The de Been Junior Elite Team (JET) is a program within the de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu Academies that looks to identify the best suited athletes to represent de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu on a national and international level.

All athletes that are considered suitable have the opportunity to participate in the JET camp held annually at de Been HQ, Saint Kilda.

The athletes are put through rigorous training where they are required to participate in sessions that involve technique, specific positional wrestling, competition match wrestles, mentoring sessions and physically and mentally demanding training exercises.

Only four athletes from each Academy may attend. The athletes ages are between 10 and 16 of varying degrees of experience.

Successful athletes have the opportunity to be sponsored by de Been 100% Jiu Jitsu and receive;

• 12 month scholarship to their Academy
• A competition pack including (but not limited to) gi, rashguard & JET patches
• An apparel pack consisting of items such as t-shirts, shorts, hoodie
• Competition fees

Tryouts are conducted by Academies to evaluate athletes from their Academy to have the best-suited athletes represent their Academy at the JET Camp.

JET tryouts ensure athletes in attendance are placed on the same level playing field irrespective of experience, weight or height. 

Athletes are evaluated in the same manner as the JET camp with regards to:

• technical ability
• emotional maturity
• coachability - ability to receive information and execute the required technique with little guidance
• level of participation

Athletes are also evaluated for their level of teamwork during the physical training session.

Athletes are given a score of 1, 3 or 5 for each of the assessment areas with all children being rated at 3 at the start of each session.

As the activity progresses, the children may retain the same score or increase/decrease. Should an athlete be scored either a 1 or 5, a brief descriptor is written as to why the score was given.

On completion of the event, scores are collated, and the top four athletes are identified and will have the opportunity to attend the camp the following year. 

The two athletes that were rated five and six will be alternates should any of the top four become injured, ill or unable to attend the camp for other reasons.

The purpose of the evaluation is to identify athletes that will be able to withstand the rigours of the JET camp. Not only this but should an international team be established the requirement to travel abroad and compete without parental support is very real.

So what do the tryouts involve? 

The tryouts are a whole day event where the athletes will conduct:

• a fitness test
• a physically demanding fitness training session
• 2 x Brazilian Jiu Jitsu technique training sessions
• specific positional wrestling and competitive wrestling matches

So what does your child need to do to participate in the tryouts?

• Athletes as young as nine (turning 10 the year of the camp) and no older than 16 can attend
• register via the de Been app
• bring/wear active or fitness attire
• bring a gi
• bring a water bottle

Lunch is provided.

The day will commence at 9am SHARP with a brief overview of the day that parents can attend. The day will finish at 4pm. Parents and guardians can come and watch the last hour.

PLEASE NOTE: teens that have not completed and brought in the 'Teen Code of Conduct' are ineligible to participate.

Athletes will be informed of their performance the following week.

For further information, please don't hesitate to speak with reception.

Regardless of the labels that apply to you, if you’re consistently getting chosen last when it comes time to roll, it never hurts to look inward first. Do you find yourself apologising for accidentally kneeing your teammates in the head a lot? Do your teammates frequently have to “panic-tap” because you crank submissions on so fast? Do you give unsolicited advice mid-roll or try to “punish” your teammates after they submit you? Are there ways in which you’re abrasive off the mats that may make your teammates reluctant to spend time near you on the mats?

Regardless of the reasons why you might be getting picked last, be the person to ask others to roll first. Relying on other people to come to you might be the only thing stopping you from being one of the first people in the class to find a partner. Sometimes, people look so shy and reluctant that other students assume they don’t want to be chosen for a roll. Dream big! Find the person you want to roll with, and ask them if they want to take the next round with you. The worst they can say is “no,” and if they do, it never hurts to ask why.

In fact, these “no’s,” though they may sting in the moment, can help ease your concerns or help you become a better grappler. Maybe, for example, the person you asked is injured and is being picky about who they roll with — only a select few trusted teammates. Or maybe they give you honest feedback and let you know that your gi is always unbearably smelly. You’ll never know unless you ask.

It’s impossible to know what’s going through the minds of every person on your team. While it can be nerve-wracking to ask other people to roll, especially when you may be insecure yourself, you can’t blame others for picking you last when you aren’t picking anyone to roll.
​
Rather than waiting to be chosen, try being the person to do the choosing. You may be pleasantly surprised at just how eager people are to roll with you once you put yourself out there.

Averi Clements
Averi is the managing editor for the Jiu-Jitsu Times. She's a brown belt under Nick Hughes of Trinity MMA.

​You’ve Got To Enjoy Getting Tapped Out
 
“You’re not going to win,” Jocko Willink, the one-man inspirational army and former US Navy SEAL, says bluntly about the early years of training jiu-jitsu. “You’re going to lose over, and over, and over again, to people that are smaller than you, weaker than you, not as tough as you, literally.”
An evangelist for discipline, cultivating healthy mindsets, and living to one’s full potential, Willink has been whole heartedly embraced by the mixed martial arts community as both a practitioner and coach, perhaps nowhere more-so than in the BJJ circles he frequently addresses on his Jocko Podcast.
In a recent episode, Jocko responds to a letter from a 50 something-year-old fan struggling with the “I can’t stop getting my ass kicked” frustration that all new grapplers eventually smash into…and that drives many to quit before they ever achieve anything.
So how does one of the most determined men alive push through the frustration of sucking for years at something? First, he radically accepts that BJJ is “a long, slow journey,” encouraging young fighters to stop hating injuries and losses and start enjoying them.
“You’ve got to enjoy the journey. You’ve got to enjoy getting tapped out by someone smaller than you–be amazed by that…say to yourself, ‘Chicks dig scars.’ Don’t look at (injuries and losses) as negatives. Don’t rush to the end, take your time and enjoy the sights!”
But also? If you’re going to make it from white belt to purple and beyond, swallow the ego and train smart.
“Select your training partners carefully. If you’re 54 years old you don’t want to be rolling with a 20-year-old steroid freak white belt that’s trying to kill you. You wanna be rolling with a cool, mellow purple belt that wants to do jiu-jitsu,” he says.
Beyond that, however, Willink–the guy who gets up to go running at 4:30am by choice–reminds listeners jiu-jitsu is supposed to be fun.
“It should be a good time,” Willink explains. “Whatever goal you’re trying to achieve, if you’re letting those frustrations get you down you’ve got to change your attitude. Look at is as something good that’s happening.”
Check out his video, it’s a pretty cool perspective.

​Would you believe me if I told you that 99% of injuries that occur in training ARE avoidable?

The one percent injuries that occur are typically ‘out of the blue’ like a torn calf muscle, or an overuse injury (strains and sprains).

Of the 99% of injuries that occur, they are a shared responsibility between partners. They are equally responsible for the injury as it is their egos that get in the way. Often it will be one partner attempting a technique (that they should have refined to apply correctly) whilst the other is being stubborn attempting to escape, or hold on when they have no opportunity to escape. This happens across all levels of the sport.

Lets have a look at the different athletes and how to identify them.

The ‘ego’ athlete.

You don’t have to be a specific gender or size to be an ego athlete. The ego athlete can be a smaller/weaker partner playing a much bigger or stronger teammate, or, the opposite sex thinking they can beat or can’t be beaten. Either way, it is the EGO that needs to be let go!

Some athletes allow their age to ‘replace’ their ego when they play younger athletes. The attitude of ‘I’m older’ and can’t lose to a younger individual is a frequent instigator. These older athletes are more susceptible to injuries and end up taking time off training regularly to recover. They come back to training and the same thing happens again.

The ‘pride’ athlete.

The excuse athlete is one that will say ‘I’m green’ or ‘no one showed me’. These players use pride as their excuse. Instead of asking for assistance they just try to wrench the submission on.
It costs nothing to look at the belt of the teammate you are about to fight with and ask, ‘how do I do X’? It doesn’t matter if the teammate is a two stripe white belt, at the end of the day they’ve been training longer and might just know something.

The ‘gender’ ego.

Typically is a male playing a female, the ultimate in combat. How can the male lose, come on!
This is pure ego and the male has already lost. Importantly they lose more than their ego, they lose respect from their teammates. The rest of the team sees what goes on and will do one of two things, avoid the ego or go out to destroy it. However, trying to destroy the ego can work in reverse as you can fuel the aggressiveness in the athlete.
This goes the opposite way too where a female may go head hunting a male to make a point. Irrespective of getting the submission or not, their ego got in the way.

The ‘I’ve been training as long’ ego.

Athletes that train infrequently (once every couple of weeks) are more susceptible to ‘injuries’ even more so, as they compare themselves to newer people or ones that may have started when they did.

What they don’t realise is that their teammates may attend training on a regular basis and have the skills to back it up.

Unfortunately the infrequent trainer thinks that their skill set should be the same as their teammates, and be able to either beat them or not be beaten. So instead of taking the sport in their stride, go hard at it and suffer the consequences.

The ‘higher belt’ ego.

This is another classic where the higher belt (can even be the coach) take on the young bull with the intent of making them yield. Only to find out that the younger athlete may be way stronger and fitter. They might lack in the skills, but what they lack in they certainly make up with in other areas.

After training for some time coaches can pretty much tell when an injury is going to occur.

The only injuries that should be sustained at training are from repetitive movements, not stretching regularly or not listening to your body. But even then, we can often avoid those injuries.

More often than not, injuries occur at the novice end of the spectrum because the athlete is still learning to let go of their ego.

​Even as a black belt I have to check my ego from time to time when I wrestle. I will have the old bull ego, to stop the young bull who more often than not, is stronger and bigger than me. What ends up happening in this scenario is that I am not playing my game, I’m playing the young bull’s game and trust me when I tell you this, I might not tap out, but I certainly lose with the discomfort the next day.