Disclaimer: This post will sound mad-douchey, which is not the intent. Bear with me on this, and hopefully it won’t have quite the same essence of douche at the end.
This is just my take on this. Fundamentals = basics. So what are basics? Basics, it would seem, are the foundational things that make everything else work. If you were a highschool wrestler, you probably have a lot of wrestling fundamentals already down, but they often times do not translate to jiu jitsu. For example, you may keep your butt really high in the air from top side control, and this will result in getting swept, or having your opponent slide his/her knee inside and capture guards, etc. So…why are these fundamentals so different?
Well, someone (or some people) developed the fundamentals…but how? In psychology, there are different methods of learning that have been studied. One of the most applicable form of learning is called classical conditioning. Textbook definition of classical conditioning is: a procedure by which a previously neutral stimulus comes to elicit a response after it is paired with a stimulus that automatically elicits that response. For example, seeing the blue lights from a police car give most people a feeling of anxiety…something it probably didn’t do when you were a little kid. This response has been learned…you have been conditioned to feel this way, which leads you to respond. One might say a fundamental in such an instance is to take your foot off the gas pedal…it’s probably the first thing most of us do without even thinking about it. This is a conditioned response.
So…in the example of the blue lights (when comparing to the definition of classical conditioning), which components are which? The blue lights are the previously neutral stimulus (i.e. they didn’t used to make you anxious). The response is anxiety. The stimulus that automatically elicits that response is the interaction with a police officer, which boils down to a threat (possible ticket, guaranteed time wasted, authority figure detaining you on the side of the road hounding you for personal information, etc.).
Okay…all that being said, even if a person doesn’t go through what might be considered an “industry standard” fundamentals class (or whatever)…he or she will still learn many fundamentals simply by participating in jiu jitsu…it’s part of how the fundamentals were discovered (that and a ton of other methods, I’m sure). Look at the example of the wrestler with his butt in the air again…after he/she gets swept a few times, the feeling of having his/her butt in the air will elicit a feeling of anxiety (or “oh shit”), and the conditioned response will be to lower that butt. After rolling like this for a while, this same person might not have his/her hips low enough, and opponents may sneak a knee in and retain guard…eventually this will lead to a sense of anxiety when the knee starts to come in, and will result in a conditioned response of flattening that leg out and gluing that hip to the mat. This position will probably look very similar to the position taught in an “industry standard” fundamentals class.
This is how we learn a lot of things…not just in jiu jitsu. Even in a fundamentals class, a person might learn one single way to get out of mount (elbow escape for example). What if we elbow escape, and our opponent counters with a chair-sit and we get arm barred? Well…the next time we elbow escape and our opponent tries to chair sit, we will respond differently than we did the last time. Maybe we get caught with something else, maybe not, but our conditioned response it to react when the person chair-sit in this instance…we know we have to react, even if we haven’t been taught this by another person. Obviously, this is getting a bit off the beaten path of the subject to a degree, but I think this is one of the main reasons people get so pissed about the online belt promotions that do not incorporate any rolling…a lot of fundamentals are developed simply by rolling. …especially with people better than you.
Anyway…hope this makes sense.
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