Merging defense and offense in BJJ

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Merging defense and offense in BJJ

Merging defense and offense in BJJ becomes very important as you move up the ranks of our art. Here are our thoughts on this at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.bergencountybjj.com). Merging defense and offense: When an opponent attacks with a given move your first responsibility is to stop that move. Put your shields up and blunt the attack. But the second you’ve done so, don’t congratulate yourself on your defensive success. Immediately get to work on counter offense. One of the most profitable times to attack an opponent is in the immediate aftermath of a failed attack. Why? Because in most cases his posture and stance will be broken and posture and stance are the basis of defense. Take advantage of that window of opportunity and get to work. Strong defense is a wonderful thing, but even better is strong defense as a prelude to offense. The front headlock position for example is one of these areas. Counter your opponents shot with a hard sprawl and grab that coveted front headlock position. The options available from there are plentiful. First you can spin and take their back. Lock up that body triangle and start attacking the neck. Your changes of getting that choke will improve greatly with the body triangle. Front chokes like the guillotine and arm-in guillotine are also there. Put these together and watch your BJJ grow!

Anticipating failure in BJJ

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Anticipating failure in BJJ

Anticipating failurein BJJ: It’s good to be confident with your favorite moves and believe that you can get them to work anytime any place on any athlete. But, we’ve got to be realistic too. Sometimes your favorite move isn’t going to work, so we got to have effective back ups that enable us to go past an initial failure into success. Certain moves go hand in hand with each other. If you’ve got a favorite it’s important you back it up with appropriate follow ups when that inevitable failure arises. That way you’ll go immediately into a second move (and potentially third or fourth when you’re really getting good (any further than four is an indication that your mechanics are poor and it’s more likely you need to improve your execution than that your opponent has great defense)). So yes – it’s important you anticipate failure. This isn’t being negative, it’s being realistic. Just make sure you’ve got good follow ups that failure will open a door to success. In a previous artcile, we talked about combinations in BJJ (https://njbjj.com/combinations-a-must-in-bjj/). Definitely check back there to read about the importance of combination in BJJ. All the best BJJ competitors, Rafael Lovato Jr pictured here, one of the best Americans to ever do it, are great at anticipating failure in BJJ. Anticipating failure in BJJ is a must trait to develop on your way to trying to win or becoming a World Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Champion. At that level, the setups and attacks are so high level, that the mistake are usually the deciding factor in who eventually wins the match/fight. In MMA, anticipating failure is also a must in the striking game in order to land counter punches, maybe clinch off a failed strike and take the fight to the ground.

Working in combinations in BJJ

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Working in combinations in BJJ

Working in combinations in BJJ is crucial to success. Work in pairs, triples and quadruples. Having a strong offensive move is a wonderful thing, but not nearly so wonderful as having a strong complimentary move that goes in the opposite direction to overcome resistance to the first move. Better still when you have a third or fourth move (I don’t recommend going beyond four shot combinations as typically by that point control and connection has been lost to a degree that follow up attacks are unrealistic). Remember that the fundamental feature of sparring and competition is resistance to whatever you attempt, so having moves that feed off that resistance is one of the keys to success. Here, Professor is threatening with one of his best weapons, a strong back take off a shoulder crunch grip. His opponent is contorting himself to avoid the hooks, but in doing so is exposing himself to two submission follow ups – a back take or a rear naked choke, one of the staples of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Never think in terms of single attacks (something stressed here at Savarese BJJ (bergencountybjj.com) but rather, always go the extra distance and conceive of a complementary follow up that follows the lines of resistance to the first move – you will soon be rewarded with breakthroughs against even the toughest resistance.

Outside or inside control in BJJ?

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Outside or inside control in BJJ?

The fundamental choice in Jiu- Jitsu – outside control or inside control in BJJ?: When it comes time to control the human body, the fundamental choice you will have before you is whether to control your opponents body by gripping outside/over his limbs or inside/under his limbs. They represent very different methods of control with different goals. As a general rule, inside control is best suited for opening an opponents limbs out and away from his torso, while outside control is typically best suited for pushing limbs across the center line and exposing an opponents back. But, these are generalizations with important exceptions. When it comes to open guard, probably the most well known and proven method of outside control is deLaRiva guard, named after the famous old Brazilian legend Ricardo deLaRiva, once a rival of the great Royler Gracie, where your leg entwines the opponents lead leg from the outside. There are many variations utilizing different grips. This is an excellent position from which to launch your open guard offense, or, if you prefer inside position, to transfer to guards based upon inside position, such as ashi garami, X- guard, reverse De La Riva etc. Train yourself to tie up your opponents lead leg with your de la Riva hook and get whatever grips you want from there. Then it’s time to decide whether you attack directly from there or switch to another guard. Either way, De La Riva guard will prove an invaluable means of initial control and a fine staging point from which you can direct an opponent into any kind of open guard that you favor. Our Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com) competition team works vs DeLaRiva guard often, as it’s commonly used in competition.

Where attention goes, energy flows

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Where attention goes, energy flows

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.

Connections in open guard in BJJ

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Connections in open guard in BJJ

Connections in open guard in BJJ are important. Where will you focus your connection from open guard? When you work from your back in open guard, it is crucial you form a solid connection to an opponent so that defensively he will find it difficult to create angles that lead into guard passes and offensively, you will be able to break his balance and attack with sweeps and submissions. One of the major choices you will make in forming this connection is whether you should entangle your legs into the opponents ARMS (spider guard and lasso guard) or LEGS (De La Riva, Reverse De La Riva, ashi garami, x guard etc) or employ a mixed strategy and entangle both arms AND legs (eg ashi garami on one side at legs and spider guard on the other side arm). All of them are tremendously effective and you can find many champions who specialize in one of these three choices. It is natural to favor one of the choices and develop it as a specialty, but don’t ignore the others. In truth the overall game is the same, form a strong connection using all four of your limbs and get the opponent out of balance as a precursor to your sweeps and submissions, they just employ different ways of doing it. We teach a 2 week course on a 4 limbs theory every couple of months at Savarese BJJ (bergencountybjj.com).Using all three entanglement strategies makes you a very tricky opponent and a versatile one, even if you are noticeably better better at one type of entanglement than the others. Understand also that it is easy and natural to go from one to another, when you do so you maximize your potential from open guard.

Separating knee and elbows to pass in BJJ

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Separating knee and elbows to pass in BJJ

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.

Jiu-Jitsu is the pursuit of perfection

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Jiu-Jitsu is the pursuit of perfection

Jiu-Jitsu is not about perfection. Not even the best among us have perfect Jiu-Jitsu, nor has anyone in the past and neither will anyone in the future. Jiu-Jitsu is about the PURSUIT of perfection through the use of rational thinking in response to the myriad problems we encounter and testing these thoughts physically through trial and error and edging just a little closer every day towards the unattainable dream of perfection. Take confidence in the fact that if victory is all you seek, your Jiu-Jitsu doesn’t have to be perfect, it just has to be better than the person in front of you and better than you were the day before. The real battle however, is not with the person in front of you; but rather with the distant dream of perfection within you and the growth of character and skill required to push yourself daily towards that shimmering dream you know you will never reach but whose pursuit will make you a far better person than those who live without a dream and an ideal. At Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com), we stress LONG TERM goals. I always tell my students to never take any training session too seriously. In years to come when you move up the ranks and earn your blackbelt, you will never remember that bad training session you had on a tuesday night in August as a bluebelt. It just doesn’t matter. If you stay focused on long term goals and just trying to be a little bit better than you were than day before, you will succeed in this art.

BJJ: Don’t Stop at the Stop

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BJJ: Don’t Stop at the Stop

In BJJ, don’t Stop at the Stop. Stopping an opponents move doesn’t end the story. It STARTS the story. Too often, athletes will do good work stopping an opponents move and then subconsciously fall into mode of thinking whereby they think they’ve done enough and settle into neutral position. Don’t congratulate yourself for stopping a move. Furthermore, that’s exactly when some of the greatest attacking opportunities arise. That is when things start to get interesting. Remember, the basis of your opponents defense is always his stance. At the moment you’ve stopped their move, their stance will be temporarily broken, making offense so much easier. That’s why you should see the act of stopping an opponents move not merely as a successful defense, but also as one of the best possible times to launch into offense. When an opponent’s stance is compromised, and it almost always will be after a stopped attack, that’s when the chances of a successful attack are highest since there is so much less to have to fight through to complete your counter attack. So turn your mind in the direction of attack every time you stop an opponent’s attacking move, you’ll be pleasantly surprised how much easier attacks become. This is something we really stress at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com). Counter attack are so important in BJJ on the sport side, just like there are in the upper realm of Wrestling. In Olympic level or NCAA College Wrestling or the World Championships, counter attacks are vital to being successful.

How to deal with larger opponents

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How to deal with larger opponents

How to deal with larger opponents has always been a problem for many BJJ practitioners. Want to know how to deal with the big men or women? Answer is…get behind them! As the head instructor here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), probably the most common question I am asked is – how do I defeat people bigger and stronger than myself? Here is my general advice. When in matches against bigger people maintain inside position underneath them and carrying their weight. In offensive situations, favor leglocks and more than anything else, attack their back and get behind them! This was the case in one of my favorite matches of all time and one of the biggest upsets ever in BJJ history, MacKensie Dern vs Gabi Garcia. Inside position is the key to managing greater body weight from underneath. The legs are the hardest thing for heavyweights to hide from a smaller and more agile player and once locked, a heel hook will break anyone regardless of size. Also, the bigger the foot, the longer the breaking lever and the less chance of slippage. And the back, I don’t care how big and strong they are, they can’t push or pull someone who is behind them. So get there soon and stay there to beat the big opponents! Mackensie did exactly that and got the win! So remember the basic strategy when fighting bigger, heavier and stronger people. Inside position when underneath, focus submissions on the legs and position on the back! This strategy will not fail you in your matches and will have a much higher winning percentage for you against those large opponents than any other attack.