Survival Mode

Your body has some basic protocols for surviving. For example, when you get scared, you get a dump of chemicals into your body (including adrenaline) and those chemicals give you a burst of strength. Another example of an automatic survival mechanism is when you go into shock, the body concentrates the blood in the core of the body and moves it away from the extremities. If you have a wound of some kind, this is a very cool system because it means you don’t bleed as much.

All these automatic systems aren’t very useful in the context of BJJ. In fact, the body’s response often short circuits our attempts to perform good techniques. We panic, we forget what we are trying to do and we sometimes tap out simply because we are panicking and exhausted.

So what should you focus on as a new student of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? My suggestion in today’s class was to learn the positional hierarchy. This means gaining a basic understanding of what the worst position in BJJ is, what the best position in BJJ is and the various shades inbetween. I gave a simplified version but if you want a bigger picture, plus more insights on what to focus on as a white belt, read this article from the grapplearts website.