Shrimpin' Ain't Easy

Last week was a return to basics. For most of the week we spent the majority of the time on hip movement. Explosive shrimping up and down the mats, one-legged shrimping, top leg only shrimping, bottom leg only shrimping, shrimping with hip elevation at the end, etc., etc.

It was eye opening to me to realize how lackadaisical my hip movement had become. Small technical movements are fine but sometimes you need to move your backside from point A to point B with a certain amount of enthusiasm. After regular classes and some extra mat time I think my body is in a permanent curve and weekend barbecues make me strangely nervous :-).

All that shrimping was combined with some frame and grip basics to escape from side control and other "life sucks" positions as well as preventing the pass. The beauty of all this hip movement reeducation was it's immediate and almost universal applicability when rolling.

When I think about how much I got schooled this last week on something as simple as shrimping it makes me wonder if I will ever get a grip on this jiu jitsu thing and then I remember this quote from Roger Gracie ~ "Jiu jitsu is simple, you just gotta do it right." So I guess I'll keep trying to do it a little more "right" everyday.

The "Technique Collector"

I rolled with an interesting training partner last week. At first I didn't really know what to think. We started standing and I pulled guard straight into a tripod sweep and came up to pass. As we started to maneuver and I gained side control he became very "active" throwing up sweep attempt after sweep attempt that were all "somehow off." I don't know how else to describe it.

As we continued to roll it continued to be weird. Arms and posts weren't controlled, leverage points were "in the general vicinity" but weren't really where they needed to be, a lot of strength and explosiveness to try and force something, throwing whole series of sweep attempts and attacks without establishing position first, not staying connected or making space as the technique required, didn't seem to understand how to advance position and make use of control.

I had the opportunity to roll with this guy multiple times over the course of the week. Every roll was the same - he was always very "active," but there wasn't much I had to seriously defend, while I was able to establish mount or take the back and submit at will. Even starting with me under side control or mount his attacks just weren't quite there, although there was a lot of variety - attempts at armbars, kimuras, americanas, ezequiels, cross collars, etc. I'd sweep and we'd start over.

I had a similar feeling when we were partnered to drill techniques during class. It seemed like he wanted to rep the technique just enough to become familiar with it but then became bored. Instead of really working through the details he would start trying to chain the technique we were learning with a bunch of other techniques in his "repertoire." This left him not really getting the technique we were drilling and it certainly didn't help his situation to chain it with other techniques he didn't really understand.

After drilling and rolling then chatting after class I came to the conclusion that he was "aquainted" with a ton of techniques but he didn't "know" any of them well. He was a "Technique Collector." He judged his progress on the quantity of the techniques he thought he knew rather than the quality.

I don't want to sound all self-righteous because I kind of get this mindset. After all, who doesn't want to "know" all the jiu jitsu they can. I would probably be there myself if I hadn't had the importance of fundamentals and details impressed on me early as a white belt. I really feel for this guy, he has been training for a couple of years now but is getting beat by guys with far less experience. If he is going to advance he is going to have to go back to the basics and unlearn/relearn pretty much his entire technique collection. It is hard to go back to relearning the armbar from guard when you think you are the master of the Peruvian necktie.