It’s been a year- 5 things I’ve learned

In less than a month it will be my one year anniversary taking Royce Gracie Jiu Jitsu. It’s been an amazing year, I’ve made some of the best friends of my life, competed in tournaments and I’ve gotten myself back into a groove that’s been missing for years. Yes, Stella got his groove back. It’s amazing to think that in the last year I’ve met and hung out with members of the Gracie family, including Royce. I’ve qualified to fight amateur MMA by becoming a top point holder in the Live the Legend tournaments, put on by Jim Hughes and I’ve been ringside while some of my friends fought in their first professional MMA fights.

It hasn’t been easy. There have been challenging times, it’s very easy to get burned out if you train every day, it’s also easy to get injured if you train that often. As I write this blog post, I have a pulled trapezoid muscle (the second in a week). When you’re starting out, the art is impossible to grasp in its entirety. The best you can do as a beginner is to learn and master the absolute basics. After an entire year of practicing jiu jitsu, I feel more than ever like a beginner, but I also feel like I have some direction in the art. I know that I need to work more on my guard submissions and sweeps, I know that I need to work on having better posture, I know that I need to work on having better base and I know that I need to work more on flowing from technique to technique. The good news is that I’m practicing with the best there is and I have my entire life to make myself better.

I’ve learned five important things that it might be worth sharing for anyone new to the art (well, newer than me that is) or to someone thinking about taking jiu jitsu. First, don’t train every day. It’s very tempting (and easy if you’re a member of Jim Hughes & Royce Gracie Jiu Jitsu) to train every single day, however, as I said above, it can lead to injury and burn out. It’s exciting when you first start, but it’s very difficult to keep up that level of intensity forever. It’s best to limit yourself to 2 to 4 days a week. If you want to do more, get a couple of books and read up. Royce has some fantastic books that will certainly help your game.

Second, leave your ego at the door. It’s very easy to keep track of things like who can tap you and who you can tap and judge yourself by whether or not you can beat someone in a match at the dojo. Yes it feels good to win a match, but you learn a lot more when you lose. Most of what I’ve learned has come from getting tapped out. When you get tapped out, you learn from your mistakes and the person who tapped you out will usually show you what he/she did to win the match. This is a very important step to learning jiu jitsu.

Third, don’t get hung up on belts. Belts mean everything and they mean nothing at the same time. Gracie jiu jitsu is one of the few arts left where a belt actually means something (e.g. there’s no such thing as a 15-year-old black belt). So in the overall spectrum of martial arts, a colored belt in Gracie jiu jitsu has a lot of meaning. However, among your peers and training partners, the belt doesn’t mean too much. The last time Royce came to town for his New England tour, he said to me “Your belt only covers two inches of your ass, you have to cover the rest yourself.” Once a person obtains a blue belt, does that mean he/she will never be tapped out by a white belt again? Certainly not from what I’ve seen. So yes, the belt means everything, but it also means nothing–the only thing that truly matters is your ability to defend yourself and your family from harm should ever need to.

Fourth, it’s very easy to flatline in your training, meaning it’s easy to feel like you’re not getting any better. That’s usually never the case. As long as you’re training, you are getting better. But if you start to feel like your training is reaching a plateau, Jim Hughes & Royce Gracie have a very easy solution for you. Members of Jim Hughes & Royce Gracie jiu jitsu are allowed to train at any of the locations in New England. Training at other facilities gives you the opportunity to learn from new coaches and spar with students you’ve never sparred with before. This gives you a tremendous advantage in your training. The more people you train with the better you will become, period.

Fifth, compete. In one of Royce’s books (I forget which one now) he said that students should compete to round out their training. Competing is the closest thing to a real fight there is, especially on the emotional side of things. When you compete you get the exact same adrenaline feeling you get in a real fight. Competing helps you to overcome your emotions and to stay sharp.

It’s been a year for me and I feel good about my jiu jitsu. I know that I have so much more to learn, but I’m very excited and positive about the path I’ve chosen. If you’re looking to sign up and become a student with Jim and Royce, good luck and I’ll see you on the mat!

-Sonny