White Belt – How To Survive Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - Part 2: Get Strongest In Your Weakest Place

White Belt – How To Survive Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - Part 2: Get Strongest In Your Weakest Place

When I was in my last year of school aged 16, back in the day, before the current generation of kids came along, when physical education was supposed to make a man of you, and the physical education staff were a fearsome bunch of psychopaths and sadists, the teacher sent us into the gym hall instead of outside due to a storm. We all hit the weights. This was the first time I had properly tried weight training, and I was so weak that I couldn’t move the ‘Boys’ weight on the bench press, and so had to do the ‘Girls’ weight instead. I suspect there might be some younger people reading this cringing at that description, but that’s how it was back in the early ’90s whether you like it not sorry!

Needless to say my classmates never failed to refer to my being so weak I had to use the ‘girls’ weights. In fact I was so horrified that I went and signed up with a classic old skool dusty cellar weight training gym. That place is for another book, it was so wild in there and the rogues who frequented that place were straight from a police lineup. Fast forward to today though, and as I reach the age where my physical strength has peaked, I am usually one of the strongest people in the gyms I attend today. Why is that? 32 years of persistent repetition, progression and hard work - literally millions of reps.

I was weak, now I am strong. This can apply in many areas of our life, but specifically is a key concept you can adopt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. When you start your weakest place is everywhere, but if you persist you will eventually get better and better. As the saying goes, a black belt is just a white belt who didn’t quit...

Persisting with BJJ is about embracing your weaknesses and working on them until they become strengths. For example, as mentioned previously I am heavy – weighing in at around 260 pounds. If I was lean, I would be around 230 pounds (wishful thinking!). In addition my body is nearly 50 and has a lot of miles on the clock and an accumulation of injuries from a variety of misadventures and years of hard physical training and being kicked and punched by other heavyweights. Therefore I am not winning any awards for mobility and speed of movement on the mat - the phrase 'beached whale' springs to mind.

My natural game in BJJ should be to assume top position and use gravity to crush my opponents will to carry on before trying to slip into a submission move on the back of the uncomfortable physical pressure I have caused. That is how most BJJ practitioners would develop their game if they had my physicality.

However, I don’t accept that I can only be the type of BJJ player who flops, like a big sloth, on top of their opponents to use their excessive bodyweight to crush their opponent. – instead I have an ongoing training program outside BJJ class, devised and implemented by myself – to get more mobile, more flexible and to be more efficient at moving my body and moving my body plus added weight. I can already feel I am physically better suited to BJJ than I was when I started, partly because of adaptations from the stresses and needs of BJJ training, but also because of the supplementary training.

I’m never going to get in the NFL as a wide receiver because I’m old, broken and slow, so this is not about unrealistic expectations – oh you can do ANYTHING if you set your mind to it – that kind of claim devoid of reality check is bullshit.

But, when I roll with other big guys on the mats, over time I am making myself more manoeuvrable, more flexible and more dynamic than them. So regardless of where your BJJ is currently weak, the way to survive and eventually thrive is to embrace that weakness and to commit to making weaknesses strengths.

Author: Jimmy Rose, lifelong martial artist and BJJ enthusiast