October 28, 2008
The Arms Race
Is there someone at your club that you are always battling against? One week you kick his butt, and the following week it's payback time? Back and forth, week after week? If you do, then consider yourself lucky. It's a terrible thing to be the best grappler at a club...
Even if you train at a school with hundreds of members you will still probably do most of your sparring with a smaller subset of people who are roughly at your level. This core group of sparring partners will drive your development as a grappler and as a martial artist. Part of your development is because the "arms race" that you have with each specific individual.
To quote wikipedia, an arms race is "any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors." On the mat it might look something like this: one week you submit your sparring partner three times with a specific kneebar technique. The next week he figures out a counter to that technique and squashes you. The following week you've figured out how to counter his counter, and so on.
This doesn't have to be animosity between you and this other person, in fact your development is going to be fastest if you actively try to help that person beat you. What I'm talking about creating is a cooperative arms race, where you are each competing against each other, but also trying to help the other person get better.
Helping them is a bit of a selfish thing. Your goal is to make your training partner as good as he can be, so that he can then help you get better too. He will force your game to evolve to the next level.
I've personally had a long-standing arms race with one of my main training partners, Vlado. The first time Vlado and I sparred, which was about 10 years ago, he triangle choked me and I footlocked him. We've been great friends and great sparring partners ever since, but that doesn't mean that I'm not continuously plotting how to defeat his techniques, and I know he's doing the same for me.
The key detail is that it's a friendly rivalry - all I really want is for my new technique or counter to work for one day. Then I'll show him exactly what I'm doing, and the probable result is that my hard-fought advantage will slip away. That's what being a great training partner is all about. It's an arms race all right, but it has tremendous benefits for all parties involved.
Now both Vlado and I have our own approaches to developing 'the next big thing' to nullify the other guy's techniques. In the next two tips I'll spill the beans on exactly what we each do to try and get a little bit of an edge on the other guy.
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Even if you train at a school with hundreds of members you will still probably do most of your sparring with a smaller subset of people who are roughly at your level. This core group of sparring partners will drive your development as a grappler and as a martial artist. Part of your development is because the "arms race" that you have with each specific individual.
To quote wikipedia, an arms race is "any competition where there is no absolute goal, only the relative goal of staying ahead of the other competitors." On the mat it might look something like this: one week you submit your sparring partner three times with a specific kneebar technique. The next week he figures out a counter to that technique and squashes you. The following week you've figured out how to counter his counter, and so on.
This doesn't have to be animosity between you and this other person, in fact your development is going to be fastest if you actively try to help that person beat you. What I'm talking about creating is a cooperative arms race, where you are each competing against each other, but also trying to help the other person get better.
Helping them is a bit of a selfish thing. Your goal is to make your training partner as good as he can be, so that he can then help you get better too. He will force your game to evolve to the next level.
I've personally had a long-standing arms race with one of my main training partners, Vlado. The first time Vlado and I sparred, which was about 10 years ago, he triangle choked me and I footlocked him. We've been great friends and great sparring partners ever since, but that doesn't mean that I'm not continuously plotting how to defeat his techniques, and I know he's doing the same for me.The key detail is that it's a friendly rivalry - all I really want is for my new technique or counter to work for one day. Then I'll show him exactly what I'm doing, and the probable result is that my hard-fought advantage will slip away. That's what being a great training partner is all about. It's an arms race all right, but it has tremendous benefits for all parties involved.
Now both Vlado and I have our own approaches to developing 'the next big thing' to nullify the other guy's techniques. In the next two tips I'll spill the beans on exactly what we each do to try and get a little bit of an edge on the other guy.
Labels: training
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On Keeping the Top Position
Here is an excerpt from a soon-to-be-released book that I've been working on called "A Roadmap for Brazilian Jiu-jitsu":
Keeping the top position is a contentious issue. To illustrate the debate, let's consider the one of the classic BJJ techniques: a straight armbar from Mount. If you manage to pull it off and apply the armbar then that's great, the match is over. If your opponent manages to defend against the armbar, however, then you will typically end up on the bottom, in Guard. Going for that armbar means that you are accepting the risk of trading a superior position (Mount) for a neutral position (Guard). Some instructors and coaches will encourage you to go for that armbar, while others find the risk of losing top position unacceptable.
As with all attempts to balance risk and reward balancing acts, however, everyone has their own comfort zone. Some BJJ practitioners are perfectly happy to abandon top position to pursue a submission, whereas other, more conservative, practitioners prefer submissions that don't yield the top position if the submission attempt fails.
If you are competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) or are in a self defense situation then I would think long and hard before abandoning the precious top position. Any time you end up on the bottom in a context that includes striking there is always the chance that your opponent, with gravity on his side, could slip some heavy punches, elbows or headbutts through your defenses. If, on the other hand, your emphasis is more oriented towards sport BJJ or submission grappling then you have a more latitude about ending up on the bottom. Being on the bottom in a sport BJJ context isn't so bad if you have a good Guard game.
One of the decisions you'll have to make at some point in your BJJ career is where YOU stand on the issue of keeping the top position. Even if you become a die-hard top position player, there are still several reasons why you should still learn and occasionally practice submissions with an inherent risk of you ending up on the bottom.
First, it may help your athletic development, and make you feel more comfortable in scrambles where positions aren't so clear cut and the role of the combatants (i.e. top vs. bottom) changes very rapidly.
Second, an opponent may reverse you and send you to the bottom against your will - feeling comfortable with these techniques may allow you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat en route to the bottom.
Finally it will allow you to better counter these techniques should an opponent try them on you; because the best way to learn to counter a technique is to know how to apply it yourself.
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Keeping the top position is a contentious issue. To illustrate the debate, let's consider the one of the classic BJJ techniques: a straight armbar from Mount. If you manage to pull it off and apply the armbar then that's great, the match is over. If your opponent manages to defend against the armbar, however, then you will typically end up on the bottom, in Guard. Going for that armbar means that you are accepting the risk of trading a superior position (Mount) for a neutral position (Guard). Some instructors and coaches will encourage you to go for that armbar, while others find the risk of losing top position unacceptable.
As with all attempts to balance risk and reward balancing acts, however, everyone has their own comfort zone. Some BJJ practitioners are perfectly happy to abandon top position to pursue a submission, whereas other, more conservative, practitioners prefer submissions that don't yield the top position if the submission attempt fails.
If you are competing in mixed martial arts (MMA) or are in a self defense situation then I would think long and hard before abandoning the precious top position. Any time you end up on the bottom in a context that includes striking there is always the chance that your opponent, with gravity on his side, could slip some heavy punches, elbows or headbutts through your defenses. If, on the other hand, your emphasis is more oriented towards sport BJJ or submission grappling then you have a more latitude about ending up on the bottom. Being on the bottom in a sport BJJ context isn't so bad if you have a good Guard game.
One of the decisions you'll have to make at some point in your BJJ career is where YOU stand on the issue of keeping the top position. Even if you become a die-hard top position player, there are still several reasons why you should still learn and occasionally practice submissions with an inherent risk of you ending up on the bottom.
First, it may help your athletic development, and make you feel more comfortable in scrambles where positions aren't so clear cut and the role of the combatants (i.e. top vs. bottom) changes very rapidly.
Second, an opponent may reverse you and send you to the bottom against your will - feeling comfortable with these techniques may allow you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat en route to the bottom.
Finally it will allow you to better counter these techniques should an opponent try them on you; because the best way to learn to counter a technique is to know how to apply it yourself.
Labels: positions
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October 17, 2008
Catch and Release
Back when I was mostly training in Judo I heard that there were some traditional dojos in Japan where tapping out to a choke was frowned upon - even in club sparring sessions you were supposed to fight the choke right to the bitter end, and your opponent would release the hold only AFTER you passed out. I thought that this was pretty hardcore, and felt lucky that the Judo club I trained at wasn't like that.
Towards the end of my Judo career, however, I came across something even more bizarre. A Jpanese collegiate Judo team on a North American tour came and trained at my club. Not only did these guys not tap out to chokes, they didn't tap out to jointlocks either, at least until something in the joint had popped a few times. This was in PRACTICE, not competition. The irony is that most of these guys actually weren't very good on the ground, and at the end of a training session a whole bunch of them would be sitting against the wall, nursing sore elbows.
I recently told this story to my BJJ coach, Marcus Soares. After he finished laughing and shaking his head, he told me that back in Brazil he'd done the exact opposite. If he had a submission locked in, and he was sure that could finish it, then he'd often stop that attack, release the grips and go on to hunt for another submission elsewhere.
Perhaps not coincidentally I've seen video of Marcelo Garcia, the best pound for pound grappler in the world, using this same 'Catch and Release' method in his training. By loosening up your submissions before they are finalized you can study your opponent's reactions and escape motions, and then work countering his counters to your initial attack.
This intelligent approach to training sure beats the meathead approach of putting your training partner out of commission for a few months until his arm heals up...
Finally, as I talked about in a previous tip, some submissions are just inherently more dangerous than others. Knowing how to train dangerous submissions is important: if you never, ever use them in sparring then you may develop a myopia towards them. Now you might not even recognize when people are setting them up on you, or know what to do if you're caught in one. Sometimes people even apply these submissions accidentally: they might not realize that a choke has turned into a neck crank, for example. Knowing a little bit about how to intentionally apply a neck crank will help you be aware of when you are doing them unintentionally, and also teach you how to defend against them better.
These were all considerations I had to weigh as I was writing the script for my High Percentage Leglocks DVD. I knew I wanted to show some safer yet still highly efficient material on that DVD, but I was concerned about revealing too much about the heel hook, on the off chance that someone would injure their training partner. In the end I decided that I would be doing a disservice to the grappling community by not showing the heel hook, and included a lot of different methods to train these efficient and effective submissions safely.
For a more detailed discussion of how NOT to blow out your training partner's knee while leglocking him I would like to refer you to the High Percentage Leglocks DVD itself.
So be like a fisherman, and occasionally practice Catch and Release!
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Towards the end of my Judo career, however, I came across something even more bizarre. A Jpanese collegiate Judo team on a North American tour came and trained at my club. Not only did these guys not tap out to chokes, they didn't tap out to jointlocks either, at least until something in the joint had popped a few times. This was in PRACTICE, not competition. The irony is that most of these guys actually weren't very good on the ground, and at the end of a training session a whole bunch of them would be sitting against the wall, nursing sore elbows.
I recently told this story to my BJJ coach, Marcus Soares. After he finished laughing and shaking his head, he told me that back in Brazil he'd done the exact opposite. If he had a submission locked in, and he was sure that could finish it, then he'd often stop that attack, release the grips and go on to hunt for another submission elsewhere.
Perhaps not coincidentally I've seen video of Marcelo Garcia, the best pound for pound grappler in the world, using this same 'Catch and Release' method in his training. By loosening up your submissions before they are finalized you can study your opponent's reactions and escape motions, and then work countering his counters to your initial attack.
This intelligent approach to training sure beats the meathead approach of putting your training partner out of commission for a few months until his arm heals up...
Finally, as I talked about in a previous tip, some submissions are just inherently more dangerous than others. Knowing how to train dangerous submissions is important: if you never, ever use them in sparring then you may develop a myopia towards them. Now you might not even recognize when people are setting them up on you, or know what to do if you're caught in one. Sometimes people even apply these submissions accidentally: they might not realize that a choke has turned into a neck crank, for example. Knowing a little bit about how to intentionally apply a neck crank will help you be aware of when you are doing them unintentionally, and also teach you how to defend against them better.
These were all considerations I had to weigh as I was writing the script for my High Percentage Leglocks DVD. I knew I wanted to show some safer yet still highly efficient material on that DVD, but I was concerned about revealing too much about the heel hook, on the off chance that someone would injure their training partner. In the end I decided that I would be doing a disservice to the grappling community by not showing the heel hook, and included a lot of different methods to train these efficient and effective submissions safely.For a more detailed discussion of how NOT to blow out your training partner's knee while leglocking him I would like to refer you to the High Percentage Leglocks DVD itself.
So be like a fisherman, and occasionally practice Catch and Release!
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October 10, 2008
Learn to Crush the Bug
A large part of jiu-jitsu is using your weight to immobilize your opponent; "crushing the bug" as it is sometimes referred to. When done properly, the application of your body weight from the top position can be enough to submit your opponent by making it impossible for him to breath. Even if your opponent doesn't actually tap out, one of these diaphragm chokes can take much of the wind out his sails and reduce his will to fight.A barrier to learning the nuances of body positioning and weight distribution necessary for this level of pinning is that most people have no way to gauge the effectiveness of what they are doing. In today's newsletter I'm going to share the ABC method of teaching weight distribution, a powerful way to get immediate feedback on the effectiveness of your pins.
Imagine being back in school and writing a test, with a teacher standing right behind you. Would you score higher on that test if your teacher were to give you encouragement, saying "yes, that's it", whenever you started writing down the right answer? Of course you would - getting immediate feedback always helps your performance.
So try this:
Start out by pinning your partner in side mount or knee mount - these are the two easiest positions to initially apply this in. Now get your partner to slowly recite the alphabet, saying "A, B, C, D...", out loud. If he is able to speak easily then there is something wrong with your positioning; most likely you are putting too much weight onto the mat instead of onto your opponent.
Now adjust your position: try getting off of your knees, lifting your elbows, shifting your weight from his belly onto his diaphragm, etc. When it becomes hard for him to breathe and his recitation starts to sound labored - "A ..... gasp .... B ..... gurgle ........ c-c-c ....." - then you've got it right!
If you're an instructor teaching a class then give the ABC method a try. It makes for a very effective demonstration, because it leaves no doubt in anyone's mind that the pinning position is, in itself, an offensive weapon.
I have written other tips and articles on this topic, which you can check out by going to these additional resources:
Take care
Stephan Kesting
Labels: positions
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October 04, 2008
The Two Meanings of the Tap
Tapping out is sending a message to your opponent. The most common message is "OK, you got me with that submission. Now let me go"
Many grapplers don't realize that tapping out can also be used to send a different message, namely: "I don't know what's going on here - I might be in danger of getting injured, so let's stop for a second"
Recently I was sparring and had my opponent pinned in side mount. He wrapped my head at an awkward angle and bridged. To relieve pressure on my neck I decided to go with the it and roll to the bottom. Halfway during that roll we collided with some punching bags at the edge of the mat - I was now wedged into a corner, my neck at a strange angle, and my partner perched precariously on top of me.
It wasn't a submission per se - my neck didn't actually hurt - but I sure as hell didn't want to find out what would happen if either he or I tried to scramble from that position. I tapped out, he let go, and -for once - nothing went snap or pop.
As you become more experienced your knowledge of technique grows - that is a no-brainer. A less appreciated aspect of the grappling learning process is that your mental library of awkward positions also grows as you spend more time on the mats. You'll figure out when certain positions are merely uncomfortable, vs. actually being damaging. You might be willing to accept the discomfort of a guillotine choke for longer, because you'll know if it is going to damage your neck or your windpipe.
Even when you get to black belt level, however, you're still going to periodically end up in weird, contorted positions that might be uncomfortable but not be submissions per se. My advice is, that if you are unsure about the safety of a position, then swallow your pride, tap out and live to fight another day. The worst that will happen is that you will make the day of some junior guy at the club who just tapped out one of the big guns. Not such a big price to pay really, when you compare it to the alternative of not being able to train for many months due to some stupid, preventable injury!
Remember that the tap can be used to send two different messages.
Happy Tapping!
Additional Resources: an article about two things that will put a halt to your training.
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Many grapplers don't realize that tapping out can also be used to send a different message, namely: "I don't know what's going on here - I might be in danger of getting injured, so let's stop for a second"
Recently I was sparring and had my opponent pinned in side mount. He wrapped my head at an awkward angle and bridged. To relieve pressure on my neck I decided to go with the it and roll to the bottom. Halfway during that roll we collided with some punching bags at the edge of the mat - I was now wedged into a corner, my neck at a strange angle, and my partner perched precariously on top of me.
It wasn't a submission per se - my neck didn't actually hurt - but I sure as hell didn't want to find out what would happen if either he or I tried to scramble from that position. I tapped out, he let go, and -for once - nothing went snap or pop.
As you become more experienced your knowledge of technique grows - that is a no-brainer. A less appreciated aspect of the grappling learning process is that your mental library of awkward positions also grows as you spend more time on the mats. You'll figure out when certain positions are merely uncomfortable, vs. actually being damaging. You might be willing to accept the discomfort of a guillotine choke for longer, because you'll know if it is going to damage your neck or your windpipe.
Even when you get to black belt level, however, you're still going to periodically end up in weird, contorted positions that might be uncomfortable but not be submissions per se. My advice is, that if you are unsure about the safety of a position, then swallow your pride, tap out and live to fight another day. The worst that will happen is that you will make the day of some junior guy at the club who just tapped out one of the big guns. Not such a big price to pay really, when you compare it to the alternative of not being able to train for many months due to some stupid, preventable injury!
Remember that the tap can be used to send two different messages.
Happy Tapping!
Additional Resources: an article about two things that will put a halt to your training.
Labels: Injuries
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