There is hardly anything worth achieving in jiu jitsu that Royler Gracie, son of the founder Helio Gracie, hasn't already achieved. Many times over! Royler has successfully competed in MMA, dominated the world BJJ scene and won the ADCC multiple times. Recently, he was promoted to the coveted Coral Belt. The promotion was carried out by his two older brothers Rickson Gracie and Rolker Gracie.
Many congrats to Royler and his students.
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Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi
Proudly sponsored by Predator Fightwear: Built for the kill and Brutal TShirt: Made By Grapplers For Fighters
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BJJ / Grappling tips: stances, movement and great techniques from Eddie Kone, head of EKBJJ
Your basic BJJ / Grappling moves are defenses, escapes, transitions and attacks. Here are a few fundamental ways in how we use our bodies in the initial moments of a match / round / fight:
First the stances*.
Your stance (the way you stand and distribute your weight on the mat) is your base and grounding. They are snapshots of movement so don't imagine that you will be spending any more than a second (even less) in each fixed stance:
'Although there are a hundred kinds of stances, they all exist for the same purpose: to defeat the opponent' - Yagyu Munenori (1571 - 1646)
Get your stances strong and solid and learn to move from them in relaxed manner.
The most important stances are:
Free-movement stance: This is your most prevalent stance and the launch pad of everything else. From here you establish contact with your opponent using your hands, feet, hips and sometimes even head.
First the stances*.
Your stance (the way you stand and distribute your weight on the mat) is your base and grounding. They are snapshots of movement so don't imagine that you will be spending any more than a second (even less) in each fixed stance:
'Although there are a hundred kinds of stances, they all exist for the same purpose: to defeat the opponent' - Yagyu Munenori (1571 - 1646)
Get your stances strong and solid and learn to move from them in relaxed manner.
The most important stances are:
Free-movement stance: This is your most prevalent stance and the launch pad of everything else. From here you establish contact with your opponent using your hands, feet, hips and sometimes even head.
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| Two top level judoka making contact |
BJJ / Grappling Tips: Delivery system first, techniques second - Pablo Popovitch shows the way
I pulled him aside and showed a couple of very small technical details regarding where his foot and hips should be facing which I knew would help and lo and behold he sent me a message later that evening saying the tips I gave him fixed the problem and his success rate with the sweep skyrocketed.
Why did my advice work? Would that same advice benefit another athlete who might be having the same problem?
While a good technique is a good technique is a good technique, the extent to which fixing details helps really relies on one very important factor: is the learner ready for the information?
The reason my advice helped wasn't because it was anything special. Anyone watching from the outside who's had some experience with that technique could have told him the same (which is why many avid YouTube watching white belts have a lot of advice to dish out). The reason my advice worked and worked so well is because I could recognise that he had the delivery system* that could:
1. Get him to that position safely
2. Get him to that position repeatedly
3. Get him out of that position safely
Basically, I could see that he could get there and get out without getting smashed or injured and he could do that often and from multiple angles.
Why is that relevant? Because nothing means anything without drilling and repetition against progressive resistance. If you don't have the skills that would facilitate repetition and drilling, all you have is something you "saw" on YouTube but could never get to work against anyone except your grandma...when she's asleep. If your mount sucks, a million tips on improving your armbars from mount won't help.
With that in mind, watch these two videos (courtesy of BJJ Weekly) of the amazing Pablo Popovitch. See how he emphasises the finer points of control from the half guard first before going into what you could do from there and if my point wasn't clear before watch the two videos in the wrong order and you should immediately get it.
Video One: Pablo looks into the elements of control from the half guard
Video Two: Pablo talks about how to create space with the top leg and free up your bottom leg to retrieve guard from the half guard / pass
*Matt Thorton talks about the concept of Delivery System in this video.
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Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi
Proudly sponsored by Predator Fightwear: Built for the kill and Brutal TShirt: Made By Grapplers For Fighters
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BJJ black belts: Different versions - an explanation
I've recently been befuddled by the variations of black belts available. I am not talking about brands of black belts (of which there are many) nor about black belts vs red-and-black (also called coral) belts vs red belts. I'm talking about straight up black belts (the one after brown and before coral).
Looking around, I could identify 4 different versions (if you know of another, please let me know) of the black belt:
Solid black belt, with no tab on it. It kinda looks just like the ones given in judo and many other oriental martial arts
Black belt with a white tab on one end. This version of the BJJ black belt is rare, but definitely exists
Looking around, I could identify 4 different versions (if you know of another, please let me know) of the black belt:
Solid black belt, with no tab on it. It kinda looks just like the ones given in judo and many other oriental martial arts
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| Photo courtesy of Meerkatsu, featured here with Cobrinha |
Black belt with a white tab on one end. This version of the BJJ black belt is rare, but definitely exists
BJJ / Grappling Mentality: Be Wewy wewy afwaid!
“Our way of action is in...the belief that inherited personal qualities are things to be proud of and defects to be ashamed of and hidden. Habits of thought and action formed in this way are of little avail when we are confronted with tasks in which our social standing cannot influence the outcome of the act...This demands flexibility of attitude of mind and body quite beyond that which we form in the present social environment"
If you fancy delving into the philosophy behind judo (and by extension, jiu jitsu) this is a great book. It's available to download for free and is full of both philosophical and technical gems.
The reason the quote above really caught my mind is because it reminded me of something John Will (5th degree black belt under the Machados) talked so passionately about during his seminar at Factory last year: the willingliness to go out there, take a risk and accept that it's ok to make mistakes.
John's angle was that we are wired to avoid mistakes. Evolution dictates this. At least to a degree, we are the progeny of the ones who survived, not those who experimented and failed. Trial and error could be fatal, literally, back in caveman days.
He also highlighted, however, that that is no longer true on the BJJ mat and to some extent in life in general. If you are training at a healthy BJJ gym / academy with a healthy environment*, you should be constantly encouraged to experiment and try things out. Don't take the grappling instructor's words for a technique or concept, try it out for yourself. Experience it. Fail with it until you succeed.
I've heard many instructors say that those who only ever play their A-game at the gym are being douchebags. Smashing everyone they can, never learning by putting themselves in positions they’re not good from: wrestlers who spend the whole round hugging you down, guard players who never want to get up and pass...etc. But never before meeting John had anyone explained the psychological mechanism that drives that behaviour: Fear.
Being afraid is natural. The legendary Rickson Gracie himself once called a man without fear a fool**. The general idea is to get on the mat and experiment in spite of your fear. Learn by doing and experiencing what your training partner can and can't do to counter and prevent you. It's important to remember why Helio Gracie decided to fight the much younger and much bigger Masahiko Kimura:
"The Brazilian press was strongly opposed to me fighting the bigger man, and everyone wanted to know why I wanted to fight him. I told them I wanted to find out how the big guy planned to beat me. I told them I wanted to be a guinea pig. It was the ultimate test."***
If you liked this, check out Arcanum's excellent post.
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*How do YOU to describe a healthy training environment?
**to be exact, he said: ”I believe intelligence and fear are very close together. Guys who say they are not afraid of anything, they are stupid. They are silly to me…I am afraid of everything”
*** from Grappling Magazine’s Doug Jeffery’s July 2010 interview with Helio Gracie.
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Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi
Proudly sponsored by Predator Fightwear: Built for the kill and Brutal TShirt: Made By Grapplers For Fighters
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BJJ / Grappling takedowns: O Uchi Gari from the pummel
What happens when you take an old school jiu jitsu takedown, which was then honed by judo*, with the pummeling of wrestling (especially Greco Roman wrestling)?
Have a look at the major inside reap throw O uchi gari, demonstrated by a judo legend: Yasuhiro Yamashita
Whisk into that some pummeling work demonstrated by WEC champion Urijah Faber:
What do you get? A kick-ass takedown that is beautifully fnctional for BJJ and NoGi Submission Grappling:
ps. If you want to delve deeper into O Uchi Gari, check out this fantastic study on the throw from JudoInfo.com
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Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi
Proudly sponsored by Predator Fightwear: Built for the kill and Brutal TShirt: Made By Grapplers For Fighters
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Maciej Polok & Marcin Held: Awareness and the BJJ Body
I just saw a video posted on Facebook by the awesome BJJHacks, in association with Manto, called Polish BJJers invade Brazil, Maciej Polok & Marcin Held training and competing in Rio
It's a great little video (well, over 18 minutes!) that follows the two chaps Maciej and Marcin on their recent training trip to Brazil. Maciej and Marcin are Black and Brown belts in BJJ under none less than Vinicius Bittencourt Almeida Magalhaes, better known in the Jiu-Jitsu scene as “Draculino”, himself.
Maciej Polok and Marcin Held visit a number of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academies around Rio and the video not only shows them training at these and competing, but some interesting conversations with the pair.
Right, here's the weird thing that caught my eyes.
I've always felt that the biggest difference between a grappler and a better grappler is better awareness. When watching higher level BJJ players and grapplers roll, I'm not so interested in who wins or loses, but rather how does this awareness express itself.
I'm always looking out to learn what these grapplers and BJJ players use to:
1. Sense their opponent's moves and intentions
2. Sense and measure their relation to the mat and their opponent
3. Execute their techniques and counters
Look at this still-shot from the video. Look at it carefully. Can you see how Maciej shapes his feet to morph around his opponent's leg and hip. This is not a fluke. This is not irrelevant. Watch the video and you will see things like this everywhere but during this particular roll, down at Brazilian Top Team HQ, the camera angle happens to show it very clearly. This is an expression of higher awareness of both your body's capabilities and how you can use it to sense and follow your opponent.
This is the true magic of BJJ and Grappling.
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Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi
Proudly sponsored by Predator Fightwear: Built for the kill and Brutal TShirt: Made By Grapplers For Fighters
----Did You Like This Article?--- Click here to add The Part Time Grappler to your Favourites / Bookmarks
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