Mithridatism

Mithridatism:

“…the practice of protecting oneself against poison by gradually self-administering non-lethal amounts.”

The story comes from King Mithridates VI (135–63 BC), whose father was assassinated via poison; so he inoculated himself with small but gradually increasing doses.

The analogy maps to progressive resistance training in grappling.

You want to expose yourself to bad positions, learn to escape them, and later use them to launch counter attacks.

To build resistance, start with manageable doses. Drilling, isolation drills, specific sparring, incremental resistance; two elements are key:

• exposure to the poison
• in small doses first, progressively building resistance

Rinse and repeat until you can withstand full-strength attacks from skilled opponents.

The poison is the lethal positions; back mount, mount, side control, top lock, armbars, locked Kimuras, triangles.

The self-administering is willingly putting yourself there. The non-lethal part is the discussion with your partner to modulate intensity at first.

Garry Tonon’s Exit the System is built on this; the entire DDS approach to escapes, especially for EBI overtime where you start in those positions.

Always put yourself in bad positions during training, so you can escape them when it matters.

“The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in battle.” “We don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training.”

2020/03/02