You Are Stuck In A Training Rut. Now What?
If you are a long-time reader of my articles on MartialJournal or on my CAIA Blog, then you know I have a deep, long and complicated love-hate relationship with the grappling arts.
Grappling arts are amazing arts. They are incredibly important to learn for self-defence (though I most certainly do not believe that they are highly effective on their own, more on this here, here and here). They are cerebral and thought-provoking and are definitely a great way to get fit and learn some cool stuff. I don’t think you can be a complete martial artist without being a competent grappler.
And here is where I struggle! Why?
I hold a black belt in Danzan Ryu Jujutsu and have dabbled, sometimes quite incessantly, in other grappling arts – Judo, wrestling, and Aikido. I have been training in BJJ for about 5 years and I’m still a white belt (in my defence, I spent about 3 out of those 5 years unable to train due to series injuries).
While I’m still a BJJ white belt, I hold several other black belts and teach and train a combined 15-20 hours per week in a variety of martial arts, and I believe I understand body mechanics, technique and application quite well. I come to class diligently (2-4 times per week, depending on my other training commitments, injuries and family life). I practice the techniques. Additionally, I ask questions in class. I go to watch competitions or watch competitions on the internet. I roll and spar every week, and always try to spar with those of higher rank.
Yet for the last 3 months – zero improvement. In fact, I’d go so far as to say I feel like I’ve gone backward. I spend more time in bad positions. Also, I get submitted by things that I see coming. I can’t finish off submissions.
And as it goes on, I feel less and less like coming to class. This is something all martial artists, regardless of style, will face at some point.
I keep coming anyway, out of sheer stubbornness. I’ve been training for long enough to know that everyone goes through peaks and troughs, and this is just another slump that will eventually pass.
Now let me get to the point.
It took me a long time and experimentation to start getting out of the grappling slump I’m in. Most importantly, it took a lot of soul-searching and critical thinking of my performance in varied situations, as well as some objective outside perspectives. Here are a couple of issues I found that I was facing, that I feel contributed to the slow progress:
- My Favourite Toy: I absolutely love kata gatame (arm triangle or head and arm choke). I find them everywhere and as they are part of other styles that I train in (especially Jujutsu and Krav Maga) I get a lot more reps of them than I do other submissions. But while my kata gatame has been getting better, so has everyone’s defence against it. Everyone I roll with in my club knows I always go for them and so the opportunities are fewer and farther between, unless I spend a lot of time setting them up or finding them in different positions. So does this mean I have gone backward? No, everyone else has just gotten much better, and have learned to adjust to how I usually attack.
Solution? I need to find better setups and new ways to attack. But the issue for me is not that. It’s that I need to find something else that I enjoy as much. - The Missing Link: This is a solution I’ve applied to my striking practice, and, I feel, has resulted in big improvement. Yet, I haven’t done it with grappling until recently.
One of the problems I found with some striking coaches that I trained with in the past was the following: You start learning the basics, you do pads and bag drills, maybe even some limited partner drills. And then you start sparring, and everything goes out the window. When you go from cooperative drills on a non-resisting partner or dummy to full resistance, it is very hard to apply what you learn – yet this is often the way martial arts are taught.
The missing link is, to me, objective-specific training. This means sparring with limited resistance or with limited techniques.
I find that grappling is often taught in the same way. We practice technique, and then we roll. We go from cooperative (or mostly cooperative) partners to 100% resistance. But because of the huge variety of positions and options, you may not actually get to practice anything you learned! For example, if you practice an armbar from the top for an hour in class, and then spar with the someone who is much heavier dominates the top position, you are unlikely to actually put yourself in a position to even attempt what you learned.
One of the things I found helped me a lot was to partner up with someone before or after class (or during, if we are doing these drills!), and do technique-specific sparring. I start in this position, you in that position. You can only pass, I can only sweep. We go at sparring pace. Do it and reset. Repeat as necessary. This definitely helps me cement technique in my head and muscle memory. - Big Targets: In order to get better I always try and spar with people who are better than me. And despite doing that all the time I found that it was not helping. I accepted the fact I’ll be tapping out left, right and centre and got on with it, yet no improvement! Simply put, I created an imbalance in my training. While my defence was getting better, I rarely got to practice any of the offensive moves we learned in class because I was always on the back foot when rolling with higher belts. It’s important to spar and train with people at different levels of experience, which I wrote about here. I was actually ignoring my own advice!
So… what’s the solution?
Here are the solutions I found got me (or have started to get me) out of the current rut. It revolves around two things:
- Closer to Home: I found that I get the best results from sparring (at the moment) when I’m sparring against people who are close to my level. People who I just beat, or just beat me. One of us will get the win, but it’ll be close and we both have to really work for it.
But why does this help when I’m in a rut?
When I train against those of much higher rank, I accept that I’m going to lose the vast majority of the time. It doesn’t mean that I don’t give it a red hot go, but I’m aware that I’ll be out-skilled. That being said, when you go through weeks, or even months, of continuously losing every single time, it starts to get frustrating. It’s important to win sometimes, if for no reason other than to make yourself feel good.
Not only do I then win sometimes, but it usually happens at a pace that allows me to think about what I am doing, and what they are doing. I can then analyse and make decisions on the fly, as well as pay attention to why something works or doesn’t work. And this leads us to the grand finale! - Training at the speed of thought: This is kinda like doing flow sparring. It doesn’t mean not going for submissions (or at least positions). But the rule is that speed is greatly reduced. This gives the less experienced person the time needed to think about what is going on and responding accordingly within the skills they have. You can do this in any discipline – grappling, striking, weapons, etc. This was by far the biggest contributor to starting to snap out of the current training rut. Why?
a. You can analyse, think, predict and respond. This means being able to contextualise and connect the dots.
b. BJJ moves tend to be complex, long sequences. When we go from drills to sparring, there is a massive gap between the speed of drilling and the speed of sparring. This gap is the speed at which your brain can process what needs to be done (more on this here and here). Training at a speed where I can think about each step allows me to better memorise the steps. The speed can then be gradually increased as muscle memory takes place and you can start thinking one or two steps ahead.
Really, this whole blog is nothing but a reminder to myself to slow down and think a little bit more in training, especially when I struggle with something. Hammer those basics, don’t limit your training only to one group of partners and get some perspective. I hope this helps you with your training!
Stay safe, stay tuned.
Osu/Oss
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