Issue 145

Improving your game is just as much about keeping your real-world life in check as it is putting in the gym time, explains Marshal D Carper

Info:

Marshal D Carper is the author of the Cauliflower Chronicles and the co-author of Marcelo Garcia's Advanced Jiu-Jitsu Techniques. His newest book, Don't Wear Your Gi to the Bar: And Other Jiu-Jitsu Life Lessons is available from Amazon and as a free download via ArtechokeMedia.com.

The instructional market is blossoming. Books, DVDs, apps, on-demand video, email newsletters – an aspiring fighter is never more than a few clicks away from six hours of analysis on any topic from the berimbolo to the latest and greatest kettlebell routine.

Fitness and technique are certainly important. In the gym or in competition, a sharp mind and a prepared body are critical ingredients for success. Often overlooked, however, is the way that life off the mat can affect life on the mat.

Neglecting those elements can be just as damaging to your game as skimping on the cardio or flaking out on sparring.

Unfortunately, there’s not a DVD set on how to balance fighting with a healthy marriage, or how to be a fighter at a party filled with unbruised, uncauliflowered, matburn free normal people.

And these are important skills. Any veteran boxer, MMA fighter, or jiu-jiteiro will say so. To fill this instructional void, here are five steps that will help you to optimize your on-the-mat and off-the-mat life.

STEP ONE: ENJOY A NETFLIX BINGE

The fight lifestyle is a long-term commitment, which is a lot to ask of an individual and of the people in that person’s life. Taking a night or two off from training to stay in and watch four hours of Game of Thrones with your wife or husband is not only OK, but it can do wonders for the health of a relationship.

With Netflix, DVD, and box-sets, television viewing can be packed into nine-hour eyebleeding binge seasons. No commercials. No waiting a week between episodes or six years for an all-day marathon on a television network that nobody watches. Simply select 'Play All' and get lost in whatever universe is queued up. Ten episodes of Scrubs in one sitting? Sure. How about a three-day trek through Cheers? Go for it.

Time-off is important, both for your television viewing and for your relationship, and it is ultimately good for training as well. By balancing life and nurturing areas that are not fight-related, the people in your life will be more supportive of your passion, making it easier to train consistently and for longer.

STEP TWO: AVOID OFFICE CHALLENGE

Even if you maintain the overall cleanliness and professionalism of your image, and avoid having a Fight Club Tyler Durden ‘Is that your blood?’ exchange with your boss, the odd black eye will not go unnoticed by coworkers.

Most will assume you were injured training and choose not to mention it. In some cases, these random encounters will involve a vocal senshido or ninjitsu expert that guffaws at the ineffectiveness of mixed martial arts or jiu-jitsu and urges you to abandon your training for an art that is street ready. The Gracie Challenge reaction to take on all comers will be strong here, but don’t give in. These people are like hydras. Cut down one, and five more appear, bo-staves and keyboards ready. Instead, smile, and say, ‘I’m just trying to stay active. It’s so easy to put on weight when you work at an office all day.’ Glance down at their stomach (it will be round, promise), look back up, smile a little wider, and shrimp back to your cubicle.

STEP THREE: ENJOY TRAINING

In the pursuit of the fight lifestyle, forgetting to enjoy training is surprisingly easy. Frustration at some point is inevitable. As much as we talk about fighting being a lifelong pursuit, the attrition rate is astronomical. The vast majority of people that pursue fighting on any level quit. When you feel like you want to stop, when you feel like you’d rather take up a hobby like shuffleboard or calorie-collecting, remember why you started to train in the first place, and guide your training back to those roots.

Fighting is about love, but everyone expresses love differently. Find what you love about the fight lifestyle and chase it. You don’t have to be the toughest dude in the gym. Do what makes you happy, and build your training around that. If you don’t, you’ll find reasons to skip training, and soon, fighting will stop being a part of your life.

STEP FOUR: TALK ABOUT FIGHTING LESS

Talking to strangers is more than dangerous; it’s awkward. Silence to most is more horrifying than a staph infection, and they will do anything to fill a lull in conversation. This is why people talk about drivel like the weather or politics, and why the gym is the best place to make friends.

Not only does the mat provide a constant source of interesting material – because nothing is more interesting than fighting – but when boredom does strike, sparring is always an option. Resuscitating a dying conversation with a non-fighter is not easy, and do not be surprised if he or she feigns interest in fighting to keep noise in the air. By now, your significant other has probably told you that you talk about fighting too much, so if your girlfriend is uninterested, do not torture an acquaintance.

When someone asks about fighting, and it’s clear that he or she is asking only for the sake of conversation, be noble and change the subject.

For example, ‘Yeah, jiu-jitsu is a good time. Did you see the last episode of the Kardashians. Scott Disick is the man.’

STEP FIVE: DON’T BE LIKE MARCELO GARCIA

Many-time world jiu-jitsu champion Marcelo Garcia is a phenomenal martial artist. And so is former double-weight UFC titleholder BJ Penn. And so is future UFC Hall of Famer and former champ Anderson Silva. We look up to these fighters, and we seek to emulate their often god-like abilities, but there is one thing all of these individuals have in common that the vast majority of us normal guys and girls do not: they have a lot of time to train.

Marcelo began training as a young teen and was able to dedicate upwards of eight hours a day, five to six days a week, to training. BJ started somewhat later in life, but in the three years between his white belt and his black belt, BJ had the resources to do nothing but train. All day. Every day. If Marcelo and BJ trained 40 hours a week, five eight hour days, it would take an average schmuck (one that has a full time job and a family) that trains three times a week for two hours a session roughly six and a half weeks to accumulate the same amount of mat time that Marcelo and BJ get in just one week. Play that same distribution out over a year, and the result is a monumental disparity in training time.

For fighters, whether hobbyists or aspiring professionals, a realistic awareness of resources and training time will make maintaining motivation and managing expectations easier.

The Marcelo Garcia standard is an admirable goal to chase, but placing more reasonable goals before it will make the journey less daunting. ‘I want to be as good as the other blue belts that train three times a week,’ or, ‘I want to win an amateur title,’ are more reasonable pit-stops on the journey to finding a way to train full time.