Gaining an advantage in BJJ


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.

Going with the flow in BJJ


Going with the flow in BJJ

Going with the flow in BJJ is a scientific approach most should adhere to. In Jiu-Jitsu, even with a well-laid plan, your next steps aren’t always predetermined. Furthermore, you see this when you translate your efforts from drilling to sparring, and discover that what seemed certain and stable is much more fluid than it initially appeared. The scientific way of working through this uncertainty isn’t to pretend that you always have the right answer. It’s to engage with the process of getting closer to the right answer. First, you lay out your hypothesis (or someone else’s, which is OK), then you show your work and make a prediction about what’s going to come next. With this approach, you’re not allowed to use magic to explain what happens. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), the instructor constantly use the phrase “these aren’t magic tricks we are teaching.” You can’t bend the outcome to fit what you’d planned. If you’re wrong, you just start again from the beginning with a new argument, checking your work and making a better prediction. Being wrong and needing to correct your hypothesis is a daily occurrence, as you make new choices and respond to your partner’s actions and reactions. You won’t find the right answers every time, but you will improve when you engage with the process that brings you closer to them.

Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA


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.

Sparring with a purpose in BJJ


Sparring with a purpose in BJJ

Sparring with a purpose in BJJ is important. Because, the vast majority of Jiu-Jitsu practitioners enter every sparring session with a “let’s see what happens†attitude. Let me tell you something, whenever you enter sparring with a “let’s see what happens†attitude, you will simply end of doing the same things you did in all your previous sparring sessions. You will just rinse and repeat.  Left to their own devices, almost all BJJ practitioners will always go back to their same habits. The idea of progressive training is to create NEW habits, not simply repeat old ones. Change within yourself has to be FORCED, it won’t happen by itself. The best way to make this happen is to have a clear goal or more that one goal when you spar. Usually the goals are very modest… a new grip, a new set up for a favorite move, perhaps a new move you think has potential. Only by bringing in new material and improving old material will you make progress. This is best done by having a notion of what you want to accomplish before you slap hands and commence sparring. Of course there are days where you just want to spar with an open and relaxed mind and have fun seeing what happens – that’s fine and healthy. However, make sure a healthy percentage of your sparring sessions involve clear prior goals to prevent them degenerating into “more of the same†sessions where you walk out the same the same as you walked in the door.

Tension and Fear in BJJ


Tension and Fear in BJJ

Jiu-Jitsu asks you to walk the line between tension and fear in BJJ, especially when it comes to new things. Learning is often difficult. If it wasn’t, you’d already know everything you needed to know. Any time you try to learn something new, whether it’s a total paradigm shift or just adding important details to something that’s already there, it’s easy to get stuck.
What sticks you to the spot isn’t fear of something new or fear of change, even though both of these are charges often levied at the burden of learning. It’s the tension of uncertainty, the competing concerns between “will this work†and “this might not workâ€. It’s the stress of wondering whether if I learn this, will it benefit me…or distract me? In my experience, this tension is the hallmark of a great educational experience. A truly new idea or experience places you on a threshold – where you used to be vs. where you are going. You may sometimes expose yourself to a little tension willingly, but often we hesitate when we have the opportunity to learn something new. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can choose to actively seek out this pressure, the experience of being on the threshold and seeing the next few steps without seeing the whole staircase. When you do, you let what’s new push over you over the edge and out onto the other side. here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), this is something we often talk about.

BJJ happens in real time


BJJ happens in real time

BJJ happens in real time and time always catches up. So because Jiu-Jitsu happens in real time, so there are always new decisions to be made. We prefer to make proactive choices wherever we can, but with resistance in the mix, you also have to become comfortable with reactive choices (where you don’t initiate the action but must still work to advance your plan anyway). Proactive or reactive, *bad* decisions happen when you’re in a rush and can’t process information fast enough. You miss an important part of the signal and head off in the wrong direction. This happens in guard-passing, when the passer can change directions faster and with greater ease than the guard player and clears the legs as a result. Panic also inhibits good decisions, leading to a freak out and a cascade of emergency choices that are less than optimal. Bad decisions also happen when the effects of your choices aren’t evident right away – you’re swayed by short-term comfort and ignore long-term repercussions. Exploding out of the mount works until it doesn’t. Many bad decisions work out OK in the short run because you can be short-term successful…but time often changes changes this. To work on making better long-term decisions requires elevating the value of the long run. It can be worthwhile to sacrifice immediate gratification, to look closely at the gap you’re covering up and the mistakes you make. With attention, you can start this process where you are and learn do it regardless of how much noise there might be around instant results.

Taking notes in Jiu-Jitsu


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.

Joint lock submissions in BJJ


Joint lock submissions in BJJ

When it come to Joint lock submissions in BJJ, don’t be in a hurry to extend the limb. There are two ways to submit an opponent in Jiu-Jitsu, chokes and joint locks. Overall, I believe chokes are the more effective of the two but joint locks are still a truly vital part of the game. You must make a deep study of the skill of attacking the arms and legs of an opponent. Probably the single most common problem I see in developing students who have gotten into a position to joint lock an opponent is an unnecessary rush to completion that sacrifices control and allows an opponent to escape. When it comes to joint locks, control beats speed. There are exceptions to this. There are times when a fast entry and finish can get you a win before an opponent can get into a defensive reaction, but for every time you see this happen you will see twenty cases where too much concern with speed weakens your control and you end up with nothing. Focus on a tight connection to the joint above the joint that you are attacking. If you are attacking the knee for example, get a good connection to the hip. If your attacking the elbow, get a good connection to the shoulder. Don’t be afraid to move with your opponent to maintain that connection. When you feel the connection is strong and you can control your opponents movement, THEN go to attack the joint. Victory will go to the person who exhibits great control more often than the person who exhibits great speed.

BJJ: Are you casual or are you serious?


BJJ: Are you casual or are you serious?

BJJ: Are you casual or are you serious? One of the first things we ask a new student who wants to become a student here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) is “are you casual or are you serious?” Casual vs. Serious: It’s important to know what your goals are. Time is an extremely valuable expenditure. Of all the things we can find and make and get, time isn’t one of them. One of my favorite quotes is from Charles Buxton “you will never find the time for anything. If you want time, you must make it” That’s why you have to differentiate between being a casual learner and serious learner. Once you understand this as a choice, all around you you’ll see opportunities to deepen your knowledge and transition from being a vague generalist to an intensive specialist.
Commitment is a powerful amplifier for this process. It can take a weak signal and make it stronger. Like the best moves in jiu-jitsu, commitment is a leverage point which gets your time working harder than it otherwise might. You make an uncommon investment when you put yourself completely behind an effort or an idea and when you’re all in, you get a significant return. Choose to go from casual to serious and make your time worth more. In BJJ, I have found that like everything else in life, the most committed to getting better are the people who make the most progress. If you want to find the time for something, you will. And you will reap the rewards.
A quote about time and the mountains

Managing your emotions in BJJ


Managing your emotions in BJJ

Today I want to talk about managing your emotions in BJJ. Emotional state management in Jiu-Jitsu and even in life for that matter is a critical skill to develop. It’s something we really focus on at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com). Jiu-Jitsu rewards you when you give attention to “the main thing”. For many of us, not having things go our way can be a frustrating experience that takes us away from that main thing. It can lead to anger or irritation, which then clouds the sort of clear thinking that’s needed for proactive problem-solving. In almost all cases, anger and frustration do not actually help you. In addition, it works in the exact opposite way. Anger of any form will keep you frozen, immobilizing you with no productive outcome. An alternative is to try framing whatever problem you face in a way that assumes there is an answer to be found, even if you can’t see it yet. It may take some time and you may need to recruit others to help you get on this path. But you‘ll get where you’re going faster by emphasizing an active search for creative solutions, rather than letting your frustration paralyze you. Also, here is something else to think about. Your physical heath. Anger can also affect your health in many different ways. An angry outburst can put your heart at risk. It can also weaken your immune system and if you are later in age, possibly lead to a stroke. If you have anxiety, it can make that worse and lead to depression. Studies show that happy people live longer. They also show stress is very tightly linked to general health. If you’re stressed and angry, you’ll shorten your lifespan. These are some more things to consider when it comes to managing your emotions.