A Single Technique From White to Black

I came up with this idea while watching an instructor talk about how your perspective on a technique changes as you move from white to black belt. I started writing down how I feel you expand your mind as a martial artist when you progress through the ranks, or maybe just with time. Thinking in terms of a single technique, I laid out five steps. Each of them correspond with the five belt levels from white to black.

1. Recognize the position

The first challenge of any technique is simply identifying it. Some techniques, like wrist turns, are easier to recognize because they only happen from a few positions (usually when your hands are grabbing someone's wrists, it's a wrist turn). Other techniques, like throws, are harder because there are many positions, and can be done with many parts of your body. Although you may not fully understand how a technique works, or even what it is, you start by recognizing the positions. You may have certain snapshots in your head of what a position looks like, or it could be associated with a feeling when your body starts to move a certain way. It's not always easy, some positions look close but they're not right. Eventually, you just know.

2. Find the setups

As you recognize the positions better and better, you begin to see the opportunities that create them. When someone locks their arm firmly, you see an opening for an armlock.  They are anatomical cues that prompt you to begin a certain technique. Initially, you probably have a limited library of techniques in your mind. Your association of how setups lead to positions that lead to techniques is very linear. If someone does A, I should do B. If this works, I get a technique. Finding these setups is like reading a map. You start to see how things are connected and how some setups lead to many things.

You need the setups to find the techniques, at least in your own mind. You start to play with creating the setups, rather than waiting for them to happen. sometimes this works, and sometimes it doesn't. You start to piece these setups together with commonalities, leading into the next step.

3. Learn what makes it work

After many repetitions, your starting to get pretty good. You can size up a situation pretty quickly and see if you have the setups to do your technique. Now that you can lay out your technique clearly in your head, you begin to compare and contrast it's various forms. You start learning what the setups have in common, and can reduce it down to usually one or two things. Take a look at the blood choke. It has more than a dozen ways to do it, but they all rely on pressure to the neck (obviously). You eventually can see (or someone tells you) that everyone has two arteries on their neck and when they are both compressed, they will pass out from lack of blood after a few seconds. No matter how you choose to do it, those arteries have to be stopped from bringing blood (which carries oxygen) to the brain. It's what makes it work.

Now that you know what makes it work, you can take a second look at those positions and setups. You realize now that while they were useful to know, your relying on them less and less. You really only need to get hold of that neck, you don't always need to be in a certain position. You may not even have to use the parts of your body you thought you did.

4. Create new ways to do it.

Before you had to recognize the position before you could do a technique. Now you don't even acknowledge the position, you go strait to the technique. Your finding your techniques in places that weren't there before. You no longer need to find the setups, your creating them. Continuing with the choke example, your starting to find chokes with not just your arms but your legs. You can choke someone with their own arms, even their own clothes. Your even starting to play with new chokes like air chokes, and seeing how they link to strikes to the neck and controlling someone's posture. Sometimes you do things that may be modified versions of the technique. But does that even matter? A technique is just a label we use so we know what we're talking about. Your moving beyond these labels and simply adding more tools to your toolbox. Now your starting to think like a black belt.


5. Do it without thinking

The last step in the learning process and the one where you truly take off. The key to doing anything without thinking about it is to not be attached to it. As you continue to learn more techniques and put them into practice, your toolbox is full enough that if one thing isn't there, another thing will be. Although we started talking about finding the positions and the setups for a single technique, its hard to even think about individual techniques at this level. The boundaries that separate them are disappearing. You see techniques everywhere. It's not that you have too many options, your just ready to take whatever is there. If your opponent escapes your technique, you just flow into the next one. That's because the technique doesn't even matter anymore, it's just one method of finishing that's as good as the next. You defeating your opponent is the only really important thing. Your not attached because you feel like you can win in many areas.


As a final word, be careful of the sixth and final step which is "you actually forget what your doing". The better you get at something, the more likely you are to forget the fundamentals. I've tied my belt so many times, I occasionally have trouble doing it slowly and teaching a new student. When this happens, return to step 1. Remember, your always a white belt.

I want to acknowledge and give credit to Roy Dean, Sensei, a very successful and respected Brazilian Jui-Jitsu Black Belt and a Seibukan Jujutsu Black Belt. His video "White to Black, A Shift in Perspective" inspired me to write this with my own variation on it's message.