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Fear and Ignorance in Jiu-Jitsu

By Kiril Stirbu on May 12, 2015

Once reading Robert Kiyosaky’s book I got his idea of fear and ignorance as a main cause of poverty. Maybe it causes your poor jiu-jitsu progress as well as your empty wallet?

How often do we see the story described below? A practitioner study some technique / position and then all his fights are limited to those positions. Then he find out some other technique in class or get it from YouTube (it’s Ok to study from YouTube, don’t have scruples). Then he tries to perform it in the very next spar and he fails (that is natural too), he loses position and loses the fight. After it, he clings to the first technique/ position and never try the technique, which have led him to loss.

IGNORANCE. He just does not know how to perform it correctly. There are a lot of fine tunings, nuances, controls and pressures beyond the visible form, which are almost not possible to be understood when you are watching it or even when you are listening your instructor’s explanations (there are some exceptions, I can tell you one next time). You can understand all those movements and tunings only by multiple applying on resistant opponent in a fight or in a fight-similar drill. Wherein drills with no resistance will give you a general idea only , i.e. they solve the problem partially, helping you to study the movement in general. However, the true satori (“Aha! This is how they do it!”) could be attained in a fight only. Along comes …

…FEAR. Student tried to perform this move before and he failed. He lost a fight due to this failure. It was just sparring within a class, but it still hurts his ego. For example, when he was trying to apply an armbar from mount and found himself in a bottom guard, which was passed successfully by his opponent, then next time he will hold his top mount position for dear life until the end of fight and after it he will tick the “victory” checkbox in his pad. “Win” and “loss” will matter for him unless he does not fear of losing. He will never try armbar from mount again. It is possible that no one in academy will be able to defeat him, but his progress will stop in this point. The price will be paid in competition.

Thus he DOESN’T KNOW HOW to perform an armbar from mount and he FEARS OF TRYING IT AND LOSING so he WILL NEVER KNOW HOW TO apply it.

Do you see a vicious circle here? IGNORANCE GENERATES FEAR, FEAR GENERATES IGNORANCE. If you study this lesson in jiu-jitsu you also will be able to apply it in real life. May be you even become a Rich Dad 😉

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