Recently, in a surprising turn of events, I was awarded my brown belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. This occurred nigh on two years since my purple belt. To mark the occasion, I wanted to reflect on the journey thus far. And what better way to do it than through the lens of the directive that’s so helped me progress: Dan John’s Show up; ask questions; don’t quit.
Show up. Be there. Do the thing. Sounds easy, but it isn’t. In most arenas, simple attendance is the failure point. We can attend daily or weekly to acts of sustenance because their very criticality ensures their automaticity. And we can attend daily or weekly to socio-cultural obligations because our lifestyle has been steered by greater powers to engineer such compliance. But showing up multiple times per week for multiple years for a voluntary activity? That is out of the ordinary.
What makes it possible is a sufficiently strong internal motivation, coupled with an environment and social fabric that at best encourages and at worst merely allows such a commitment. To me, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a philosophical pursuit. It puts me near-death, helping me hover at contentment everywhere else and tap reliably into aliveness on the mats. Internal motivation; solved. The enviro-social aspect also presents no issue for me, happily.
Yet, it is still hard to show up for Brazilian jiu-jitsu physically, mentally and technically. Why? Physically, it is an art that stresses the body. Not as much as striking or judo or wrestling, but more so than individual activities like running or yoga, or team sports like football or basketball. One wins at BJJ by exerting control over another’s body and using that control to cause enough pain and discomfort to elicit a submission. This has risks, and consequences. One must accept them and mitigate.
At minimum, there must be some counter-weighting regime to the bodily demands of BJJ. Perhaps a calculated program of systematic interventions. Ideally, there would be a cross-training approach that does more than nullify, a life of movement that enriches total movement capacity beyond that required for grappling.
Showing up mentally? That is also tough. BJJ is humbling. It doesn’t extinguish the ego so much as deform it, compel it to acknowledge its serious and true relative vulnerabilities. It reflects oneself as a bare flickering candle, capable of being easily snuffed.
If the ideal mixture of training partners is someone better than you, someone equal to you, and someone less accomplished, then it is a fact that the early experience of grappling is disorientating. It takes a long time to observe and orient, yet alone to be capable of making good decisions and to cease being acted upon by others, snuffed out. In such a hellscape, solace must be found in the mini victories, in the, “Dude, I almost had you,”moments.
Fortunately, as you become more accomplished, solace starts to emerge in the expression of acquired skills and their continual refinement. This is showing up technically, and asking questions.
Asking questions, like showing up, seems simple but is hard. Because once you’e asked the obvious good questions, additional good questions become trickier to generate. They need to be tailored to oneself, scoped to a smaller slice of the overall activity, pitched at the appropriate level of abstraction, and framed in a way that yields a usable response.
A question posed during a drill differs from a question asked as a coach demos a sequence; a question explored during a roll differs from a question pondered at home, sprawled on the couch watching a technique breakdown on YouTube. Muddying the clean practice of question asking further is the fact that BJJ is a kinetic, embodied art. Purely verbal questions have a bounded utility. Eventually, one must ask questions of and with physical entities. Bodies.
What if I move here, press there, pull harder, bait this, relinquish that, chain these motions, remove this impediment, accelerate this segment, slow this portion, cause this reaction? The answers to all these queries from every roll must be sifted, eyed closer, absorbed, reconstituted as deeper questions, and embodied. Do this enough and good questions are formulated. Do this enough and it is the very opportunity to ask good questions that one shows up for.
Of course, this delighting in the joy of good questions is a particularly infinite game orientation to grappling and BJJ. It is continuing to practice with the intent to make the practice more interesting and prolong the game. This is one way to not quit.
Another way to not quit comes from a more finite game orientation. One shows up, asks questions and doesn’t quit in order to win. “Winning” could be attaining a particular belt, or medalling at a competition to climb regional, national or international ranks, or even just one-upping a friend or training partner at the next session. A quick diagnostic to uncover one’s current orientation is to ask which label you feel more comfortable being yoked with: combat athlete or martial artist? Those comfortable with the former seek a win; those comfortable with the latter seek The Way.
Yet, in either case, one’s long term practice can still be derailed. It doesn’t matter how immutable the rails are, nor how insistent the drive of the engine is. The forward motion of the carriage can always be impeded. Not quitting is, like many things in life, an unwieldy mash of luck, persistence, resources and skill.
If, on average, one can show up and ask questions more often than not over a long enough timeline, then the reason will be love and/or need. Love of the (in)finite game and its rewards and/or a habitualised need for the boons the process and its consequences deliver. Plus luck. Always luck.
Dan John has another directive I often think about: Constantly strive for mastery and grace. Thus far, with respect to grappling and BJJ, I have shown up, asked questions, and not quit. This will continue, but with a new focus: mastery and grace.
It’ll mean expanding and sharpening my strengths, interrogating and plugging the many, many gaps in my game, and always, always striving for the beautiful and deadly grace of a martial artist in motion.
I cannot wait.
Swell & Cut 