Tap or Snap… surely
there is a third option?
A recent incident on the mat involving an injury to a
student from a late tap got me thinking about why this occurred. In an ideal
world no one would get injured ever and we would progress to becoming high
level grapplers in good time. I figure the problems of injuries and stalled
development are related, so I have written some of the factors, as I see them
that contribute to both problems.
Ego
This is tough to define, we hear a lot of people talking
about “ego” all the time, but I think that it is often a generic word used for a
variety of meanings. For me though it means “the personal definition of ones
importance in comparison with others.” This isn’t a problem in and of itself
unless the ratio between self and others leans too heavily towards the “self”
end of the spectrum.
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| This is how it really works at the gym.... |
Competitiveness
Yes, I know that BJJ is at least in part a sport and we
“compete” in sports, but it may be of benefit to fully understand what
competing actually means. Then decide whether your approach to competition is
that of its original intention or more from your own unbalanced ego. If you
look up compete in a dictionary (a good dictionary that shows the etymology of
a word) it should say that the word comes from the latin competre which is made up of 2 parts. Com which means “together or unified” (as in community, compadre or
comrade) and Petre which means “to
seek”. So to compete literally means “to seek together”. The Romans obviously
had this in mind when they held sword or chariot tourney’s, a means of
encouraging growth and learning, not a search for the best individual. Putting
this into a Jiu Jitsu context, when we roll in every class, it is probably
worth asking yourself are you “seeking together”? Or are you in it for
yourself?
Poor Coaching/Poor Attitude
Another factor that became apparent to me recently was when
speaking to a person who had developed a chronic injury in his elbow from
tapping late, was that this person had a poor attitude to tapping. During our
discussion I was told that his previous coach had taught him that it was “weak
to tap” and that you should never do it unless absolutely necessary. Whilst I
will concede that the purpose of Jiu Jitsu is to strive to submit, not be
submitted, I still think that this previous coach’s advice was extremely poor
and also reckless. In terms of my own game, it wasn’t until I realised that
tapping was part of developing that I really started to improve in Jiu Jitsu
this I believe is for 3 reasons:
1. I stopped getting tweaked and injured as often (and now
hardly at all).
2. Letting go of my ego allowed me to let go in a lot of
other ways, such as clinging to techniques or approaches that didn’t work or
thinking that I knew better than my coach.
3. I stopped wasting so much time.
Wasting Time
By wasting time I mean that I could spend 1 minute of a 4
minute roll trying to avoid an arm bar by locking my arm into a life and death
tug of war. However, I will have lost 25% of my rolling time (read: ‘learning
time’) to my own ego. Imagine losing 25% of your time!!! If you consistently do
that it would equal out to hours and hours throughout a year that you are doing
nothing but testing your anaerobic fitness. Once I learned to just tap and then
start again I found that I was spending more time rolling and guess what?
Getting better at not getting into an Armbar in the first place!
Most of what I have written here has been on the decision
to tap or not, the other side which also equally needs to be looked at is
getting the tap. I think that for every injury that comes from not tapping
there are just as many that come from overzealous submission attempts. There
has often been an attitude on the mat that says “If he doesn’t tap it is his
fault”. That is all well and good except when you were so intent on finishing
quickly you didn’t notice he didn’t have an arm free to tap with, or you didn’t
realise that it was his first lesson and no one told him what tapping was.
Time wasting can equally apply in offence, except in this
case if I spend 25% of my time straining to put on an Armbar then I am still
losing 25% of rolling time. Don’t get me wrong, there is certainly room for
persistence at times, but this attitude can be negative if frequent. Remember
Jiu Jitsu in fact means the gentle art,
so winning by straining for a technique probably misses the point a bit. It is
more in the spirit of the art to continue to transition until you do get a
clean submission. In other words, it is not the “tap” that I am after, rather
than execution of clean technique.
Conclusion?
So do I actually have a conclusion? Not really except to
say that I think firstly, the willingness to tap and not see it as some kind of
personal or moral defeat is critical for good Jiu Jitsu and secondly, the
absolute need to tap everyone else is probably best being traded in on the
desire to roll well and achieve everything through skill and perfection. I
reckon that would make for a safer mat with a lot more skilled Jiu Jitsu
practitioners on it.
Train smart and train safe...
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