3 Major life lessons I’ve learned from my first 2 months of training Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
After seeing a picture from last night's class I decided to write a reflection on my first 2 months training BJJ. Specifically 3 lessons that I believe can be applied to learning any new skill, job, or hobby.
Once we reach a certain age we rarely opt for “new” as often. Learning a new skill that is way outside of our comfort zone.
BJJ is something that had ALWAYS interested me even though I never really followed it closely enough.
I finally took the plunge this year. It started with me as a spectator, with my step-daughter going away to college in the fall, it was not only a great experience for her, but also gives us some comfort knowing she can defend herself with us so far away.
I wanted to get into it eventually as well. Partially because of my interest in it, and partially as something we can do together.
It was an important lesson for me as a coach, and as a person to remember what it feels like to be completely new at something. I’ve whittled it down to three important lessons that I needed to be reminded of, and what I believe are some of the most important steps to learning ANY new skill, job, or hobby.
1.) Enter with a learning mindset, don’t get frustrated.
I went into this new endeavor knowing very little about it, but figured I would pick it up. Most of the time when it’s come to learning anything physical where body mechanics are involved, I pick it up relatively quickly.
I spend a majority of my life studying movement mechanics and using my own body as a test dummy. This has made me able to pick up new movements quickly, or for most things I had.
I’m sure you can imagine my UNBELIEVABLE frustration when I was having trouble even getting into the right position to start a drill.
“Control the arms, reach through to the collar, get your knee up near the head…now that you’re in the right position lean back until they tap”
I could watch the demonstration and understand what they were saying, but as soon as I started to work on the movement, it was almost like I spoke English and my limbs spoke Mandarin, I just couldn't connect the two.
I was about 4 classes in when I finally broke and let my frustration get the better of me a little bit when I said “Well I’d like to do fucking something right”.
Now mind you I didn't say this to the instructor or say it out loud, it was just kind of low to the guy I was working with at the time.
However, it took that along with my former teacher and now coach reminding me to “be humble” to realize I had fallen into the same trap I saw from so many clients over the years. I was stuck in a “I should be able to figure this out” then was frustrated when I couldn’t, rather than just accepting that it was going to take some serious time to teach my body to move a new way.
This is important in any new job, skill, or hobby. If it's something you’re interested in you MUST go into it with a learning mindset. You have to go into it thinking “man I have so much to learn I can't wait!” rather than “I can figure this out, and I’m going to be upset if I can't”. Otherwise how can you ever really improve if you’re constantly angry at yourself for not improving?
2.) Learn the language and the goal.
Imagine that you’ve always thought baseball looked fun, you’ve never really played or watched, but in the back of your mind for some reason you always thought it looked fun.
Then you showed up to play in a league and you didn't know how a run was scored, and you also didn't know the names or placement of any of the positions. Can you imagine how lost you would be?
This was me over the course of my first 3-4 classes “Ok we are going to start in half guard, person on the top is trying to pass, person on the bottom is trying to sweep…” a month ago that sentence might as well have been written in hieroglyphics. I basically spent the entire time just trying to focus on how they were setting up. I was trying to “figure it out” without actually being able to speak the language.
As you can imagine this didn't work out super well, and in hindsight probably led to a bulk of the frustration I was feeling. Until again I asked my teacher and coach “are there any books I can read, or any blogs, email lists, etc?”. He pointed me in the direction of some helpful resources as well as right there went over alot of the base stuff I needed to understand that I was missing.
This was another one of those humbling moments, realizing again how it felt to be in an environment where people basically spoke a different language. Like when a new client comes into a lifting program, if you ask a large majority of people what a “hip hinge” is, they look at you like you’re speaking another language. That was an important lesson for me to re-learn.
After that got squared away I realized the next thing I was lacking was a clear understanding of what my goal was. We would do rolling drills (“rolling” is essentially the equivalent of “sparring”), but I had no clue what my objective was. I would escape from someone's “guard” (basically they are trying to keep you pinned in some way) only to have no clue what to do next because I didn't understand the goal, or more specifically what positions or moves I was supposed to work towards.
Until again I asked my teacher/coach and he worked with me on what positions I was trying to get to.
These two steps have vaulted my understanding and honestly how much I’m enjoying it. More than any other if I’m being honest.
It’s VERY difficult to understand any new endeavor, whether it be a job, a hobby, or a new sport, if you don't A.) speak the language and B.) understand the objective. We just tend to forget that because at a certain point we don’t leave that comfort zone as often as we used to.
3.) Be slow and methodical at first.
I learned this one the hard way.
I’m a big dude, always have been even before starting to lift.
My biggest fear was that I was going to accidentally hurt someone because I didn't know what I was doing and I’m a big strong dude. Whelp we got that in the rearview mirror class #1.
During my first class, while working on a brand new skill, I tried to move too fast and ended up nailing my partner in the side of the head with a knee…hard…really hard…I felt TERRIBLE.
Since then I’ve gotten constant reminders to slow down. Reminders that I have had to give others in the past. I can't even count the number of time I’ve been working with a client, teaching them some new skill and they just can’t seem to figure it out, but they just keep busting out rep after rep until I finally just had to say “stop, slowwwwww down” and often that was all that was needed.
Speed is a definer of success, how quickly we can accomplish a given task. As you get more skilled at a task, you can do it faster, so more often than not we try to run before we can walk. We want to look like we know what we are doing, we want to show the people around us “see I can handle this!”. So we try to move too fast and actually do the opposite.
Move slowly, learn, digest, understand, and don't try to increase the pace until you can do it fast with the same level of execution as you can do it slow. If you start making a ton of mistakes when you pick up the pace, it means you haven’t mastered that skill yet.
The people who are great at any skill aren’t great simply because they do it fast. They are great because they do it fast with the same level of proficiency that others would have to slow down to accomplish.
Any new skill or endeavor you try, these three rules will help you immensely!
Remember
Enter with a learning mindset, don’t get frustrated.
Learn the language and the goal.
Be slow and methodical at first.
~ Coach Adam
