5 Things I learned from a Martial Arts Master

Chico is one of the greatest people that I have ever met in life. As one of my frequent training partners during my JiuJitsu life vacation, I was incredibly fortunate to get to spend a lot of time training and talking with him. During that year of time, I learned a great deal from him and his influence has had a big impact on my life. I want to give my best attempt at sharing some of the lessons that I learned from that time with him him here. 

A very accomplished man, Chico has a long resume in the military and corporate sectors, although you'd only know that because someone else told you. A humble and wise man, he rarely talks about himself, and instead is content to listen to others share their own stories. In fact, most of what we know of those accomplishments come from the mouths of others. In that spirit, I only make mention to them to share the type of person that he is. The one thing that I will share is that I won the State level National Guard Best Warrior Competition because of my pistol shooting ability. A skill that I had acquired from only 5 training sessions at a local range with him.

Chico started training martial arts from the time that he was learning to walk and has trained in many different martial arts since then. At the age of 57 now, you'll still catch him on the mats every single day at lunch class, laughing with a huge smile on his face as he leaps around, hopping from position to position, catching and releasing submissions. Leave a foot or hand hanging out, and he will make you quickly regret it. His affinity for movement, love for rolling, and amiable personality makes him the most fun person you'll ever get a chance to roll with. 

Our typical training sessions together were 90 minutes long. The first 30 were devoted to discussion while we stretched and warmed up. Some of these involved the usual topics such as recent sport, political, or dojo related activities. Many of them though were devoted to personal topics such as relationships, JiuJitsu, careers, business, and many other similar matters that pertained to real life. Many of the things that I've written about and had later conversations on stemmed from these conversations. I greatly cherish the memories of these mornings, and try to keep the lessons gleaned from them in mind.

After those 30 minutes, we'd put on some OG, Mexican rap music and roll for an hour straight with no breaks.

From those conversations, and my observations of him, these are a few of the things that I think other martial artists and JiuJitsu practitioners could learn from his example:

an exert from "The Art of War"

Mastery

Meme credit to Flying Memebars

Chico talked a lot on this topic what he referred to as "masterful" technique. If there were two techniques being taught on how to do a submission, and one of them required six steps to do, while the other only required three to execute, the one that requires only three is the more masterful of the techniques. I think that's a pretty straight forward concept, but I think can often be forgotten by the allure of "fancy techniques." Hence all the wonderful memes that  exist out there about it.

If you can stop a fight without fighting, or you can end it in one punch instead of five, why not do that? When training and developing your game, attempt to accomplish your goal of acquiring a submission in as few movements as possible. Efficiency and precision should always be factors to consider when developing your game. Watch a black belt roll and you will often see them display this "masterful technique" by seemingly effortlessly submitting someone over and over again.

Consistency
Chico wakes up early every morning, makes a cup of coffee and then begins his daily workout. Part of that regiment involves body hardening and stretching. After a lifetime of this, he is still ever part as strong as an ox. His gi barely spans the length of his broad shoulders. His shins are like steel rods and knock when you tap on them with your knuckles. His own knuckles are flattened from years of punching an iron anvil and his fists fall like a sledge hammer when they make contact. A contradiction to most weight lifters and their inflexibility, he can still stretch his legs into the slips, an attribute that makes it a hell of a job to sweep him.

This consistency follows over to JiuJitsu training as well. He skips his lunch break at work every day in order to be on the mats training. This contributed to a rapid improvement in his technical knowledge and rolling ability. He quickly went from a new white belt, to a valued training partner that could challenge and teach me things, even though I had been training JiuJitsu much longer. I attribute a large part of his rapid development to a commitment of being in class every day.

Have Fun with Training
I like that picture above because it catches what it's like to train with Chico. You'll notice that both people are laughing with goofy grins because they are having a blast while rolling. Very few of us get paid to do JiuJitsu, instead, we do it because we love it. Why keep doing it then if we aren't having fun? Chico was a daily reminder of this. He had long ago put aside the need to win against his training partners, and trains out of a pure love for the sport and the joy he gets from doing it.

I learned from him that the human body loves movement. Instead of fighting relentlessly to finish a submission, it's okay to let it go and continue moving. Our rolls rarely focused on submissions then. Instead it was sweeps, transitions, guard passes and the like. If someone did catch a submission, they'd often quickly let it before the tap and continue rolling. I will admit that he was much better at me than this though. These positional style rolls are a blast that push your cardio harder than smashing someone for the entirety of a roll. The just have fun vibe meant too that you could try out a all sorts of new techniques. If you failed at it, you could laugh at how badly you'd blundered and just try again later.

Find Balance in Life
This is an area that I really struggle with. I'm a bit obsessive, especially when it comes to JiuJitsu. I'll train seven days a week and think and talk about little else. This advice especially applied to me at the time because all I was doing at the time was training JiuJitsu. I won't put it in quotations because I don't trust my memory to do it word for word, but I frequently remind myself of when Chico told me, Steve it's okay to do other things besides training. There is so many good things in life that you can enjoy and you don't want to get to the end of your life having missed out on them. It's okay to buy a boat and spend your weekends fishing. There's nothing wrong with occasionally enjoy a good beer or eating nice food. Find a girl and fall in love. Whatever is it is that you enjoy, go out and do it. You will probably find that you come back to training better from it too.

Chico demonstrated this in his own life. Even though he maintains a strict training regimen, he skips lunch to go to class so that he can spend the evenings with his wife. On the weekends he devotes his time to his grand kids and other hobbies like drone racing. This is something that I'm still working on, but since moving to Washington I have done a much better job of finding balance and have found myself much happier and at peace as a result.

Always Remain a Student
Chico holds multiple black belts in multiple different studies of martial arts. He is even the highest ranked black belt in America in one of them (Something he only mentioned once to me during a conversation). He ran a highly successful Taekwondo school in the FT Bragg area, and has multiple students that run their own schools. Despite having achieved these levels of success, he still approaches every class as a dutiful student. He is the first one to the door every day, and intently watches the instructors lessons. He then trains the technique intently, asking questions to ensure that he fully grasps what the instructor wants to convey. When others might gloss over a technique because it doesn't fit their style or grab their interest, he is over on the side of the mat drilling it to see what he can learn.

The eagerness and excitement that he displayed during class is one that I try to emulate. As I myself move up through the ranks of JiuJitsu, I hope that I never forget this particular lesson from him that there is always more to learn and it is possible to learn from anyone.


I am incredibly grateful that I got to spend the time that I did with Chico. He was one of the teammates that helped me to get through my knee injury. He continued to safely push me while I trained within my very limited capacities, and encouraged me to keep on going during those challenging months of recovering. I would go on to win several local tournaments after that, instead of regressing like I might have. My JiuJitsu improved a lot during those many hours of mat time we shared, and I hope that I became a better person from that time as well. I wish that everyone could get a chance to train with him because of how much fun it is. If you ever happen to be in the Fayetteville, NC area during lunch time, I'm sure you'd happen to find him on the mats rolling and laughing.


As always, thank you for reading! This piece is very close to me and I hope that you enjoyed it and maybe even learned something like I did from my time with Chico. I hope to see you all on the mats soon!

About the Author:

Steven McMahon earned his Kyuki-Do Black Belt in 2011 from Grand Master Kim at Kim's Black Belt Academy and his  BJJ Purple Belt in January 2017 under Professor Charles Nunley. He currently trains out of Wakizashi BJJ  in Oak Harbor under Professor Eli Trevino. He is an active competitor at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Army Combative tournaments.