Controlling your emotions in BJJ

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Controlling your emotions in BJJ

Controlling your emotions in BJJ is vital. Emotional state management is just as important as the techniques you learn. Jiu-Jitsu rewards you when you give attention to “the main thing”. For many of us, not having things go our way can be a frustrating experience that takes us away from that main thing. It can lead to anger or irritation, which then clouds the sort of clear thinking that’s needed for proactive problem-solving. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), this is something we preach to all our students from the very beginning. In almost all cases, anger and frustration don’t actually help you. They keep you frozen, immobilizing you with no productive outcome. In addition, you can hurt yourself, your training partner or get a reputation as someone people don’t want to train with. It’s hard to get better if you don’t have training partners. An alternative is to try framing whatever problem you face in a way that assumes there IS an answer to be found, even if you can’t see it yet. It may take some time and you may need to recruit others to help. But you‘ll get where you’re going faster by emphasizing an active search for creative solutions, rather than letting your frustration paralyze you.

Coaching the big picture first in BJJ

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Coaching the big picture first in BJJ

When it comes to coaching the big picture first in BJJ, coach the big picture first: The growth and development of any given technique in our repertoire follows the same pattern as the growth and development of our physical bodies. A technique starts off weak and vulnerable, unable to survive on its own. Then it grows into early development where it begins to mature into early adulthood. Finally it enters into a mature phase where it can not only survive on its own, but work with others, improve itself and rise to prominence. When first coaching a move to a student – I always begin with the big picture. What is the general nature of the move? What are it good and bad points? What are the main things to focus upon? What are the broad movements required for its execution? Sketch the outline first – THE DETAILS CAN ALWAYS COME LATER. Just get them moving in the general directions they need. Just as an artist begins with a sketch and only then brings in the complexity of colors fill the canvas and create a masterpiece over time, so too, The martial artist must begin with the rough outline of the move and over time ADD DETAILS AS A PAINTER ADDS COLOR TO COMPLETE A PICTURE. In all technique development , start with general movement and over time refine it with precise movement. Don’t be obsessed with precision at the start – that will come later. Here I work with 2 of my talented female students, Ivette Ponte and Mariana Vazquez on proper griping details. They already have excellent performance with the general movements so the process of refinement now begins.

Patience is a virtue in BJJ

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Patience is a virtue in BJJ

Patience is a virtue in BJJ. As is the virtue of slowness. Working out new ideas and integrating new skills into your set is a creative process. It has to be open-ended, relaxed and loose enough so you can cultivate a new set of habits…and not be afraid of “positive dissatisfaction†with your results. Over time, you’ll tighten everything up, but at the outset, you have to be flexible enough to make a few mistakes in order to see what you’re missing. Starting with a feeling of tightness, pressure or competition can be stifling, blocking the flow of ideas and associations you need in order to fully integrate something new into what you know already. Whether you are a fast learner or a slow one, there’s an almost universal experience of impatience in the learning process. Armlocks, leglocks, sweeps, takedowns, no matter the topic, you’ll want to get to the end so you can see the finished result. If you can learn instead to become patient with the process, enjoying the effort you have to exert in research and discovery, you’ll find a kind of organic growth that stays with you over the long-term. Looking back, the extra time you put in won’t seem exhausting and laborious. Instead it’ll be invaluable, an essential and organic part of your development in Jiu-Jitsu.

Stay tight and smash in BJJ

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Stay tight and smash in BJJ

Stay tight and smash in BJJ! Stay compact! Probably one of the biggest problems beginners in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu face is that of extending their bodies at times that make them very vulnerable to attack. Most of the fundamental postures of BJJ, particularly the defensive ones, involve contraction of the body. Your spine rounded, elbows and knees tucked in tight. Learning to trust in this contraction as the best means of slipping your limbs inside your opponent’s limbs as the most high percentage route to escape and evasion is a big step for the beginner in Jiu-Jitsu. As you progress, the problem will change from that of getting to a safe contracted posture to that of maintaining this strong posture throughout the course of a long tough match against a skilled opponent who is doing everything he can to subvert that posture. Either way, learning and fighting to keep your limbs in tight at the appropriate time will be a constant theme of your training. Just as a good boxer constantly keeps his chin tucked, shoulders high and rounded to protect his jaw and elbows in tight to protect his torso when in danger, so a good BJJ practitioner/competitor puts his or her primary effort into sound defensive structure before anything else. From the guard, often your opponent can presents you with a wall of knees and elbows that prevents you exploiting the angle you have gained. Their well rounded spine will give him the mobility they needs to quickly recover their legs and square up to you so that they can immediately shift from a defensive cycle to an offensive one. Posture before all, and in defense, when in doubt, contract and pull everything in tight.

Gaining an advantage in BJJ

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Gaining an advantage in BJJ

Gaining an advantage in BJJ  is something to always be looking for during a match or sparring session. Training your mind to see working from neutrality to advantage. The basic insight behind all martial arts is that of gaining some form of prior advantage before committing to an attack. In truth however, our opponents strongly and skillfully resist any attempt on our part to gain any form of advantage and so we spend the majority of our time on the mat in neutral positions. It is important to understand that even within positions that are considered neutral (no points scored), there can still be minor advantages gained that can accumulate to a degree where a breakthrough can be attained and/or points scored or a submission is applied. Often it may be something small, an advantageous grip, foot position, head placement – anything that affords you a greater degree of control over him than he has over you, no matter how small. Understand this, any given neutral position is in practice, only as neutral as the skill level of the 2 competitors. Learn to go beyond seeing positions as dominant or advantageous and start to look for actions and placements that are advantageous. These are less obvious, less well defined, but against skilled opponents, they will be the resource you call upon more than any other. Here, our 2 Savarese BJJ students Elliot and Anoop work from neutral position for leg control. Small nuances in grip, limb positioning, placement of wedges and directionality of force will determine winner and loser in these situations.

Going with the flow in BJJ

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Going with the flow in BJJ

Going with the flow in BJJ is a scientific approach most should adhere to. In Jiu-Jitsu, even with a well-laid plan, your next steps aren’t always predetermined. Furthermore, you see this when you translate your efforts from drilling to sparring, and discover that what seemed certain and stable is much more fluid than it initially appeared. The scientific way of working through this uncertainty isn’t to pretend that you always have the right answer. It’s to engage with the process of getting closer to the right answer. First, you lay out your hypothesis (or someone else’s, which is OK), then you show your work and make a prediction about what’s going to come next. With this approach, you’re not allowed to use magic to explain what happens. Here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), the instructor constantly use the phrase “these aren’t magic tricks we are teaching.” You can’t bend the outcome to fit what you’d planned. If you’re wrong, you just start again from the beginning with a new argument, checking your work and making a better prediction. Being wrong and needing to correct your hypothesis is a daily occurrence, as you make new choices and respond to your partner’s actions and reactions. You won’t find the right answers every time, but you will improve when you engage with the process that brings you closer to them.

Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA

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Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA

Attacking the neck in BJJ/MMA is amust have for your BJJ toolbox of techniques. Futhermore, attacking the neck via the rear naked choke has the most finishes in the history of MMA. An essential feature of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the idea of concentration of force upon a vulnerable target that if successfully attacked, would end the fight. Hence, the neck. There is no part of the human body that is more vulnerable to the attacks of grappling than the neck. The neck is relatively small in circumference, around fifteen to twenty inches for most male athletes and smaller in females,  yet within it are packed together some of the most vital components of the human body. The body does a good job of protecting key components like heart and lungs behind the bony rib cage. The crucial spinal cord is well protected by the spine. The brain by the thickness of the skull. The neck on the other hand, houses the critical carotid arteries, vertebral arteries, jugular veins, trachea and the spine itself, along with a host of other very important components, all packed in close to each other with absolutely no protection and close to the surface. As such, the neck is the single best target for attack when grappling (when strikes are involved you can argue that the jaw and other targets becomes more important). I remember the light bulb go off in my head the first time this was explained to me in a conversation between my friends John Danaher and Carl Massaro. All BJJ students must make a serious study of neck anatomy and the means of attacking the vulnerability of this greatest of all targets. In grappling, The human body is controlled at the head, but it is best finished at the neck. No other part of the body offers this. I teach my students to fight like vampires, with the neck is always the first target. Once opponents fear your neck attacks, their defensive reactions will often make other favored targets such as legs, much easier to snatch.

Sparring with a purpose in BJJ

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Sparring with a purpose in BJJ

Sparring with a purpose in BJJ is important. Because, the vast majority of Jiu-Jitsu practitioners enter every sparring session with a “let’s see what happens†attitude. Let me tell you something, whenever you enter sparring with a “let’s see what happens†attitude, you will simply end of doing the same things you did in all your previous sparring sessions. You will just rinse and repeat.  Left to their own devices, almost all BJJ practitioners will always go back to their same habits. The idea of progressive training is to create NEW habits, not simply repeat old ones. Change within yourself has to be FORCED, it won’t happen by itself. The best way to make this happen is to have a clear goal or more that one goal when you spar. Usually the goals are very modest… a new grip, a new set up for a favorite move, perhaps a new move you think has potential. Only by bringing in new material and improving old material will you make progress. This is best done by having a notion of what you want to accomplish before you slap hands and commence sparring. Of course there are days where you just want to spar with an open and relaxed mind and have fun seeing what happens – that’s fine and healthy. However, make sure a healthy percentage of your sparring sessions involve clear prior goals to prevent them degenerating into “more of the same†sessions where you walk out the same the same as you walked in the door.

Tension and Fear in BJJ

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Tension and Fear in BJJ

Jiu-Jitsu asks you to walk the line between tension and fear in BJJ, especially when it comes to new things. Learning is often difficult. If it wasn’t, you’d already know everything you needed to know. Any time you try to learn something new, whether it’s a total paradigm shift or just adding important details to something that’s already there, it’s easy to get stuck.
What sticks you to the spot isn’t fear of something new or fear of change, even though both of these are charges often levied at the burden of learning. It’s the tension of uncertainty, the competing concerns between “will this work†and “this might not workâ€. It’s the stress of wondering whether if I learn this, will it benefit me…or distract me? In my experience, this tension is the hallmark of a great educational experience. A truly new idea or experience places you on a threshold – where you used to be vs. where you are going. You may sometimes expose yourself to a little tension willingly, but often we hesitate when we have the opportunity to learn something new. It doesn’t have to be this way. You can choose to actively seek out this pressure, the experience of being on the threshold and seeing the next few steps without seeing the whole staircase. When you do, you let what’s new push over you over the edge and out onto the other side. here at Savarese BJJ Academy (www.njbjj.com), this is something we often talk about.

BJJ happens in real time

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BJJ happens in real time

BJJ happens in real time and time always catches up. So because Jiu-Jitsu happens in real time, so there are always new decisions to be made. We prefer to make proactive choices wherever we can, but with resistance in the mix, you also have to become comfortable with reactive choices (where you don’t initiate the action but must still work to advance your plan anyway). Proactive or reactive, *bad* decisions happen when you’re in a rush and can’t process information fast enough. You miss an important part of the signal and head off in the wrong direction. This happens in guard-passing, when the passer can change directions faster and with greater ease than the guard player and clears the legs as a result. Panic also inhibits good decisions, leading to a freak out and a cascade of emergency choices that are less than optimal. Bad decisions also happen when the effects of your choices aren’t evident right away – you’re swayed by short-term comfort and ignore long-term repercussions. Exploding out of the mount works until it doesn’t. Many bad decisions work out OK in the short run because you can be short-term successful…but time often changes changes this. To work on making better long-term decisions requires elevating the value of the long run. It can be worthwhile to sacrifice immediate gratification, to look closely at the gap you’re covering up and the mistakes you make. With attention, you can start this process where you are and learn do it regardless of how much noise there might be around instant results.