You fritter and waste the hours in an off hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way
Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun."
Pink Floyd, "Time," from Dark Side of the Moon, 1973
Asked why Rickson Gracie was such a great jiu jitero, someone—maybe patriarch Helio—replied, "his timing is impeccable."
When I first heard that, I thought surely there must be more to it than that. Some supernatural sense of balance, some encyclopedic knowledge of leverage and the physics of the body … that was the stuff of greatness. But “timing”? Just “timing”?
The more I train, the more I see how key timing is. Too often in jiu jitus I feel as if I need to do a certain move with great speed, or with a burst of explosiveness. While I don’t want to say that speed and explosiveness can’t be virtues on the mat, the more a person learns about jiu jitsu, the less important these qualities become in and of themselves. Instead, they are replaced by an awareness that all one needs to do is be “one step ahead.” And if you are on the right path—performing techniques with the proper form and balance—then that “one step ahead” is more than enough to control and submit your opponent.
Timing is one of the the things that hampered my performance on the mat last night. Sure, there were technical mistakes (some of which were noted in the “Erratta 2.0” post from yesterday), and I will continue to make those. But one thing that I’m very bad at is waiting too long, and letting the moment for an escape or a submission attempt or to improve position pass. As I think of it, I feel like letting myself off the “laziness” hook, a little bit. It is still an issue, but often I’m just caught waiting, thinking (probably too much, as Tommy reminds me) about what I want to do and then, unfortunately, freezing up when the moment to move arrives.
Two or three times last night I got mounted because I was on the bottom in side control and was trying to bait the mount move so that I could trap the trailing leg and slip into half guard. I didn’t get it once. Again, there was a technical issue involved—I forgot that you’ve got to turn into the trailing leg, to attack it in a sense, rather than waiting for the leg to just fall into your lap. But also my timing was off. By the time the guy on top had moved, I was too late.
For me, I suspect that my problem with timing is also a problem with doubt. A part of me still doesn’t really believe that I can pull off certain moves—even basic ones. Add even a little temporary fatigue to that situation and you’ve got a recipe for underperformance. In life, he who hesitates is lost. In jiu jitsu, he who hesitates gets submitted (or, at least, mounted, as was the case with me last night).
