I didn’t want to go to Jiu-jitsu last night.

I was on little sleep, was in the middle of an important project for a client, and with some personal and medical stuff going on, the stress made me feel like a cord with the most of it frayed and coming apart. The last thing I wanted was to put myself in a position where I had to perform on demand in front of people who would see me fail and perform poorly. Most of all, I did not dig the thought of not living up to my own expectations. The easiest thing would have been to get my Professor to run the fundamentals class, and go home, go to bed, and pull the covers over my head while waiting for a new day.

But I went. And guess what? Teaching-wise I was solid, because somehow I can always pull up the needed drive to do that, but when it comes to my personal training, that is not the case. My performance rolling was not awesome. I did not do as poorly as I feared (that is actually almost impossible to do since I always fear the worst), but I still was not particularly good. And so what? Do I do this to make everyone think I am awesome? Do I do this so I get rich and famous? Nope. I do it for myself, and for what it does for me.

And that benefit – what I get out of it – is as much in the doing, and the choice and effort of doing, as it is any particular level of performance. Sure, I want to get better, and I am hoping to see improvement at least in some incremental way, but the real advancement is in the discipline to just do it when you don’t have to. The easy thing is to not do it, so when we make the choice to take a step forward; it is truly and in every way a step forward.

Character has been defined (quite rightly in my opinion) as what you do when no one is looking. Well, discipline can be defined as doing what you know you should when there is no immediate consequence to not doing it. If I am fasting, could I go ahead and have a donut? Sure, who would know, and one donut is not going to destroy the diet, but it is in those little choices to not do so that we grow.  My buddy Larry Lindenman did the carnivore diet for a month not that long ago. When he explained it to me, I asked him if it would have been a big deal if he had eaten a salad. His answer summed it up – “no, but that was not the diet”. He made a choice to follow a program for a month, and cheating even once was a violation, so he did not do it. It is that simple.

Now, just because it is simple in no way means it is easy. In fact, it is probably one of the hardest things to do as a human being. But here is the secret. YOU CAN DO IT. I know this because I am nothing special, and I can do it, so you can too. Give it a shot and keep fighting that good fight with the inner voice that tells you to stop. It is worth it. Win baby, win.

So a top grappler (Ben Askren) got knocked out in the most recent UFC by a flying knee from a striking centric opponent (Jorge Masvidel) and then, inevitably, the people who have zero to do with it try to jump on and attempt to validate themselves by somehow aligning themselves with the situation.

It only took minutes for a number of non-grappling martial artists and combative self-defense “experts” to make claims that they too are equal to this KO. Probably the most laughable was a knife focused group posting all over social media that they have been teaching this same move for years. As if that meant one damn thing. It is sad commentary that so many martial artists, who have so little ammunition to argue against the efficacy of grappling, will make such huge leaps in order to try to bolster their weak side of the debate.

Here are a few points these folks should keep in mind.

1. It is irrelevant if they have taught a similar move. Is there any evidence at all that they themselves have been able to pull it off against a fully resisting and uncooperative opponent? How about just one of their students? Of course no such evidence exists because if it did, they would have already bragged about it. It is really unseemly to try to equate yourself to someone who does a fighting methodology completely different from you, who you have never trained with, and who has a bio of accomplishments that have nothing to do with you in any way.
2. Just because you “know” a move, or have even taught a move is meaningless. If you have not been able to practice it under high pressure sparring against another person who is doing their best to make you fail, then you have about a zero chance of suddenly pulling the move off for real. So someone can pick up a guitar and play a couple of chords. They are not going to suddenly become the next Jimi Hendrix until they practice. A lot. For real. Anything less is mental masturbation fantasy. A good number of traditional martial artists love to try to convince others that there are hidden grappling moves in old kata, and ergo, they are knowledgeable grapplers. Except that not one of them can actually pull off any moves against even a BJJ white belt with less than a year of training. Because sheer knowledge does not equate to being able to perform. I “know” how the top Formula 1 drivers drive. That does not mean I can drive the same way.
3. Cherry picking your examples of success is intellectually vapid. So the flying knee knocked a high level grappler out in the most recent UFC. Awesome. Now, let’s add up all the times in the past 50 UFCs where not only did it NOT KO the other guy, but actually failed miserably and it failed to do any damage, and put the knee thrower in a worse position than prior to the knee. What you will find if you do the numbers is that the success to fail rate is along the lines of 1:50. Does anyone really think those are good odds and that with the low level of success that anyone should be putting much of their limited training time into doing it? If so, I have some ocean front property in Arizona I can sell you.
4. The biggest issue with people trying to somehow share the spotlight in these situations is that they are by default telling you that they are as physically capable as a professional athlete in the prime of their career who does nothing but train multiple hours every day. We know that is not the case, and they are not on that plane of performance so their chance of pulling the move off is not even the same. Which makes their attempt to equate themselves all the more laughable. If a pro athlete can only pull off such a move once in a great while, the non-athlete chances are exponentially more remote, so stop pretending. It is just gross.

It can be very useful to see what is working in MMA fights. However, we need to see what is working CONSISTENTLY, not the rare move. Just because some technique is spectacular does not equate to useful.