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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Make sure you read part 1 here:   Invisible Jiu-Jitsu http://bjjengineer.com/?p=341

I wasn’t even planning about writing about this subject a second part, but I ran across some interesting articles I want it to share with you from: http://elementsfitness.blogspot.com/2009/01/invisible-jiu-jitsu.html

Invisible Jiu Jitsu

In a recent interview Rickson Gracie let it be known that he has returned to Brazil to live and has begun conducting a series of seminars which focus on what he calls “Invisible Jiu Jitsu.” This is, as far as I can tell, the first extended interview Rickson has given in over 3 years and while many topics were covered, the concept Invisible Jiu Jitsu is what truly captured my attention.

For those of you who have been living under a rock for the past ten years, Rickson is the son of Helio Gracie, he holds a 7th degree black belt in BJJ and has a rumoured 400 + combined wins in Jiu Jitsu, Wrestling, Sambo and Vale Tudo matches. He held the middle weight and open weight World Jiu Jitsu titles for two decades and also has a professional Mixed Martial Arts record of 11-0. He is regarded as a legend in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu circles and is often held up to be the epitome of technical skill and fighting spirit.

Invisible Jiu Jitsu was only lightly touched upon during the interview but, as far as I understand it, I took Rickson to mean that the most important parts of Jiu Jitsu are the bits you can’t see. There are, I think, three main categories that Invisible Jiu Jitsu covers:

1. Things about you that you can’t see.
2. Things about your opponent that you can’t see.
3. Things about your technique that you can’t see.

Things About You That You Can’t See
Balance and leverage are things that cannot be seen but play a vital role in the successful execution of any technique. Being balanced is a fundamental part of grappling – or fighting in general for that matter – and being the slightest bit unbalanced dramatically increases the amount of effort required to perform any technique and leaves you disproportionally vulnerable to your opponent’s attacks. Leverage is what makes Jiu Jitsu work; the greater your leverage the more effective your Jiu Jitsu. Your use of leverage determines how well you can control and attack your opponents limbs, the amount of strength needed to execute a technique and whether or not you will able to defeat a larger, stronger opponent.

Things About Your Opponent You Can’t See
‘Feeling’ is an important aspect of BJJ in a number of ways. The most straight forward application of ‘feeling’ is that you are frequently unable to see what your opponent is doing – Are they blocking my hip? Are their legs flat? Is their chin tucked? – and must work out what’s going on purely by feel. An application of ‘feeling’ that is considered less often, but is no less important, is determining the state of your opponent. Working out whether they are tense or relaxed, balanced or unstable, even where they are strong and weak can only be done by ‘feeling’ your opponent (not like that you gutter snipe).

Things About Your Technique You Can’t See
The single biggest factor that holds back your technique development is the mistake that you don’t know you are making. This problem – termed ‘unconscious ignorance’ in skill acquisition terms – is best remedied by listening to what your coach says you are doing wrong then – and this is where most people fail – actually doing what they say. If you are convinced that despite what your coach says you are in fact doing the right thing tell them your reasons and if your coach knows their stuff they should be able to explain why you should do it their way. If they can’t, don’t just assume that you’re right, do some research and bloody well find out for certain.

There you go; a brief explanation of my understanding of the main concepts of Invisible Jiu Jitsu. I hope you understand that this article is made up of my thoughts and my words, not Rickson Gracie’s. Rickson, through both an unwillingness to discuss the finer points of his ideas in such a public forum and due to language difficulties, is a little unclear on what exactly Invisible Jiu Jitsu is. That being the case I think it is best to leave you with something that is not an interpretation or an extrapolation but with something that is all Rickson.

“It is only with a lot of training and dedication that we can achieve something. A brave man, a real fighter is not measured by how many times he fall, but how many times he stand up. Always be ready to fight, to win and to forgive when necessary. Good luck and train hard!”
- Rickson Gracie.

If you wish to hear the interview with Rickson you can find it here.

By the way probably the best Grappler in the world right at the time of this writing is Braulio Estima. He has also decided to talk about this subject. Here are some of the videos he has released under the name “Invisible Jiu-Jitsu”

Videos:

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Last night I was having a late dinner with Coach Julius at the Double T Dinner in Baltimore, MD. It has become a tradition, last training session of the trip from 10:30 pm to who knows when followed by the late dinner discussion about where BJJ is going and sharing thoughts.

In our conversation we started talking about how everything for both of us has changed now that we are upper belts. How back in the day it was so simple.. just watch instructionals, but now there are no instructionals for what we need, only Master Lloyd Irvin seems to have the answers to many of our BJJ problem and capable of enlightening us when time becomes available, but when he is not around its hours and hours watching tape, and competition footage trying to zoom in on elbows and knees and figure out the details like a Sherlock Holmes epsiode. Hours spent studying for just a tiny detail.

So much is part of Jiu-Jitsu: Fundamentals, Techniques, Strategies, Positional Advantage, Conditioning, etc…Its a crazy system.

We then spoke about the legendary  Rickson Gracie. There is a myth out there that says that Rickson Gracie was interviewed and asked why doesn’t he ever release an instructional DVD set. His answer was that the real Jiu-Jitsu can be taught by instructionals that it is very incomplete, that it has to be taught person to person. We both agree on this subject. There are so many details, so many things to learn. Maybe one day things will change with the evolution of technology, but for now there is no instructional DVD that teaches what I teach my students at Third Law BJJ of Naples, FL in the most advance classes. It may look like a simple comment or remark but in reality there are details that are being transferred in in this causal conversation.

I had the same realization yesterday when Lloyd Irvin taught me a very important aspect of BJJ I had never understood before and I don’t know how many years wit would had taken me to study it on my own, and have if ever figured it out.

I will be releasing some videos categorized as Invisible BJJ in the near future. Just to give you a better idea of what I am trying to explain.

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You should have read so far:

Goals for Athletes Part 1: http://bjjengineer.com/?p=328

Goals for Athletes Part 2: http://bjjengineer.com/?p=329

&

Goals for Athletes Part 3: http://bjjengineer.com/?p=330

There are some special rules that you must follow to get the most out of writing your goals daily. First you must use the three P forumla.:

Your goals must be written and described in the positive, present and personal tenses.

Your goals must be stated positively. Instead of saying “I will quit smoking” or “I will lose a certain number of pounds of weight,” you would say “I am a non-smoker,” or “I weigh X number of pounds.” Your command must be positive because your subconscious mind cannot process a negative command. It is only receptive to a positive, present tense statement. Your subconscious mind is only activated by affirmative statements phrased in the present tense. You therefore use the present tense as well. You write down your goals as though you have already accomplished them. Instead of saying “I will become a World Champion in the next 12 months” you would say, “I am a World Champion this year.”

The third P stands for personal. From now on and for the rest of your life, write out every goal beginning with teh world “I” followed by a verb of some kind. You are the only person in the universe who can use th word “I” in relation to yourself. When your subconscious mind receives an order beginning with the word “I” it is as though the factory floor receives a production order from the head office. It goes to work immediately to bring the goal into your reality. For example, you would not say “My goal is to become a World Champion this year.” You would say, “I am a World Champion this year.”

Begin each of your goals with phrases such as “I earn,” “I weigh,” “I achieve,” “I win,” “I drive such and such a car,” “I live in such and such a home,” “I climb such and such a montain,” and so on.

To add power to your daily written goals, put a deadline at the end of each goal. For example you might write, “I will be a World Champion by August 1, 2010,” followed by the particular year. Your mind loves deadlines and thrives on a forcing system. Even if you do know how the goal is to be acheived always give yourself a firm deadline. Remember you can always change the deadline with new information. But be sure you have a deadline, like an exclamation point, after every goal.

When you begin writing your goals you may have no idea how they will be accomplished. But this is not important. All that matters is that you write and rewrite them every day, in complete faith, knowing that every single time you write them down you are impressing them deeper and deeper into your subconscious mind. At a certain point you will begin to believe with absolute conviction that your goal is achievable.

Once your subconscious mind accepts your goals as commands from your conscious mind, it will start to make all your words and actions fit a pattern consistent with those goals. Your subconscious mind will start attracting into your life people and circumstances that can help you achieve your goals. Your subconscious mind words 24 hours a day like a massive computer that is never turned off to help bring your goals into your reality. Almost without your doing anything your goals will begin to materialize in your life, sometimes in the most remarkable and unexpected ways.

Whenever you write down a new goal of any kind you may be skeptical and doubtful about the likelihood of accomplishing it. You may have the idea in your conscious mind, but you will not yet have developed the total belief and conviction that it is possible for you. This is normal and natural. Just don’t let it stop you from usign this method every single day.

All that is required to make this method work for you is to get a spiral notebook and then to discipline yourself each day to write down your 10 goals in the positive, present, personal tense. That’s all you need. In a week, a month, a year, you will look around you and you will see that your whole life will have transformed in the most remarkable was.

In the next article (Part 5)I will some techniques that will build on the 3P’s formula!

Roberto Torralbas

The BJJEngineer

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The first step to writing a successful gameplan is to start of the right foot and take notes in class religiously (http://bjjengineer.com/?p=203). Second there is no such thing as one gameplan. At the bare minimum you should have 2. One should be a practice gameplan to be executed at class. This is the one in which you will incorporate new techniques you have drilled and will tweak them and polish them on a daily basis until you achieve the results you want. Then these techniques go on to your competition gameplan or your overall jiu-jitsu gameplan (if you don’t compete). The latter gameplan unlike the practice gameplan should be very solid with fewer holes as there is a try and error phase that filters out most of the kinks. You should not change your competition gameplan one month away from an important competition.

Gameplans form part of what we call “Periodization”. An introduction to Periodization can be found on http://bjjengineer.com/?p=167 and http://bjjengineer.com/?p=169. The practice gameplan should incorporate training objectives, a very important aspect of your training and topic we plan to write about in the near future in our Periodization series of articles.

In a nutshell there shouldn’t be a single practice you come in to the academy without a training objective, a technique, or goal that you wish to achieve or perfect in class.

Examples can be:

• Play Sitting Guard: This will allow me to develop a better guard.
• Play Turtle: It will make my back defense better.
• Play inside the close guard of a very dangerous close guard player: This will make my guard openings and submissions defense much better.
• Don’t get score upon. This will improve my ability to shot other people’s game down.

just to name a few…

Make sure that your training objectives include your practice gameplan. Make sure that you have a practice game plan written down and you meticulously revised it and adjusted depending on the feedback you get from your training objectives during your class time. For example, say you tried playing Dela Riva, and figure out that the position of the outside leg made a big difference, then this detail it must be added to your gameplan as follows.

If the opponent goes for _________ try De La Riva Sweep.
- make sure to have the leg at this angle to stop him from ________

A gameplan should be very specific and detailed. Only remove the specific details once they have become second nature and too obvious to even write them. I personally prefer to leave them as they serve as useful reminder of the importance of having fine, and detailed technique.

So how do you write a game plan? I get asked this question very often. Here is a quick template to give you an idea.

Game Plan Template

OPENING

Gi

- establish grips and immediately pulls or jump guard. (Not Specific Enough.)

No-Gi

- look for arm drag single or immediately jump to guard—closed if possible. (Meant to get you started.)

ON THE BOTTOM

THE GUARD

Guard objectives:
- submit /take back/ sweep ( prioritize it)

Make sure to prioritize your objective. If your submissions are better than your sweeps, make sure to make submission from close guard a higher priority and attempt things that will enable you to attack with your strength not your weaknesses.

Gi Guard Series
- Write down the sequence of move you plan to attempt on your opponent (be specific) use arrows to help you visualize the flow. i.e.: - attempt bump sweep to threaten kimura- look for triangle when the guy defends.

No-gi Guard Series
Make sure to also use “if” to account for all the things your exponent my expose you to

“if opponent is _______”
I will do _____
“if opponent is _______”
I will do _____

A game plan is really like an algorithm or computer program ( a loop) in the back of your head that you have memorized, drilled, and internalized until it become second nature. Make sure you have both a gi and no-gi gameplan.

HALF GUARD

Half guard objectives:
- sweep/ submit/ take back/ escape to full guard (prioritize and number it so you know what’s your first option, second, etc…)

Half Guard Bottom Submission Series

Half Guard Bottom Sweep Series

Half Guard Bottom Takeback Series

Half Guard escape to full Guard Series.

The more positions you have thought through in your gamplan the less surprises. Once again be as specific as possible.

ON TOP

THE BACK

Back objectives:
- submit

Grips on the Back

Back Attack Series

HALF GUARD

Half Guard Top Objectives:
- submit/pass/smash opponent/takeback

Half Guard Fundamentals
If there are bad habits that you are trying to get rid of make sure to add them to your gameplan

-Remember to DO
-DONT DO

Write them large so you remember. Little mistakes can always come back to bite you.

Half Guard Attack Series

Half Guard Passing Series

INSIDE THE OPEN GUARD

Objectives of Open Guard Top
- submit/pass/lock down half guard top

Inside the Open Guard (GI)

Inside the Open Guard (NO-GI)

Passing the Open Guard

Finer Details of the Over/Under Pass

One more time…be as detailed as possible. Look over your notes in class.

This template it is mean to get you started and it is incomplete in many ways. Imagine that your gameplan is a PHD thesis that you are planning to turn in, take your time to type it down and make it look professional but at the same time don’t delay it a single day after reading this if you haven’t done it so far. Make sure to have your instructor look it over and write down notes where he will like you to be more specific and give you suggestions if he feels that there are strengths or weaknesses you have overlooked.

Also make sure to film you matches! This is  what competition is all about; getting more feedback from other people you don’t train with everyday to help you get your BJJ better. If you don’t film your matches you are definitely wasting a lot of your time, investment, and commitment to compete. You don’t need fancy camera just one that allows you to see what you are doing right or wrong. Don’t rely on your instructor to film your matches as there might be multiple teammates competing, he may forget to bring it one day, etc…

Finally reads these quotes on planning:

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail”
- Proverb

“Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now”
-Alan Lakein

“A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow”
-Proverb

“Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”
-Thomas Alva Edison

“To be prepared is half the victory.”
-Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra

“Proper preparation prevents poor performance.”
-Charlie Batch

“When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary”

-Thomas Paine

“If you don’t have a plan for yourself, you’ll be part of someone else’s”
-American Proverb

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