November 29, 2016 by MMA trainer with 0 comments

Simplifying the world as you don your gi

When you put on your gi and step into the gym, you’re entering a world that’s both simpler and more complex than the one ‘outside’.

I’m going to focus here upon simplifying the essence of your Jiu Jitsu.

I feel that there is a real need for this, because BJJ is such a dynamically growing sport that the list of techniques being developed just keeps increasing.

Just about every good competitor or specialist is inventing his or her own techniques these days, and means that there is an exponential increase in techniques out there.

It’s just impossible for anyone to learn all the BJJ techniques that are in use today.

How do you simplify all those techniques out there so that you create an effective BJJ game?

Well, the number of techniques out there is a sort of double edged sword. That is to say, it can cut both ways. Firstly, for many beginners and even up to blue belt, there are so many techniques out there that it can get quite confusing.

How do you know what works, and what does not?

On the other hand, there being such a number of techniques out there means that it’s very easy to add effective techniques to your repertoire.

The key is to be open minded and to experiment a lot.

Keep looking at new techniques and experimenting with them, but don’t add a technique to your repertoire unless you’re convinced that it’s both relatively easy to implement and more than usually effective in rolling.

When you encounter a technique like this and, despite the vast number of techniques out there, such techniques are rare, you need to practice it assiduously.

In other words, the next time you slip on your gi and head onto the mat, focus your intelligence onto sifting between the different techniques that are available.

Also, focus on learning the underlying principle beneath the technique rather than the technique itself.

It is not necessary to execute the technique that you learn exactly as you learn it. Everybody’s body is different, and the length of people’s limbs is different, as well as their muscle memory, endurance and strength.

This means that no two people can ever execute a technique in exactly the same way, and nor should they attempt to.

You need to identify the techniques that work best for your unique mind/body combination and then to learn to apply those techniques in your own utterly unique way.

You’re an individual. A lot of people who learn BJJ tend to forget that.

They try to learn a vast number of techniques, and they think that their BJJ will be better in direct proportion to the number of techniques they know.

This is not so.

Your BJJ becomes better in direct proportion to the number of techniques you can apply effectively on the mat.

So you need to focus upon increasing that number.

I underline the word “effectively”.

It is better to practice one technique that works very well for you assiduously than to practice a hundred that don’t work well for you. It is better to have a repertoire of thirty techniques that work extremely effectively on the mat than to have a repertoire of three hundred that you can’t apply effectively.

Then, once you have developed your repertoire, you need to continue experimenting and adding to it as you come upon a new technique.

Timing

Once you can apply all the techniques that you know effectively, you need to then work at the timing of their application. There is no point in knowing a technique very well if your timing is just a little off, so that the technique fails. Once you have mastered the techniques that work best for you and the timing, you need to then apply yourself to understanding the underlying principles of leverage.

These are the underlying strategies that make BJJ work, that allow your technique to defeat brute strength, and a cool mind and a focused nature to prevail on the mat.