How to Drill BJJ Transitions
Learning jiujitsu is like learning a language. You don’t do it all at once. You learn the smallest, most base elements of a new tongue (an alphabet, words) before you dive in to the whole grand structure.
As you get more building blocks — more movements, a larger vocabulary of techniques — your understanding of the physical grammar expands. This is an exciting, albeit frustrating, process. I still remember the first time I hit the basic rear naked choke, and I also remember the months it took me to get there.
But you can’t say the same words forever unless you’re Hodor. You also can’t rear naked choke everyone either. If you want to become fluent, you have to acknowledge that what you’re aiming for is a long process.
That’s where transitions come in. Learning a technique well is powerful, but learning to flow between the techniques amplifies that power manifold. It’s the difference between knowing words and being able to have a conversation.
In this analogy, drilling complete transitions — chaining moves together — represents sentences and phrases, the core components of dialogue. When someone defends our attack, we want to be able to understand the language of that defense — and have our responsive phrase flow from us immediately and effortlessly.
We’ve talked about the power of drilling before. It helps us solidify our core of knowledge. Other people have knowledge, too, though. To stay ahead of them, we have to drill, and to drill chains of moves. I had a great response to my earlier post about how I drill and learn moves, so I thought it might be helpful to do a follow-up on my method for drilling transitions.
I divide the types of chain drills I do into two categories in my mind: static (or simple) and dynamic (or active). These aren’t cut-and-dried distinctions, but it’s how I think about them. We’ll start with the most simplistic versions of these and advance to the most complex.
VIDEO: Knee shield arm drag with Jason “Bumpkin” Wingate
VIDEO: Dave Camarillo teaches a guillotine from the clinch
All Time Most Common Submissions At US Grappling
The world is made of probability. If you make consistently good choices, you have much better chances of getting good results. If you make consistently bad choices, you will probably end up getting submitted.
Numbers can guide us on what choices are better than other choices. If you ask a human being what the best technique for you to learn is, that human being is going to give you an opinion — and you should carefully consider the weight of that one person’s opinion. But while all humans have bias based on their own experience (I am much more likely to encourage you to learn the moves that I know, am good it, and have good experiences with), data is cool and rational and, if you have enough of it, going to give you a broader perspective. It’s not going to reveal everything, of course, but the more quality information you have, the better you’ll be able to make informed choices.
That’s why, with the help of U.S. Grappling, I analyzed data from more than 4,000 submission-only matches since the beginning of 2015. I wanted to have a clear and comprehensive picture of what worked most often in these true submission-only environments, with no points, advantages or time limits. Continue reading “All Time Most Common Submissions At US Grappling”
How to Drill for BJJ
Drilling is central to success in jiujitsu. With an art this detailed, you simply have to repeat the core movements thousands of times to train your body. As Roger Gracie famously advised, you shouldn’t drill a move until you get it right — you should drill until you can’t get it wrong.
There are several great sites and articles and videos out there with specific drills. I’ve written about the solo drills I do when no one is around to train with.
That’s not the point of this post, though. It’s very common that I see new white belts making mistakes in terms of drilling method: either they treat it like sparring, or they race through the details, or they make other simple errors that are going to impede the learning process.
These are understandable mistakes — they’re new, for one thing. Also, sometimes new people see upper belts doing drills that are more appropriate for experienced people. Drilling should never stop. Red belt legends still drill basic moves.
It’s a lot easier to implement good practices than to correct errors. So let’s go over how I like to drill myself, and how I suggest you learn jiujitsu through drilling as you move up through the ranks. Continue reading “How to Drill for BJJ”
VIDEO: Collar Choke from Closed Guard
VIDEO: Self Defense Arm Drag to the Back with Seth Shamp
VIDEO: Muay Thai Leg Kick Instructional with Chris Clodfelter
Basics of Grip Fighting on the Ground
You’d think grip fighting would rank at the top of the “grappling fundamentals” list. When you grapple with someone, you have to grab them, and if they’re wearing clothes, those clothes are an ideal target for said grabbing.
Yet when I started jiu-jitsu, I remember my knowledge of grips lagging behind. I don’t want this to happen to you, and so although I’m hardly an expert on grip fighting, I’m going to list some of the principles I wish I’d known all along.
Because grip-fighting is its own universe, we have to narrow it down: this post will focus on grip strategy for when you’re on your back in guard, although a lot of the principles apply everywhere else in a fight or grappling match. Let’s talk about two crucial overarching principles first.
Control Inside Space: We’re more powerful when our arms are pulled in close to our bodies. This makes it easier to push and pull an opponent, harder for them to push and pull us, and creates a barrier to them striking us. This is why pummeling is so important in nogi situations and MMA — and the principle holds true when wearing the gi as well.
For a simple example, from your closed guard, try grabbing the outside of your opponent’s sleeves. Not only would your opponent be able to punch you pretty easily, you’re less able to control their arm movements. Now, pummel inside and put your hands on their biceps. The situation changes. I’m not suggesting the hand-on-bicep play as a preferred position: just trying to illustrate that if your opponent’s grip-fighting has allowed them to successfully control inside space, you need to address that.
Deny Their Grips First: An ounce of prevention is worth a 16 ounce can of whoop ass. I think Confucius said that, or Stone Cold Steve Austin. Whichever. If your opponent can’t effectively grab you, they can’t effectively grapple you.
Judo players are some of the best at this. I’ve watched Olympian and world champion Jimmy Pedro’s Grip Like a World Champion DVD several times, and I still feel like an high school student auditing a Ph.D class when I do. Pedro illustrates both of these principles in this short spot:
This second principle might seem self-explanatory, but its importance can’t be overstated. If they don’t get the grips they want, their game never gets going. As Jimmy Pedro says in the video, the more skilled person is always going to win given equal mastery of grips. But if you get into a situation where your grip is much more advantageous, you can win exchanges with opponents who are more skilled than you are. That’s powerful.
If we initiate our ideal grips, we can do double-duty: if I control the sleeve well, getting a deep grip and putting my knuckles on the back of my partner’s wrist, I can both get good control and prevent my partner from re-gripping.
Now let’s get into what grips you want. The attacks you prefer inform the grips you want, and vice versa. Let’s talk first about what we can do with grips when we’re in the guard.
Note: there are endless possibilities (and you’re welcome to share your favorites in the comments), but these are some solid fundamental grip options to begin playing with.
When We’re In Closed Guard, or They Pass From the Knees
Collar and sleeve: We reach for the cross-collar grip (deeper the better) with one hand. For example, my right hand would reach deep in my opponent’s right-side lapel. Then, my free (left) hand grips my partner’s same/mirror side, in this case his right hand.
This allows us some control of our opponent’s posture, since we can use the collar grip to prevent them from posturing up, and accesses powerful fundamental attacks like the cross-collar choke and the scissor sweep. Because we have control of one sleeve, our opponent can’t post that way, and so if we off-balance them in that direction, they risk losing top position.
Cross-grip on the sleeve: This powerful grip is the counter-point to the mirror grip. If I can grab my opponent’s right sleeve with my right hand, for example, I can turn that opponent’s body at angle that allows me to expose their back. If we get a good grip here, we can put constant pressure of a back attack on our opponent — which also sets up fundamental sweep options like the pendulum sweep, taking us to mount instead of the back.
I will often set up the cross-grip off of a grip break. Check out the Vicente Junior video below for good grip break tips.
When They Stand To Pass Our Open Guard
If they’ve opened our guard and stood up, they have more mobility — but they also have a less stable base.
The answer to problems in jiujitsu is usually “move your hips,” so don’t think getting grips alone is going to save you here: you’ve got to engage your legs and hips and move. But a couple of basic grip configurations will help you get started.
Personally, I don’t do a lot of grabbing the collar when my opponent stands. Lots of people who are better than me do this, though, so don’t think it’s wrong if you wind up liking it! I just find that the collar grip is easier to break when people are standing, so since I have weak grips, I am more likely to grab a grip that’s tougher to break — like the belt. We’re not going to talk about belt grips here, but I use that as an example.
Two options that are good to start with, and also serve as jumping-off points for the more advanced open guards:
Sleeve and the heel/cuff of one pant leg: If I get a sleeve — mirror side or cross-side — this sets up fundamental attacks like my favorite sweep, the tripod sweep. I like to grab the heel of one leg, because it diminishes their mobility, and also because it allows me to play De La Riva guard. Even if you don’t do De La Riva guard, though, controlling their leg and stepping on their hip diminishes their mobility and allows you some control/attack options.
Double sleeve grips: Michael Langhi is magic with these. I like controlling sleeves because when we control sleeves, we control posts — where our partner can place their hands. If they can’t post a hand, there’s a good chance we can roll them over that direction and get on top.
Just like sleeve/heel grips are good entry points to De La Riva guard, the double sleeve grips are solid entries to the world of spider guard. When we have the sleeves, it’s a short jump to step on biceps.
Troubleshooting
But what if they get their grips before we get the chance to get ours? If they do get the grips they want, you can break their grips, of course. The great Vicente Junior, along with his black belt Lance Trippett, show some good drills for doing that:
Another option can be to re-grip, which Jason Scully shows from the top guard position here:
The more I learn about grips, the more I realize how much I don’t know. Grip fighting is a vast thing, and you won’t ever learn all you need to understand.
This post is intended to provide a framework for you to explore and to go down whatever rabbit hole of grip resources you choose — like any of the videos linked here. Check out this Reddit thread for more tips.