Ten Tips to Accelerate Your Black Belt
I recently re-watched Forrest Gump; and got thinking about the feather that floats throughout the beginning credits, going wherever the wind blows. That feather is a great metaphor for Forrest's life, which took amazing twists and turns, but in our own life we typically don't end up where we want to be without a good plan. The Ten tips I'm going to share are ones I've learned over the last 30 years of training. I think you'll notice a theme, and that is "specificity." The more simple and specific you make your training the further and faster you'll go.
Tip Number One: Focus On The Basics: It's been said a million times, but the basics are the basics for a reason! Basics are the fundamental building blocks of everything that comes later: they are also all you need to advance and be a successful martial artist. Many of the best competitors use very few techniques yet dominate the competition on the mat. This is because they have relentlessly developed these skills to the highest level. Your coach will have a good idea of what techniques can be used universally by any body type and in many different scenarios; usually these techniques are taught in the beginning of your journey. You'll thank yourself later if you take the time to truly master these techniques before moving on.
Tip Number Two: Train How You Want To Perform: Instead of trying the flashiest new techniques to try to get an edge, try adding more pressure and stressful training scenarios to the techniques you already have. When you can perform your techniques from memory, execute them well and at speed in practice, that's a good start, but the goal is always to be able to execute in worst case scenarios. Can you hit your moves while you're tired, like when you're in a competition? Have you developed all the attributes to perform the technique optimally? Do you need more strength, speed, flexibility? Once you can perform the technique reliably under pressure, begin to look for new ways to use that technique: new entries or variations. Battle-tested techniques should make up no less than 70% of your game, and that means making sure they work in the gym under high pressure.
Tip Number Three: Find your Tokui-waza: Tokui-waza is your favorite or "special" technique. What are you good at? What do you like to train? Begin there, if you enjoy a particular throw or submission you'll be more likely to work on it and perfect it. There is a rule that states: the less techniques you use, the more variations of the techniques you do use that you'll develop. By finding and developing your "special" techniques you'll begin to develop your own game and be one step closer to black belt. One of the reasons this works so well is that the more you use your technique the more you’ll begin to recognize the common defenses to it; allowing you to develop counters to those defenses. Another trick to help you narrow your training focus: every few months ask yourself what the top five techniques you need to train are, then pick the one you think is most important and relentlessly develop it.
Tip Number Four: Know Where You’re Going/Visualize Your Performance: Study the greats; who is your favorite? What do they do that you can do? Find an athlete that has similar physical attributes as you and study what works for them. It's important to understand your body and what techniques work best for your body type, for example: if you are short it may not make sense to spend too much time on a throw like Uchi-mata, which is great for tall, long legged athletes. To have a crystal clear and realistic idea of how you want to perform as a blackbelt you must know yourself: attitude, body type, learning style, Tokui-waza. Give yourself a short term goal to develop one skill every three months that you saw work at the world class level that aligns with your goals, and you'll see your game grow by leaps and bounds.
Tip Number Five: Set Goals Every Training Session: There are many questions you can ask yourself that will help you decide what your personal training goal should be each class: "Is my defense good enough- what submissions am I having trouble defending?" "Should I attack more, am I active enough?" "Am I attacking in combination enough?" "Am I having trouble finishing a certain throw or submission?" Have a small goal in every class and utilize your training partners to help you work towards it. Push yourself to be better each time you drill; don't just go through the motions!
Tip Number Six: Ask "why?" Continually: Get down to the root cause of issues by asking "why?" The general rule is to ask at least five times. Most people in life stop asking "why" as soon as they reach their first answer, which leads to a lot of wrong diagnoses and wasted efforts. If you train yourself to keep asking, you'll drill down to the actual root cause of an issue and know exactly what action steps you need to take to address it. This same process works in reverse: pick a high percentage submission and ask yourself "why" it works so well: continue to drill down until you can explain all of the mechanisms and details that make it effective. You've probably noticed most instructors have the ability to break down in fine detail what makes a technique work, or not. Usually this isn't because they have trained themselves to ask "why", but instead it is from years of students asking them "why" and forcing them to go through the mental exercise.
Example: Student: "My Omoplata isn't catching anyone, I'm not going to use it anymore"
Future black belt " I better drill down and figure out why this isn't working"
Q. Why isn’t my Omoplata catching people? A. People are good at defending it (where most people give up asking questions)
Q. Why they good at defending it? A. We drill it a lot and everyone is quick to posture up
Q. Why can they posture up? A. I'm not getting them broken down with enough pressure before attacking
Q. Why am I having trouble getting them broken down? A. I lack a good setup to break them down and don’t have good control of their head before I launch my attack
Now we make a goal for ourselves to learn a good setup to break our opponent down (Like a hip bump attack) and be more aggressive controlling our opponents head and posture we start attacking.
If you are able to get to the root cause of your issue, you still may not know the solution to fixing it; this is a great time to pick the brain of your coach!
Tip Number Seven: Pick a Side: I've watched a lot of students waste a lot of time drilling techniques on both sides with the expectation that they'll be able to perform with the same ability and precision on both the left and right. Typically people are much more comfortable performing tasks on one side vs the other. Trust that you will be very good at techniques on your dominant side and that you will also find techniques that you perform better naturally on your "weak" side. There will also be techniques that work equally well on either side. This is the reason to drill on both sides, to figure out where it performs best for you. Once you figure out which side gives you better performance, spend your time drilling it on that side and make it the best it can be on that side, before moving on to your other side.
Tip Number Eight: Make A Map: Making a map means you are like an explorer; looking at all the different aspects of your art. On my journey I found that grappling could be broken down into eight different skill sets. I mapped each skill set by finding my Tokui-waza for each position and then listed all of the techniques I used in that position. Once you hone in on what techniques you use the most, you should assess how well you execute those techniques under pressure. Knowing and refining your attack chains makes a huge difference when you are going against someone who knows the counters to most of the common attacks; usually it’s the second, third or fourth attack that catches someone- not the first.
Tip Number Nine: Don't Only Go With People More Skilled Than You: Yes we all need to get smashed sometimes, but we also need to work on our offensive techniques. Aim for the sweet spot of 70% offense and 30% defense: remember to train the way you want to perform: getting smashed over and over doesn't build confidence or attacking skills! Yes it will make you tougher, but, we need more than just toughness, we also need confidence and finishing skills.
Tip Number Ten: Find Your "Belt Buddy": Similar to a Tokui-waza (your favorite technique) a Belt Buddy is your favorite training partner: someone close to you in level who knows your game (and vise versa) who you can push and who pushes you! Having a belt Buddy will make sure you have to keep upping your game and make sure you aren't getting smashed too much. Try to use that same formula: 70% of your training should be with your belt buddy, 30% with higher and lower belts. Another plus of a Belt Buddy is they are someone who will stick with you through the ranks and you will have each other to make sure you are accountable and show up to practice.