BTG 183 - The Problem with Keeping Score

Hello and welcome to breaking the guard. On today's episode, I wanted to talk about focusing on the score when in training as we get competitive and particularly as you start thinking about competing or even if you don't but you just I think it you naturally gravitates towards competing in the training room and you start keeping tabs on you know how many points you scored on so and so who would have won this if it was a a competition, how many times I tapped this guy, how many times they tapped me, and you start keeping tabs and all these different things. On one hand, it can be good for you because it's a way of motivating yourself to push yourself harder. If I know I'm in a round that I've been scoring and, oh, I'm down by two points. I need to score a sweep now. and it makes you work urgently to score, that's great. This is a device that can be used to positively motivate you in a way to take action. On the other hand, if you focus too much on winning every round that you train in, you might end up fighting a very stale fight because you want to win. So, I'm only playing one type of gaming training, which is going to typically be your aame, the best thing that you do. And that can result in stagnation because you're now you don't have the liberty to explore other parts of your game because since they're not strong suits of yours, you're probably not going to pull them out in competition. And since you're competing in training, you're not pulling them out in training either. So you end up just doing the same things over and over and over again. And while you might train well and people like, "Oh, you know, he does really good. He's hard to score on, you know, or he does this takedown really good." That's all they're going to say about you because you're not developing. You need to have some freedom in your training where you can allow yourself to let loose and go for crazy moves or do things that you suck at and have the space of not being worried about, oh, I lost to this guy, right? Like, no, you can't lose because you're in training. The training room is for funsies. You're there to learn. So, if you're taking it too seriously, it's going to impede your growth long term. For me, right now, I play a lot when I'm out here. And that's not to say I'm playing because I'm so much better than everybody. I'm training with people who are very tough, but I'm playing. And the reason is I want to be able to explore different strategies, different techniques. I don't care if I end up getting caught in a submission. Uh it's fine. It happens. Other day got caught in every naked choke. Uh it's going to happen because I'm playing a lot of uh turtle positions and I'm trying it against different people. Uh and the training is not always for my benefit, too. I was training with this young guy who's a really good wrestler and the first couple times I trained with him, I was playing my Kimora game for the turtle and I was I had him in some trouble. So the next time I roll with him, I made it a thing to focus on that even more because I wanted him to be able to respond. And he did. He learned to avoid the grips better instead of if you guys see me do the videos. When you go tight waist on somebody who's a kimora hunter, you're giving up that elbow, that shoulder, you're going to be a problem. He made the audible of going sg grip, keeping the hands in the center. Then I wasn't able to catch it anymore. And he solidly controlled me that round. I wasn't able to really get any offense as a result. And I was happy with that because the goal for me was for him to be able to pick that up and also to pressure test me to see well how can I make him expose that arm when he knows this is what I'm going for. Now mind you not a great strategy on my effort because like I told you you shouldn't force these things but you know like I said we're playing and the the game isn't always for me to win. Sometimes it's for me to learn and for the other guy to learn and to win. That requires that your ego is not fragile or soft or revolving solely around your most recent performance. If you have a bad day in training, and what does a bad day mean to me? It means you got hurt. uh if I just got beat up, you know, in a metaphorical sense, right? I didn't actually take damage, but I lost a bunch of rounds, then I there's plenty to learn now. There's things that I should be working on that should be exciting. And since you guys know I journal every day, I'd be writing things down like, "Oh, I had trouble in so- and so position. You know, I got caught in so and so thing. I need to work on strategies and counters and ways of working around it." That's interesting. And that allows growth to happen. So I feel being able to have that flexibility is important. Now this is not to say that you should always play, right? Because then you don't even know what your serious game is if you're just always goofing around. And I can admit I can suffer for that sometimes. I tend to play around a lot uh as of late. So, it it would benefit me to go serious. Maybe I'll do that in the next training session. But you should have sessions where you're playing your aame and you're focused on a competition style game. But then you should also have training sessions where you're allowed to goof around and and explore things, not being afraid of getting caught or submitted and just moving with it. Generally, if you're in a fight camp, you're probably not going to be playing around too much, right? If you're in a fight camp, you have to be focused on the the strategies and the techniques that are going to be deemed by your coach to be necessary to win this fight against this particular opponent. But when you're off camp or maybe you're really far, you know, from your fight date, you're like five months out or something like that, there's time to play around, right? And like I said, that going to help you round out your skills so you can be a better athlete. And perhaps this thing that you're playing around with will now become a part of your agame. And now your agame has expanded. You have more options. You have more variability. The other thing I would say is when you're not taking it too seriously, I feel like you're putting yourself in a better position not to get injured. Because normally when you're really serious and like I'm competitive, super competitive, you're probably not going to want to concede anything. Whether it's a takedown or a submission, that's when you get hurt, right? An arm bar that goes too far because you really want to escape this submission. I don't want to get this this guy can't tap me out. And then you get your elbow popped. That's a mistake, right? Whereas when you're playing around, it's not a big deal. Like, ah, whoops. You know, no big deal. You should be able to have that type of flexibility in training. Like no one should be getting their arms popped in training. And to me, it should come from both sides, right? The the guy getting caught in the submission should be smart enough to know when he's cooked, tap out. The other guy with the submission should know, okay, my partner is being a dummy. I'm just going to hold it. I don't have to let go of it. I'm not going to crank it anymore. I can just keep it put. All right. And I can just focus on control. Normally, if you're holding someone in a full blast submission, after a few seconds, hopefully they should realize like, "Oh, okay. He's being nice." There might have been some denial from the guy like, "Oh, no. I'm going to get out. He doesn't have the power." And then like after a few seconds, you're like, "Oh, no. He's being nice to me. Okay." And it I feel like when both guys are going crazy, it's more likely to make more craziness. If you have one guy who's crazy and one guy who's very calm but in control, I feel he can influence the other guy once the other guy realizes like, "Oh, all right. I'm I'm being too spazzy here." Not always, but I feel it's a better position uh to be able to do that. Anyhow, that's my take on this, right? You guys could uh let me know in the comments if you agree, you disagree, or where you fall in this continuum of being very serious, competitive, constantly in training versus being a goofball, always experimenting with new things, never taking anything serious. Like, like everything's usually somewhere in the middle where you want to be, but you have to be able to swing a little bit to the the serious side. You have to be a little bit unserious. uh to allow yourself room for growth. And ultimately, we started this sport in some form to have fun, right? At least I would hope so. I mean, I started from self-defense, but once I started doing it, I realized I had fun doing it. And I would hope that's true for everyone.