Scaffolded Learning - Your Ladder to Skill Acquisition

There are many different aspects to skill. Knowledge of technique is just one small sliver. Learning to identify and understand the other aspects of skill will make it more accessible to you and others. If you wish to develop skill with Jiu Jitsu, or even to go beyond that and become "good", or "very good", you should make a conscious effort to find connection across as broad a range of skill disparity as possible.

What am I are you talking about? Lets break it down.

Find Connection.

When you walk you can feel the ground with your feet. When you train, you SHOULD be able to feel the intent of the person you are training with. You can read a persons intent through the physical connection, (grips, etc.), all the way back to your base. If you can't feel your own base, your balance and plantedness on the ground, it will be very hard to feel the base and intent of someone else.

If there is enough of a skill disparity you can feel their base through the connection. When I talk in class about being like an "empty GI" when your partner tries to move you, it means, in part, that they cannot feel your base when they get grips. The less training a person has, the easier it is to feel their base/balance through the grips - or connection.

You can think of this as being the stinkiest person in the room who can't smell that fact. The person with no balance trying to football tackle everyone is the opposite end of the spectrum of being an empty GI. In martial arts we are trying to connect so we can find technique and leverage, not overpower blindly.

Technique is about efficiency. Connection allows you to find leverage. The better you can manipulate the leverage, the greater your efficiency. A better understanding of the connection/leverage/base relationship will allow you to develop a much greater overall skill potential. The better your base and ability to move it, combined with your connection with your opponent, defines what technique is possible.

Most beginners don't try to find that connection with leverage. Instead they try to test the leverage, generally harder than not, rapidly moving on when the initial football tackle doesn't have the desired outcome. Think of running into and bouncing off of all the walls until you find a door vs running your hand along the wall. The less energy you save trying to find the door the more you will use to open it.

Skill Disparity vs Intent

Skill disparity does not mean better than. You will not, in the sense you probably wish, be "better than" others. What you will be though, if you train enough, is more aware and capable than others.

More capable - when you focus on it and try.

Skill disparity, using this definition, becomes a difference of skill capacity. I can be defeated by someone I am "better than" IF they are paying more attention and trying hard.

Training martial arts is about developing your Intent. Intent is a concept from martial arts that means reading the current situation well enough to know what is and is not possible in this moment. If I know it is not possible I do not intend to do it. Like I can't intend to jump up a skyscraper. I can try hard, but that is not intent.

Intent is using the information available to you, combined with your martial capacity, to make technique happen. As one of my teachers told me, "Before you do a thing, you need to have a basic idea of what you are trying to do". This is why Jiu Jitsu is called a thinking persons art. Feeling your base, using your connection, and finding leverage are real time measurements that continually change.

What makes Jiu Jitsu engaging is how real time it is. You generally are reminded of your base AFTER you get swept off your feet AS you are landing on the floor. "Oh yeah, I didn't have any balance there". Consequences remind us of where we are, and how good we are or are not. When you think of doing something intentionally you don’t think of being surprised at the outcome. You intended to do it.

This gives you are important metric you should always keep in mind when training - how surprised are you when a move happens? If you are getting better the answer should be “less”.

Understand and Improve How you Frame Training

Lev Vygotsky was a Psychologist who developed a concept called the Zone of Proximal Development. There are three states in this concept; A) Things I cannot do by myself, B) Things I can do with help, and C) Things I can do with the help of others. Proximal Development is using these states to help others as they in turn help you. It's the productive use of disparity in capability. It is generally thought of as a self emergent system in which those less capable struggle to keep up with those more capable - with the more capable sometimes offering assistance or advice.

In Jiu Jitsu circles this often gets replaced by; A) People I can always beat, B) People who I sometimes can beat, and C) People I can never beat. This environment, left unchecked, can lead to the myopic view of skill acquisition through local dominance. Misguided practitioners develop the mistaken belief that being a big fish in a small pond makes one a big fish.

This type of learning environment CAN be something instituted culturally from above, however it is more often a self imposed prison you need to learn to break free from in order to improve. If you are constantly wondering who can beat who it is generally pretty tough to make any substantial acquisition or development of skills.

Since it is easy to determine who can beat who, (which you should train some and find out - it's Jiu Jitsu), you should devote a good chunk of your training time, (most of it), to training your intent, or rather your ability to control and direct certain aspects of the training with those who you can beat without too much difficulty.

If you recognize and pay respect to skill or capacity differences you can enjoy a more productive training environment. If you know you are better than someone you generally don't get a lot of benefit by demonstrating it. In that case, it pays to either start from a disadvantage and work through the positions more deliberately, slower, and with more intent.

If you know someone is better than you, you should focus on moving well. When we are scared we tend to freeze up. Intent doesn't flow. Trying to move fluidly and smartly with someone better than you is a skill. Moving slower, with more deliberate exposure to danger, against someone you are better than is a skill. Practicing these makes both of you better.

The better your training partners are - the better all of you will be - if you work together. OR you can just beat the shit out of each other, call it a tough guy contest, and resign yourself from actually becoming a martial artist. Some people chose this path. They usually give up and quit pretty quickly. I try to avoid teaching them when I see it. Better students make for a more enjoyable and productive room.

Martial Artist understand this. They know how to use the spectrum of skill disparity to their TRAINING advantage. Remember; anytime you are not actually fighting for your life you are just training. Knowing the difference facilitates a better experience with each one.

How can you start doing this in training?

Start with shapes - Recognize connection - Read intent

In our warm ups I teach shapes. We start by making a ball - knees connected to elbows - 90 Degrees apart - spine curved. We also make the basic hip out shape on both sides. Those are three stable positions. It is pretty hard to get finished in those shapes.

All the basic positions in Jiu Jitsu consist of some simple variation of those shapes. If you don't know what else to do try to make one of those shapes. Don't worry about the moves there - focus instead on connection and leverage advantage. In unarmed self defense an opponent can't hurt you if they can't touch you. If they are touching - you are connected. Instead of doing the mental calculus of what moves are available - look for movement options through or around the connections you have.

What about Intent? Intent, like gravity, is constant. Unlike gravity, you control intent. When you lose intent you often lose context. All of these things should work together. If you are busy thinking about moves you are not being present in the moment. Moves emerge from the moment.

If you focus on the shapes you and your partner are making - If you are aware of connection - If you are playing with the base, balance, and movement option available - your mind will find the moves, (if your ego doesn't try to tell it what to do). Or your partner will. What happens doesn't matter. What matters is that you don't allow it to disrupt you being in the moment.

There is generally a point in a match that the loser (to be) stops fighting and starts berating themselves for making a mistake. Inactivity in fighting invites loss.

There is a flip side to that - the person who pulls off a move, then pauses to kind of congratulate themselves on a job well done. While they are patting themselves on the back - the (would be) loser doesn't get lost and capitalizes on the (would be) winners lose of intent. Refusal to accept defeat invites victory.

This only happen if…..

Yes, this can all be a little complicated. Sorting it out and making sense of it is what training is about. It's not about memorizing moves. It is about learning to be in the moment. In a very real sense it is just learning to pay attention, however non of this happens unless you train it. Being intentional is a practice. You can train it in class. or you can train it just by going for a walk.

Sometimes you just need to train. Most times you should train with a purpose. All the time you need to plan on being able to train again. How you treat yourself and others in training is the key to making that happen, skillfully.