Drilling perfectly and being a good partner

Something I think people might not realize is just why drilling is important. Granted most people would agree its important but when you ask them why they might give you something about reps or practice, but what I’m talking about specifically is muscle memory. Most people are aware that when you practice something over and over again, you are literally creating neural pathways for that movement. Your brain is becoming more efficient at that movement and if you practice enough, your brain gets so good at it, that you can do it without even thinking. This is the reason you drill, so that you can do it without thinking.

Now I see a lot of people in the gym drilling techniques kind of sloppy, maybe its boring after a while, or maybe they feel like they know it already, who knows. But I see a wasted opportunity, and I say this being guilty of it myself from time to time. Since I started filling in teaching for a friend, I’ve had the chance to see things from a new perspective. It’s funny that I never really realized it before, but watching students waste time can be so frustrating. Maybe you are drilling a triangle set up today, and after 2 or 3 times, the students start messing around, interest completely lost. However if you ask their partner to resist 75% on the next try, they would fail miserably. How can you help keep it interesting? Be a good partner and start with very little resistance and then amp it up each rep.

So maybe the first attempt at a sweep, you resist maybe 20%. You basically hold your balance but you don’t really fight anything your partner does to you. Then after they get the movement down, you resist 50%. This is still fairly easy for your partner to sweep you, but they might not get it if they don’t do it properly. Then once they start doing it with ease, put up a little more of a struggle, but don’t ever go 100%. For the most part any technique you resist 100% will not work. If you know its coming, and you are fully resisting you are being a bad partner. You should never resist more than 75%, but that’s just my opinion. 100% resistance is for actually rolling. Also never forget that its ok to give your partner instructions. They are there for you, they are not just your drill dummy. Dont be embarrassed to tell them to relax a little bit more, or resist a tiny bit more. There should always be open communication when drilling.

Why don’t you resist 100%? because if I’m rolling with anyone who is good, and they know the submission im about to do, i can pretty much guarantee it wont work. The only submission you get on someone good is the one they don’t see coming. And here is the best part, drilling doesn’t have to be difficult. Dont listen to people who tell you that drilling has to be a tough workout or something like that. It’s not a race, or a competition, it’s simply practice and brain training. I’ve watched some amazingly technical and awesome grapplers drilling, and it looks effortless. They are not muscling it, they are not tense. They are fluid and focused. To me that’s what drilling should be.

Now that we’ve covered how to be a great partner. Lets talk about the drilling itself. When you drill, it should not just be about putting in the reps. That to me is only physical, you need to get your mind involved. How? By being mindful. Focus on your body and how it moves around the opponent. Focus on how they react to your movement. Try and feel the shift in balance and base. Focus on you hips, on your feet, your grip, everything. If you do this correctly you should be going fairly slow at first. The first reps should always be slow. Your mind should be on the move, and the move should be smooth. Remember before when we talked about not thinking? When you trust your body to run autopilot, it better have the right programming don’t you think? If all the drilling you’ve ever done, you ignored what your feet were doing, then they wont be doing the right thing when it matters. When you react instinctively, in those moments in between moments, in transitions, you can’t think. Your mind isn’t meant to consciously think that fast. You just need to react. Think of a jab. If someone throws a jab at you, you can’t think “Oh hey that punch is coming at my face, I should duck”. It’s too late, you’ve already been hit, and probably about to get hit a couple more times. You just need to trust your body to react. And it will react the way you taught it to, by drilling.

So remember to always be a good partner when drilling, and if its getting boring, don’t be afraid to ask your partner to resist a little more. There is always something you are missing, you will never master any technique, so keep that in mind when drilling. And keep your mind on the movement, shift your focus from one body part to another each rep, and make sure you are aware of what it’s doing. This will ensure your drilling time is as efficient as possible.

Tournament Mentality

If you have never competed before, I think its worth noting the vast difference that exists from just rolling at the gym with your friends. At a tournament the people you go up against turn up the intensity 100%, winning is the goal, whereas in class I’d like to think learning is the goal, with winning being secondary. You see these people at a tournament paid good money to be there, their friends and family might be there watching, it might be being recorded, they want to bring home a medal and tales of victory. This fosters a new level of aggression than is ever seen in a gym setting. The fact is that most people you compete against in a tournament setting will absolutely not tap unless you put them in real fear for their safety. In the gym you might take an armbar for example, to a certain limit, a limit where you expect someone to tap from experience. Right at the sweet spot where it is slightly painful but not dangerous, even though you could go farther. In a tournament the person will stack you, roll, hop and twist like a fish on a hook. They most certainly will not tap unless you get within centimeters of breaking their arm. Sure there are people like me that want to train the next day, and will respect a good submission, but if you have competed before you know that what I’m talking applies to 90% of the people at those things. With that being said I am willing to bet the rate of injury is massively higher at a tournament than at your own gym. This is the reason. So if you are ever competing in your first tournament take my advice and when you get a submission on someone do not let go until the ref stops you, and do not let up. You really don’t want to lose a match because you were trying to be nice. At the end of the day it is their fault not yours, so you shouldnt feel any guilt. If they are being stubborn, refusing to tap, that is their choice I feel. I don’t think it’s crazy, its just a choice. If winning means that you are willing to take some tendon damage or what have you, I can’t hold that against someone. But I’m not going to hold back on you either. In a gym setting I would usually back off if I think someone is being like that, but not in a tournament. I’d be curious to hear from fellow grapplers about how they approach opponents like that in a tournament. Do you let go, or do you break it?

My first class

I thought I was pretty tough, being a serious weight lifter for a while until I became bored with it. I was a stocky 250 lb guy, probably a half human, half bulldog looking person when I first walked onto the mats of my first jiu jitsu class. After drilling a few techniques that didnt really make any sense to me yet, we were paired up to roll. The entire time we rolled I don’t think I even got close to putting anyone in a bad position once. It was then that I knew without question that not only was jiu jitsu a martial art that actually delivered what they all promise, but that I would happily dedicate years of my life to learning it.

Now I have met black belts in certain martial arts, and sparred with them, and always come away disappointed. Many of them (not all), including Judo and Tae Kwon Do, surprisingly couldn’t really do anything to me, and it was so apparent that many of these people were simply paper tigers. The mystique of the “black belt”, the master who was so dangerous, someone who had mastered the art of unarmed combat, that I had thought so highly of as a child, was usually just a really fit guy who knew a few flashy moves, but lacked substance. So naturally when I checked out jiu jitsu, I was skeptical, and thought it was probably more of the same. When rolling, I was rolling with not just high level players, but many beginners, all of which tooled me. Something these so-called “black belts” never were able to do. Im really glad I had that experience because if I wasn’t dominated so badly, as a regular guy off the street, then I wouldn’t have respected the art at all. But there was no excuse to be made, only the glaring fact that jiu jitsu was the most legit thing I had ever experienced as far as martial arts styles go. I had tried other martial arts when I was younger, but never really fell into any of them.

In my opinion, no matter what size a practitioner of a martial art is, if they are highly skilled they should be able to beat a regular person. Regardless of if that person is larger, faster, stronger, whatever. I mean isn’t that the whole idea behind martial arts? And not only should they beat them, they should beat them with the ease and grace that you might expect them to. If they cant do it, then I have serious doubts in their ability to really teach me anything of substance. So I will always be grateful for my first class, it is through that initial beating that I came to find one of my biggest passions.

Advice for the new guy

Over the years I’ve seen many of people come into the gym for their first lesson. Some are awesome people who stick around long enough to become friends, some are there for a week or two and are never seen again. If you train you have probably had similar experiences with new members. You also might have seen a couple of “that guy” come into the gym. The guy who wants to fight ASAP, within a month preferably. They have no previous experience, unless of course you count his undefeated street fight record. They “knock dudes out all the time”, or “don’t need to learn grappling because they can’t be taken down”. If you get them in a grappling class they flop around like a fish without any clue what to do. They might admit they suck at grappling, but boast about their awesome stand-up game. That is until the next day when they get their heads knocked off, all the while claiming they are really a ground fighter. They are completely naive about what it really takes to be a fighter, and because of a couple of bar fights they get the idea that they are the next Anderson Silva.

Now I don’t want to mock “that guy” too hard because while I was never that oblivious, I will admit that when I first started I was naive too. I thought I’d train for a while and maybe become a professional fighter. Luckily I knew that when I walked in everyone in there could destroy me if they wanted, but I was delusional about the massive commitment it takes to actually be a fighter. I had no clue. After about a year of training I won my first and only MMA fight. I realized even before the fight that I was hooked on jiu jitsu, but didn’t really get too excited about MMA. Even so I was committed to get in the cage at least one time, just to see if I could really do it. Afterwards I stuck to competing in numerous grappling tournaments, and am happy I was able to find something I truly love to do.

If you are serious about getting into MMA, consider some of the following advice. Since I am not a fighter and merely a grappler, feel free to tell me if I’m full of crap.

First, dont think you are going to fight in less than 6 months unless you have a background in wrestling or martial arts of some kind. The reason I say this is because back in 1993 you might have gotten lucky with so little experience, but now everyone is so well-trained, that you will most likely get smashed and it could ruin the sport forever for you. You might either be too ashamed to try again, or you will have a chip on your shoulder and become a douche. Either way that’s not good, and you will rob yourself of a rich experience the way it should be, which is 2 well prepared fighters facing one another in equal combat. Any gym that promises you such a thing in such a short time is probably not very experienced, full of shit or doesn’t really care about what happens to you. An exception might be if your opponent also has little to no experience. But in my opinion I’m not sure fans would want to watch that.

Secondly be humble. I guarantee you if you have never trained MMA before, you will get absolutely destroyed for not just the first few classes, but probably the first few months. It will be a true test of how healthy your ego really is. Stick with it and don’t get discouraged, you will get better. For the love of god though don’t tell stories about your street fights. I hate hearing them and nodding politely. Maybe it’s just me?

Lastly be patient. With the growing popularity of MMA there are events every couple of months, so don’t worry about rushing before you are ready. You will regret fighting before you are ready. It will be much harder than you picture it in your head, and you need to be 100% confident before you agree to do it for real.

There is a quote by Joe Rogan I really like that I think puts things into perspective for people who are thinking of trying MMA. he said:
“Very few people actually want to fight, they just want to kick someone’s ass. They dont understand, that that guy can kick your ass too. This is not going to be an even exchange..if you are not willing to take big shots and be in pain and push through, you are never going to do this.” – Joe Rogan

Ryan Hall 50/50 Guard DVD Review

I recently had a chance to get a copy of Ryan Hall’s 50/50 DVD, and thought I would write a short review on it because I havent found many out there. I’ve been very interested in leglocks for some time now, but they are not taught very often at my gym, hence why I went looking for a good instructional. Now I have bought several DVD instructionals in the past and own countless books on jiu jitsu. I am usually able to see something and be able to apply it in the gym. A lot of people simply can’t and thats why good old fashioned mat time will always be the best teacher. But in my down time I like to sate my hunger for more jiu jitsu by doing what I can at home. My experience with DVD’s in the past have been hit and miss at best. Most have been pretty awful to be honest, but some are alright. I had actually decided I probably wasnt going to buy anymore, but I had read some really positive things about Ryan’s DVD, and the fact that it was all about leglocks eventually won me over. I’m very glad I decided to take a chance too.

I have been focusing on leglocks on my own for some time now and its kind of become my thing. I consider myself pretty proficient with them, but I also know that with anything, there always much more to learn. This DVD proved that very thing to me. I don’t know why I had the delusional idea that I “knew about the 50/50”, but it became clear after watching the first DVD out of the three, that I had no freaking clue how awesome this position could be. The first DVD called “the 50/50 illuminated” goes over the fundamentals of the 50/50, the positioning, the defenses, different attacks, how to gain the advantage, and some broader concepts. It is very informative and really gives you such huge respect for this position. As Ryan states in his DVD, the 50/50 guard is a physically mirrored position, hence the name 50/50 but really it is a position of skill. If two people wind up in 50/50 usually whoever has more skill in the 50/50 will win, as with many other positions in BJJ. The truly amazing part though for me, was his ideas about defeating a superior grappler using this position, something I have found to be 100% true. Notice he says whoever is more skilled in the 50/50 will win, not whoever is the more skilled grappler. There is no passing this position if you do not understand it. You can’t just stack into the guy, as Ryan shows many options for this when it happens. You also can’t run away, because your leg is so securely wedged inside your opponents. You essentially are forced to deal with the 50/50.

Ryan does something unique in this 3 DVD set that he starts with the position itself instead of the entries. At first this bothered me and I thought it was an oversight, but he actually addresses this in his DVD at some point. He says that he purposefully did this because its more important to understand the position before you get yourself into it, for your safety and your opponents safety. This makes sense to me, I’m not sure if I like it but his reasoning is sound.

The second DVD covers entries for the most part, which are very cool. They are highly complex looking but Ryan makes them look so easy. A lot of them are from an upside down or inverted guard, which I have never really played, so unfortunately I probably wont be using those anytime soon. There are however other entry options, as well as entries during transitions which will be more beneficial to me. It all depends on your style.

The last DVD has some more entries and some advanced heel hook finishing tips, which are amazing. I don’t want to give anything away, but the tips are an absolute must see for anyone who fancies themselves a leg lock aficionado. I have been very successful with heel hooks and get taps all the time with them, so you can finish them with sloppy technique, but once I saw some of these advanced finishing tips my finishing percentage with heel hooks went even higher. Anyone who has been learning BJJ for a while will know what I am taking about. You can think you know a technique and even be successful with it, but then one day when you drill it again you pick up some small detail you somehow missed the first time, that makes it even easier. This happens multiple times for the same technique in my case.

In closing this DVD set is amazing. All the positive things I read before purchasing this were true, the production value was great, the details were game changing, and the techniques were shown from several angles so you didn’t miss a thing. I honestly felt like I took a college level course on this position after watching it a couple of times. Its one of those DVD’s I’ve watched at least 4 times now, and keep picking stuff up because there is just so much to learn. Over 4 hours of instruction total. If you are interested in leg locks at ALL, you should grab this DVD, or equally important, if you don’t want to be someone’s plaything inside the 50/50 you also need this DVD. As far as instructional DVD’s go this is by far the best one I’ve ever owned. 5 stars.

Position before Submission

Position before submission is a cliché you may or may not hear in your gym from time to time.  I wanted to share my experience with it, and how it totally changed my game.  First of all, on the surface level it is a great concept for new players to grasp, the idea that they should focus on holding and advancing good positions instead of focusing on the submissions.  This is important because the better you control a position, the higher the percentage your submission attempts will be.  It’s also one of the main reasons beginners will continuously lose their position and get swept in a mad, sloppy attempt for a submission.  However the important of this phrase goes much deeper for me.

When I started Jiu Jitsu after a few months I started to get some sweeps and gain top position.  Once I got there I just kept telling myself that I needed to hold that position instead of getting swept back into a terrible position again where I would undoubtedly flounder away wasting my energy.  I was so focused on holding the position I would stall there and just pray I could maintain that control until the timer went off.  After awhile I started thinking about the big picture and how this was affecting my game.  I came to the conclusion that not only were my escapes not getting any better while doing this, but I was also not attempting submissions because I was so afraid of getting rolled.

This was a major eye opener for me because I realized that to have a great offense, you need a great defense.  If I am truly comfortable in my escapes and transitions, and I mean truly comfortable, then I can go for a risky submission because I have confidence that if it doesn’t work out, and I end up on bottom, that I can get back to where I was.  I am still, and always will be, in the process of developing my escapes and sweeps because I’m a firm believer that it will make my offense better as well.

Over the years as my escapes improved, I started finding myself in a dominant position more and more, and thus was able to win more matches.  In a weird way it was the “position before submission” ideology that initially held me back but ultimately sprung me forward.  The big take away here for me was that if you want to really develop your submissions in jiu jitsu it helps tremendously to first develop rock solid sweeps and escapes.  Only then can you have the confidence necessary to risk position for a submission.

Gi and No Gi

This is a topic of hot debate I really wanted to put my 2 cents in on. I purposely titled it gi and no gi instead of using the usual gi vs no gi. I did this because I think they are both great sports, but personal preference plays such a massive role in people forming an opinion. I really don’t like when people frame it that way because it seems like an either/or setup, when it can easily be both. To me that’s like saying Judo vs Greco, two similar but separate sports. But I’ve had experience with both, and granted my time with gi training was limited so take that into consideration when reading the rest of this post. Also consider just because 1 school does things certain way, doesn’t mean they all do. My experience with a gi gym may not have been typical, I have no frame of reference visiting only one.

  For those of you who might not know, the Gi is a uniform that traditional BJJ players wear.  In No Gi you typically wear shorts and a rashguard or t shirt.  The main difference in the 2 styles is that in Gi you can grab onto your opponents Gi to control them.  In no-gi you cannot grab clothing so you must control your opponent using underhooks/overhooks/head control.  The main concensus is that Gi is more technical because no-gi players can get sweaty/slippery and explode out of positions easily.

I was originally trained at a no-gi school for about 5 years.  We were very good and usually won any local tournament we chose to enter.  I never gave much thought to Gi jiu jitsu over the years.  Then because of going back to school I was forced to join a new gym that had class times that suited me better.  As luck would have it they were a gi only school.  As soon as I walked in and the instructor heard of my backround he went off on a rant about how no-gi guys were not technical, and how sloppy we were.  I though this was really rude and I was kind of caught off guard by this, but I didnt really say much about it, it was his opinion afterall.  I commenced training and tried to keep an open mind about how technical this whole gi thing apparently was.

Over the course of 6 months I trained only in the gi.  One great thing I noticed is that everything I learned in no-gi I could use regardless of what someone was wearing.  So any time I rolled in the gi class, I still was fairly dominant, and people started asking me why I didnt grab their gi ever.  I simply told them I didnt need to, and that I just dont grab clothing out of habit.  I tried my best to learn the grips but it takes time, and they werent readily as comfortable for me.  I feel that its silly to say that one is more technical than the other.  A lot of people will say that all the world champions train gi, but I feel this arguement is flawed because no gi is fairly new, and still in its infancy compared to traditional gi jiu jitsu.  Marcelo Garcia, one of the greatest grapplers of all time, even claims himself that they both are incredibly technical, and doesnt think one is more technical than the other. I’m just some random guy so my opinion doesn’t count for much, but Marcelo’s I feel does.

As a white belt never having worn a gi in my life, I was holding my own and even dominating other white belts, blue belts, and even purple belts.  I wondered if I was such a “sloppy no gi player” how was I breezing through all these supposed “technical wizards”?  The answer is simple to me.  They are both incredibly technical sports, and usually the only people saying no-gi is sloppy are the people who train in the gi.  They have been fed a story by their instructor for whatever reason and never question it.  Well I reserved my opinion on this until I actually trained both, and I feel most people should do the same.

There are some very stark differences between the gyms that did not take long to notice, as far as atmosphere and style.  A big difference I noticed was the speed and pacing of the styles.  No-gi is slick and fast and full of what I call flow.  Gi is very slow, there is lots of yanking and pulling and grip fighting.  In the gi it takes much longer to pass guard and there tends to be a preference of standing up to pass the guard most of the time.  I think that it is a matter of preference in that respect.  I like the flow, the “slipperyness” of no gi.  It is exciting and you are truly rolling.  In gi it is just not my style.  I dont feel like its very technical to grab a wad of my sleeve and wait for the timer.  There is definetly a more traditional martial arts feel at the gi gym as well.  There is bowing to the mats, and everyone yelling OSS! every 2 seconds.  Everything is done by rank, the way you line up and which classes you are allowed to join.  Leglocks of any kind are illegal, which sucks because thats sort of my specialty.  In the no gi gym anything imaginable is legal, and any class is open if you think you can hang.  The types of people I also find interestingly different.  Since the no gi gym is geared towards MMA, the members tend to be bigger and tougher.  They are mostly all incredible athletes (myself excluded).  At the gi gym, the members not only are smaller, but there are more girls.  This makes sense to me, because the technical rhetoric would make alot of sense to a girl who might worried about the strength of her male cohorts.  They also might feel less self conscience about their bodies in a thick gi uniform.  There is also a big focus on rank achievement at the gi gym I find really strange.  Everyone seems to eye up belt colors, and brag about submitting a certain color belt.  They talk about who should and shouldnt be a blue belt or a purple belt in hushed corners.  In the no gi gym you dont know who is good until you roll with them, and nobody really seems to care who wins.  There is a lot of laughing and joking around to be heard over a stereo playing rock and hip-hop as opposed to the gi gym where it is deathly serious at all times and there is no music to be heard as you roll, only the heavy breathing and grunts of the people around you.  The gi gym is also twice as expensive at per month, compared to the no gi gym. Not even counting the extra money you probably pay for testing and belts.

The one great thing about the gi gym is that there is a massive amount of members.  Probably at least 3 times more members.  I think a lot of it has to do with their excellent marketing, nobody in this city hasnt heard of them.  Another is that they have a heavy focus on competition, which in turn acts as self marketing in a way.  They compete at any tournament within 200 miles it seems.  It really helps to get their name out there and inspire confidence. If you compete a lot of want to compete, this alone would be a huge advantage.  The other reason I think they have more students is because people like achieving something tangible.  At both schools you would learn incredible knowledge about grappling but only 1 school will give you a fancy belt to show off.  For me the learning is more than enough, but I think the average person needs that belt for their own self confidence. There is also something that needs to be said about the level of expertise. At both schools the instructors are incredibly knowledgable, and they are both legit.

That was just some of my thoughts from both sides of the fence.  They are truly 2 difference sports.  Like judo and greco roman wrestling, the object of both is the exact same, but one has grips, the other doesnt.  A lot of the differences I noticed could very well be specific to these gyms alone but something tells me they are both fairly good ambassadors as to what to expect from each style of gym in general. Traditional BJJ makes alot of sense for certain types of people, but for me I enjoy the leglocks, the egoless atmosphere and the flow.