Peripheral Vision, Tetris, and Jiu-Jitsu? The Benefits of Repetitive Training

I have been thinking quite a bit about the importance of repetition in our training. I originally planned on making this two posts, but keeping it together seemed more appropriate. Below it is broken up into three parts with headers.

I'm sure all of us see the wisdom in training with repetition. I try to capture some of those thoughts here and try to elaborate upon them. Please share your ideas, I'm curious for your thoughts on the matter.

Part 1 The Question: Why Train with Repetition?

Tiger's long drive. Jordan's fade away jumper. The complexity of ice skating. The gymnast's perfect form. It also takes place in the athletic realms that we deal with in Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. Mirko CroCop's left head kick. Roger Gracie's back control and rear naked choke. I would also throw in Fedor's armbar.

To be able to employ the perfect form in competition it takes a significant amount of work. The examples above illustrate such. That we stare at TV screens in awe at the wonder of such skill doesn't do justice to the mental and physical anguish that goes into such efforts of achieving mastery. I wonder how many times such athletes, in moments of intense training, come to hate, maybe if only for a brief time, what they are doing because it gets so old. I'm not talking about physical exhaustion. I'm talking about mental burnout and reaching the point of becoming numb due to having to do a drill over and over and over again. I think that such extensive hard work is more mentally taxing than it is physically painful. Yet I think the rewards for such straining are great.

One of my favorite lessons that Shihan and Conan stress to us is the importance of practicing moves...not only practicing moves here and there but "thousands of times" as Shihan has stressed. The first time I learned this lesson was when Conan told us what Shihan had told him when learning the kimura: "now go practice it 10,000 times and you'll "begin to get an understanding of how this submission works."

We have a challenge with Jiu-Jitsu though that many other athletic spheres don't face: the plethora of submissions, sweeps, and defenses that are needed to succeed. In Renzo Gracie's and Craig Kukuk's instructional videos they mention that there are some 300 submissions one can learn in Jiu-Jitsu. The result is that the Jiu-Jitsu practitioner faces a challenge that many others do not.

Because of the multiplicity of techniques to master, the student of Jiu-Jitsu goes through at least 4 stages of learning, perhaps even more. First, the amount of techniques of the game are so extensive that the student feels overwhelmed and tries to overcompensate with strength and excessive energy. Then, after time spent training, the student slows down, letting go of trying to use brute strength and now focuses on technique. Third, the student begins to train technique in clusters. That is, learning to put together combinations and transitions. Fourth, the long road of learning to put together combinations leads to such advanced technique becoming second nature. That is, the mind no longer has to concentrate so deeply during training that the body has to pause to allow the mind to think. At this point, the contradiction between mind and body is overcome. The body knows how to react in each situation. Technique becomes second nature. The student no longer has to pause and think what to do, but rather trust that the way the body is moving is the right path to victory.

Part 2 The Answer: Jiu-Jitsu Becomes Second Nature

Constant repetition of one move leads to knowledge of the details of that given move. For instance, in the armbar you come to know where to shift your weight to get the leg over the head. You automatically make sure the thumb is pointed up. You pinch the shoulder with your legs without consciously thinking about doing it.

But this isn't enough if one wants to progress in the jits game. With that, one must be able to quickly recover mount if the opponent begins to slide away, to be able to swivel the legs around and get into side control if needed, to be able to use a different armlock or pull the triangle if needed.

Trying to study these things and to know where to go beyond that fries the brain. Indeed, Jiu-Jitsu is like running through a maze that takes the liberty of constantly changing.

Hence, the necessity of learning to use combinations via instinct becomes the next mountain to begin climbing once we have some of the basic techniques down (but I want to revisit this below). In the end, I think we end up with a sort of peripheral vision for Jiu-Jitsu. Like a point guard that sees the entire floor, knows where his four teammates are and where they're moving, as well as where the five defenders are and where they're likely to get beat to the basket, Jiu-Jitsu works the same way.

For instance, we end up seeing four different techniques we can use in any given situation. We are aware of the four different ways our opponent may react, and we know four different ways to counter that counter. Yet it seems that the movement toward such combinations eventually becomes less a conscious effort and more a reaction. I don't argue that consciousness ceases to function, but that such movements become part of the motor system. This is why I believe the best analogy for understanding Jiu-Jitsu is chess.

Now let me try another analogy that goes beyond even chess. I will try to keep this brief. Do you ever play tetris? Are you good at it? If so, you'll know what I'm talking about here. If not, you're about to get a lesson on how to be able to master tetris, although the ability to do this in Jiu-Jitsu is much more important in this discussion (and much more challenging!). Please also note that I in no way think I've got this down in the Jiu-Jitsu game! It's that I see it on the map and I'm trying to get there. (I do, however, have such mastery in the tetris game! ;)

The key to succeeding in tetris is to not think about the current piece that is falling, but the piece that is pictured on the side that comes next. Does this even make sense? Why would we not focus on the piece that if falling?! We have to guide it to its proper destination! The answer is simple: because we have already decided where it is going before it starts falling. You have to think a step ahead of the tetris game. Part of this is physical. You can't look directly at the piece that is falling. You have to have a kind of larger view with your eyes. Out of the corner of your eye you must see what piece is next and start situating it into the building blocks below, and out of the other corner of your eye you need to be able to guide the falling piece.

The implications for Jiu-Jitsu are, I hope, clear. The piece that is currently falling is the submission we are trying at the moment. The piece that is presented to come next is the submission or sweep that we try once we have to transition. The complex set of blocks that we are trying to get to deteriorate are the different defenses and movements our opponent is employing.

So what does this analogy have to do with instinct? In tetris you have to have a perfect knowledge of how to move the blocks, how to situate them. Understood in a context of Jiu-Jitsu: instead of thinking about the mechanics of a choke, you apply it as quickly as you do as you spin a piece to fit into the building blocks in tetris.

The point: we need to have a peripheral vision, meaning that we are able to attack, defend, or transition all at the same time.

Like the tetris game that almost can't speed up enough to get you to quit because you're always a step ahead, your opponent doesn't ever stop defending because of your plethora of instinctive techniques. We cannot reach this level of Jiu-Jitsu without excessive repetition. Importantly, those repetitions should become more and more complex. Ultimately, we drill transitions in larger, longer chunks. In the end, we have an endless set of linkings that keep us many steps ahead of our opponent.

Before ending I want to re-visit the notion of having techniques "down good enough" that I discussed above. It might seem monotonous to do the armbar drill again, to learn how to apply the key lock again, to go over the shrimp crawl for the 1,000th time. Didn't I already do this?! If the answer is yes . . . then good! We need to keep visiting these things over and over again. Even though we've got some of the basics down, everytime we drill something that is basic, we pick up more details about it. We become more aware of smaller and smaller details.

Part 3 The Lesson Visualized

In an interview after this fight, Minotauro stated that he drilled this transition from side control to guillotine over and over until he knew with absolute certainty that it would work. Watch closely: he baits Sylvia into sticking his neck out when getting up...repetition, repetition, repetition!