Sylvie from 8limbs.us, my favorite non-BJJ blogger, wrote a great article called Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control – Neurology and Muay Thai.
The article is about mis-perception of contact strength. The idea is that we underestimate how much force and strength we are actually using, and when we attempt to match the force we are given, we end up one-upping the person. Then they attempt to match, but in fact they’ve also added +1. You end up with this ever-escalating force.
Sylvie posted a link to a scientific article showing this, but what I thought was very interesting was how she linked this to women:
Sparring too Light – If you are someone who somewhere in their lives resists escalation instinctively – I think women can be like this, in particular if they experienced violence on a personal level, but also just because, culturally, we are taught to be more passive – how does the mis-perception of contact strength affect you? It may mean that even when you are sparring at equal force, you are experiencing it as your sparring partner going harder than you are. You may find yourself reducing the force of your strikes over and over, trying to “turn the heat down”, when in fact it already had begun at equilibrium. This, unfortunately is to some degree the opposite instinct one wants in a fight. You can find yourself training non-escalation, or even de-escelation of force, while experiencing dis-equal striking. In a fight, you want to end up on top, or as the final word, on every escalation. – Sylvie, Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control
She mentions that when Thai men are sparring, they often engage more in play fighting. For me, that harkens back to Ryron Gracie’s motto: Keep it playful.
Reading this article made me think about a few things.
1. How people on forums will often say things like “My partner did XYZ to me – should I teach him a lesson?” or “My partner injured me – should I get revenge?” Okay, they may not put it that bluntly, but that’s their meaning. My personal reaction to that is – NO. Unless your sparring partner is a dickbag, he probably had NO IDEA he was going hard, and he DEFINITELY didn’t mean to injure you. Shit happens! People mess up! Did my sparring partner intend to give me a black eye? Hell no! Did he feel like crap about it whenever he saw me? I’m absolutely certain of it. How wonderful do YOU feel when you have accidentally injured someone? This article speaks to that:
the efference copy of our motor actions – the body imaging we use to predict and gauge our effect on the world – is inherently sensorally dulled, while when things happen to us they feel amplified. Simply put, you might feel like you’re taking up very little space on the bus the guy next to you is taking up the exact same amount but it feels to you like he might as well be lying down with his feet up. It is built-in that we experience the world impacting us more forcefully than how we are impacting the world, at a very basic touch level.
2. It takes a long time to control your body. I feel for the big guys going with the little folks. They’re AWARE that they’re likely exerting more force than they intend. So they overcompensate, but don’t do it perfectly. Hooray big guys for giving a crap about your partner! It’s up to the little person to help communicate how much you can actually deal with. Today I couldn’t complete a move to its submission because I over empathised with my partner and it freaked me out how much she could almost do the splits. Can I eventually overcome this? Sure! But sometimes we are also our own obstacle.
3. The new folks. You know them – the ones who come at you with a kill or be killed attitude! The ones who grab at you super quick and fast or practically leap at you. I’ve responded to this only a few times, and I remember thinking “Okay dude – you want to go hard? I’ll show you hard.” Not my finest moments, but it is what it is. Sometimes we have mental baggage we’ve got to deal with. Thankfully that’s not usually the case. Usually I will just recognize this person has NO FREAKING CLUE how to control their body or how much force they are exerting in this new sport of grappling. Other times, I get mad and then cry in the locker room after class and console myself by reminding myself that that guy was a doodyhead and a stupidface and something something his mother.
4. Why communication is so very important. Wondering if you went to hard? Ask your partner. Wondering if you were being douchey? Ask your partner. Wondering if your partner wants you to go harder or lighter? Ask them. Surprisingly, humans have not quite developed mind-reading skills, so one has the choice of a) playing detective, looking for clues, body language, and reading words carefully to find out. b) asking random Internet folks for advice. c) using direct communication to find out the answer from the person. I try to use C whenever possible.
5. This meme:
So – go read Sylvie’s awesome article – again, the link is: Brain Science: Why Sparring Gets Out of Control – Neurology and Muay Thai. If you drop by her blog, let her know you found the article by way of here!
Then, leave your thoughts here: What are your reactions to this article and this phenomenon? Have you found your sparring matches to escalate or deescalate? Are their certain folks you react to more? What circumstances? How do you think this might affect you in the near future?
The meme is cracking me up. This is exactly what is happening with our two cats right now. I feel for them both. The female played second fiddle to our guinea pig for many years until the guinea pig died. Then she thought she had it made until I made the mistake of thinking she needed some company and stimulation and brought home another adoptee. Our new adoptee is long and gangly and incredibly playful, but he totally unaware of his strength and the sharpness of his claws. Our female staunchly defends her territory when he invades her space and he simply doesn’t seem to get it. He tries to play with her and she sometimes will play a little bit, but then it gets out of hand. He also doesn’t seem to realize that he was neutered. So he can’t quite accept that she (also neutered) is not really interested resuming “those” activities. I feel bad because he gets sprayed with the water bottle more than she does and she actually draws blood on him more than he does.
I can totally relate to crying in the locker room – though not over BJJ. Most of the guys who do BJJ in our dojo seem extremely respectful – in two ways a) I actually feel that they respect the fact that I’m serious about learning so they do not treat me like a China doll and b) they also seem to have a great deal of control when they are working with me.
It was in the “mixed martial arts” (which we call standup even though we do do some floor work) that I had the worst crying in the locker room episode when a newbie white belt who was literally a foot and a half taller than I am, hauled off and rkicked me straight to the stomach as hard as he could. I was very happy that my abs were as strong as they were from all the sit ups because I would have definitely lost my lunch otherwise. I did NOT cry when all the wind was knocked out of me and I was proud of the fact that I didn’t immediately retaliate. After catching my breath I managed to go back and spar normally although I must admit to many revenge fantasies.
The same slimebag also thought it was funny when I has to spend $2,000 having my nose fixed when another white belt ignored the “light tough only” in a drill which was deliberately done without protective gear in order to learn light touch. The drill was jab cross only for lower belts and she unexpectedly in our light touch drill (after I told her to lighten up at least three times), smashed my nose with a bare knuckled hook. She never asked about my black eye or put two and two together that she had literally crushed my nose in a drill that wasn’t supposed to be at all about sparring. Since many of us had difficulty with her and since I really couldn’t afford another hospital bill that year, I simply refused to partner with her. I don’t think she really understood what she had done but I was too angry to actually be honest with her. As for the slimebag – I think I made some comment to the effect that I didn’t find spending $2000 to be particularly funny and after that I tried to avoid him too because I was afraid that I might just be too tempted to do something I would regret. Both dropped out. I kept going. I have never seen anyone else compare to those two in their complete oblivion to what damage they were doing to others. I did make a pact with myself that I could refuse to participate when someone crossed my line of no longer feeling safe.
Dear lord! What a jerkbag! That really sucks. And it also sucks about your nose – I hope you’re okay now!
I totally agree that we need to refuse when we don’t feel safe. I understand we are conditioned to put others’ comfort before our own feelings of safety for fear of being thought rude. When I put it in those terms it makes me realize how utterly stupid that is. “Oh sorry, I don’t want to make you feel BAD, so instead I’m going to put my SAFETY at risk. Sorry about feeling like you’re dangerous, dude.” cue eyeroll.
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[…] put up an interesting post about sparring, neuroscience and the proclivity for one-upmanship. It’s pretty interesting, and talks about the mis-perception of strength, suggesting that you […]
That’s an interesting post, and it mirrors what I’ve seen happen to others in terms of how combat escalates – it also mirrors how other women treat me (they de-escalate constantly). However, my personal experience in sparring is completely different. I’m really small and look really young so no-one wants to go hard with me, and that means they over-compensate. It’s really hard to find good sparring partners (for striking in particular) because people of both genders say, and I quote “You look so little and cute and I feel bad hitting you!”.
This means that I got out of the habit of de-escalating pretty quickly – when I do get a small man or a teenage boy that is willing to go for it, I’ll do my utmost to match their intensity because I desperately want that experience. I’ve been accused of having an ego a few times because I’m reluctant to ask those guys to tone it down if they are slightly above where I’m comfortable; but it’s not so much ego as that I know from experience that if I do say “can you do tone it down please” they go to the other extreme and scale down too far. As long as I don’t feel like I’m actually in danger of being injured I’d rather err on the side of too rough, and actually learn for it.
Things are different (generally better) in BJJ, although I do feel for the big guys because it must be a nightmare trying to make a roll productive for both of us when they can’t use their weight properly.
I once had to tell a big, new guy who was just sitting on me “Hey, I really can’t do anything if you just stay there, and you can’t do anything from there if you just hold me. Why not try to go to knee on belly or mount?” Honestly, stalling doesn’t really help anyone.
But yeah – I get that partners can get really uncomfortable. I was incredibly uncomfortable with some of the takedowns we were learning because I was overempathising with my partner – HOLY CRAP THAT LOOKS PAINFUL! On some level I could understand it didn’t hurt them, but it really was more about me and not them. It’s something I could get over, but it would take some work.
Just a couple of weeks ago I had a really interesting experience – most of the time I roll with much younger men; even the ones who are lighter than me (and I am not skinny by any means) are generally stronger than me, or have had some wrestling experience. So I’m often on the defensive and needing to defend HARD to get where I think I need to be. That’s just fine with me by the way – I have years of escalating battles both on and off the mat, going back to adolescence, and my too-much-yang-personality is very comfortable with that experience. The new and interesting experience was rolling with a fairly experienced girl (high white belt), but who was much younger and also much lighter than me. After I celebrated (I was in charge!! Hurray!! The work has paid off!!), I had a new challenge. How was I going to go slow and go light enough for both of us to have a good learning experience? I was one of those ‘big guys’ trying to make a roll productive and not being able to use my weight properly. I suddenly had to discover how to de-escalate so she didn’t end up feeling like I have felt when I’ve been crushed on a bad day i.e. I am useless at jujitsu and therefore useless in life, decrepit, fat, ridiculous and unworthy etc., etc……..it was a good experience, for which I’m grateful; I think I will have been successful if she asks me to roll again. I know I avoid some potential rolling partners because of this issue and their inability to modulate themselves so we both learn something. And it’s also given me some empathy the ones who can’t modulate – maybe I should give them another chance….it’s not easy.
Agreed – it’s a very different experience to go from being the lightest to the heaviest. I had the opposite – going from 205 down to 150 lbs. I outweighed most of the guys in class. Now I’m their size or smaller. Yet when I roll with the women, I’m generally bigger than them. I brought a friend of mine. Her wrist was absolutely tiny. Yet we had a good time.
A friend of mine does judo. She said that her sensei told her that to improve now (she’s a black belt) she needs to a. roll with other women her size/ability b. roll with children. The reason for rolling with children is so that you are using pure technique without your strength. There is a time and place for it, and understanding how to do it is invaluable.
That is an interesting study and one that matches my observations over the years.
The way I handle the issue is that I generally establish a level of force intensity at the beginning of a roll (usually a bit below that of my training partner) and then try to keep it there throughout the roll even if my partner escalates. There are a number of reasons why I find this a helpful approach:
1) If I were to ever have to apply my techniques in a real fight, the odds are excellent that my attacker would be bigger/stronger/faster/more athletic than I am. If I get used to moving light even with a partner who is escalating the intensity it means I am preparing myself technically and emotionally for that situation.
2) Keeping it light even against an opponent who is going all out means that I will have the stamina to keep grappling all class without getting exhausted. Some of my training partners have the idea that I have good cardio. I really don’t – I just know how not to waste my energy.
3) When I do roll with training partners who are smaller/weaker than I am I can still learn something technically from the experience if I pretend that I am the weaker partner and have no chance to match his/her strength with my own.
4) It avoids the whole ego-driven inadvertent force escalation spiral where both parties walk away feeling the other has been a jerk.
[…] The things that keep me sane and calm are knowing that GENERALLY my training partner doesn’t WANT to hurt me, people aren’t usually TRYING to be douchebags, and new people don’t USUALLY know they’re going too hard or too rough. […]