LOCK N ROLL

Your attributes
Are you flexible, heavy or quick? Study your physical attributes. Work with what you have to create a safety net. Then start developing your lesser attributes. Ultimately leave the safety of your physicality as soon as possible, relying on techniques over physical attributes. Technique multiplies your physical advantages.

Hunt out technique
Be technical, hunt out jiu jitsu that requires little energy and maximises leverage. Study smaller and weaker jiu jitsu players such as Caio Terra and Emily Kwok. If you like a particular movement, look for who else does it well. Look at what they do that is different.

Be analytical
Importantly, when something works, ask your self why? e.g. how has the fulcrum changed? What is going through my opponent’s head in this position? What options are left for my opponent? What other attacks are available?

Visualise the mechanics for a move with simply objects like seesaws, tables, balls, and cylinders. By abstracting your jiu jitsu in this way you will see similar patterns occurring all over your jiu jitsu, the principles that apply in one area of your game may well apply in another part. Mechanical principles I have learned from single leg take downs have improved my leg locks, and gripping techniques from the rubber guard have improved my Kimura.

Learn to wrestle
Start wrestling once or twice a week, this will give you options that most other grapplers can’t access. In some instances a wrestling option is superior to a jiu jitsu one. Wrestling will also improve your power and agility. With the means to take a person down proficiently and safely, wrestling will complete you as a grappler.

Drill to win
Find a drilling partner, and hunt out or create drills that have a small gap between each repetition, drill guard passes and transitions that you find pleasing and fun. Precede to drill the shit out of them. Your partner is active in these drills giving you increasing amounts of grief as you get better at the drill.

I drilled one pass with some team mates for at least 7 hours over 3 weeks, during rolling I’d try to use the pass as often as possible. I’m Jackie Chan at that guard pass now. As a bonus, hard drilling is easier on your body than rolling is.

You must roll
Roll as much as you can without beating yourself up. Roll with the entire spectrum of experience. On people you are better than practice flowing between submissions and positions, try getting in trouble and getting out. Force the lesser skilled opponent into positions that you are drilling, and try them out.

When sparring people you are on par with try to beat them, try to make your new techniques work.

With those who smash you, survive, work on your tenacity, make them work for everything and don’t let them break your spirit.

Attack
When sparring, attack and grind away, be stubborn. Put your opponent under continuous pressure. You are thinking that you will pass their guard at any moment, you will get the submission. Be the person you sets the pace. If they are getting tired, increase the pressure and break your opponent. Be dangerous, always seek out the nearest submission.

Ask for help
If you are asking for feedback, be specific e.g. why do you always sweep me this way? How can I pass your butterfly guard? You keep on escaping my armbar, help? Bob always gets blahplata on me every time, any ideas?

Lastly, remember that in jiu jitsu, much more than speed, power or flexibility, it’s your brain gets the most leverage.

The video above features Ricky ‘The Hybrid’ Lundell, he’s Americas youngest jiu jitsu black belt and the cerebral supercoach behind Frank Mir and Joe Lauzon. He is also a phenomenal wrestler, being selected by wrestling legend Cael Sanderson for the Iowa State University wrestling team.

This alliteration is catchy, and it’s practical advice for our BJJ.

Reduce a technique into broad concepts
Armbars are about bending elbows the wrong way. Chokes are about stopping blood to the head, or crushing windpipes. Sweeps are about making your opponents base narrow, and tipping them over it. By reducing individual techniques into broad targets, we make them easier to hit during sparring.

Reuse movements you are good at in unfamiliar contexts
I use my physical knowledge of omoplata in my hip roll escapes and tornado sweeps. For me it’s having an omoplata flash light in a dark room of bent limbs. The contrapositive is also valuable: By reusing contexts you are familiar with, while training unfamiliar techniques you will rapidly increase your learning. I blend my wrestling and jiu jitsu, and my ~2 hours of wrestling specific training per week is effectively doubled.

Recycle moves to multiply your attacks
By recycling my single leg takedown I now have a inside single, outside single and a double that I can switch between rapidly, they are all essentially the same move, from a different angle. Marcelo Garcia and Rigan Machado embody the same idea with their take-down systems too. By recycling my basic butterfly sweep, I have an inside hook sweep, and out side hook sweep and a de la riva hook sweep. The oblique benefit with recycling techniques is that if you get better at one of them, you’ll get better at all of them.

As if you needed an excuse to watch Marcelo, he embodies the 3-R’s brilliantly.