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Tom Barlow Online

Always Be Learning

Subj: Two Books Every BJJ Player Should Own.

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Before YouTube, online membership sites, and instant downloads there were books. And while a book can be more difficult to consume than a 10-minute video, the information in books can often be more valuable.

Don’t get me wrong, I love videos they can be a wonderful resource to have, but books often have a longer-lasting impact on me.

The great thing about a video is they’re easy and cheap to make. All you really need to create a video is a phone, a training partner, and an Internet connection.

This can be a double-edged sword as anyone can easily upload anything, and if it’s rubbish they can always re-film it tomorrow.

On the other hand, books are hard to create.

For example, the Performance Drilling eBook took 2 hours to plan, about 40 hours to write, and another 10 to edit. That’s only a 50 page eBook! A physical book of 200 – 300 pages would take far longer.

And because the author is paying for every page they write to printed and distributed, the content has to be well thought out, well-edited, and no space wasted.

When students ask me if there are any resources that could help their training I usually recommend two books.

The first book I recommend is Saulo Ribeiro’s Jiu Jitsu University. This is a fantastic book for anyone studying Jiu Jitsu.

The content is broken down clearly with numerous pictures and the descriptions are precise and concise.

The book also has a great structure starting with the most basic concepts of staying safe and ending with attacks sequences.

Here’s the Amazon link:

Jiu Jitsu University

The second book I recommend is not so obvious. It has nothing to do with Jiu Jitsu technique but everything to do with mindset and how to be an effective coach.

The book is John Wooden’s Wooden On Leadership.

In case you don’t know who John Wooden is, he’s one of the greatest Basketball coaches ever!

He guided the UCLA Bruins from a failing team to ten NCAA basketball championships over a 12-year period. That including four perfect seasons and an 88-game winning streak.

I believe his coaching strategies and the way he approaches competition can be used by anyone that want’s to succeed.

Here’s the link on Amazon and if you don’t own it I’d highly recommend getting it.

Wooden on Leadership

I’d highly recommend getting both these books, the information in them is gold.

Until next time,

– Tom

Subj: The skeptic and the early adopter.

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I first saw the Beeimbolo when I fought in the 2008 World Championships.

There were these two kids tearing through my division. They kept doing this weird upside-down-spinny-thing that left their confused opponents and defending their backs.

It was a pleasure to watch them destroy the competition and I made a mental note to watch their development.

Those kids were the Mendes Bros.

It wasn’t until a year or so later after they’d wrecked many seasoned competitors that I saw a video of them demonstrating the berimbolo.

I immediately grabbed a friend and hit the mats to practise it.

We spent about an hour playing with it but just couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

I played around with it for a few more weeks with little success, so I decided to put it on the back-burner and just kind of forgot about it.

Fast-forward a few more years to 2012 and there’s Berimbolo’s everywhere. The Miyao’s are doing them, Buchecha’s doing them, even the kids are doing them, and I lost a couple of matches because of them.

At that point, I realised I needed to play catch up with my berimbolo game and I’d missed an opportunity. I could’ve had a 4-year head start on my Berimbolo game, but I stayed within my comfort zone and I didn’t see the opportunity.

I was a skeptic.

In life, you can either be a skeptic or an early adopter. In my experience, early adopters win the game.

With Berimbolo’s, I was a skeptic and it cost me.

Don’t be like me, be an earlier adopter and look for the opportunities around you that can maximise your results and give you the edge.

Not every opportunity will be like the berimbolo, but every now and again the new idea or technique you put some energy into mastering can put your streets ahead of your competition.

Until next time,

– Tom

Subj: Three Tips For Competition Success.

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One of the most common questions I get asked at seminars is something like “How do you prepare for competitions?”

And I completely understand why people ask that question, after all, who doesn’t want to win when they compete.

For years, I struggled with pre-competition nerves, which meant on game day I would often underperform.

It wasn’t until about five years into my BJJ career that I started to understand how to compete.

For me, competition success all comes down to one thing; getting comfortable in your environment.

That’s why the more you compete, the easier it becomes.

You’re more comfortable with the sights, sounds, and smells at a competition.

You’re more comfortable with the pressures of competing.

You’re more comfortable with what it feels like to apply your techniques against a fully resisting opponent.

Don’t get me wrong, you will always get nervous before a match, but you’ll understand that those feelings are natural.

While there’s no way to replace competition experience, there are things you can do to better prepare for a competition.

Here are three tips that will help you have more success when you compete.

Tip #1. Train how you want to fight.

You will always revert to what you feel most comfortable doing under pressure.

If you’re always flow rolling or counter fighting, you’ll revert to that during a competition.

Unfortunately, what you feel most comfortable doing may not be the best for competition.

I’m naturally a counter-fighter, which is fine, except it relies on your opponent making mistakes.

That rarely happens at the highest level.

So I force myself to be more aggressive when training, so I’m more aggressive when I compete.

You have to train the way you want to compete to be successful.

Tip #2. Create a game plan.

Having a game plan is closely linked with the previous tip.

You need to know how you’re going to fight from start to submission, and the likely counters your opponent will try.

Your goal is to impose that game plan on your opponent.

If you can that, you’ll have a much better chance of beating them.

Tip #3. Visualise the competition.

I typically use visualisation in the week before a tournament.

I go through every stage of the competition process from waking up in the morning, to arriving at the venue, to starting my first match.

I try to make my visualisation as real as possible including the sights, sounds, and smells I’ll experience.

Then I play these events over and over in my mind until I’m comfortable with them.

And when I arrive at the venue I follow the same pattern.

I’ve found this makes me much more comfortable walking into a tournament as it feels like I’ve been there many times before.

As I said, there is no substitute for competition experience.

However, these three tips have helped me massively when I compete.

Hopefully, they can help you too.

Talk soon

– Tom

Subj: When wrong is sometimes right

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Have you ever had the experience where your opponent puts you in a weird position and you have no idea what to do?

Here’s a good example of that:

When that happens in sparring you have three options.

Do the right thing, do the wrong thing, or do nothing.

By far the worst choice is doing nothing. That’s right, doing nothing is far worse than doing the wrong thing.

If you do the wrong thing, at least, you’ve experienced what not to do and can avoid it in the future.

You just improved your Jiu Jitsu.

You may be thinking, “If I do the wrong thing, won’t that give my opponent an opportunity to attack?”

The simple answer is, yes it will. But if you do nothing, your opponent will still be able to attack and you won’t have learnt anything.

So what can you do if you find yourself doing nothing?

Honestly, just do something. It’ll either be right or wrong but you’ve given yourself the opportunity to learn.

And if you end up in a bad position you get to work on your defences and escapes.

It’s a win-win.

This is a great attitude to have in training, but if keep doing the wrong thing in a competition you’re going to lose.

If you’re competing and you find yourself in an unfamiliar position or you’re waiting, reset to a different position.

This could be resetting to closed guard or stripping the grips and disengaging entirely AKA running away.

Whatever you do, put yourself into a position where you feel confident and know what to do.

Then you can start attacking.

I hope that makes sense. Try it the next time you’re training and see what happens.

Until next time,

– Tom

Subj: Shu Ha Ri

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I’ve been thinking a lot about the process of learning lately. More specifically, how I can improve my teaching and speed up my students learning process.

I’ve come across a few tactics that seem to be working really well such as outlining key steps, preempting common mistakes, and setting everyone in the same orientation.

But that’s not what I want to talk to you about now.

Instead, I want to share with you the concept of SHU-HA-RI.

I first came across this idea while reading an article about a guy who got his black belt in record time. In it, he mentions Shuhari, and as I’d never heard of it before, I set about researching it.

It turns out it pretty well know in the learning space, lol.

Shuhari illustrates the stages of learning you go through to mastery. There are many different translations for Shu-Ha-Ri, but the one I like best roughly means “learn, break, create”.

Shu (learn) is the beginning stage.

You follow the teachings of your instructor precisely. You concentrate on how to perform a technique, without worrying too much about the underlying theory.

If there are multiple variations on how to do the technique, you focus on just one way.

Ha (break) at this point, you begin to branch out.

With the basic techniques working, you learn the underlying principles and concepts behind the technique. You start to innovate, and learning variations then integrate them into your practice.

Ri (create) Now, you aren’t learning from an instructor, but from your own practice.

You create your own techniques and adapt what you’ve learned to your own style.

Basically, you start by learning concrete steps and imitating them, then focus on understanding principles, and finally into creating your style.

All this is of great relief to me as it backs up what I’ve been saying for a long time about the concepts vs. techniques argument.

Beginners should focus on techniques, while advanced students should focus on the concepts. Experts can do whatever the hell they like.

So how can you apply this to your training?

When you’re learning a new technique, first learn the key steps precisely. Then understand the concepts behind the technique and innovate ways to apply them. Finally, create your own techniques and style.

Unfortunately, it’s not a shortcut. But it is an interesting concept I recognise in my training.

And it’s the method the guy I mentioned earlier used to get his Black Belt super fast.

Talk soon,

– Tom

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