Yea, Whitebelts!

We were talking about working new techniques into our games the other night, especially various open guard set-ups, sweeps, and subs. The problem with almost all open guards (spider, De La Riva, etc.) is that until you get really good at them you generally get passed and smashed pretty easily by anyone close to your skill level and above. Jeremy made the observation that one of the things that helped him move from purple to black (and really develop all the inverted bendy twisty stuff he does) was the fact that almost everyone else he had to roll with at that time were white belts.

How does a white belt help a purple belt advance to black belt you may ask? Jeremy explained that he got to "play" with everything, try it in all sorts of permutations, and really get a fairly deep understanding because he was working in a relatively safe environment full of white belts. Side Control and Geogette both wrote great blog posts about this very issue too, so condering this a trifecta of planetary alignment - I have to add my two cents.

As we advance, rolling white belts is one of the those essential things we all need in order to experiment with techniques and set-ups and learn to "trust" our jiu jitsu. Being able to roll in an environment where the "cost of failure" is not high encourages us to experiment, explore, and develop in new directions.

There are so many techniques that made me look like an uncoordinated idiot the first time I tried them. After drilling them enough to understand how they are supposed to work it is always a challenge to integrate them into my game. If every roll was a fight to the death I would always stick to the stuff I know best and never grow. Rolling with less skilled partners let's me "play" with the new stuff without getting my head handed to me.

As upper belts, our responsibility in return is to bring the white belts along for the ride. No game is fun unless everybody gets to play. You don't need to smash a white belt everytime you work your game. You may control and lead (and be relatively frustrating) and this builds the white belt's base and defense,  but they also need to work some offense too. We should be feeding them openings and set-ups, letting them start from advantageous positions, teaching a little bit as we roll, letting them try something again that they almost got. In other words, making sure they get to play too. Saulo Ribeiro says that when an upper belt visits his academy, he places a lot of weight on how he sees them treat his white belts.

All that said, I am thankful for all my training partners. It is great to train someplace that has a good mix of belts. I see a continuum from white to black of what we get to learn from each:

> With complete rookies we get to throw techniques with impunity. This is our "safe sandbox" and we can play freely. (Although we still have to watch for spazzing.)

>> As they get a little better we still get to throw up whatever we want and there is more true resistance and base. If we muck it up we can still "force it," but we don't worry too much (they are still no threat) and we reset and start over.

>>> As they are about to be promoted to our level, we can still work new stuff into our game - but if we are not careful or don't take them seriously they will be all over us - and we might have to revert to our "A game" to survive the moment and regain control.

>>>>When they reach our level it can be like "unstoppable force meets immovable object." Sometimes one comes out on top sometimes the other, but trying new stuff usually gets shut down pretty quickly. But this is where we get to see if our "A game" is up to snuff.

>>>>>When somebody is better than us we can see how a technique is supposed to work, how it feels, and how it is set up effectively. We learn to capitalize on any mistakes they might make and learn to really watch out for the slightest slip - our sensitivity goes way up.

>>>>>>With somebody much better than us we can go back to throwing up anything we want just to see what kind of new pretzel shape they will invent with our bodies and learn from where they effortlessly poke holes in our "A game."