. As I started to accomplish this things became easier as had more money to travel and compete and visit my mentors. This is where I am at currently, constantly improving on all of the 3 ingredients, but specially on number 3.
The funny thing is that ingredient 3 teaches me how to become more efficient in the other areas. It is a never ending cycle.
I want to end this article by saying that an athlete above all things must believe in the power of the human mind and will power and the ability of humans to overcome obstacles regardless of how big they may seem from the distance. It is true that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and that is the journey where the true prize lies, and not the destinations ( titles , gold medals, etc..). It is in the journey that you will learn the most about yourself, character, discipline, honor , and self- improvement.
Sincerely,
Roberto Torralbas
The BJJEngineer
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from futon, turned on the light, and looked at my body. Neither my height (169cm) nor weight (86kg) is outstanding. There was no guarantee that I could continue to defend the title judging from my body size. I kept on thinking everyday, “I want to become a true winner.” About 10 days after this, I came up with a solid good idea. That is, “San-bai no Do-ryoku (Triple Effort)”. Until then, I practiced about 6 hours a day. I thought practicing twice as much as others would be sufficient since I had heard that others were practicing about 3 hours a day. In reality, however, they had been practicing about 4 hours a day (which I found later). But now I am the champion, others would start to train 6 hours a day to beat me. I could not beat them as long as I trained as hard as others. If my opponents train twice as hard as others, then, I will train 3 times as hard as others, i.e, 9 hours a day. This way, I would gain extra 3 hours a day, and I will do this everyday. The accumulation of these extra hours will become my flesh and blood, that is, my skills and mental power. This will automatically give me real self confidence. If I had this much accumulation, I would be able to fight as usual even if I got sick with fever at 40 degrees centigrade. I practiced “Triple Effort” everyday.”- from My Judo by Masahiko Kimura 
