Advice for limited training time
The whole conversation is interesting. This part is the most applicable to us regular dudes.
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philosophy
Training Philosophy
I watched a few videos recently that were less about specific techniques and more about philosophies related to training. First, I came across this discussion of guard pulling. It pretty well captures my feelings about training standup. There are folks who complain about the lack of standup in Jiu Jitsu and it’s fair to note the deficiency at the highest levels, but there are practical reasons to de-emphasize it at the hobbyist level.
The rest of the interview is interesting because Travis Stevens is such a beast from his judo background, but here are some thoughts on BJJ takedowns from a Judo silver medalist:
On another subject, Andrew Wiltse went on a rant about skill development. I’m less interested in his detour about optimal strength and conditioning training beyond my agreement that rolling is not the optimal way to achieve it. That isn’t a huge concern from me. As Kesting’s video noted, there’s a difference between dedicated competition training and learning.
I know rolling is fun and I try to accommodate that in class but I do agree that free rolling and not using enough intermediate levels of intensity prevent skill development. I’m super guilty of this in my guitar playing as I have a tendency to play songs within my current skill level rather than doing more deliberate practice to advance the level. There’s a balance between having fun and progressing, but everyone needs to ask themselves whether they really want to get better over time and are they really doing the things that would contribute to that.
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Getting to Butterfly Guard
So far, we’ve been emphasizing the mechanics of sweeping from the butterfly guard, but in order to use those skills, we’ll need to establish the right positioning. A hinderance to my adoption of butterfly guard has generally been the lack of control I feel when I approach someone with the mindset to enter butterfly rather than establishing a different guard. My legs get grabbed, hopped over, or danced around before I get anything going. Pulling half guard generally reduces the movements and encourages my opponent to perform a more high-contact guard pass, which I prefer. I’d rather be smashed than have to chase someone.
My preference for slow control makes Marcelo Garcia’s approach problematic for me. He replaces physical control with an onslaught of attacks. He doesn’t need so much control if his opponent is always on the defensive. It obviously works for him, but his instructional is about nogi where grips are not so powerful. Wardziński seems to drag people into butterfly with collar and sleeve grips. That’s a bit closer to my comfort zone, but the sleeve grips are not a natural move for me yet. What else is there?
Saulo doesn’t seem to like a direct entry into butterfly either. He shows how to move from a full guard position into butterfly. One point of emphasis that I took away from this video is the priority of pushing into the opponent first. It’s more important to post with a hand behind you and get your hook deep underneath them than to start worrying about their posting arm for the sweep defense.
I already live that half guard life, so maybe butterfly is a place to go but not to start. We worked on a version of this back in the half guard unit:
Maybe you don’t like being smashed so much and like knee shields more than I do. There’s a good reminder here that although there’s some visual similarity between half butterfly and a knee shield, they work differently. Your butterfly hook needs to go outside, it cannot go inside the way the knee shield does:
This next one doesn’t necessarily belong in this post, but it’s something that I watched while I was pondering the other resources. Gordon explains the necessity of combining multiple guard systems:
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Slow Down
You don’t learn when you are fighting, bringing in all sorts of tension and emotion. You learn when you are having fun, training in a smooth and gentle way. You need to work on improving your technique until you are comfortable in any situation. Eventually, you will develop a subconscious understanding of the techniques and they become reflexes. Only after you have done all this you are ready to take your natural abilities “off the shelf” and add them back into your game. Now the effectiveness of the technique will be at least ten times better.
Rickson Gracie
What is flow rolling?
This is a longer video, but worth considering. A lot of people talk about “light rolls” or “flow rolling” but they are poorly defined and it’s a skill in itself and it’s not widely taught.
Deliberate Practice
I spent some time talking in a recent class about the value of deliberate practice. The idea is important to me as I’ve always felt that Jiu Jitsu classes could be improved by a more thoughtful class structure. Ben Askren once shared his perspective as a wrestler on JRE:
We know, without a shadow of a doubt (that) just saying ‘go for five minutes’ is not the most effective way to train someone.
If I’m coaching at my academy, and we were drilling the front headlock, we don’t just say ‘OK, now go five-minute goes’ because how many tries are they gonna get at going at the front headlock position? Maybe one, maybe two, but essentially most people, if you say ‘go for five minutes’, they’re not disciplined enough to make themselves do new skills. They revert to whatever they do best. And then they just do it over and over and over again.
If I want a kid to be good at a front headlock – which if you’re gonna wrestle at a high level, you need a good front headlock – I’m gonna put him in there 50 times in that practice. He’s gonna get it over and over and over, and maybe the next day, it’s single-legs, and maybe the next day it’s double-legs. And maybe some days, you say ‘hey, go for ten minutes, go wrestle.’
But saying ‘go for five minutes’ every single day is very much not the most effective way to do it, and it’s so insanely frustrating for me to have that happen at almost every jiu-jitsu school in the planet.
Ben Askren
In the following video, Chewjitsu addresses the comments and shares the dilemma about this problem. Essentially, rolling more fun than focused practice. He tries, as I do, to find a balance between the two. He also used the music analogy. I actually dug this video up after that class. I didn’t mean to parrot his ideas, it’s convenient parallel thinking.
Also, I’ve previously linked to the full podcast, but if you want a more digestible portion. Here’s John Danaher’s thoughts on “drilling”:
I think getting your brain in the right mode to learn is as important as any technique that we’ll work on. I’m guilty of all of the bad habits myself, but I’m trying to be conscious about what I’m doing to make better use of my precious limited mat time.
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BJJ Philosophy
Here are some longer conversations about jiu jitsu, how to build a game from the ground up, and the value of half guard. It’s not just my own unqualified preference! Listen to John Danaher explain why he coaches his athletes to put themselves in half guard from both the top and the bottom. I find it to be the closest position to everything. Half guard is rarely more than one simple maneuver away. Because of that, I spent a lot of time there even before I wanted to. Then, I came to appreciate the way it slowed the game down and gave me an opportunity to keep up with younger, quicker opponents.
https://bernardofariaacademy.com/blog/ideal-game-old-grappler/