January 29, 2006
A Terrible Thing
Oleg Taktarov once told me, more or less in these words, that "it is a terrible thing to be the best grappler at your school". What he was getting at was that if you are always the king of the jungle in your sparring sessions then it is really hard to get better.
Now this might not be an issue if you are training at a large jiu-jitsu academy where there are many black belts and brown belts on the mat every training session, but unfortunately not everyone has access to those sorts of clubs. For every student at a large academy there are probably 5 or 10 grapplers training at a small club, in a friend's garage, or in a rec center.
So what can you do if you are the best grappler among your group of sparring partners - how do you improve your skills? The answer lies in limiting your game. For example try going for one week (or one month) only trying to get to, maintain, and finish from, rear mount. Then spend the same period of time always starting from underneath your opponents' mount. Then move on to only finishing with the armbar from the guard. I am sure you get the picture by now and can come up with many other ways of limiting your game.
What you are doing here is educating your opponents to give you a hard time. If you think it's easy to apply an armlock to someone just wait until they figure out that you're ONLY attacking with armlocks - they will start getting better at all the counters, forcing you to become better at the setups and recounters. Everybody wins, and perhaps someday you will have created sparring partners who are at your level.
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Now this might not be an issue if you are training at a large jiu-jitsu academy where there are many black belts and brown belts on the mat every training session, but unfortunately not everyone has access to those sorts of clubs. For every student at a large academy there are probably 5 or 10 grapplers training at a small club, in a friend's garage, or in a rec center.
So what can you do if you are the best grappler among your group of sparring partners - how do you improve your skills? The answer lies in limiting your game. For example try going for one week (or one month) only trying to get to, maintain, and finish from, rear mount. Then spend the same period of time always starting from underneath your opponents' mount. Then move on to only finishing with the armbar from the guard. I am sure you get the picture by now and can come up with many other ways of limiting your game.
What you are doing here is educating your opponents to give you a hard time. If you think it's easy to apply an armlock to someone just wait until they figure out that you're ONLY attacking with armlocks - they will start getting better at all the counters, forcing you to become better at the setups and recounters. Everybody wins, and perhaps someday you will have created sparring partners who are at your level.
Labels: training
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January 16, 2006
Shoulder Rehab
Shoulder injuries are fairly common in grappling. Most often they are the result of an overzealous Kimura (chicken wing) or Americana (V arm lock) attack, but shoulders can also get damaged by other techniques, such as throws and sweeps. While it is entirely possible that you may never have a shoulder injury, the odds of someone in your training group getting injured this way are fairly high.
Another sport that has similar injuries to the shoulder is kayaking. In kayaking, especially whitewater kayaking, the arm is often placed into positions that closely resemble the two above-mentioned bent arm locks; these compromised positions can result in both chronic and acute shoulder injuries. The reason I bring up this up is because there are some excellent shoulder rehabilitation resources available for kayaking, perhaps because it is an Olympic sport. Most of this information can be applied directly to rehabilitating grappling shoulder injuries.
The best online layman's resource for shoulder anatomy and rehabilitation I have found is www.kayaksport.net/docs/USACKshoulder.pdf. Do yourself a favor and save a copy of this document to your hard drive. Hopefully your grappling career will be injury free, but information like this is always useful to have on hand, either for your own use or to forward on to an injured training partner.
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Another sport that has similar injuries to the shoulder is kayaking. In kayaking, especially whitewater kayaking, the arm is often placed into positions that closely resemble the two above-mentioned bent arm locks; these compromised positions can result in both chronic and acute shoulder injuries. The reason I bring up this up is because there are some excellent shoulder rehabilitation resources available for kayaking, perhaps because it is an Olympic sport. Most of this information can be applied directly to rehabilitating grappling shoulder injuries.
The best online layman's resource for shoulder anatomy and rehabilitation I have found is www.kayaksport.net/docs/USACKshoulder.pdf. Do yourself a favor and save a copy of this document to your hard drive. Hopefully your grappling career will be injury free, but information like this is always useful to have on hand, either for your own use or to forward on to an injured training partner.
Labels: Injuries
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Pump Up the Volume
Recently my game has taken off. My guard passing has gotten a lot better, my escapes are more reliable, and I've been having success with some new submissions (and rediscovering some old ones). I'm pretty sure I know exactly why this has happened - increased training volume!
Up until a couple of months ago I was at a very busy time in my life, trying to find the balance between work and play, family and business, training and resting. There were times when all I could do to train once a week; a good week was getting on the mat twice. The only saving grace was that my conditioning didn't suffer too much, because I was still running, lifting weights, and doing circuit training.
Then a couple of months ago I managed to streamline my life a little bit, and started hitting the mats 3 times, and sometimes even 4 times, a week, while still doing most of my conditioning. It was a rough go at first - all that happened initially was that I was getting my ass kicked more times a week. Eventually, though, persistence paid off, something 'clicked' and my game jumped a notch or two.
Now the takehome message is NOT that you should all train 4 times a week - that would be great, but not everybody is at a life stage where that is possible. My point is that sometimes life demands that you put your art on the back burner for a while, where you will try to keep it simmering away. Of course some extra conditioning during your hiatus from the mats will only help. Then, when circumstances change (or you change the circumstances), you can ramp up the training again and not be too far behind where you left off. Who knows, you might even be able to have some exciting breakthroughs!
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Up until a couple of months ago I was at a very busy time in my life, trying to find the balance between work and play, family and business, training and resting. There were times when all I could do to train once a week; a good week was getting on the mat twice. The only saving grace was that my conditioning didn't suffer too much, because I was still running, lifting weights, and doing circuit training.
Then a couple of months ago I managed to streamline my life a little bit, and started hitting the mats 3 times, and sometimes even 4 times, a week, while still doing most of my conditioning. It was a rough go at first - all that happened initially was that I was getting my ass kicked more times a week. Eventually, though, persistence paid off, something 'clicked' and my game jumped a notch or two.
Now the takehome message is NOT that you should all train 4 times a week - that would be great, but not everybody is at a life stage where that is possible. My point is that sometimes life demands that you put your art on the back burner for a while, where you will try to keep it simmering away. Of course some extra conditioning during your hiatus from the mats will only help. Then, when circumstances change (or you change the circumstances), you can ramp up the training again and not be too far behind where you left off. Who knows, you might even be able to have some exciting breakthroughs!
Labels: training
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January 08, 2006
Grappling Breakthroughs!
Breakthroughs on the mat are very exciting times for grapplers: you work, sweat, toil and labour for the longest time and your game does not improve. Then, without warning, something happens and your game jumps to another level, making all that work worthwhile.
Sometimes it is possible to know exactly what caused the breakthrough. In my own development, for example, my no-gi guard game lagged behind my gi-based guard game for the longest time. Try as I might, my closed guard would get opened, my open guard would get passed, and my training partners were rarely in any danger from my submission or sweep attempts.
The breakthrough happened rather suddenly, when I finally realized that I wasn't controlling my opponent's head in no-gi sparring. When I started controlling, holding, shoving, stuffing and pushing the head it became much more difficult for opponent's to make good posture and to pass my guard. Anytime my opponent tried to pass my guard on his knees, for example, I would push his head up, sideways or down to the mat, creating the room I needed to reguard and block his guard pass. My no-gi open guard game probably jumped a full belt level in less than a week as that revelation, and its implications, sunk in.
More on the topic of grappling breakthroughs can be found in this article, exclusively on Grapplearts.
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Sometimes it is possible to know exactly what caused the breakthrough. In my own development, for example, my no-gi guard game lagged behind my gi-based guard game for the longest time. Try as I might, my closed guard would get opened, my open guard would get passed, and my training partners were rarely in any danger from my submission or sweep attempts.
The breakthrough happened rather suddenly, when I finally realized that I wasn't controlling my opponent's head in no-gi sparring. When I started controlling, holding, shoving, stuffing and pushing the head it became much more difficult for opponent's to make good posture and to pass my guard. Anytime my opponent tried to pass my guard on his knees, for example, I would push his head up, sideways or down to the mat, creating the room I needed to reguard and block his guard pass. My no-gi open guard game probably jumped a full belt level in less than a week as that revelation, and its implications, sunk in.
More on the topic of grappling breakthroughs can be found in this article, exclusively on Grapplearts.
Labels: the mental aspect
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