Have you seen the show, Breaking Bad??? Breaking Bad is one of my favorites. I find the main character, Walter White, very interesting. Walter White doesn’t know any martial art; however, he has incredible survival instincts and a brilliant mind. When Walter is confronted by life threatening situations, he survives. I think there is a life lesson here. In a conflict, along with a little luck, the most alert mind and the right choices wins the fight. Life is really about minute to minute choices.
Getting back to the Gracie Jiu Jitsu practice, during independent review time, I try to review the fight sequence; like a story, a beginning, a middle, and an end. Ironically, the same steps you would take in writing a story or an article. I think a fuller explanation helps in the learning process. Thus, there should be a quick pre fight explanation, the fundamental move, and the consequence of the action.
My fear of practicing incorrectly and passing my mistake onto a white belt almost occurred this week; however, a higher ranking belt saw this mistake as it occurred and stepped in. I had my hands positioned wrong on a choke hold. I missed this important detail. We were learning the collar tag choke. When the hand reaches in, then the other to the collar tag, both index fingers should be touching. I didn’t do that. I couldn’t see the instructors hand grip very well. My mistake was just going with my thumb.
Again, I have been trying to avoid this, I paired up with a guy that had 75 lbs over me. I’m around 165 lbs and my practice partner was around 240 lbs. We were practicing a throw, standing arm lock choke from behind. He was having trouble controlling his body, over weight. He threw me over his shoulder. I immediately learned a much bigger body mass, has a lot more momentum. I shot threw the air. In this scenario, if I am getting thrown by a heavy weight, I should just relax and worry about my fall technique.
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