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Sep
21
Pete V., Professor Sauer, and Me
Saturday I tested for my brown belt. It was great seeing Professor Sauer again. I was a little nervous for the test simply because I wasn’t one-hundred-percent-sure what exactly the test would entail. Not knowing makes us nervous.
I was told by a black-belt friend of mine that it would be mostly on self-defense techniques. Basically everything in Master Helio’s, Gracie Jiu-jitsu Master Text Book, so I bought it and had studied it, and felt really prepared for that.
I really like Professor’s ideology of giving a belt test. He looks at the test as half technique check and half private lesson, so if you mess up, he doesn’t come down on you, he shows you your mistake—I like that. It puts you at ease.
Instead of going over the seventy-five self-defense techniques I learned, Professor Sauer simply asked me to show my favorites, which I happily did. He helped me with one; for which I thanked him.
The other thing was that Professor Sauer would put us in a position with a partner and say, “Show your arsenal.” For example I would be mounted on my partner and I would show all the moves I knew from mount. He’d give you about five minutes and you would do what came to your mind. I found my mind racing with all these potential moves, almost too many to chose. Instead of being paralyzed by choice, I just started moving—not thinking—just moving, and the techniques just poured out.
By the end of the test I felt good—I passed.
I like the idea of test as an opportunity to teach, and also as an opportunity to show what you know. The phrase “Show your arsenal,” really stuck with me as well. So now, after almost twelve years of jiu-jitsu, I’m a brown belt, and all I want to do now is improve my arsenal.
It is the Old way Mark, my family was the same. The difference being is that with these new associations, the Champion of the lineage is not their for all of your evolution, so they are not intimate with your skillsets. Most choose to use the Flow vs an arsenal check, if they don’t have a Curriculum schedule on paper. Most go with the Flow. it all depends on their pet peeves. In todays JJ world its subjective to your champions “Bad habits” I joke, but the comment is a very humble truth. When ever we hop lineages or Mentors, we end up learning how they “do the deed” or like in the police world we say ” Learn their bad habits” Jiu Jitsu is an art that has so many differnt mindsets and strategies, that a lineage is its own subculture. This is what makes the intimacy of the tradecraft with your lineage. Black belt is only efficiency vs a Brown belts growing confidence.