What is your best skill in BJJ?

/in /by


What is your best skill in BJJ?

What is your best skill in BJJ? Yesterday we looked at the problem of lagging skills in our game. Today we shall look at our strong points. What is your best skill on the mat? Is it a positional move? Like a guard pass or sweep? Or is it a submission move, like for example the Americana lock, aka keylock? How did it become your best skill? Was it a natural result of your body type? Your personality? Perhaps some technical insights from a professor, coach, a mentor or self experimentation? We are all proud of our best skills, they give us confidence and direction on the mat. When we go against a tough opponent, we naturally gravitate towards our best moves and when things get tough, we work in the hope that we can bring our best and biggest guns to bear. Now ask yourself three sets of questions. However happy you might be with your favorite skills. First, do you really maximize your potential success with that particular move? Or, can you do more with it? Second, do you use that skill or move as a lead into other moves and skills to broaden your skillset or “toolbox”? And third, what did you experience learning and developing this favorite move of yours teach you about learning in Jiu-Jitsu? Could you use this knowledge to help you learn other moves and further your progress far beyond it’s current state? What about learning things the same way off the mats? It’s natural (and healthy) to feel a sense of pride and contentment about your best moves. Keep working hard to make forward progress and learn to use past learning success, not as a place to rest and be happy, but as a springboard to further progress and development that will elevate you far above the level that you are currently at.

What is your worst skill in BJJ?

/in /by


What is your worst skill in BJJ?

What is your worst skill in BJJ? Every BJJ practitioner, you, me, everybody, has a worst skill. For some, it starts with their attitude and willingness to listen. And for others, it is some part of the game that lags far behind their other skills. We all carry it around as a burden and hope it does not show up in sparring or competition. A great project for all Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students is to identify the worst element of your game. It can be a move, say for example, the triangle choke, a problem for many heavier people when they start training. In addition, it can be a position, say, left side bottom half guard. Whatever it is, identify it. Then study it. Ask your instructor about it. Furthermore, study great athletes who have a reputation for excellence in that area. Then set a very manageable goal. For three weeks, start every sparring session in that position or move and spend as as much time as possible working on that specific area. Initially you will feel awful. Don’t get dispirited. Understand this, in all learning activities, the greatest jump in skill level occur early in the training and decrease over time. We preach this at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.bjjlyndhurst.com). I promise you that after a rough start, you will make astounding progress in that area in a relatively short time. Will you be a world beater? No, but you will be considerably better and put yourself in a position to improve over time. Most importantly, you will no longer see that specific area as a weakness in your game. In addition, you will see it as a growth area with potential to improve in the future. Once you see it in that light, then you can move forward with that move/position as part of your overall progress, rather than make progress in some areas and just leave that one behind and hope it never gets exposed.

A tip for getting better at BJJ

/in /by


A tip for getting better at BJJ

Here is A tip for getting better at BJJ. Handicapping yourself to make yourself better: One of the most valuable methods of improving your skills is to handicap yourself in same way that forces you to adjust in some way that encourages skill development in other critical areas. I usually find that most beginning students are hand and dominant in almost every aspect of the game. This is a natural consequence of the fact that most tasks we perform in everyday life are predominantly performed with hands and arms. However this usual hand/arm bias is not acceptable in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Trying to perform the moves of BJJ with hands and arms quickly leads to fatigue and failure. The source of all power and endurance in human beings is in the legs and hips. They are the strongest parts of your body. Only when you become leg and hip dominant in the performance of Jiu-Jitsu moves will you excel. For instance, in the case of heel hooking, a simple test for us as  teachers here at Savarese BJJ Academy (northnjbjj.com) as to whether or not a student is performing the move predominantly with legs and hips is to make him or her perform the heel hook with only one hand. This immediately forces the student to properly apply legs and hips in the move. Furthermore, they cannot compensate for failures in hip and leg work with their hand strength. When you can easily submit an opponent with a single handed heel hook, breaking an opponent with two hands is easy work. There are MANY ways to use this simple training principle in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Use it often. It will teach you a lot about how the other parts of your body are involved in any given move. When you remove the handicap and come after your opponent with full force, they will feel the jump in performance you have made.

All about the grips in BJJ

/in /by


All about the grips in BJJ

It’s All about the grips in BJJ. Especially shutting down grips. This is something we preach here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com). Shutting down grips: Every attack an opponent can every do to you in grappling starts with a grip of some kind. If you can control his ability to grip you then you can nullify most of the danger he presents to you. You don’t want to take this line of thinking too far and become an overly defensive gripper. Make sure you negate the opponent’s grip and then immediately go into your attacks so that you maintain a good spirit of offense in your game at all times. Nonetheless it’s important that you be able to stop an opponent getting to their favorite grips, because once he can impose them things can go quickly from bad to worse. If you can stop his hands – you’ll stop everything that follows.

Importance of posture in Jiu-Jitsu

/in /by


Importance of posture in Jiu-Jitsu

Importance of posture in Jiu-Jitsu can be tricky for some. One tip for posture in Jiu-Jitsu is to stay compact. Probably one of the biggest problems beginners in BJJ face is that of extending their bodies at times that make them very vulnerable to attack. Most of the fundamental postures of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, particularly the defensive ones, involve contraction of the body – spine rounded, elbows and knees tucked in tight, often times connecting the elbows to the knees. Learning to trust in this contraction as the best means of slipping your limbs inside your opponent’s limbs as the most high percentage route to escape and evasion is a big step for the beginner in Jiu-Jitsu. As you progress, the problem will change from that of getting to a safe, contracted posture to that of maintaining this strong posture throughout the course of a long tough match against a skilled opponent who is doing everything he can to subvert that posture. Either way, learning and fighting to keep your limbs in tight at the appropriate time will be a constant theme of your training. Just as a good boxer constantly keeps his chin tucked, shoulders high and rounded to protect his jaw and elbows in tight to protect his torso when in danger, so will a good BJJ practitioner. A good Jiu-Jitsu practitioner puts his or her primary effort into sound defensive structure before anything else. Here, one of our Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) instructors Sean presents our student Kayla with a wall of knees and elbows that prevents her from exploiting the angle she has gained. His well rounded spine will give him the mobility he needs to quickly recover his legs and square up to her so that he can immediately shift from a defensive cycle to an offensive one. Posture before all, and in defense, when in doubt, contract and pull everything in tight. Practice the posture in BJJ theory and watch your BJJ game evolve.

Moving up the ladder in BJJ

/in /by


Moving up the ladder in BJJ

Moving up the ladder in BJJ can be tricky for some. The higher you go….Moving up the ladder in BJJ, the less you will concern yourself with the standard techniques of the sport. Your first challenge when you begin your BJJ journey is to develop strong skills in the basic operations of the game. You must train often to develop skill in the basic moves. So for example, you work hard to develop a good arm bar, a tight triangle, a reliable elbow escape etc etc. By the time you get to a good level, you will come to realize that in the majority of cases, there is near uniformity in the ability of most of the people you train with or fight against to perform the basic moves of the sport. In addition, some may even do them better than you. If you watch the current world champion perform a basic move, say for example, an arm bar from closed guard, there is little to distinguish it from a local black belt. But, at the higher levels, it is much more about your ability to outperform others at the particular setup of that techniques than the technique itself. Among competent black belts, EVERYONE has a strong arm bar, a strong kimura, a strong triangle choke. What makes one stand out from the others is mostly about the small and subtle skills and tactics that enables him or her to get into the situation where they can actually apply that technique. Due to the fact that the vast majority of your opponent’s defense to any given move comes from the integrity of his stance, the single most important skill at the higher levels becomes the ability to redirect, negate and degrade your opponent’s stance. Only then will you be able to actually apply the basic moves of the sport. Beginners must focus on moves, but as you gain in expertise, you must shift your direction to breaking your opponents stance and structure, Then and only then will the opportunity to apply those moves arise. Our teaching here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) reflects this fact…moves are taught in great detail, but always embedded in a coherent system of preliminary moves that make them work in competition.

In BJJ, Use the power of your hips

/in /by


In BJJ, Use the power of your hips

In BJJ, Use the power of your hips! Using the power of your hips is important o building a good defensive system. In most respects the human body is not particularly impressive in terms of generating power, but the hips and legs are a notable exception. When you can harness the power of your hips in a constructive way, you’ll find your combat effectiveness greatly increases. One of the best examples of this comes when athletes use their hips effectively against takedown attempts. Aggressively checking and stopping an opponents takedown with your hips and then pulling him onto your hips to lift and rotate him enables you to strongly counter takedowns and many forms of wrestling based guard sweeps. Probably the most commonly used variation of this is uchi mata. You’ll need an upper body connection, usually an over hook, but it’s the lower body that supplies the horsepower. Learning to quickly fit your hips into and under your opponents hips provides you with a tremendous source of power that you can call on at a moment’s notice and turn defense into offense. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) we teach escaping your hips is the one thing every defensive BJJ movement has in common. From there on, if you take a look at the BJJ bridge, another huge part of using the hips, you’ll notice that the end goal is the same. Escape your hip from underneath your opponent. In fact, you might argue that the bridge is nothing more than a hip escape done with your hips higher off the ground. In short, everything in BJJ is about the hips. Even a bridge. Next time you need to bridge, think about being close to your opponent, using your hamstrings for power, and going in the right direction. Throw in the concept of escaping your hips away when you’re at the peak of the motion and you have a foolproof way of bridging. Now transfer all this knowledge to any other position that requires you to bridge another integral part of using your hips to escape. .

The great divide in BJJ

/in /by


The great divide in BJJ

The great divide in BJJ: There are two approaches to winning in Jiu-Jitsu. The first are PROACTIVE methods. Here the idea is to initiate the action. You set the goal and start the work towards it. So if I favor arm bar attacks, I will begin with set ups that push the action towards position where I can attack arm-bars. This stands in contrast to REACTIVE approaches. Here, I passively observe my opponent’s actions and I  counter. He initiates and as I observe, I see opportunity arise in the course the the action or the flow. I then match the opportunity with the appropriate technique and score. Let’s understand something very important about these two different approaches. Proactive approaches generally require a small set of favorite moves encased in a large collection of set-ups that enable you to force their application against someone who knows they are coming. Reactive approaches on the other hand, generally require a large set of moves to cover any situation our opponent puts us in, but very little set up as the opponent creates the opportunity for us. This means the stylistic difference between the two can be quite dramatic. Proactive games are all about creating the conditions for a few favorite moves. Reactive methods are all about patience, pacing, sensing opportunity and having the breadth of technique to cover whatever opportunity emerges in front of you. There have been great champions using both approaches and also great champions who merged both approaches together. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.bjjlyndhurst.com) we teach that understanding which approach you want to master will help give you a sense of what kind of training program you must adopt to make good progress. In addition, it can give you a defined path for your training, what you should be working on and how.

Finishing mechanics in Jiu-Jitsu

/in /by


Finishing mechanics in Jiu-Jitsu

Finishing mechanics in Jiu-Jitsu should always be on your mind. A distinctive feature of our coaching style here at Savarese BJJ Academy (northnjbjj.com) is an unusually heavy emphasis on finishing mechanics for all the major submission holds that we teach at our Academy. So often I see talented athletes do a fine job of entering into a submission and controlling their opponent, but then exhibit weak finishing mechanics at the crucial moment when submission victory was within their grasp. Furthermore, the hold is now lost. As a BJJ practitioner, you must have a very clear understanding of the mechanical details that make a given submission work against determined resistance. Perhaps more than any other aspect of Jiu-Jitsu, the submissions game is the one where the smallest errors of placement of hands, feet or angles and application of directions of force will have the most detrimental effects. Study your favorite submissions with an eye for detail that surpasses all other aspects of the game and you will soon find that opponents who used to easily slip away from you are now trapped and helpless when you get to your finishing positions. Make your primary focus tightness, restrictions of movement and precision in placement of angles rather than application of power or strength. If you base your entire BJJ game on strength, you will lose every time you face an opponent who is stronger than you. Observe the impressive tightness of the kimura used by Professor Rafael Lovato Jr to win this Fight To Win match against a super tough opponent in Ricardo Demente, such is the precise placement of hands, head and elbows, along with the rotational direction of force that we favor  Take pride in your finishing mechanics, once you master them you will have a set of weapons that opponents will fear and upon which you can attach great faith.

Mentors in BJJ

/in /by


Mentors in BJJ

Mentors in BJJ: I am a huge believer in the idea of taking on grappling mentors, usually someone with a similar body type as you, or just outstanding figures in the art Of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu  who you believe have some characteristics that strongly appeal to you or which you believe could greatly improve your performance and direction if you were to implement them. Some truly great grapplers who dazzled the sports of grappling and MMA (earlier known as NHB or No Holds Barred) when they entered ADCC, the World BJJ Championships or the UFC or Pride inspired me These legends were Rickson, Royler, Renzo and Roger Gracie as well as Saulo Ribeiro and Jean Jacques Machado. Watching and studying ALL of them had a huge impression on my BJJ. Of course my Instructors had the most but film study has always been a huge part of my BJJ and these are the men were who I studied the most. I even studied Leticia Ribeiro because her X-Guard was awesome.  Jean Jacque for his guard and the way he blitzed his weight division on several occasions, it was not just that he won that was so impressive, it was the WAY he won. There was not a moment wasted on the mat, he embodied what I take as the ideal of Jiu-Jitsu. His BJJ always had a purpose, purposeful movement towards head control that lead to submission. Royler for strategy, something I learned masterfully training under him. Renzo, man, I owe so much to him, I learned so much from him. Rickson for the way he capitalized on mistakes (and forced them) If you wanted to show a curious friend what great grappling looks like and were looking for exciting and technically flawless matches you could not do better than Rickson Gracie. Roger and saulo for their passing mastery and Saulo’s standup was always amazing. Roger was like watching a genius. From the start of the match until the inevitable submission finish it was a hustling bustling flurry of well directed attacks in combinations that flowed evenly between position and submission and created tactical pressure rather than physical pressure, watching this pressure crack his opponents was one of the most instructive lessons of my own development. Trying to recreate that sense of efficient and unrelenting attack has been a big part of my work, and todays grapplers are still using his style (Roger heavily influenced John Danaher, so his guys mimic Roger’s top game often) and it should be yours too.

A series of pictures showing different types of martial arts.

Mentors in BJJ