I’m snaking this idea from Tangled Triangle: 21 Days of Improvement. This will be in addition to regular articles, which means that 2-3 days a week this month there will be two articles. It’s good to stretch as a blogger, and there has been lots of feminist talk and sexist talk and sucky ads, so I want to share some of my love affair with Jiu Jitsu with you over the rest of October. I hope to have a few more blogging challenges for myself, to be revealed over time.
The mind’s first step to self-awareness must be through the body. – George A Sheehan
1/21 Improvements from BJJ: Body Awareness
Before starting jiu jitsu, I had very little body awareness. There’s a phenomenon called “Propioception,” which is the sense of body positioning – knowing what your body is doing. When I started, I had zero sense of what I was doing or what was happening. I would do something wrong, a teammate would say “That’s wrong – it’s THIS” and show me, I would literally have no clue what I had done – “Isn’t that what I was doing??” If you said “Right hand move to their left hip, I would have to stop and puzzle out what you were talking about. And a teacher getting frustrated with me would piss me off. Please believe me – I already felt stupid enough without the extra added outside frustration.
It’s something that far more coordinated teachers should watch out for in “bodily stupid” students. It may be that they literally have no idea what you’re talking about. Or they THINK they are doing it correctly.
Fast forward to today and I can better picture how to perform moves. I still help scaffold my own learning by physically going through the motions as I am shown the moves (sort of shadow jiu jitsu), but I often can get it without doing that. I can also adjust much more easily, and I can often figure out what’s gone wrong. It’s such a cool feeling – being aware of what my body is doing or not doing. It’s a new feeling for me – a physical skill I developed in the past 3 years. Yay for jiu jitsu!
Jiu Jiu’s Question: How has your body awareness grown? Is it something that was well developed before you started BJJ (or whatever sport)?
What a great idea! I’ve often thought about starting some kind of series like this, or something similar to what Chewy is doing over on his site with his 10 lessons in 10 years, but I’m far too entrenched in that ‘brain dump/stream of consciousness’ style of writing to sit down and actually craft anything.
Looking forward to the series!
Thanks, Jon! I think some of this was because I started to get somewhat mentally overwhelmed by needing to make CAKES all the time – and I need to just get some cupcakes out there. A lot of mental energy goes into my longer posts, and I wanted something to just remind myself that not everything has to be perfect. I can slam it out and get content out and do this on a regular basis – to get that habit going.
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My body awareness was decent coming in because of all the dancing I’ve done, but my understanding of weight and pressure is expanding now and that’s exciting for me.
Yep, the body awareness thing has extended to more than just what’s happening – I broke my arm when I was young, and this is the first time I’ve been totally conscious of not being able to turn my arm more. Having to rely on my physicality has meant being aware of pros and cons of my body as well. Plus – I love strong pressure! ^_^