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Walk before you run.
In fact…Crawl, before you walk, before you run.
As much as I’m trying to teach my daughter things, she is teaching me back….And the whole situation is teaching us both.
At the moment, she is on the verge of crawling. She gets into a pushup position, belly and legs still
on the floor and then pushes with her arms. This means instead of crawling forwards, she slides backwards on her tummy. It’s not the most effective way of getting around, but it’s what she’s figured out so far and it’s great, until she reaches a solid object behind her and then cries for help.
At the same time, she’s figured out that if she’s sitting and can grab onto something solid, she can almost pull herself up into a standing position. She LOVES this! Why shouldn’t she; it’s a whole new perspective to see her little world from. She’s pulling up to her knees every chance she gets, and crawling is kind of forgotten with this fun new skill at hand. She’s getting impatient and wanting to jump ahead….and so am I.
On the mats, I’m doing the same thing. I’m trying to walk before I can crawl. I kiiiiiiiind of know some attacking moves now but instead of solidifying and reinforcing a strong position (on the rare occasion that I manage to get into one), I’m trying to jump ahead to some fancy attack that I can try to use. This is a mistake and my opponent almost always then just escapes and I’m back to square one.
The same happens with my defence. Instead of just biding my time and defending solidly, once I start defending move and the “action” stops, I get impatient and try to turn the game around. This invariably weakens my defence and allows the opponent to carry on with their attacks. Next stop, SMASH CITY again, and again….
We both need to just focus on the basics and internalise them first. The next step is the next step. I need to try and slow down, remember that I’d like to be rolling around in pyjamas for a good few years still and I can take my time.
I think that’s a good lesson for life sometimes. You can’t skip the process. You can't jump ahead. BJJ is very much like life and parenting in this way. There is no "hack". There is no shortcut. You have to go through the process.