Peer Review

In grappling there are four skills that participants need to learn early in their journey. The Fourth skill is the ability to learn scientifically with your team.

The skills to scientific learning are skeptical testing and experimentation.

Share knowledge- steel sharpens steel

• By explaining the technique, it forces you to think about the details that make the move work.

  • You will gain a greater understanding of what is going on.

• Teaching your best moves to your training partners, it allows them to come up with their best defenses.

  • Which makes your improve and tighten up the technique. This upward cycle will improve the whole team.

• Teaching the technique to others will allow you to have to defend your own move.

  • Allowing you a new perspective on how it could be defeated, or made more lethal.

Disprove it- if they tap, it is a submission.

• Play with variables and improvisations just to see what happens.

  • Evolution doesn’t always choose the most obvious path, if it did we would probably have larger claws and teeth. You may come up with a move that others would not have considered. Then you can name it something silly like the ‘trailer hitch’ or ‘twister knee knot.’

• Encourage criticism - and be open to feedback.

  • But if their feedback is wrong, prove it with a submission.

Like submitting an article to a peer reviewed journal, make a hypothesis, test your hypothesis, and get ready for the skepticism and pushback.