Everyone starts as a white belt. I certainly did, as the faux tough guy picture above clearly shows (I am on the left).
More importantly though, every technique starts at white
belt.
Your overall rank may be purple, but that does not mean that
all of your techniques and positions have reached the purple belt level. In fact, you are probably still a white belt
in some areas, and you may have reached brown belt in other areas. Your favorite spider guard sweep, the one you
constantly hit in the gym and in competition, may be at the brown belt level
while that new set up for the omoplata that you saw in class yesterday is at
the white belt level.
Assigning ranks to techniques is a useful mental
exercise. Anyone can say “I am good at
this but bad at that,” and having a general idea of where your strengths and
weaknesses lie is helpful, but forcing yourself to rank your escapes and
attacks and set ups allows you to clearly define the progress of every
component of your game.
Once you have analyzed your game, you can use your results
in two ways:
1. To identify a need for self-improvement and create a
plan.
2. To structure your game plan against an opponent in
competition.
Using your technique ranks to identify what you need to work
on seems straightforward, but it’s not as easy as you might think. If I admit to myself that I am a white belt
with De La Riva guard, simply trying to use De La Riva guard more when I roll
will not completely solve the problem and elevate my rank. I need to talk with an instructor about what
I have been trying to do, what I should be trying to do, and what techniques I
should be drilling. If I have to take a
private to have these questions answered, it is money well-spent. Otherwise, I will be left to flail about
blindly, hoping that I happen upon the right path, which is incredibly
inefficient.
To use your self-analysis in competition requires an
analysis of your opponent as well. Every
time I prepare a fighter for a match, we run through this process. We identify my fighter’s strengths and
weaknesses, and then we identify his opponent’s strengths and weaknesses,
ranking everything so that we have a detailed breakdown of every component of
their respective games. By comparing the
findings, we can see where my fighter should take the fight, and where we
should be concerned. Having this
knowledge lets us construct a game plan, both for preparing for the fight and
for the fight itself. While this is most
useful in mixed martial arts where you have a few months to prepare, you can
run through this process from the edge of the mat at a jiu-jitsu tournament.
Experiment with applying this process in friendly
competition, and use it to protect your ego.
Your training partner might be a blue belt, but if he was a standout
collegiate wrestler he is probably a black belt in doubles and singles, so you
should not feel bad if his black belt takedowns trump your blue belt
sprawl. And you certainly shouldn’t
expect your brand new sweep, which is still at white belt level, to work on
blue or purple belt competition, even if you are a purple belt yourself. Use your white belt sweep against people with
white belt defenses and gradually test it against tougher and tougher competition
as your rank in that technique improves.
An exercise: post your rank, and then rank your overall
game. You can rank positions or go above
and beyond and rank individual techniques.
Share your results.
Completely unrelated: how I feel rolling with one of my
black belt instructors, even after six years of training.
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