Aggression, Relaxation, Tapping and Ego

**Mjelva** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 5:54am

I've also come to this realization. Now, I started training teh zhoo zhits august last year, so I'm still very new, but I bought into the whole "wait for a mistake" line of thought immediately.
Now, not so much.

**UpaLumpa** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 10:35am

For about a two month period after I got my blue belt I was in perpetual satori, or at least whatever the equivalent to satori is that relates to the topic at hand. I constantly pushed and dictated the pace. This allowed me to try for moves I normally wouldn't because even if they failed I was still in control. I hit submissions at will from wherever I took the match, and even from bad positions dictated the flow. I went from a good white belt to one of the better blues virtually overnight based on my decision to control my own fate.

One could say that I flowed with the go.

Alas, I fell from grace and now roll with a relaxation that from outside appears almost apathetic. Basically I'm sucking.
Thank you sirs, I will try to extract from this pit.
I must meditate.

**MEGALEF** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 3:20pm

Originally Posted by MEGALEF

Anyway..

..competition this sunday. Better go to lockflow and see if they have any good techniques I can use there..

= Total Joke. I apologize for sullying this forum with it.

**Kokujin** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 9:38pm

I'm a noob at bjj, but after a couple of months of watching other people fighting at the gym I began to see a certain kind of "stalling" mentality. Imediatly pulling to guard, not even trying to throw or anything and once they're in the guard it's "boring city".
I asked my instructor about it and he told me that some of them came from other academies with the notion that bjj is all about winning tournaments and worse...winning by scoring once or twice and then "stalling" the rest of the match by pretending that you're doing something(changing the grab on the gi from hand to hand, or trying to pull on the lapel).

That become painfully evident with several "clashes" between my instructor's students and the "transfer" students. My instructor's students would be a LOT more agressive and always trying to sub anyone who fought them. They move better and faster and it seems like someone racing against a ferrari.:qleapfrog

**Bang!** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 10:34pm

The issue of will is an interesting one. My standup grappling game leads my fall-down version and I have noticed a marked improvement over the last several months through my decision to initiate more. I don't know if I'm any less reactive in the end, but those reactions all follow a path back to something that I started.

BJJ feels different for me right now. Some days I am conflicted over whether to follow my nature and change my movements over and over again to adapt, or to bludgeon my way toward the completion of certain submissions (hoping that they will somehow become more subtle with practice). I am tending toward the latter as a temporary measure. In the end, though, I do understand how much better it is when I'm not lazy and actually risk making mistakes, so long as I'm the one making them. After all, basing one’s approach on the assumption that their opponent will be stupider than they are is no more reasonable than banking on them being weaker.

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 5/09/2006 10:38pm

I was talking with Matt Thornton today about how to coach aggressiveness, since my sister trains too but she's always had problems with this. Here's what he recommended:

There are a couple drills for this. She will need to work her full game. If she has large spots where she doesn't know what to do that may hamper her confidence. But once she starts to fill in those areas, then you can start working on staying very active. Teach her some combo attacks from guard, teach her some ways to get to her feet, etc. Then set a timer and have her perform them quickly.

Also, scrammble drills. . .having people start back to back is good for this. As are timed sub drills. Set the timer for 3 minutes and have one side try as hard as possible to score a sub. Things like this can help increase the level of activity and energy.

**MONGO** · Posted On: 5/10/2006 1:50am

The 3 min back to back is standard practice in the dojo I go to. Judo newaza is almost specificly aggression but the club I go to tends to avoid the standard smash and grapple approach that I have seen other places.

Its a result of there being so few weight class shiai. Everything I have ever been to is open weight and skill trumps muscle almost everytime.

One of the things I have picked up from here was the submission or sweep flow charts. It is helping tons.

ON and aside, I think there would be less stand ups if there was good transition in between movements on the ground. Its like judoka go to sweep, stall, attempt sub, stall, etc. No wonder there is so many stand ups.

**MaverickZ** · Posted On: 5/10/2006 7:38am

you wanna know how to get real good at relaxation and finding holes? grapple someone bigger and stronger than you ALL THE TIME. that's how i learned, hooray for being one for the smallest in my class.

aggression, that's comes from your goals in the short term.

being relaxed and working on transitions and good positioning, well that's just good jiujitsu. our instructor breeds the "i'm not tapping" mindset out of us within the first few months.

**Aesopian** · Posted On: 5/10/2006 9:46am

Another topic I feel is related to this discussion, especially relaxation, is breathing. And I just so happen to have amassed a collection of quotes on the subject.

Stephan Kesting has written about the issues several times:

His anxiety was causing him to hold his breath. No breathing equals no oxygen equals total exhaustion.

The solution was fairly simple: he had to concentrate on his breathing before all else. He started to focus on inhalation and exhalation while doing pushups, while doing Yoga and especially while grappling.

Fred also used a fairly simple tool to ensure he wasn’t holding his breath while grappling: every 5 or 10 seconds he would check in on his breathing and ask himself if he was holding his breath. Submissions, body positions and techniques were all secondary to focusing on the breath, making sure that it continued to flow in and out during the heat of the battle.

Source: Breathing, Oxygen and Exhaustion

More on controlled breathing to relax:

Breathing: the rate and depth of breathing has a strong influence on an athlete’s mental state – that is why it is the central focus of so many meditation methods. To lower your arousal level make sure that your breathing is slow and deep, and that you relax fully at the end of each exhalation.

Source: Chill Out! Lowering Your Arousal Level.

Likewise, breathing can be used to produce an aggressive state of mind:

To use the breath to calm down one should breathe slowly and deeply, relaxing after each exhalation. To use the breath to become more aroused you still want to breath deeply, but a little faster and a little bit more ‘deliberately’. Try to become more and more focused on the task at hand with each breath. Be careful not to hyperventilate.

Source: Let's Get It On - Raising Your Arousal Level

I've also picked up a Luis' Gutierrez quote about it:

Breathing is connected with your state of mind (no duh) but what I continue to discover is that one can easily be used to control the other and therefore gives an athlete a great tool to monitor, record and improve breathing states alongside mental states.

And let's pull another Garcia quote out while we're at it:

Marcelo Garcia also has a hint for those hard situations: stretching and breathing. “The fighter has got to know how to stretch and move all of his members, besides breathing properly, for the time when he is on the bottom, being smashed and smothered by the adversary,” says the middle-weight world champion.

Source: Gracie Magazine Jiu-Jitsu manual -- 20 tips to enhance your play

I'm sure I could find more, but you probably get the point by now.

**Ryno** · Posted On: 5/10/2006 10:45am

Very good points. For me, the key to getting more aggressive was to expand my bag of tricks. When you first start, it's easy to get stuck and not know your options. Since your positional work is fairly poor, it's fairly easy to get subbed, so a lot of noobs just hang on and stall. That's what I used to do, at least.

As soon as I had learned enough to have a few options from most positions, I was much more willing to attack, knowing that even if my attack failed, I would still have other techniques to use. I stopped being so terrified of losing what position I had, and became more focused on actually landing a sub. Even if I were to completely screw it up, miss the sub, and lose my position, I would still have several choices and wouldn't just get stuck like I used to.

By playing more aggessively, my subs obviously improved rapidly, but so did my positional. If I'd screw up a sub and lose position, I'd take notes, try it again, and ask my training partner or instructor exactly why I was blowing it. Pretty soon I started landing subs with confidence and authority.

So I guess to reinforce what others have said, aggression can help, but only if it is focused in the proper way. For me, getting to know more techniques allowed me a proper avenue to execute aggressively.