Sunday, March 08, 2009

On Being Better

Thinking a little about the next tournament, the Sub League event in early May, the kind of techniques I want to focus on and the kind of conditioning program I want to start, I stumbled across this interview with Marcelo Garcia.

A few interesting and relevant comments:
I'm pretty sure that if you're going to train Jiu-Jitsu, if you're going to compete in Jiu-Jitsu, then you only have to train Jiu-Jitsu. Because first you have to really really understand, and really dominate the techniques of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. It's not going to help too much if you just do half Jiu-Jitsu, and half work out. Most of the time you have to do Jiu-Jitsu. And that extra time, and that extra energy that your body has, then you can do something outside. But if you're going to do No Gi, work out with No Gi. But first, if you want to be a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu fighter then you have to concentrate a lot on the Jiu-Jitsu training. You have to have a lot of hours of mat, of training on the mat. That's the most important. That's what makes my techniques good."

And this:
The only thing people have to do to be good in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is train in Jiu-Jitsu. Spend all of your time doing Jiu-Jitsu. One day, when you can not train more, when you can not have more classes of Jiu-Jitsu, if you still have energy then ok, you can say "let's go improve my cardio, let's go improve my muscles". That's what I mean, that's what worked for me. I think it can work for you guys.