The Dao of Jiu-Jitsu

I wrote something sparked by my study and appreciation of the 10th Planet system. As most of you know, if someone comes from certain schools or has certain instructors, that someone can be easily ostracized. I know of people who were kicked out of teams for attending unapproved seminars.

First, thanks for the way you've treated me and handled my newbie questions. Second, I look forward to making a trip to a 10th Planet school sometime.

It's a long read, but I hope you enjoy its message.

Best,

E.drik L.op.ez

http://throughjiujitsu.com/2014/09/2...sest-training/

Thanks for taking the time to write this blog. I've followed yours for a while from seeing your posts on another forum and have the utmost respect for you view on bjj and your experiences. Unfortunately, the other school I was studying at was not responsive to any of the 10th planet system being used so I have no left and chose to just study under Boogey and Walel at our 10th Planet San Diego. I'll continue to pay my monthly fees at the other place since I re-signed up for another year there and can't get out of it, but it's worth it for what I've found with Eddie's system. I have never understood the "creonte" hangups with so many of the Professors. Seems like a way to just make students feel guilty and keep paying dues nowadays. How other schools can dismiss Eddie's system is silly.

That was excellent.

Awesome blog. This article is good. But, your David Epstein article is even more interesting to me.

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Originally Posted by damian jungermann

Thanks for taking the time to write this blog. I've followed yours for a while from seeing your posts on another forum and have the utmost respect for you view on bjj and your experiences. Unfortunately, the other school I was studying at was not responsive to any of the 10th planet system being used so I have no left and chose to just study under Boogey and Walel at our 10th Planet San Diego. I'll continue to pay my monthly fees at the other place since I re-signed up for another year there and can't get out of it, but it's worth it for what I've found with Eddie's system. I have never understood the "creonte" hangups with so many of the Professors. Seems like a way to just make students feel guilty and keep paying dues nowadays. How other schools can dismiss Eddie's system is silly.

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Did this former school verbally say you can't train at 10P schools? Or are they just not open to the system, but are okay with you training there?

In PM

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Originally Posted by Jack Hanley

Awesome blog. This article is good. But, your David Epstein article is even more interesting to me.

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+1.

Love the blog!

"In that context, it sounds ridiculous. Yet in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, this climate is quite common."

I find the above statement appalling, and I can scarcely bring myself to accept that it is common. I've never experienced firsthand the close-minded jealous-ex-girlfriend instructor mentality, and I haven't heard any direct accounts of it from close friends. Of course, I began grappling as a Midwestern wrestler, where the mentality is to achieve victory at any cost whatsoever. My jiu-jitsu journey has been overseen by Eddie from the beginning, so it was never even a question that I would be free to go train with Josh Barnett or Jeff Glover or whoever the hell else could improve my effectiveness qua grappling. Eddie appreciates when his students learn effective techniques from other schools; he knows that we all grow stronger as a result.

In fact, the only way I can begin to understand the factious nature of BJJ is to invert your analogy, recalling the occasionally territorial nature of some of my academic interactions. I once had a famous professor stand up at one of my talks and say, "I will never believe X," where X was merely an observation and not my interpretation (we'd all die of boredom (myself included) before I could finish adequately explaining X, so we'll ignore the details). Rejection of an observation is anathematic to the scientific method, and yet dogma persists even in that community.

It saddens me that we cannot, as a species, allow free thought and open discourse not just in BJJ and science, but across all spheres of human interaction. If you can find the holes in my ideas and my techniques, then by all means point them out to my competitors; if I ignore my own fallibility, how will progress toward the unattainable goal of perfection?

From a literary perspective, I thought you would go a completely different direction with the palimpsest device. To me a palimpsest connotes a failed attempt at revision. It represents the ineptitude of the censor, the inability of the powers-that-be to extinguish troublesome ideas. Try to scrape away the traces of the past as you might, they're still discernible beneath whatever bullshit you've scribbled on top. In the same way, the jealous instructor cannot long disavow the effective techniques of a rival school, at least not without looking foolish. Perhaps this is why he feels so cuckolded by a departing student; his dogmatism is revealed for the disability it truly is.

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Originally Posted by Amir Allam

"In that context, it sounds ridiculous. Yet in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, this climate is quite common."

I find the above statement appalling, and I can scarcely bring myself to accept that it is common. I've never experienced firsthand the close-minded jealous-ex-girlfriend instructor mentality, and I haven't heard any direct accounts of it from close friends. Of course, I began grappling as a Midwestern wrestler, where the mentality is to achieve victory at any cost whatsoever. My jiu-jitsu journey has been overseen by Eddie from the beginning, so it was never even a question that I would be free to go train with Josh Barnett or Jeff Glover or whoever the hell else could improve my effectiveness qua grappling. Eddie appreciates when his students learn effective techniques from other schools; he knows that we all grow stronger as a result.

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Well you are lucky. It be interesting to perform an anonymous survey.

As to the palimpsest, your track is one of the right ones. It's origin, though, is necessity. Lack of materials (paper, canvas, etc.) So not all are about revising the original, although, in the codices of the 5th century Greek bibles, there was revision at play, we know. Your conclusion, "jealous instructor cannot disavow rival" is what I was getting at but in a broader sense. There is no way even the most blindly anti-10th planet Eddie people have NOT been influenced. They are marked because all grapplers have to deal with systems that work, if at least to respond to it. Thanks for reading and writing. I'd love to continue this over a brew but I don't see myself getting to Alaska anytime soon. Although next week, in a senior seminar class, we are reading Into the Wild. (Literary Journalism).

Be well.

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Originally Posted by Jack Hanley

Awesome blog. This article is good. But, your David Epstein article is even more interesting to me.

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Thanks for pointing this one out, great article. I really like the example of the softball pitcher against top MLB hitters. This holds a lot of lessons for other sports. Have a style that doesn't fit your opponents chunks and you will be very hard to deal with. Like Conor against Dustin. Conor's movement didn't fit Dustin's chunks he's used to recognizing to allow him to predict and it made Dustin look easy. You're nothing but blind attacks without your predictive ability.

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Originally Posted by Aiseop

Well you are lucky. It be interesting to perform an anonymous survey.

As to the palimpsest, your track is one of the right ones. It's origin, though, is necessity. Lack of materials (paper, canvas, etc.) So not all are about revising the original, although, in the codices of the 5th century Greek bibles, there was revision at play, we know. Your conclusion, "jealous instructor cannot disavow rival" is what I was getting at but in a broader sense. There is no way even the most blindly anti-10th planet Eddie people have NOT been influenced. They are marked because all grapplers have to deal with systems that work, if at least to respond to it. Thanks for reading and writing. I'd love to continue this over a brew but I don't see myself getting to Alaska anytime soon. Although next week, in a senior seminar class, we are reading Into the Wild. (Literary Journalism).

Be well.

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Thanks, and I realize that in my first post I didn't adequately celebrate your article; I'll do that now. You've very succinctly and thoroughly encapsulated the spirit of 10th Planet with your blog post. Rejecting authority alone as a valid basis for belief, we embrace the free exchange of ideas. Eddie is a friend and a brilliant thinker, but far from infallible. As you perfect put it: "Each of those people I honor as my teachers but respect them enough not to beatify them..."

And any discussion of Into the Wild stirs up an uneasy feeling my own wellbeing. Sometimes our fear of heights comes from the knowledge that a small part of us wants to make the jump. I know that I'm only barely civilized, that my connections to the world at large are frail. It is easy to see myself stepping away from it all at only slight provocation, winding up alone and beyond salvation like McCandless or Evan Tanner. I guess I tell myself that I can't do jiujitsu alone.

This is fantastically written, I really enjoyed it

"The lockdown is not the 10th Planet gospel; an open mind is the 10th Planet gospel." — Amir Allam

Amir always makes my day when he posts. So nice to see a well educated open minded person speak on so many topics. The terribly misspelled regurgitation of garbage on FB and other forums can really put me in a funk sometimes. Amir's words can be like standing under a waterfall in Hawaii in these situations.

Great read by the way.