Fighting bigger opponents in BJJ

Fighting bigger opponents in BJJ

Fighting bigger opponents in BJJ can be rough. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is one of the few combat sports that still allows open weight competition where smaller athletes can be matched against much larger opponents. In addition, in daily training at your Academy, we are routinely matched with larger training partners. Whenever faced against someone bigger and stronger than yourself, the key to beating them is to take their back or attack their legs. One thing I always advise…get behind them and choke them out or attack the legs, especially from 2 on 1 leg attacks. These two approaches to victory have proven more successful in my experience watching my students over my 20 years of teaching than all others. There are other good methods as well. I like guillotines,  I think the guillotine works well against bigger opponents, but nothing has had the level of success of rear naked chokes from the back and ashi-garami based leg attacks. The back makes good sense. A big opponent can’t crush you with his weight when you’re behind him and chokes can be applied even on very big people, especially in the gi. An opponent can use simple strength to push or pull someone behind him. In the case of leg locks, most people are inherently less coordinated with their feet and often more careless and forgetful of foot/leg placement than they are of hand/arm placement. So remember, when it’s time to take on the big people, think about BACK and LEGS as your path to victory! In this photo, the legend Marcelo Garcia attack the much larger Rico Rodriguez’s back in the 2005 ADCC submission wrestling World Championship. For more articles like this, always check the news section of www.njbjj.com