Many will look – few will see: A sizable portion of any grappling match just looks like a profitless tangle of limbs leading to nothing but confusion. I'm sure you've all had the experience of trying to explain the appeal of grappling to non grappler friends. When they watch a match it just looks to two people aimlessly rolling about on the floor. Your job as an athlete and mine as a coach is never to WATCH the action, but always to interpret it. You must train yourself TO SEE opportunity AND DANGER EARLIER THAN OTHERS DO – for this is the surest way to success in the sport. You can train this skill daily by watching two other athletes spar and trying to ask yourself what you would be doing in their respective situations. This trains your mind to ACTIVELY INTERPRET events rather than what most people do – which is passively watch for the outcome. The idea is not to FOLLOW the outcome – but to CHANGE the outcome; and the best way to train this is active interpreting observation – a skill you can train every day – even when you are not training yourself.
