A recent quote from Rickson Gracie black belt Henry Akins got my attention. The longer I have trained jiu jitsu the more I believe the following quote to be true. There is a lot of wisdom in the statement below from Henry quoting Rickson:
If you want to develop very high-level skill in Jiu-Jitsu, there are some great Rickson quotes making the rounds online that I want to share with you today.
The ideas in these quotes will become more and more important, the further you go in your Jiu-Jitsu journey.
Here they are:
“Even when you spar during training, you should minimize your natural talents.
By limiting yourself, you may find yourself in much worse situation, but you are forced to think your way out, using techniques you would not have otherwise used.
When you start doing this, you begin to understand what is really wrong in a certain situation and you begin to understand what actually needs to be done in a technical way in order to improve the situation.
You then begin to develop a real, deep progress, understanding the mechanics of any situation.
It is important to remember that in a serious fight or in a competition, the mechanics of the fight will be exactly the same as when you are training in a gentle manner.
The only important difference will be your mental attitude. When you train, you should put more emphasis on learning than on competing with your partner.
You don’t learn when you are fighting, bringing in all sorts of tension and emotion.
You learn when you are having fun, training in a smooth and gentle way.
You need to work on improving your technique until you are comfortable in any situation.
Eventually, you will develop a subconscious understanding of the techniques and they become reflexes.
Only after you have done all this you are ready to take your natural abilities “off the shelf” and add them back into your game.
Now the effectiveness of the technique will be at least ten times better.”
