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Where attention goes, energy flows is an old quote, but truthful when it comes to BJJ. Where is his energy going? When you get a grip upon an opponent there two possible reactions. First, they first is that simply doesn’t react. In this case go straight into your offensive move and win. By far the common reaction is to resist whatever force you apply to the opponent through your grip. If you pull, the majority of your opponents will pull back. If you push, the majority will push back. Sometimes this reaction manifests itself as movement, sometimes the opponent will be static. This  does not matter. In either case, there will be an energy in a given direction. Learning to read where your opponents energy is going at any point of time in a match as they react to your grips is one of the most crucial competition skills you can ever develop. We stress this at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com). When you can read the direction their energy is going and quickly decide which move to apply that complements that direction, you can defeat opponents with relative ease. Most people decide first what they want to do and get a grip that allows them to do it. That’s fine and works very well in many cases. However, the advanced and veteran BJJ practitioners and competitors get a grip and push and pull and then decide which move they will employ based not upon what they want, but rather upon what their opponent offers. Learning to play with this mindset is one of your deepest goals in Jiu-Jitsu and elevates you into the ranks of those artful players who seem to get more done with less effort. This is not something that comes quickly. Initially just okay with the skill of getting a grip and pushing and pulling and feel your opponents reaction every time you grip up. In time you will learn to smoothly apply a well chosen move to their reaction but you have to start somewhere, so start with the empty minded grip and push/pull. As your repertoire of moves increases so will your ability to correlate a move to their reaction.

Separating knee and elbows to pass in BJJ is crucial. When you can separate knee and elbow you can pass and pin. One of the main difficulties associated with passing the guard of a trained opponent is separating his knee and elbow on the side towards which you are passing. As long as your opponent keeps his knee and elbow framed together you will not have the space required to establish chest to chest contact and though you may have passed his legs/hips- you have not passed his guard. Learn to understand the need to separate knee and elbow as part of the guard passing process and you will have a lot more success getting to your pins. Don’t be satisfied with the superficial action of getting past the legs and hips – this has little effect on a skilled opponent. Even as you are doing that, start plotting how you lever apart his knee and elbow so that you can actually profit from passing the legs/hips and get your score. Here, Professor Sav does a great job of keeping knee and elbow far apart as he exerts his passing pressure and is rewards with a gap big enough to drive a truck through. The result? A clean pass to a controlling pin. This is something we stress at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com). Pins lead to “cooking”, cooking makes people tired, and tired leads to submissions. This is why I always loved this quote by Saulo Ribeiro: “If you think, you are late. If you are late, you use strength. If you use strength you get tired. And if you get tired, you die!” Saulo himself used this theory to become a multiple time Wrold BJJ Champion and Masters World champion and even led some of his students like his brother Xande and Rafael Lovato Jr to great success.

When it come to takedowns in BJJ, I prefer takedowns from the back in BJJ. It’s a lot easier to take someone down when you’re behind them than when you’re in front of them. First of all, it’s never easy to take a skilled grappler down when you’re directly in front of them. Worse still, it can be downright risky when they have strong positional and submission counters to your takedown attempts. In contrast, takedowns from the standing rear body lock are easier and safer. We preach this heavily here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com). Futhermore you don’t have to get past your opponents head, hands and hips – the major defensive lines when operating from frontal positions. You don’t have to worry so much about guillotines and front headlock chokes, there is some threat from rolling leg lock entries and kimura but substantially less than the guillotine/front headlock danger from in front. Best of all, your feet are very close to your opponents feet, which opens up the possibility of foot sweeps. These are among the safest and most energy efficient takedowns in the game and are a big part of what we teach here. There are many paths to the back in standing position, some are deliberate and planned moves, some are spontaneous reactions to a perceived opportunity that arose as you grappled. Both approaches can put you in a position to make the task of takedowns much easier. The great Gordon Ryan used this theory in this summer’s ADCC tournament in the Superfight vs Andre Galvao (pictured below). Coming into this match, many fans of the sport and in the BJJ community probably thought that Andre would have a clear advantage in the standup game. But I knew from my training with John Danaher over the years that Gordon would be ready from anywhere.