Back in 2008 I had the pleasure of spending a week at legacy gym in Ubon Ratchathani Thailand. Its run by Ole Laursen the Danish Thai boxer. As luck would have it
they had a resident black belt at that time running the mma classes he was Pedro "babe" Schmall. A black belt under Royler Gracie. This was great as there were only 3 of us interested in bjj, the rest of the guys in the gym were concentrating on there muay thai.So the first training session began, this week we are studying take downs I was informed. This I thought was good for me because I hadn't trained take downs much at that point. Every morning session we were shown a new technique and a variation of that technique. we'd then practice it till the end of the session. Then in the afternoon session we'd go over the technique quickly then spa just take downs. Training sessions lasted between an hour to two hours depending on us. Due to the heat we were getting tired quickly and spending an hour on take downs is really draining, also trying to take Pedro down is like trying to move mount Fuji.
We all had one obvious problem with our take down attempts, that went for myself and my two training partners, one of which had a high standard of judo due to 10 years training back in Japan. The problem was that we were all waiting for the other person to make the first move. We only once trained in a gi due to the heat, when we did everything changed grip fighting began quickly and a variety of throws were tryed. But as soon as the gi came off it was back to the old ways of waiting for your partner to make the first move.
Whilst training with Pedro we were shown arm drags, single legs, double legs, trips and more. Whilst it was great to have these almost one on one sessions with him, his attention to detail was great and I could go on and say more of his teaching credentials. But the biggest thing I took out of the week was when half way through one session he sat us down in the middle of the cage and said "So what you waiting for?" "I'll tell you" he continued " your waiting for confidence and that train wont come unless you start taking the initiative and going for that take down first, waiting for that train to come won't happen, its not coming you've got to make it happen on your own, when you've done this enough, you won't have to wait for that train anymore. Because you'll have the confidence and you can just attack. I love the way he used the train of confidence to analyse what was holding us back. He was spot on. As I look back now and compare my take down attempts from then to now there's a real difference obviously my take downs have improved which helps, but also I don't need to wait for that train anymore.
