Rickson Gracie about Positions in BJJ and grappling

Gracie, Inosanto, Machado. Wow!

Master Rickson Gracie shared some fantastic insights on the positional strategy of Jiu Jitsu during his seminar in Amsterdam. Most jiu jitsu practitioners are familiar with the famous "Flow with the Go"*

As promised in my earlier post, I will share many of these thoughts from the Gracie Master. One that really stuck with me was his focus on positional control. Here are two Rickson Gracie quotes and his interpretation of them:

Positional strategy guidline number 1:

"When you are on the ground, only one of you two can be comfortable at any one time. Either you are comfortable or the opponent is. Your job is to transfer the comfortable from him to you in every position"

BJJ / Grappling Learning: Learning Languages

I love BJJ. It's such a deep and difficult art form to learn, and I think that that's part of the grappling art's charm. I am always thinking about new ways to learn (and teach) BJJ techniques and concepts and I often find myself drawing on the knowledge I have outside the mat. One such area is learning languages. I am fluent in three quite different languages (Swedish, English and Arabic) and have a fundamental grasp of both French and Afrikaans and some dialects of both Kurdish and Turkish. One of the best habits I have for learning languages is looking for patterns but also being very relaxed about rules. It is important to recognise why and when a pattern of language (or BJJ) appears but it is also important to accept that there will always be exceptions. In spelling, '"i" before "e"' is good to remember, but so is 'except after "c"'. In BJJ it's handy to remember that you shouldn't extend your arm when escaping, accept with a mount escape to butterfly guard or a armpit escape from the side control.




More about exceptions to the rules of grappling in a later post. I mentioned in my previous post that learning to watch BJJ is an important skill and avenue to learn more grappling. Luckily, my blog is read by some intelligent people and one of them is Megan (check her awesome musings on her blog) and, being a language learner/teacher herself, she had a query:

“I always tell students I'm tutoring in English to spend as little time as possible listening to non-native speakers. It's advice I take myself. I've been wondering lately if the same advice is applicable to BJJ. As much as I love watching my instructor spar with the brown belts, what they're doing is so frequently above my understanding, I find myself favoring watching blues and some purples lately, since I can follow the conversation better. While I'm comfortable though, I believe there may be more latent learning going on when I'm watching higher level grapplers."

While I definitely believe there will be latent learning when watching advanced grapplers, I don't feel that the best use of such an opportunity. If you are lucky enough to have access to black and brown belts rolling, you should utilise the following exercise I use with my brother when I teach him Swedish:

BJJ / Grappling Learning: Rolling Reflections & Becoming a More Rounded Martial Artist

How much of your BJJ mat time do you spend listening and watching? How much do you spend executing or repeating shown grappling techniques against an opponent (cooperative and progressively resisting)?

I remember when I was studying to become a TESOL (Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages) the following table of how much time an average student will spend training communication skills was introduced:

Listening: 45%

Speaking: 30%
Reading: 16% 
Writing: 9%


The percentages indicate how much of our communication time we spend training in each skill. Of course, these are not hard and fast rules but they do paint a picture. We spend far more time listening than, for instance, writing. This blog is partly my way to become more rounded as a communicator and a human being.

At the same time, I always see direct links between Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and communication. A roll is very much a physical dialogue, the more honest and candid the better it feels. If I was to take the above table of skills and relate it to grappling skills I think it would roughly translate to something like this:

Watching (instruction, dvds, online media, matches...etc.)
Executing (performing techniques and movement drills against partners)
Analysing (trying to understand not just what happened during a BJJ roll but why and how it could apply in other situations)
Experimenting (scientific play, doing things no one has shown you before)


The question becomes, how much time do you spend in each area? How much time do you spend watching, really watching, your instructor or coach? How much time do you spend executing and drilling shown grappling techniques against a variety of partners with progressive resistance? How much time do you spend analysing grappling matches or BJJ moves? How much time do you spend experimenting with logical solutions to grappling challenges (framing with the elbow instead of the hand, what is the best way to shrimp? where should your head be when you bridge?...etc.)

This is one of the reasons I love Rolling Reflections type videos like the ones Roy Harris put at the end of his instructional DVDs and the ones often put on YouTube by BJJWeekly such as this one here.



How do you distribute your BJJ time? What can you do today to become a more rounded grappler and martial artist?

Liam "The Part Time Grappler" Wandi

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Are we all created equal? A BJJ / MMA Perspective

Learning styles are often grouped into visual (show me), auditory/verbal (tell me) and kinaesthetic (let me have a go). You often hear that no one learning style is better or worse than the other and there is a lot of truth in that, but I believe the operative word here is "learning".

Last Friday I had another training session with my brother and he brought along two friends. One of them has been training at a DIY kinda place (training on carpet, instructor had learnt submissions off YouTube…you get the picture!) for a couple of months and to say the least he had a huge thirst for the sport. He asked me about armbars from the guard so I spent a few minutes showing him the basics. It took me 10 seconds to figure out he was a kinaesthetic learner: He looked at me with a big question mark on his face when I was trying to explain what he needed to do on his training partner (he kind of looked like a puppy trying to understand algebra). When I demonstrated the armbar on my brother he got much more excited but it didn't translate into any better performance (if anything, I think it confused him a little)

When I offered to demonstrate on him he jumped (literally) at the opportunity but he immediately pulled guard. He wanted to try it. He had had enough watching and listening. It was his turn and sure enough after a few gos and a few manual corrections from me he was doing alright armbars. All's well that ends well. But I couldn't stop thinking about two things:

1. If your instructor only has one styles of teaching and doesn't happen to match yours, you're screwed.
2. If you are a pure kinaesthetic learner, there's a strong probability you'll be a lousy instructor, at no real fault of your own.

Think about learning / teaching as a process of exchange and transfer. If words (verbal) and/or images (visual) are your currency you can exchange much more easily than if you need to feel something to truly understand it. Sure, you can learn the art and become excellent, maybe even the best at it. But to teach a verbal/visual learner something in words/images when your real forte is “feeling” is a difficult thing to say the least.

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BJJ Tips: What's in a BJJ / Grappling name?

An excellent post on Allie The Clear Belt got me thinking about the power of language and how it (can) influence our actions, in this case specifically within BJJ / Grappling. I started thinking about trigger words or phrases and how we could take advantage of them in our training. I am certain that there are hundreds and hundreds but I’ve only listed 4 below:

“Sit back for the leg lock.”
This kicked in when I was getting caught with leg locks a lot when playing open guard, or even just going for Scissor Sweeps from closed guard. I was not succeeding in sweeping and instead I was getting caught in heel hook after heel hook. I knew I was doing something wrong, but couldn’t figure it out. One day, I was rolling with someone who really liked leg locks and as I opened up for a Scissor Sweep, I heard Karl tell them “now sit back for the heel hook” and that’s when it clicked:

If they want to heel hook me, they need to be able to sit back!

I wasn’t controlling their head/neck/collar and hence their upper body, which gave them the opportunity to sit back for the leg lock. Of course, controlling the upper body and “loading” the shin with their weight is an essential detail of the Scissor Sweep but it’s easily forgotten when people focus too much on the scissoring action of the legs.

"Sweep"
I see this all the time, especially with beginners. Eager beginners. Continuing with the Scissor Sweep example and sweeping to their left, the bottom sweeping leg is way too high.

I don’t know about you but when you sweep with a broom, you have to touch the floor. If you are expending too much energy and/or generally struggling with sweeps, chances you’re sweeping leg is not low enough. Chop the tree a little lower.

Vs

"Knee on belly"*
This is the other side of the coin. The name is Knee on Belly but, firstly, the best position for your knee is not always on the belly. Sometimes higher up actually affords you better control. Secondly, you can place your knee on the belly and still be in terrible balance/not get the best out of the position (e.g. if your foot is still on the mat). In other words, getting the knee on the belly is not the make-it-or-break-it detail of the position. It’s just a name.

"Arm lock"
Again, this can deceive in a couple of ways:

1. Some subs are termed “arm locks” when they are actually shoulder locks.
2. Some players focus too much on locking the arm with their grips, holding on for dear life, losing sight of locking the upper body and neck with their legs and hips.

Yes, locking the arm is what gives you the tap, but the position is likely to fail if you don’t precede that with control of the hips, upper body, shoulder and neck.

Now I know many of you will look at this and think big deal, I already knew about these, but these are just 4 simple examples. Your game would benefit tons from thinking about how language is, both positively and negatively, affecting your actions on the mat.

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*The best Knee on Belly tutorial I’ve ever seen is the Saulo one from his first BJJ Revolution set.

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Grappling and BJJ in Russian

Here is something different.

One of the great pleaures of this BJJ/grappling blog has been coming into contact with Part Time Grapplers from all over the world. Somebody emailed me from Russia daring me to put one of my posts in Russian. Of course, they did not know I have russian friends at the gym who were very kind to translate it for me. So, in the words of Pavel: Enjoy!

Грапплеры на неполную ставку ( ГНС) это те среди нас, кто имеет огромную страсть к искусству Бразильского Джиу Джитсу (БЖЖ) и грапплингу без кимоно. Некоторые из них могут тренироваться в таких десциплинах как бокс или тайскии бокс, однако глубоко внутри они предпочитают блокировать,затем клинч и затем бросок на пол, чем удары ногами и руками.

Помимо всего вышеупомянутого, что относится к почти всем грапплерам, ГНС же это те кто не может или не желает посвешать тренировкам больше чем несколько часов в неделю. Под несколькими часами я подразумеваю 3ь5 часов в неделю.

Итак, ктоже эти ГНС? По моему опыту это те люди кто работает или учится больше пяти часов в день, у кого есть семья или партнер, или те у кого может быть хобби помимо грапплинга. Это важно чтобы вы заметили что я зову жто хобби, так как для нас это и есть наше хобби. Это не работа.

Если иметь все вышеупомянутое во внимании, то большинство людей попадут в эту категорию, сами того не стараясь. Например, военные,люди работаюшие на полставки, работники на полную ставку или возможно, те люди кто имеет в расположении только нескол0ко часов в неделю. Это может быть финансовая причина ( нет возможности платить за уроки или за дорогу), или логичная принича (только 1 академия по соседству и они дают ограниченное количество уроков в неделю), или же причина занятости (есть возможность как и финансовая, так удобное расписание в академии, однако нет времени из-за учебы или работы).

Главная цель этого блога- делиться идеями и опытом о том как максимально увеличить результаты за эти несколько часов тренировок, чем мы распологаем, так чтобы мы могли и дальше наслаждаться этим искусством и спортом. Я не предлагаю сверхзнания БЖЖ или грапплинга, ни супер секретную систему тренировок, это только простые подсказки в таких темах как:

1. Управление временем (так что бы мы могли иметь больше возможностей для тренировок)
2. Методы обучения (чтобы мы могли оптимизировать вышеупомянутые возможности)
3.Управление ресурсами (чтобы мы могли использовать все возможные ресурсы и ничего не осталось незамеченным)

Итак, огромное спасибо за все теплые слова (продолжайте в том юе духе):) и я надеюсь, моя идея вам понравится.

Once again I would like to take a moment and thank my friend Elena for doing the honours. Of course I have no way of checking that the above is not just full of swear-words unless someone from fluent in Russian feels like dropping me a line :)

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