Nicolas Plessis at the European IBJJF tournament in Lisbon Portugal
Amazing just how strong the human mind, body and spirit are.
“A human being is a deciding being. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
-Viktor Frankl
Chess and flow charts…
The comparison of Jiu-Jitsu to Chess, is a common one. The similarity is found in the thought process the practitioner learns to utilize. Chess players do not think singularly. To clarify what I mean by thinking singularly, they do not think only of the present moment, they think in a line of thought that reaches into the unknown future and hypothesises as to what the most likely outcome will be. They think several moves ahead, to anticipate their opponents moves, to be better prepared for the unknown.
Jiu-Jitsu and Chess players find success when they are able to deal with the unknown, if/when the unknown happens. Of course, having the unknown happen depends upon your opponent being able to out think you. If you can anticipate your opponent’s moves, you can defend against them. This was my biggest obstacle as a white belt, and remains a constant area of exercise every time I step on the mat.
Of course no one plays Chess for the very first time and starts to think this way. You need to know the game, you need to know the patterns each piece can move in, you need to understand the role your moves will play in setting up a strategy that will hopefully result in successfully ending the game. This takes time and patience. Lots of time and patience. The same goes for Jiu-Jitsu. You must first establish a knowledge of the positions and skills you will face before you can defend against them, or utilize them to your advantage. I found that live training was the best method for me to learn to think and recognize my opponent’s movements, but I still ran into dead-ends. Of course to an advanced Jiu-Jitsu player, my dead-ends were rife with opportunities I just didn’t recognize. I still find myself stuck at times, unable to see where I can transition or how to attack, but I know these dead-ends are just “thought gaps”, moments when I failed to recognize the progression of my opponent’s movements, failed to see far enough ahead to recognize the position I am forced to deal with. I’ve learned there are almost always options.
I’m a visual learner, I do a pretty well at paying attention to details. One downside for me is that I’m not the fastest thinker. I like to dedicate time to my thoughts, making sure I’m organized and clear in the points I try to convey. There is no time for that kind of thinking during a roll. To help me speed up my real time thinking, as an exercise I started to draw flow charts for basic positions that I found myself in. I would link possible progressions to each position as quickly as I could. If I start in my opponent’s closed guard, what next? Well…Pass guard. In order to do that I need to posture, break my opponent’s grips, control opponent’s knees, pass your knee, establish base, control hips and torso…then what? If you execute a clean pass and end up in side control, then you can attack an arm for Kimura, or Americana, or maybe your opponent bridges hard to escape, and you can, if you anticipate his hips thrusting, move to knee on belly, moving on to work for juji gatame (cross arm-bar), or establishing grips and working for a no/so choke. These pics are examples of my first 2 flow charts.
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I think they help me to work through my stalls, those “what next/what now” moments, when I’m unsure what possibilities are right in front of me. The more evolved and deep your game becomes, the more options you will begin to see, the easier it will become to think like a Chess player. At least that has been my experience.
