Yesterday morning I was rolling with a guy named Alex. He is a bigger dude, probably north of 200 pounds, and I fight somewhere around 175, so he has a good 25 pounds on me. I had top control. I was in his guard, working, grinding, doing my thing. And the whole time, down there underneath me, he was just kind of smiling (actually more of a calm smirk).
So when we broke I asked him. I said, you are conserving your energy, aren't you? He grinned and said yeah. Then he said, we call that the “white belt spaz”.
Full Humility, Engaged
I about died laughing. Because that is exactly what I am. I am the white belt spaz. Dammit.
Note: If you’re new to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, the white belt is the entry belt, then blue, purple, brown and black. So white belts are the most inexperienced.
If you have never trained, here is what that means. A white belt gets in there and goes absolutely apeshit (mostly out of fear and confusion). Every muscle in my body is flexed at once. I am grinding, muscling, fighting for every inch like my life depends on it. And it feels productive in the moment. It feels like I am doing something. But what actually happens is I burn through everything I have in about two minutes, I gas out, I make a sloppy mistake because I am too tired to think, and then I get submitted.
Every …. time.
The Big Epiphany
It clicked for me a week or so ago, before the Alex thing. I was rolling with another guy, an advanced white belt who is right on the edge of his blue belt. And I was just gassed. I remember thinking, man, my cardio is way off, something is wrong with me. But that was not the real problem. The real problem is that I was spending my energy like an idiot. I was paying full price for everything when I did not have to.
Because here is what I started noticing about the better guys. They are not doing that. They are calm. They are patient. They sit there and defend and wait, spending almost nothing, just watching. And they are waiting for one specific thing. They are waiting for the other guy to burn himself out or make a mistake. The second you make a tired mistake (double bad), they pounce, and they absolutely dominate you, because now you have nothing left and they have a full tank. The whole time you thought you were winning, you were just doing their cardio for them.
Patience and Pace
So here is the lesson, and it is the biggest one I have had in a while. Maybe the biggest one since I started.
When you roll, slow down and breathe. It does not matter where you start. Top, bottom, judo grips, whatever. Slow down, breathe, and really pay attention to the person in front of you. The first job is not to win. The first job is just to get control. Get your grips, settle your weight, pin the person down, lay flat, and spend the least amount of energy you possibly can to hold the position. Just control. Get things quiet.
Then you assess. Okay, what is going on here. Where are my windows. You poke at a few things and you watch how they respond. You are gathering information, not throwing haymakers. And only after that, once you actually see something, do you start taking chances and making aggressive moves.
But here is the part I had honestly never thought about until this week. Before I commit to an aggressive move, I need to already know my answer to this question. If this goes wrong, how do I get back to neutral or better? Because the worst thing I can do is gamble big, lose the gamble, and end up flat on my stomach with someone on my back. If I do not have an exit, I should not be making the move.
The Bigger Lesson to Learn
When I zoom out, none of this is really about jiu-jitsu. It is about breath. It is about control. It is about being present. What I am actually training, every single morning, is my autonomic nervous system. It is my fight or flight response. The white belt spaz is just a guy whose sympathetic nervous system took the wheel and floored it. The calm purple belt smiling underneath me is a guy who has learned to keep his hand on that wheel. The more I can control that response, the better I am going to be at all of it.
And that is the part that follows me off the mat. I keep thinking about all the times in my life some altercation kicked off, a snarky comment, a confrontation, something that got under my skin, and my fight or flight response went completely bonkers. I lost control of my own body. And then a couple hours later I would just crash, totally wiped out, because I had dumped every ounce of cortisol I had over something that did not deserve it. Same exact pattern.
Spend everything early, have nothing left when it actually matters. The lesson is the same in both places. Do not match the other person's energy just because they are bringing it. Stay calm, stay patient, watch them, and wait for your moment. There is probably a time and place to bring the heat. But all the time? No way, Jose.
Week 27. The white belt spaz is still very much alive over here. But at least now I can see him.