A new chapter - A new website

So, the journey continues but I have moved this over now to my new website 

www.biancathomas.org

I will be writing about my Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Bikini-Fitness bodybuilding journey as it goes global! 

This is not about the "body" or "medals" but about life lessons so I'd love to hear your stories too. 

Copenhagen: Trip 1 – Lessons about learning

I’m two weeks into my global trip of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ) and Bikini-Fitness, starting out in Copenhagen, Denmark. My four big goals in life nowadays are to live (not exist), love, laugh and learn. They are what I value, so for me this trip is about learning. I love to ask, and try to answer questions, around how I can do things in a better way and I use sport(s) and competition to help me in this process. I have really enjoyed getting to a level of competency in a multitude of different sports and from each sport I have learnt an enormous amount, most notably:  

• lessons learnt about myself and what I value (allowing me to become more authentic);  
• lessons about performance; 
• lessons about managing confidence and; 
• lessons about learning.  

In truth, the first week here was really tough, hard, lonely and demoralising. I can’t use language as an excuse because all the Danes speak impeccable English but I had expectations that I was going to slot nicely into a BJJ gym, learn lots, make new friends and live happily ever after for a few weeks. This really didn’t happen….in any way! 

Learning is not always fun, it is intermixed with periods of struggle and frustration but I have found that some gym environments are more suitable than others.  By suitable, I mean they just align much better with a person’s personality and values.  

In BJJ, I want to have fun, competing only if and when I feel like it. For that I need some skill, therefore I have to be able to remove practice barriers. That is, everything that 1) stops you getting to practice and 2) stops you practicing well, with the intent to learn or improve. Fear of judgement and feeling self-conscious are big issues here.  

For me, hard sparring at the moment is a disaster. I’m very much a beginner in terms of skill acquisition but I’m physically strong, so whilst I’m still trying to learn the basics, hard sparring isn’t conducive to purposeful practice in any way - It just ends up being a battle of egos and nothing really of value is learnt. The only thing gained is risk to injury, which rapidly goes up when you have two beginners going hell for leather at one another. So I found myself walking away from yet another gym but straight into a different one, where the shoe did fit, but in ways I was not expecting.  

Somehow training in this new environment inspired me to put on boxing gloves for the first time in 8 years following a very bad, boxing induced, head injury. I used to love Thai Boxing and, whilst I would not wish brain trauma on my worst enemy, recovery from this was probably the best thing that ever happened to me as I learnt gratitude and perspective. Putting gloves back on was not something I had ever planned on doing because I had been so scared to do so; but I did and it has now opened up possibilities for fun and for MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) training. Whilst I have no intention of fighting (I’m neither brave enough nor crazy enough), light drill work has proven to be a huge success. I will admit I was terrified walking into my first MMA class, after only 1 day of getting used to striking again, but it has created a feeling of fun and relaxation, which then allows me to learn much better….in everything.  

Being relaxed is essential to learning and therefore my advice is – this is the place to start. Do whatever you must to create that. I believe the myths about adult learning impose huge limitations on people and by self-experimentation I would like to have a go at breaking these down. Because we are all unique, we all learn and respond differently but it is worth taking responsibility for this, just like it is worth understanding how to listen to your body. Hard, but worth it.  

Some take-home messages  

A few very basic techniques can take you really far.  

I like to use the Pareto principle (80:20 rule) to explain this. If you learn a few techniques really well, you can usually execute them in 80% of situations. Practice the most important things first. In BJJ, that is the end game; submissions and/or positions that score points. It’s not mastery in anyway, but “removal” of complexity is really important when you are a beginner.  

Find or create an environment where you can relax.  

For me this has meant (i) finding a class where I can learn only the basics of BJJ. If this isn’t possible – purposely filtering out the white noise of complexity by taking away a single technique to practice for that week.  

(ii) NOT sparring; hopefully as I get more competent I will incorporate more of that (iii) including other activities like training in the striking/wrestling sports which bring me a huge amount of joy and fun.  

I rapidly went off course for a few weeks by moving away from what is important to me, but by going wrong you can get back on course again. Experimenting with some slightly unconventional strategies for my personal learning have paid off and I feel back to that place of happy learning.  

I train with my personal minimum effective dose in BJJ (about 3 times a week) and the rest of that time is spent in play (MMA and weight training). It means when I come to learn a skill, I’m relaxed, switched on and ready to absorb.  

It is my opinion, that learning how you learn is a really vital skill. Whilst few people would do well on this specific way I have done this, the principle is the same – experiment! 

Being competent in a skill really helps build confidence and whilst you do have to turn up to learn, I think there are better ways to execute than others but it involves a bit of exploration. I have found as an over simplistic key to this; when it doesn’t work, it usually feels really awful and when it does, it is hard and challenging but there is an overriding sense of seeing light at the end of the tunnel. I call this choice the “path of least resistance” contrary to conventional sporting wisdom.  

Failure to learn is not a consequence of a faulty person, it is merely an unsuitable teaching/learning method and it is remarkable how far 20 hours of purposeful practice can take you. Whilst I’m talking about learning a sport, the strategy can be applied to anything. Feeling like you can have command over anything, (be it a language, sport or chess) at any time of your life is hugely empowering. Because the barrier is usually emotional rather than intellectual, being able to deconstruct this to come up with an emotional and practical gameplan is half the battle.