Mithridatism :

“…is 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 decided to inoculate himself starting with small but gradually increasing doses.

Let me shoehorn this analogy for the PROGRESSIVE RESISTANCE TRAINING necessary in grappling arts.

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

Imagine your back taken, or side control, mount, a locked armbar or triangle, etc. Imagine it’s the first time, you have no idea how to defend and crumble under the pressure until the inevitable submission.

In order to build resistance from such bad positions, we must start with manageable doses of resistance. Call it drilling, isolation drills, specific sparring, situation sparring, incremental resistance drilling; whatever the nomenclature, two elements are key:
– exposure to the poison
– in small doses first to progressively build resistance
Rinse and repeat until you can withstand the full strength attacks of a skilled opponent.

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

The poison are the lethal positions; back mounted, mounted, side-controlled, top lock, armbars, locked Kimuras, triangles, etc. 

The “self-administering” part is about willingly putting yourself in those situations.  “Non-lethal” is the discussion with your partner to modulate the intensity at first.

That’s essentially what Garry Tonon is advocating in his great instructional on BJJ Fanatics (Exit the System) and what the entire DDS are doing with escapes, especially preparation for rule sets like EBI with overtime that has the participants start in such positions.  

Always put yourself in bad positions during training, so you can learn to 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.”

<>