Last year, we had jiu-jitsu black belt Brian Glick come to our academy to teach a seminar for the academy’s third anniversary, something he has done every year since we opened this particular location. Whenever he comes down, he is gracious enough to spend much of our time together answering my many jiu-jitsu questions. Our conversations are not all about jiu-jitsu, though. We also discuss music, philosophy, meditation, pedagogy, family, etc. but jiu-jitsu is the common thread that ties the conversation together.
During his last visit, Professor Glick and I talked about what to prioritize in training and how to do so effectively and efficiently. The primary goal of jiu-jitsu practice, at least for me, and seemingly for Professor Glick as well, being personal and technical development, knowing what to prioritize and how to practice it is extremely important. Without a focus on a specific area of skill development, training is somewhat random and there is no real way to track progress aside from how many rounds of sparring a person wins.
Winning at sparring is fine for what it is, but it is important to keep in mind that sparring is still just practice. Winning at sparring, then, means winning at practicing and no one ever got a medal or a trophy for winning at practicing. The other problem with this approach is that it makes it very difficult develop new skills because, when our focus is to win at practicing, our tendency is to do only what we are already good at and take as few risks as possible along the way.
Focusing on a specific skill, technique, or principle to work on has several advantages over simply trying to win at sparring, but the most significant advantage is that it affords us a measurable goal by which to track progress. Instead of worrying about the entirety of jiu-jitsu, we need only worry about the one thing we are working on and whether or not we were successful.
Unfortunately, I tend to complicate things. So I was explaining to Professor Glick that, being special smart and complex, I prefer to have multiple skills to focus on at a time. That way, whatever position I find myself in, I have something to work on from there.
After patiently listening to me explain my ADHD method for skill development, Professor Glick calmly explained why he did not recommend this approach. He said, “If you allow yourself to work on multiple things at one time, you will always find an excuse to not work on the one thing that is most important. A better approach would be to decide what is most important and then work on that, exclusively. That way, no matter what is happening in your rolls, you have to find a way back to a position from which you can work on that particular skill.”
This simple, yet profound statement totally changed the way I think about not only practicing jiu-jitsu, but also how I think about my priorities in general. No matter how many things I have going on in my life, there is always one thing that is more important than all the others. If I can name that thing, focus on it, and prioritize it above all else, allowing everything else to take a backseat, I have a much better chance of success. Not only that, but if I choose this priority wisely, my working on it should have a positive downstream effect on every other aspect of my training or my life.
For me, I have come to accept that this one thing is my relationship with God. By making my spiritual condition my priority, everything else in my life is better as the result. Whether it’s jiu-jitsu, my career, or even my family, when I prioritize God, everything else benefits.
Perhaps more importantly, when I prioritize God, I am a better person who is more capable of participating in life with more love, presence, and intention. When I try to multi-task and multi-focus, however, things begin to fall apart rather quickly; I begin to fall apart rather quickly.
~Robert Van Valkenburgh
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