Not looking like a good week to catch up on my monthly training goal. I doubt the roads will be clear enough to make an afternoon training tomorrow, as I thought I might be able to do. Saturday is never an easy training to make and Sunday is Sunday - especially with our leaving for Tucson on Tuesday.
Reread a great piece from Roy Harris' marvelous essay, "Belt Progression in Jiu Jitsu" which really matches up with what I had been writing in my notes about what should be my focus for 2009. I wrote that 2009 would be the "Year of Creating Reaction: Make Them Give You What You Want." And here's what Roy Harris wrote should be the roadmap for the purple belt now on the road to faixa marrom.
Purple Belt
This is the belt of momentum and combinations. This is the belt level where the amount of energy you expend to accomplish a specific task should be considerably lower than it was when you were a white belt. Your game should have a certain amount of grace and finesse to it. Your game should not have rely on speed, power and explosiveness to get you into positions or out of positions. Your repertoire of techniques should be very high. However, you should begin to focus your training on your depth of knowledge. The white and blue belts are the belts where you accumulate techniques. The purple belt is the first belt where you must begin to refine your techniques. It is also the belt where you learn to put the basic techniques together into various two technique and three technique combinations, with the use of momentum.
Because you become more reliant upon combinations and momentum, the amount of speed and power required to effect your technique decreases. This is not something a white or blue belt can do just yet because of their limited amount of knowledge and experience.
As a purple belt, you must begin to focus your training on the use momentum. You must train your entire body to FEEL momentum. Up until this point in time, most everything was visual. You must develop a high level of sensitivity so that you can flow with your opponent instead of forcing techniques with speed and power, especially when you grappled people who are much bigger and stronger than you are. Pushing an opponent's dead weight around is exhausting if you do not have a firm foundation in escapes and positioning. You will need to learn to use the momentum that your opponent gives to you, as well as create momentum when his body is not in motion. Momentum will help you to lower the amount of strength you use to perform your techniques.
Your training should also begin to use the basic techniques together into two, three and sometimes five technique combinations. Notice I said "basic" techniques. The purple belt mentality is very different from the white and blue belt mentality. White and blue belts think the answer to their problems is learning more techniques. The purple belt thinks to himself: "I need to refine the techniques I already know and then learn how to reflexively put the appropriate techniques together into flowing combinations." For example, when I first learned the triangle, I thought it was just a matter of throwing my legs over their head and shoulder and squeezing my legs together. Then as I matured in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I noticed that there were a specific set of components that made up the technique (20 to be exact!). Then, I noticed that these components could be broken down even further into sub-categories. Now (as a black belt), the triangle is no longer a simple technique with three or four movements. It is now a myriad of over twenty (20) different (and subtle) moving parts that must be put together in a specific order so they can all work together towards one common goal: apply pressure to the neck. Once I had mastered the triangle, I needed to put it together with other basic techniques like the arm lock, the hip bump, the sweep, the kimura, a knee lock, etc. Knowing how to combine the triangle with other basic techniques was very important to my development in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu! Once I could combine techniques together and use them in conjunction with momentum, I now felt ready to take on the world. I've noticed the same in many students, both in seminars, at my school and other schools.
The purple belt's mind set should be on the refinement of his current knowledge and the use of momentum and combinations. The purple belt is able to do this because he already has a wide base of knowledge in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I know that white and blue belts want to learn how to do this, but they simply aren't ready for it just yet.
This mindset, along with some rapidly developing skills by the purple belts usually sets the stage for some highly charged matches, especially amongst new purple belts. Why? Because the some of the "veteran" blue belts want to make a purple belt tap. Plus, a number of students who get their purple belts go through a period which I call "testing their wares." They want to see just how they compare to the older, more experienced purple belts, especially those who are about to be promoted to brown belt.
