Sport BJJ is a team sport

Sport BJJ is a team sport. No matter what anyone thinks, it takes a village to raise one to our highest levels. One of the greatest things about our sport is that it’s a team/Academy sport where the best athletes in the game work out daily alongside regular members of the Academy. In most sports, elite athletes are carefully shielded away from every day people, in basketball, you won’t see Lebron James working out with average Joe players. You won’t see Tom Brady working out w/ the local plumber. In grappling and Jiu-Jitsu, there is no separation between the elite and the recreational player. The result is that many recreational practitioners and every day people with every day jobs develop a shocking high level of skill over their years of training. Literally just by constantly working out with world class competitors and being exposed to the same techniques and tactics as them. I have seen many cases of every day people give a very hard time to visiting world champions. And, I don’t think you would see that in many sports. This is a wonderful thing. In addition, a great rule of thumb is “THE STRONGER THE ROOM OVERALL – THE BETTER THE BEST MEMBERS OF THAT ROOM WILL BECOME.” Remember, the rising tide that lifts all boats, some may float higher than others but all rise to some degree. Just as they say it takes a village to raise a child, so it takes a room to raise a champion. We believe this at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com) and believe the better that room overall, the better the champions who come out of it.

Angles are your friend in Jiu-Jitsu

Angles are your friend in Jiu-Jitsu. This is a lesson it takes a very long time to learn in our art, sometimes takes years. Gunning for submissions underneath a tough opponent is never easy work. But you can generally make it easier if you consistently look for side on angles that result in your hips coming out to one side rather than being square on and exposed to all of your opponents weight in vulnerable stacking positions. Arm bars, triangles, omoplatas all benefit from getting your hips out. Often a big help is to scoop your arm deep inside your opponents leg and use it to help pull yourself to a good angle. Whatever method you opt for, look to get hips out/side on, and soon you will suffering a lot fewer failures to to stacking counters to your favorite submissions from bottom position. Getting the prefect angle can be the difference between finishing and not finishing your triangles and armbars from the guard. At Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com), we practice these movement daily.

Staying calm in BJJ

Staying calm in BJJ is an absolute must in order to escape. In a crises situation, everything begins with a calm mind. There is a huge amount physical stress associated with bad/inferior positions in Jiu-Jitsu. If your opponent knows what they are doing, they can make your life thoroughly miserable with cross faces, chest to chest pressure, forcing you into contorted positions etc. It’s very natural for that physical pressure to create mental pressure, where you feel stress to a point where you start to lose effective decision making capability. This creates a vicious spiral where additional mental stress shuts down your ability to plan escapes, resulting in worsening physical stress, which creates still more mental stress, which adds additional physical stress. Learning to maintain a calm mind under intense physical pressure will enable you to see what needs to be done and make decisions to get you out of there. The only real way to develop calmness of mind under pressure is to experience that pressure often enough to adapt to it. Here, our Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) student Pops, all 70+ years old of him, works on his mental game as much as his physical game by absorbing the powerful cross face pressure of his opponent, and stays calm to think his escape of the position. Only the calm mind can make the correct calculations, and that ability to observe accurately what’s happening and calculate what’s needed to turn things in your favor is what will make the difference in your sport performance when things are not going your way.

No-Gi submissions from the mount

No-Gi submissions from the mount are more difficult without the use of grips to choke the neck. Getting submissions from mount without the gi is often a very different position from just holding  the mount itself. Normally when we aim to hold a tight mount, we stay roughly aligned with our opponents centerline with our hips over his hips. However, when it’s time to enter into mounted arm bars and triangles, we have to climb up high to the shoulders and pivot 90 degrees while totally changing our leg placement. This is also often referred to as S mount in Jiu-Jitsu circles. This angle and position allows you full use of your hands to pull and manipulate and the legs and hips to wedge your opponent and prevent defensive movement. This requires some balancing on your part, since you have less base under you, but as they say, nothing risked, nothing gained. The number one rule of the mount (and back) is to keep those dominant positions. And to take your time to work your angles tightly to prevent their escape. Let them carry your weight for a bit. In addition, you can use your face over their face to hinder their breathing, something the New Wave BJJ team has been very effectively using lately. Here at Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com), we have been working our no-gi mount game to try and find all the proper angles and set up to submission with no escape. Taking away each escape systematically so the submission is indefensible is the goal.

Have a goal and a plan for your BJJ journey

Here is a huge tip: Have a goal and a plan for your BJJ journey. Know what you want – make a flexible plan to get there. People who know what they want usually get there. Those who know what they want and have a good plan to navigate their way get there get there often. Those who know what they want and have a flexible plan that adjusts to the many variables and contingencies that life throws at us over time almost always get there. Those that have no idea what they want have to be content with whatever fate gives them, sometimes good, sometimes bad, but never an expression of your will. Your work outs must reflect this pattern. If you come in with no goal and no plan, the worth of your workout will be determined by those around you, sometimes good, sometimes bad, never an expression of a vision you have of yourself as a better player in the future, but only a vague hope that one day maybe you’ll be good. If you come in with a clear goal and a plan to enact it that can change intelligently according to changing circumstances over time you will find over time that goals get realized and the you of today beats the you of yesterday, just as the you of tomorrow will defeat the you of today. You carry a lot into every workout – your physicality, tactics, technique, enthusiasm, passion, worries, anxieties, fatigue, injuries, burn out – but the most important thing you can ever bring is A GOAL AND A PLAN.