The art of showing up to BJJ class

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The art of showing up to BJJ class

MASTER THE ART OF SHOWING UP…
Recently a student asked how they can improve their skills. Without hesitation, I go into my long-winded answer covering all these specific situations; then, I see the eyes glaze over (which is a conversation for another day) so I just end up saying, you need to master the art of showing up. It always comes back to consistency. Of course, skill development will depend on where you are on your journey. But, first you should be striving to master the art of showing up regardless of how you “feel.†This way you will be able to scale your skill acquisition as your journey continues. In other words, stop worrying about the moves you forget, can’t do, or the people that give you a hard time. NONE OF IT MATTERS unless your consistency is rock-solid.
Understand this: You can’t consistently improve jiu-jitsu skills with inconsistent training, period. Lay down your foundation first. This foundation should be unrelenting non-negotiable consistency. Once your base is set, now start organizing your training and focus on the areas you’d like to improve.
Personally, there is nothing special that separates me from other people when it comes to anything that I choose to pursue. However, the one thing I have going for me is that I don’t miss workouts or training sessions, ever. You can control your consistency and I treat it like a superpower. Once mastered, you can then leverage it and reach new levels of improvement. If I choose to learn something new, establishing strong consistency is always my first step. Until then, I keep my mouth shut. There is no complaining, no rationalizing situations to make myself feel better, and no comparing myself to others. I accept that there is a process and I DO NOT get emotional about the time it takes to get good.
Don’t overthink when it comes to establishing your consistency base. Some easy steps are:
1. Have your gear ready to go, the day before.
2. Master the warm-ups.
3. Pick one day that is non-negotiable.
4. Keep feelings/frustrations out of it.
5. Actually absorb what instructor is saying by using eye contact and good body language.
6. Keep your expectations in check and accept that is takes time and you’re not special.
After this, scale. Until you have mastered the art of showing up, no answer I give you related to getting better at Jiu-Jitsu will work or help, period. It’s easy to feel out of place or frustrated in our social media driven culture that depicts the highest level our art of grinding day in and day out, 3 a day training sessions and other BS (steroids) Don’t forget, journeys don’t begin this way and if they started to show the early stages of all these, now, superstars it wouldn’t get any eyeballs because there is nothing special and it’s “not impressive.†This can be great for entertainment and fuel for motivation, but is not the norm. Just show up and when you see your lifestyle shift to one of consistently showing up every week, regardless of circumstance, you can then improve linearly and monitor/measure your progress much easier. Then, when you do ask questions you can actually apply the answers. See you on the mats.
Written by Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) blackbelt Professor Chris Laciura (www.training4life.com)
Two men in white uniforms standing next to each other.

Being prepared for trouble in BJJ

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Being prepared for trouble in BJJ

Being prepared for trouble in BJJ is a necessary skill. You must always be prepared for any situation that can be problematic. In Jiu-Jitsu we always train ourselves to find the best routes to the best outcomes. However, the reality is that your opponents are doing the same thing and many of those opponents are very talented. As such, it’s always prudent to prepare yourself for trouble, including the worst kinds of trouble. Getting out of fully locked in joint locks is probably the scariest situation in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu because the price of failure in a competitive match can be a broken limb. Getting the confidence to escape from these scenarios has to begin in the gym. As always, start with lowered pressure so that you can build over time to escape from increasingly tight holds. Make sure your partner understands the difference between extension of a limb and hyperextension, so that they can create a tension that gives realism but no damage if you don’t perform the escape moves quite correctly. Learning to keep a calm mind during a crises is half the battle of extricating yourself. Fear doesn’t make your escapes better, only skill does that. Here one of our Savarese BJJ Academy (www.bergencounty.com), is prepared for the trouble and defends the armlock against her with a skillful escape.

Opportunity and Emotion in BJJ

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Opportunity and Emotion in BJJ

Opportunity and Emotion in BJJ often go hand in hand in Jiu-Jitsu. When opportunity knocks, it’s time to break down the door. In a match against a tough opponent, you may be presented with only one opportunity to make a decisive attack. Whether you do so successfully will come down mostly to two things, your ability to PULL THE TRIGGER when the moment arises and your ability to EXECUTE the move you have selected. The first is more psychological in nature and pertains to your confidence levels. The second is more physical in nature and pertains to your skill level. To shine under pressure you’ll need both to work in harmony. Emotion can be a tricky thing. This game is about decision making and calculating risk and reward. Emotion doesn’t help decision making and calculation. I find most people do their best work in a calm and emotionless state. It’s sometimes difficult to achieve this in the pressure of competition but you don’t have to be perfect,- just better than the other person you are competing against. And often, if you can make your opponent emotional, you can have a great advantage. The time for emotion is after the performance, then you can let out whatever you were holding back! Here, our Savarese BJJ (www.njbjj.com) student Brian lets out some emotion AFTER a big win at the World BJJ Championships.

The beauty of the triangle in BJJ

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The beauty of the triangle in BJJ

The beauty of the triangle in BJJ cannot be undersold. In addition, it is probably one of the most important finishing holds to learn in BJJ. At our Academy, Savarese BJJ (www.bergencountybjj.com), it is taught to you almost every class through your first 3 months of training. Furthermore, here are some more remarkable properties of the triangle. The triangle is among the most impressive moves in all of Jiu-Jitsu. It has many manifestations and variations. One of the best and most unique features is that it is capable of being used as both a choke and a joint lock at the same time. Usually we are given a choice when we go for a submission, it’s either a choke or a joint lock, the submission lets us have our cake and eat it too! Not only does it give us a choice, we can use the treat of one to set up the other. For example, in a front triangle shown here, the general rule is that the closer my opponents head to my head, the easier the choke. The further his head moves away, the easier the armlock. Triangles allow us to use several different types of joint locks without releasing the chokehold, creating real danger for the opponent. Learn to use this unusual dual submission threat of the various triangle variations to get your submission percentages rising! Often, many larger new practitioners will have trouble finishing a triangle choke. Don’t fret, you are just not used to moving your hip correctly and making the correct angle. This will come over time on the mats. As you gain more experience, you will start to understand the angles for finishing this choke better and see the value and the beauty of the triangle in our great art.

Base in Jiu-Jitsu

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Base in Jiu-Jitsu

Base in Jiu-Jitsu. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.northnjbjj.com), standing up in base is literally your first lesson. Whenever you are in standing position or top position it is generally demanded of you to keep a solid base of support that enables you to keep standing or top position as long as you desire it. Intuitively, it feels like the best way to keep a strong base of support is to WIDEN your base as much as possible. This would be true if you were alone and static – but in a match you aren’t – you are constantly moving in response to an opponent. As such width of base is only a part of the story. What you really want is a dynamic base. It will be your ability to maintain base through movement that makes you successful against a resisting opponent. It’s not so much the stationary width of of your base as your ability to step and post to a new base of support in response to second by second changes as the match unfolds. Very often this means taking a rather narrow initial stance so that you can pick up a foot easily and move it, rather than a heavy, exaggerated wide stance that makes it difficult to make a reactionary step in response to an opponents movement. Here, our student Daniela uses a good natural stance to easily pick up a foot and move to a new base of support in response to an opponent trying to off balance her in a recent class.

Maximizing connection in Jiu-Jitsu

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Maximizing connection in Jiu-Jitsu

Maximizing connection in Jiu-Jitsu is a must! Maximizing connection: Grappling is the business of controlling the movement of a resisting human being who is actively trying to control you as you try to control him. The means of control is physical connection to an opponent. Understand that connection comes in degrees. You can be more or less connected to an opponent. The more connection, the more control. As such, when it’s time to control a limb to set up a submission, the onus is on you to make sure you maximize the contact and connection between his limb and your body. This will prevent the slippage and space that defeats so many submission attempts. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy in Lyndhurst, (www.njbjj.com), we teach that you want focus upon getting the highest possible percentage of the surface area of his limb in contact with you and then to solidify that contact by setting wedges around that limb and using your hands and feet to set those wedges in place. that is how to maximize your connection.

Your BJJ training is a long game

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Your BJJ training is a long game

Your BJJ training is a long game. So play the long game. When we first enter the world of BJJ training and gain some experience, we always tend to walk into the trap of thinking we are defined by our achievements of today. We aren’t. Ultimately, you’ll be judged by your achievements over the course of your career. Once you understand this, you can begin to see that your central concern must always be improvement over time. Any failure today can be over turned by great success down the line. At Savarese BJJ Academy (www.northnjbjj.com), we often say your Jiu-Jitsu may well be lousy now, but that implies nothing about how it will be in five years. Focus on building to the future and be confident that any deficiencies here and now can be reversed with training and adaptation in the future. No one was born good at Jiu-Jitsu. Also, the best Jiu-Jitsu competors and World Champions also weren’t always good at Jiu-Jitsu either, even they had their time as clumsy beginners just like you! In addition, as you progress in your BJJ journey and achieve the ranks of brown and blackbelt, you won’t even remember these training days as a white and bluebelt that you are taking too seriously right now. They are just part of the long journey of growing on and off the mat as a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and martial artist.  Play the long game. Focus on gaining knowledge and developing skill and one day that will turn you into a very different person on the mat! Trust us with this advice, there will come a time when you look back and laugh about how you are feeling now. And then hopefully you smile looking back at how far you’ve come.

Escaping the back tip for BJJ

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Escaping the back tip for BJJ

Here is an escaping the back tip for BJJ that will help you forever. When escaping the back in BJJ, better to have the floor on your back than an opponent on your back. The worst situation in a grappling match is to have an opponent on your back. From there, they have many of the most high percentage submissions in the sport available to use to submit you while you have only a few very low percentage submissions to fire back with. They have a powerful and robust position that is very difficult to escape from when well applied. Thus, we must do our best to avoid back exposure as much as possible. When it does happen that your back is exposed to a dangerous opponent, the safest general strategy it to get your upper back to the floor. This is the best tip we can ever give you. All courtesy of us here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com) 🙂 The logic is simple, if the floor is on your back, then there won’t be space for your opponent to be on your back. Accordingly, most of the back escapes of Jiu-Jitsu favor the strategy of upper back to the floor. This is the one that minimizes back exposure to an opponent. There are other strategies. You can stand up, threaten kimura etc etc and these can definitely work, but they do result in a degree of back exposure such that if they don’t work, they can get you in deep trouble. So when you feel the danger of back exposure, try getting your upper back to the floor as a first. Once you master this skill, start to focus on avoiding them switching to the mount as well, but you can acquire that skill over time training. Acquire this skill first.

Where should I start from open guard?

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Where should I start from open guard?

Where should I start from open guard? One of the problems associated with open guard is the sheer number of options available to you as you play the position. You can be seated or laying on your back, have inside control or outside control, a large number of different grip variations, many different types of guard to play and a seemingly infinite number of moves. The number of options can soon expand into a dizzying number and in the heat of the action you can end the hesitating as you make choices. Whenever the choices seem to too confusing, here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.northnjbjj.com), we recommend you use the cross collar, sleeve cuff and foot inside bicep guard to start off. It is of our opinion the single most versatile open guard and has exemplary defensive and offensive properties. It leads equally well into both positional sweeps and submissions on both kneeling and standing opponents. When it all seems confusing, use cross collar, cuff and bicep guard as your default option and you can’t go wrong. The good news is that this form of open guard allows you to enter seamlessly into just about any other form of open guard so as your skill level grows you can keep using it as an entry into all the new guards you learn as you progress. If you are making open guard your field of study, make this one your first stop and it will give you a powerful and versatile start that will never let you down!

2 possible reactions to grips in BJJ

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2 possible reactions to grips in BJJ

There are 2 possible reactions to grips in BJJ. First of all, where is his energy going? When you get a grip upon an opponent there two possible reactions. The 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. It 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 combat skills you can possibly develop. 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 skillful BJJ practitioners 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 skillful practitioners who seem to get more done with less effort. This is not a skill that comes quickly. Initially, just play 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.