It’s a common way that BJJ is taught. You show up to class, do a warm up, perform unresisted repetitions of several different techniques and then you roll. The warm up and rolling are beneficial, but the technique portion in the middle is ineffective. Ineffective? Observe the experienced students in gyms that structure their sessions […]
A teacher of mine had a saying he was fond of. “If you believe everything I say then you’re a fool. Either prove me right or prove me wrong”. This is great advice for life in general, but it’s very relevant to the martial arts. Pressure point knock outs, kiai masters, wrist throws, chi balls. […]
The most important skill in BJJ is not a physical skill, but a mental one. It’s the ability to predict how your opponent is about to move. Once you know how your opponent is about to move, you can plan your response and implement it with good timing. In expert level competition, everyone is moving […]
Last Sunday we were proud to host the regular West Australian Women’s BJJ sessions run by Josephine Masiello. Jo (WA’s first female BJJ black belt) has been organising regular sessions for all female BJJ practitioners since last year. This is a fantastic initiative by Jo to provide support and specialised training to women in our […]
I was recently pointed to a blog post about applying the Pareto (80/20) principle to BJJ. Seeing as my gym is named for this principle, a response seems appropriate. The idea behind the Pareto principle is asymmetry. Obviously, not everything is the same. There are a small number of good things, a large number of […]
I recently received an email from a beginner enquirying about how to take a better approach to learning BJJ. The email illustrates the common idea that many beginners have, that BJJ is a collection of techniques. Unfortunately, many BJJ coaches and instructors encourage this idea by running a class composed entirely of techniques. Techniques are […]
… said one of our members during Sunday morning training. This made me laugh because I’ve said the same thing many times over the years. But it got me thinking. Those times when I said I hated gi, I didn’t hate it all the time. When I was choking someone with a collar choke, gi […]
The first thing a beginner needs to learn is not technical skill itself, but rather how to train to gain that technical skill. This is an important yet subtle point. Technical instruction alone, no matter how detailed, is not enough to ensure someone progresses quickly. The previous post described the methods I use to get […]
A typical BJJ session involves warmup, some sort of isolation training/drilling followed by rolling (integration). My previous post talked about drilling and there is lots of good detail in Matt Thornton’s Notes on Drilling. The next three posts will focus on rolling and my approach to rolling with the people I help train. For these […]
“Here are three random techniques. Let’s drill them with no resistance and then roll.” If you’ve had the misfortune to train this way you’ll understand how terrible it is. The naturally gifted will improve while everyone else flounders. It leads to frustration and ego problems. Let’s move beyond this. The goal in BJJ is to […]