Good enough
Aristotle said, “The more you know, the more you realise you don’t know.” Outside of fight sports, I do a few things that are more like hobbies. In both my hobbies, I have reached a level where I am good enough to know that I’m not that good. To me, that is a very important place to be.
I have an event coming up for one of my hobbies and some other people are coming along for their first time. One thing that I am finding interesting is that one of the people seems to think they will be really damn good. To me, this does not make sense. How can you expect to be good at something that you have never done before? Although, when I did my first event, I thought I would be quite good but ended up getting a massive wake up call. I have improved since then and now sit comfortably in a region where I enjoy the hell out of it but know that I am not that good.
To put this in a fight perspective, imagine you have never done any sparring but a fair bit of pad work. This gives you a false sense of your fighting ability. When you are doing pad work, you’re practicing fight technique but not actually doing fighting itself. Then you have your first sparring session and there are three groups that people tend to fit into. Beginners, for people that have never sparred before, intermediate for people that have sparred a number of rounds, then advanced for people that have fought or just about to fight. Because you are good at pad work, it can give you the belief that you are good at fighting, so you jump into the intermediate or advanced group. Anyone that has done sparring knows that it is a lot different to pad work, hitting and being hit changes things drastically. Distance and timing become a big issue and then with pad work, you have someone leading you and telling you what to do. In sparring however, you have no one giving you the signals; on top of that, your opponent is doing everything they can to make things difficult for you. Most people get a nice introduction to sparring against a more experienced person who eases them into it. For your first sparring experience, if you go against someone better who is trying to prove a point, you will not be having a good day. Just like any skill, you need baby steps, otherwise your confidence can take a real hit.
In BJJ, you see this with new white belts. They have gone from knowing nothing to having a little information. Then before you know it, they are instructing beginners on technique. Then after a few more months something changes – they click that they are actually not that good and should keep their mouth shut. On the other hand, you see the brown belts (who destroy most people) not giving advice unless directly asked for it. By the time someone has got to brown belt, they have been beaten so many times they understand they know a fair bit, but still have so much to learn (a mountain of unknowns). They think what they are doing is simple and they say things like “just keep moving your hips.” This is because when they are rolling, they do simple things really well but in their mind it’s nothing. To the rest of us though, it is really effective.
The Dunning Kruger effect describes it perfectly. You start off with the big climb and thinking you are way better than you actually are – then realisation kicks in at the top of Mt. Stupid and then the real learning begins. For the event that I am doing in a few weeks, I am well placed just above the valley of despair and to me, that is great place to be as it is all uphill from there. Everywhere in life it is important to be good enough to realise that you are not that good, this means we get entertained by the people that have not learned that lesson yet.
Gareth Lewis
Head MMA Instructor