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Patience is a virtue in BJJ

Patience is a virtue in BJJ. As is the virtue of slowness. Working out new ideas and integrating new skills into your set is a creative process. It has to be open-ended, relaxed and loose enough so you can cultivate a new set of habits…and not be afraid of “positive dissatisfaction†with your results. Over time, you’ll tighten everything up, but at the outset, you have to be flexible enough to make a few mistakes in order to see what you’re missing. Starting with a feeling of tightness, pressure or competition can be stifling, blocking the flow of ideas and associations you need in order to fully integrate something new into what you know already. Whether you are a fast learner or a slow one, there’s an almost universal experience of impatience in the learning process. Armlocks, leglocks, sweeps, takedowns, no matter the topic, you’ll want to get to the end so you can see the finished result. If you can learn instead to become patient with the process, enjoying the effort you have to exert in research and discovery, you’ll find a kind of organic growth that stays with you over the long-term. Looking back, the extra time you put in won’t seem exhausting and laborious. Instead it’ll be invaluable, an essential and organic part of your development in Jiu-Jitsu.

Gaining an advantage in BJJ

Gaining an advantage in BJJ  is something to always be looking for during a match or sparring session. Training your mind to see working from neutrality to advantage. The basic insight behind all martial arts is that of gaining some form of prior advantage before committing to an attack. In truth however, our opponents strongly and skillfully resist any attempt on our part to gain any form of advantage and so we spend the majority of our time on the mat in neutral positions. It is important to understand that even within positions that are considered neutral (no points scored), there can still be minor advantages gained that can accumulate to a degree where a breakthrough can be attained and/or points scored or a submission is applied. Often it may be something small, an advantageous grip, foot position, head placement – anything that affords you a greater degree of control over him than he has over you, no matter how small. Understand this, any given neutral position is in practice, only as neutral as the skill level of the 2 competitors. Learn to go beyond seeing positions as dominant or advantageous and start to look for actions and placements that are advantageous. These are less obvious, less well defined, but against skilled opponents, they will be the resource you call upon more than any other. Here, our 2 Savarese BJJ students Elliot and Anoop work from neutral position for leg control. Small nuances in grip, limb positioning, placement of wedges and directionality of force will determine winner and loser in these situations.

Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA

Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA is amust have for your BJJ toolbox of techniques. Futhermore, attacking the neck via the rear naked choke has the most finishes in the history of MMA. An essential feature of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the idea of concentration of force upon a vulnerable target that if successfully attacked, would end the fight. Hence, the neck. There is no part of the human body that is more vulnerable to the attacks of grappling than the neck. The neck is relatively small in circumference, around fifteen to twenty inches for most male athletes and smaller in females,  yet within it are packed together some of the most vital components of the human body. The body does a good job of protecting key components like heart and lungs behind the bony rib cage. The crucial spinal cord is well protected by the spine. The brain by the thickness of the skull. The neck on the other hand, houses the critical carotid arteries, vertebral arteries, jugular veins, trachea and the spine itself, along with a host of other very important components, all packed in close to each other with absolutely no protection and close to the surface. As such, the neck is the single best target for attack when grappling (when strikes are involved you can argue that the jaw and other targets becomes more important). I remember the light bulb go off in my head the first time this was explained to me in a conversation between my friends John Danaher and Carl Massaro. All BJJ students must make a serious study of neck anatomy and the means of attacking the vulnerability of this greatest of all targets. In grappling, The human body is controlled at the head, but it is best finished at the neck. No other part of the body offers this. I teach my students to fight like vampires, with the neck is always the first target. Once opponents fear your neck attacks, their defensive reactions will often make other favored targets such as legs, much easier to snatch.

Tension and Fear in BJJ

Taking notes in Jiu-Jitsu

Taking notes in Jiu-Jitsu is something I am a big believer. First of all, I am a believer in the notion that to a large degree, Jiu-Jitsu is a knowledge game. Of course, knowledge is not the whole story. Until KNOWLEDGE is translated into SKILL, it is of little practical value to the BJJ student (though it can still be of great value to the professor or instructor). Like any knowledge based enterprise, there is a lot of memorizing and, unfortunately, a lot of forgetting! As such, I believe it is of great value to many people (not all people, some learn in very different ways) to keep notes on their progress and even of classes. At the end of every day, I always made sure I wrote down in some form the main things I learned that day. I don’t suggest writing vast amounts, but I do recommend writing them in a fashion that you would remember in a year (for example, a triangle…like the final scene of Lethal Weapon). Just write the NEW elements that you believe have potential for the future. I believe that writing things down on a piece of paper or typing them into your phone aids in retention. In addition to helping retention, it helps order your thoughts into more coherent structures that will help you work them into your development. So even if you never peruse those notes again, they still will have helped you. I DEFINITELY recommend this for seminars you attend. Most of the classes you take will be 3-5 techniques. In a seminars, if may be between 15-20, taking notes will definitely aid you to remember everything thought. I remember once coming across an old journal of mine from 2002 and seeing an entry on an “interesting concept that may be of considerable value for further research and wider applicationsâ€. It was the notion of double trouble applied to ashi garami based leg locks that I learned from John Danaher in a private lesson. How ironic that this would go on years later to be of such value to my students. I love going over my old BJJ notes from time to time to see how far I’ve come, how much BJJ has evolved and to go back to remember things I haven’t worked on in awhile. Let the time, orderliness and discipline of note taking work for you, just as you did in school as a kid or in college,  it can help you take the lessons of today into your improvements of tomorrow.