PURE WATER

Do you remember the game "Telephone"? You and the other kids would sit in a circle, one kid would whisper a phrase into another kid's ear, the phrase would pass around the circle from kid to kid until it got back to its source, and you and the other kids would laugh at the mangled nonsense that the original phrases had become in transit.

Martial arts is like that. A teacher teachers based on his or her understanding, and a student learns based on theirs. In this way, even a simple technique can get garbled. And when it comes to Jiu-Jitsu - in which the difference between the version of a technique that works against someone my size or smaller and the version that works against someone much bigger than me can  be very subtle - the problem is even more pronounced. Add in outside pressures jockeying for attention - the need to win within the limited rulesets of modern competition, the need to create an "exciting" style to appeal to MMA spectators - and the mutation of the original technique is almost assured.

These are strange times for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The proliferation of the sport means a veritable army of blue and while belts crowding the scene, but the relatively thin distribution of qualified instructors means that many of these are left to fend for themselves, learning from videos and seminars and otherwise figuring  out on their own (I, admittedly, was one of these). This, combined with the "put up or shut up" attitude of wrestling and MMA that has permeated some segments of the culture, has produced a potentially toxic skepticism. White and blue belts I've met think nothing of openly questioning the validity of the techniques shown to them at seminars, or when visiting another's gym.

I in no way endorse the kind of wholesale "follower" mindset that created and defined the culture of martial arts before MMA. Skepticism can be good and healthy, and no instructor should think of himself as being above the questions that such skepticism produces. To do so invariably leads to self-delusion. But this humility must not mean an inversion of the dynamic, in which the teacher answers to the student more than the student answers to the teacher! The dojo culture is healthiest when the student carries the attitude of the student, and the baseline assumption that the teacher knows more and better than him or her about the subject at hand. If he or she does not, he or she should not be in class, because why would you go to a school that has nothing to teach you? 

Today I look online and I see white and blue belt openly expressing dissatisfaction with a given technique or position shown by Master Rickson or Master Helio. Nowhere in their attitude is the assumption that any concern they have about the technique is the result of their own imperfect understanding. Everywhere I read comments from people eager to talk about what they know, give their own answers, express their own style, have their own highlight reel on YouTube, have their own name above a school door.

A master who wants you to call him master for his sake is not your master; a master who is a master because of his knowledge is. You have limited time on this earth, and the more of it that you spend listening to yourself talk the less time you spend learning from those who really know something.

Stick close to the source, and try to understand.  

Commit to the journey. Represent the art. Get the teeshirt here.