Train Like You're Injured
(Written before I received my purple belt.)
The lessons I have learned over the past 8 years due to my impairment have put me in a good position to be able to stay on the mats, even with my deformed arm. In taking what I have experienced and extrapolating out lessons learned, I have found that if you train as if you are injured, you will find better and more efficient movement patterns. You will learn about connection and feel even some invisible jiu-jitsu concepts.
What do I mean by train like you are injured? For one, it means to train in a way to always stay safe, "protect your joints", as Professor Sauer says. It also means take time out of your training to give yourself a disadvantage as if you had an injury. You don’t have to wait to get injured before you train as if you are injured. Tell yourself as a drill that “I cannot roll to one side because of an injury”, therefore you need to find new ways to use your body to defend. Alternatively do as I did for years, tie an arm in your belt and roll using only one arm.
It is good to continue training the rest of your body rather than the one 'injured' part in a way that doesn’t require use of that limb. You will learn how to place your body to defend more efficiently. I would suggest tie your arm in your belt and try rolling that way for a couple of weeks, using just one arm. It is extremely important that you train extremely slowly at first. Like a baby learning to walk you will be extremely uncoordinated and can actually injure yourself or your partner if you move too quick. You need to train yourself and also teach your training partners how to roll with you while injured. If the day comes when you are injured and need to train light, it won’t be a new experience. When you can trust yourself and your partners to go light and protect your joints, you can open up your game and start progressing further until you are almost going full speed. With this trust established you don’t need to concern yourself with the fear that they will mistakenly hurt you and you are able to open up your mind and body to new ways of moving and thinking. You can then test the limits of your injury, if you had a real one, and be aware of what limitations you have with such an impairment. Without trust in yourself and your partners while you are injured (real or pretend) you will have an overbearing fear of getting injured worse and may even eventually quit or take more time off than necessary. If all you do is worry about an injury how can you learn?
If you practice rolling injured when you are not actually injured, you will have the confidence that you can roll with an injury.
Do not listen to the naysayers who say “you can’t do that move with one arm”, or similar. Why not test the rules you learned and see if you can do a move that traditionally takes 2 arms to finish, with one arm? After all you are rolling with an impairment so you may as well try weird things and see what sticks. There are a lot of moves, positions, holds and submissions that your body physically can’t do but you need to explore how you can do the move with 3 limbs and your body. For example, I have had some decent success with my one arm guillotine, so much that all my training partners are super wary of it and go crazy defending against it. In Jiu-Jitsu they say “never say never”, but there is always a caveat of “this is the right way”. This is mostly true, especially the tried and true techniques. However when you are injured many of the techniques are unattainable given the normal method. You need to find a way to be more efficient with the rest of your body. If you can physically put yourself in the right position to finish a move with an impairment then that is half the battle. Once you realise the comfortable positioning of your body needed to finish a technique, work backwards from there to figure out how to set that position up and what adjustments you need to make for your injury. Going back to the one arm guillotine example, think of this; It is possible to finish a one arm guillotine in the mount, as we have seen in the UFC many times. What is the mount from a leverage perspective? It is upside down guard for all intents and purposes. So whatever you can physically do in mount you can also do in the guard. Yes, it is more difficult but the principles are the same so assess the position and adjust your entry, your body position and your angles so you can apply maximum leverage with your impairment.
You will be surprised by the results, however it is by no means easy and requires many hours on the mat and lots of emotional and physical pain. To mitigate the time taken when you are injured I would suggest to practice without a limb. Start with one arm tied in your belt, holding the bottom of your jacket. See how your body moves without that hand. After you get used to that, stop using your elbow to 'cheat', (rather than having a flat arm you will still use your elbow to brace and defend) as when you get an elbow injury you wont be able to use it.
I received my blue belt from Pedro Sauer six years ago. I've had my impairment since before then and finally, after much time off, including months at a time, and years of mostly one arm training, I will hopefully be able to demonstrate all the moves required for the purple belt test in my own way.