"Flow"

This inspired me. It's so meditative. I love flowing like this. At our gym, we try to start out with 'flow rolling'. With some people, this clicks better than others. But when I get to go with someone else who also really 'gets' it, it's magic. It looks something like this.

I love watching Barnett do it, though, because he's better than me, and has a different style than I or most BJJ guys do. And watching it, I felt an idea coalesce; BJJ "Kata".

Hear me out. I generally am not a fan of 'kata', which in most martial arts look like solo repeated movements, the same pattern of strikes or kicks done at length; in Judo, it's slightly better, involving two people, and with your opponent sometimes throwing full resistance at you to test your pin, for instance. Still very 'stiff', though, very rigid, formal. It is useful, but somehow... Not inspiring, I guess I might say.

But this... In BJJ, in the beginning, you learn discrete 'moves'. As a result, for a long time, a lot of people are caught up on whatever one move they are trying to execute. They think, 'I want to do this certain move', and then they project that that's clearly what they want to do, and they try and force it, even though it's no longer the optimal time to perform that move. Sometimes, they go one step further, and include a setup as a part of the move. But if it falls apart, some defense is mounted, the move is over, and they have to mentally switch gears, and keep vaguely fighting for position until they find theirself in some place where they can stop and focus on trying to execute a move again.

In quality BJJ, this is not what is happening. Many a westerner is familiar with the term 'no mind', or 'mushin', as something that sounds mystical and perhaps silly. But the idea is well captured by the modern psychological principle of... flow. Yes, that's actually what they call it. The idea is that you are deeply mentally engaged at the subconscious level. You aren't parsing individual thoughts about what is happening, you aren't planning specific moves, or discrete concepts. Everything you know just effortlessly coalesces into what it should be. One movement flows into the next, a failed attempt turns into a transition which turns into another attempt, which he tries to counter with a reversal which you flow with into a counter reversal.... all without thinking or planning, it just happens.

Doing what Josh does in this video, I think, could help facilitate this mentality. Could help people build up their neural knowledge base not in terms of discrete 'moves', but as collections of related positions, transitions, and submissions that are inextricably bound. If one developed a series of these, focused around different submission chains, and had students drill these...

I think one would see incredible progress, not just in positions learned, but in mentality.

What's more, I think this concept could be applied to Judo as well. We typically teach Judo in terms of concrete, specific, discrete 'moves'. Ocassionally we'll also learn one-two combos. But what if, like 'go', we studied entire match sequences? We looked at one-two-three-four-five-ippon combos, and practiced them together? Because in reality, this is how throws happen. It's very hard to hit one move on its own; when someone stumbles to recover from their defense, which compromised their posture, then you can hit your next move. This is what combos are supposed to teach; why not take it to the next level? Not just ko-ouchi -> seoi nage, but ko-ouchi, seoi, o-ouchi, uchi-mata, ko-ouchi. All of them together. Teach the brain about the connecting pieces between the moves, make that as natural as the throws themselves.