BJJ barriers

I’ve been back on the BJJ mats with my gi for the last year now. Recently though, I hit a barrier that was a really good head scratcher. 

On any normal week, I grapple on a Friday at lunch time for an hour with all the other lunchtime warriors. If I get the opportunity (which doesn’t occur too often), I also do the no-gi grappling on Saturday for 2 hours. A few weeks ago, I managed to get the Fri-Sat session in for two weeks in a row.During the second Saturday session I was rolling as usual and was having a good session. I did a solid round with my nemesis; the guy that is just within reach but still has the upper hand. I followed this up with 2 rounds back to back with a black belt and was very happy with how that went.

After the next round however, against a lower rank, I just felt like I didn’t want to be there anymore. Partly because my energy tanked but I was just over grappling at that point. I thought this was due to fatigue and once I get my energy back, I would be sweet for the next week. However, I turned up to the next session with a slight injury and as soon as I started rolling, I knew I shouldn’t have been there – theinjury took over 99% of my thinking and I just wasn’t present. This added to the feeling from the previous session and made me really question what the hell I was doing. I took the next week off grappling, then booked a meeting for the second week so I would miss that one as well. I thought after this 2-week absence, I would have my groove back. However, that was not the case. When I went back to grappling, the motivation was not there, and it was such astruggle. So, I went to my A-game against anyone who wanted to roll. To put that in perspective, I usually try to roll with the higher ranks and of course, they get my A-game each and every time. When I roll with a lower rank, I will usually work from a weaker place to train my escapes and defence. Not on this day – I gave everyone my best to see how that would affect my enjoyment. After the session, I left feeling neither here nor there and was still unsure. Since then I have had two more sessions and I don’t leave buzzing… but also not dreading the next session. 

I have gone over and over this in my head. One of the best examples of how I was feeling about BJJ is like my relationship with pizza. I always enjoy pizza, but once you have eaten too much of it, you just don’t want it anymore. I then find it easy to go a couple of weeks before I eat another pizza. I still don’t know what caused my enjoyment to drop as I didn’t have a bad day at training. But sitting back and thinking about it – I am frustrated with my overall skill level. When I was grappling more often, from my perspective, I would get a lot of submissions, chain submissions together and flowed relatively well. Now, I may or may not pass guard, get to side-control and attack arms but have very limited success. Therefore, basically, all I am doing is keeping people in side-control, and at best, maybe getting an arm to attack. My focus when training is about control and position so what I’m doing does make sense. My main goal for any session is to not get swept and end up on my back. I do go to my back when escaping a choke or something like that, but I work like hell to not be there in the first place. I have thought that I should play more then I end up grabbing a leg and getting on top and playing the side control game again. 

Just like anyone, I like success and will do what gives me that success. However, there are people that I get very little success against and it can feel like you are hitting your head against a brick wall. Now I am sure most people have had this issue in fight sports against better people. They give you a problem one session, so you go home and figure a way around it. You get to the next session and find yourself faced with that same problem; your solution does work, but you are then greeted with another problem that you have to solve. Basically, what I’m saying is that for everything you do, they have an answer. They feel as if they are always one step ahead and you are always playing catch up. Put in a shorter way – that person is just better than you. 

I have been putting on the gi for a while now and have to come to the realisation that the main way I can give people trouble is through control. I don’t have a slick submission game so will give myself some weekly/monthly goals and try to tick them off as I go. From where my grappling was a year ago, I have gotten better but so has everyone else – sorelative to them, I have not improved at all and in a nutshell,that is where I am struggling mentally.

Gareth Lewis

Head MMA Instructor