By purple belt, you have developed games in every position. You have absorbed a long string of techniques, and likely don’t come across that much you haven’t already seen. At a superficial level this reads like an end point. What more can be gained once you know much of the game?
Of course, this game isn’t superficial. Knowing how to do techniques and having a deep understanding of them are two different worlds of Jiu Jitsu capacity. To really dive deep into understanding requires consistent focus. Long stretches of time where you keep at it. “It” being that attack series you are sharpening into real weapons. Within the larger context of a basic decision tree lies an intuitive understanding of timing, space, leverage, and a long list of other Jiu Jitsu buzz words that separate the novice from the master. That’s the important stuff, and this process is how you gain real skills.
Something else happens here though, and it causes real concern. What happens to all your other techniques? Inevitably, time spent on one topic is time lost on another. There are two sides to this. The side in the future where you can be overwhelmed by how much you need to study, and the side in the past where you have spent lots of time and energy on a topic you let slip away. In the present, you stand making decisions about the nature of your progress and how you spend your time. This is skill dropping.
Skill Dropping
Some constraints are imposed on us by the other mind and body. Some constraints are imposed on us by our own. The practical nature of skill development and the yearning desire to know it all conflict in a contest of self-imposed expectations. You want to maintain the sharpness gained by your output, but also develop new skills for your repertoire.
You can’t do this, and that can sting.
You have to walk away from your A game to develop. Your A game will suffer. That tool you have spent so much time developing is going to diminish as time erodes your natural instincts and intimate knowledge. This can feel like loss. It can feel like backsliding and wasted effort. Your skills are dropping. Your rolls will change and your moments of victory will be defeated. Damn.
Skill Recovery
That decision to walk away, move on, and step into a new world of movement options pushes a set of skills back into the memory hole. The further back in time - the further you move forward, the deeper the hole. In fact, some things get completely lost.
Until they recover. The fear of forgetting is natural, but in this long process of learning you discover that skill recovery happens quickly. It may take you months to learn a system, but relearning a system can happen in a single session. You not only have prior knowledge to bring back into existence, your now future self has more grappling experience and conceptual understanding to approach the system with. You now look at the system in a new light, have more skills to implement it with, and more techniques to connect it with.
This process of skill dropping and skill recovery ultimately brings you greater understanding of the system. If you don’t skill drop, you will never develop enough to rethink the system with greater insight. Growth begets growth.
Skill Dropping, Again
It takes time to get this insight, and this is why I included this in purple belt life. How long do you need to grapple before you develop a long list of systems, and then begin to revisit them again? That takes some time. Purple belt time. Once you understand this process you can embrace it. You must embrace it. You have to let go. Have confidence that your future self will be able to pick this skill back up and make it better. If you don’t do this you will stagnate. Your current version will always be your version. To truly grow, you must skill drop.