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Sensitivity Training for Grappling

Wednesday, August 18th, 2010

Physical attributes are really important for Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission grappling (a point further discussed in this article about physical attributes and BJJ).

Being able to feel your opponent’s intent and react to it even before he moves (like when he’s trying to bridge his way out of your mount) requires sensitivity. In fact, sensitivity is one of the most important physical attributes in grappling.

So let’s talk about some ways to develop this mysterious attribute called “sensitivity.”

The tried and true method to amp up your sensitivity is simply to spend more time on the mat. If you’re working with real-live opponents and dealing with real-live pressure and resistance on a regular basis then you will eventually develop sensitivity.

But if you want to specifically work on your sensitivity you can try sparring with your eyes closed. By relying on feel, rather than vision, your sensitivity and spacial awareness will develop much faster than if you were always using your eyes. (I often use this to handicap myself when I’m sparring with someone who has much less experience than me).

Another great method is to do drills with your eyes closed.

For example, check out these four relatively simple technique repetition drills that can all be done with your eyes closed (just be sure not to impale your partner with your knee during the guard passing drill!).

Maybe the most effective application of this idea is to do reaction-based drills with your eyes closed.

For example, let’s say that you’re trying to train your defense to a specific attack. The specific type of attack almost doesn’t matter – it could be an armdrag from butterfly guard, an armbar from mount, or a standing guard pass. The important thing is that your partner can apply it to you on both the right and the left side.

Start with your eyes closed – your training partner will start his attack, but you won’t know whether he’s going to your left or right. You have a single, specific counter in mind, and as soon as you feel the attack you respond with the counter on the appropriate side.

The idea of this drill is to bypass the normal circuit of first seeing the attack, then thinking about your counter, and then deciding to initiate your defense.

With severely limited options (i.e. right or left) and your eyes closed you feel the attack and then go directly to your counter. I was using this training myself the other day with my good friend Ritchie Yip and it really helped solidify the arm drag counter we were working on.

If you’re looking for ideas on how to train this way, then take a look at my classic Grappling Drills DVD – almost all the exercises on this DVD can be ramped up a notch by doing them with your eyes closed!!

Posted in drills, physical attributes, sparring, training | No Comments »

Flow Sparring

Tuesday, June 15th, 2010

Last week I had a short but fun training session with my friend Ritchie doing what we call ‘flow sparring.’

The rules of flow sparring are very simple: you have to keep moving and you can’t use strength. You can’t hold a position for more than a couple of seconds and you have to move, even if it means you’re going to lose a good position. And you don’t finalize submissions; you can go for leglocks, chokes and armlocks, but you put them on loosely so that it’s relatively easy for your sparring partner to escape.

The whole goal of this kind of sparring is to create movement, lots of it! And by continually experiencing movement for the entire sparring session you’re improving your ability to scramble.

Scrambling is really important in grappling. It’s the transitional twilight zone between established positions, and if you become comfortable in these transitions then you’ll start to see more and more opportunities to apply flash submissions, or find unexpected ways to lock yourself into rock-solid pinning positions.

(In his excellent book ‘A Fighter’s Mind’ Sam Sheridan describes Marcelo Garcia – the best pound for pound grappler active today – as “the king of scrambles.” Watch some of Marcelo’s matches on Youtube and tell me if this isn’t true!)

Now I’ve actually heard some people say that flow sparring develops bad habits, and that one should concentrate instead on holding positions.

Of course the ability to hold good position is important, but fast-paced, seemingly chaotic transitions are always going to be part of the game. If you can maintain total positional control over your sparring partners at all times then your sparring partners simply aren’t good enough to challenge you. If skill levels are closer then there will be moments when there is no position and everything is just a giant scramble.

Flow sparring is just a training method. In an important match you wouldn’t fight this way: you might scramble, scramble, scramble, get a good position and then crush your opponent while incrementally ratcheting your submission tighter and tighter. That approach combines the very best aspects of a mobility-based game with a positional game (this topic is further broken down in my mobility vs position blog post here).

A lot of people don’t understand the concept of training methods. Think of it this way: almost every martial arts instructor in the world has his or her students do pushups. Does that mean that they advocate standing square to an opponent and repeatedly pushing them with both arms at the same time? Of course not!

Pushups are a training method to develop strength and endurance in the arms and chest.

And flow sparring is a training method to become comfortable with transitions, to recognize opportunities in the midst of movement, and to develop that elusive ability to scramble effectively.

Posted in concepts, drills, training | No Comments »

Robot Legs Drill (video)

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Today I want to show you a fun and effective way to improve your guard passes that I call the ‘robot legs’ drill. Once you get comfortable with this drill try going faster and faster so that you also get a bit of cardio burn.

But here’s the ‘catch’ – this drill ISN’T only for the guy on top. It ALSO lays the foundation for some highly sophisticated guard retention drills for the guy on the bottom. That makes it win-win for both training partners, which is always the best kind of situation!

Obviously there’s a lot more to defending the guard pass than this highly simplified ‘robot leg’ movement, but this is a great place to start. Once you get comfortable with this, then you can move on to other, more advanced, drills. Click here to see the Robot Legs Guard Passing Drill Video.

Posted in drills, guard passes, training | No Comments »

The Deep Half Guard (video)

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Nowadays you often see the Deep Half Guard at the highest levels of BJJ and submission grappling competition.

Because I saw this position working again and again, several years ago I decided to add it to my repertoire. It’s a bit like regular half guard except you insert yourself right under your opponent’s center of gravity, which opens him up to some very powerful sweeps.

It wasn’t easy at first: it took a lot of experimentation and research, but eventually I had a series of ‘aha’ moments and it became one of my bread and butter sweeping positions!

Here’s a video clip of the specific revelation that made the biggest difference in my game, and converted the Deep Half Guard into an aggressive sweeping position for me:

Posted in concepts, drills, half guard, no gi, positions, sweeps | No Comments »

A Drill to Rescue the Armbar from Guard

Friday, February 12th, 2010

At a seminar I attended, martial arts legend Dan Inosanto once distinguished between

the techniques used in a martial art, and
the training methods used to develop those techniques.

These are different things! For example, many of the same jointlocks and chokes occur in Brazilian Jiu-jitusu and classical Japanese Ju-jutsu, but the training methods used by those two schools of thought are obviously fairly different. One art uses choreographed drilling, the other uses contested sparring.

OK, OK, so there are techniques and teaching methods. How does this apply to you? Well recently I was able to guest teach a class at the school of my friend Ritchie Yip.

Here is part of that class

One of the techniques I wanted the group to work on was the armbar spin-out from guard. This is a very useful move when a bigger and stronger opponent tries to stack and crush you in an attempt to get out of your armbar attack.

But my secret hidden agenda that night was to field-test a different method of teaching and training this technique. I had just come up with a new solo drill. I wanted to see if it would make the spin-out, a fairly complicated technique, easier to learn.

So I made the class do the solo drill, and then we moved on to the technique itself. Within a few minutes everyone – even the new guy with only 3 classes under his whitebelt – was spinning out of the armbar like a seasoned pro.

Not bad for a move that considered by many to be ‘advanced.’ I’ve taught this technique before and adding the solo drill to the teaching progression really accelerated the success that everyone experienced. The students learned something that night, but so did I! A big ‘thank you’ to the boys and girls who were my guinea pigs!

Regardless of whether you’re teaching or just training, sometimes the best way to learn a move is to isolate the crux of the move – the most difficult part – and drill it on it’s own. A bad workman blames his tools, and a poor teacher blames his students. Finding, creating, and using the correct drills is part of good teaching. The right drill at the right time can work wonders.

If you have something against embedded video, here’s a direct link to the solo drill and the actual armbar spin-out on Youtube.

Also, for more ideas about solo and partner drills check out my Grappling Drills DVD, available on this very site!

Posted in armbar from guard, drills, teaching, training | No Comments »

A Video Tutorial on the X Guard

Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

I’m just drowning in email right now, because my new Grappling Concepts course has just launched. I’ve never seen a response this intense (maybe it’s because of the limited number of DVDs available).

But before I get back to taking orders and answering emails, here’s a link to an online video X Guard tutorial that I’m using to promote the Grappling Concepts Course

Posted in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, butterfly guard, drills, sweeps, teaching, the guard, x guard | No Comments »

A Great Half Guard Resource!

Tuesday, September 8th, 2009

If you haven’t seen this video yet then you’re in for a treat!

Here Indrek Reiland and Jorgen Matsi take you through the Half Guard Position, covering the basics of both the top and the bottom position.

Not only do they show techniques, but they also share drills and, most importantly the underlying concepts of the half guard. Once you understand these concepts it will put the techniques into perspective and also make it much easier to remember them.
Production values aren’t quite up to ‘Speilbergian’ standards, but the information they show you is top notch.

By the end of this video you should have a real solid head start on the Half Guard.

Since it’s on Google Video, you can either watch the video on the site or download it to your computer for free. In fact, I’d recommend that you go and download it right away, just because you never know when a gem like this is going to disappear from the internet forever!

(If you want to download it to your computer first click here to go to the page on Google video, and then click on the “download video – iPod/PSP” link to the right of the video.)

Till later!

Stephan Kesting

P.S. Word’s gotten out that I’m working on something new. I don’t want to jinx things by talking about too early, but it’s a BIG thing with some very exciting give-aways. Hopefully I’ll be able to make a big announcement soon, and then things are going to get VERY interesting around here…

Posted in drills, half guard | No Comments »

Study Time

Thursday, May 7th, 2009

Today I want to talk about a very useful tool for intermediate and advanced-level grapplers.

The idea is to create study blocks where you focus on a single topic. During this time you basically take one aspect of grappling, and beat it to death with a large stick!

How long you do this for can vary, but typically it will range anywhere from one week to two months. It depends on a number of factors, including

How narrow or focussed your topic is
How many times a week you train
How fast you learn
Whether you have the self-discipline to focus on a topic for a lengthy time
etc.

Also it’s worth noting that some topics just inherently require a lot of more work than others.

Maintaining and attacking from the mount position – for example – is a pretty big topic. Two months of focussing on this this would be a pretty good start, but in some ways it would only be scratching the surface.

On the other hand, if your goal was to get better at finishing the armbar when your opponent is clasping his hands together, then that’s not a huge project. (It would, however, require you to find people to train this with you over and over).

For purposes of discussion, let’s pick a big topic. For example, let’s say that your goal is to get better at escaping from side mount.

So now what do you actually do during your side-mount-escape study block?

The most important change would be starting most, or all, of your sparring sessions trapped in side mount. When a new round begins, or if someone taps out, then you go back to the bottom of side mount and suffer some more.

On top of this you should also dedicate some time to repetition and drilling of the core techniques that you use to escape sidemount. Twenty, thirty, fifty repetitions per technique, per class. (But I’ll be the first to admit that finding a training partner to do this with isn’t easy…).

Additionally you should also be researching different techniques, concepts and details for the topic in question. You can acquire this information in many different ways, including:

Asking your instructor what you’re doing wrong in that subject area, and suggest some techniques for you to use.
Asking your sparring partners for feedback and suggestions
Reading books on the topic (there’s been an explosion of good BJJ books recently).
Watching instructional DVDs – there’s probably several on the topic you’re working on.
Searching Youtube for instructional clips and/or footage of matches where your specific techniques were actually used by high level competitors.
Posting your questions on internet forums, or just reading what other people have written on the topic.

Most of my own bread and butter techniques have come out of such periods of intensive study, so I know from first hand experience that this training method can have very real long-term benefits.

Give it a try!

Posted in drills, training | No Comments »

Coming Back from a Training Layoff

Thursday, February 19th, 2009

Coming back to training after a layoff is a tricky thing. There is a real danger that you jump back into full intensity training and re-injure yourself right off the bat (especially if you’ve been gone for a while and/or are coming back from an injury).

No, you need to ease back into training. Give your body some time to ‘remember’ what it used to do and ramp up your intensity slowly.

I actually have some authority to dispense advice here, because I’m coming back from a training layoff myself.

Three months ago, in November, I was working like crazy on some new grappling instructional products. Filming, producing, editing, writing and quality control took up almost all my time. I trained, but not very much.

Two months ago I injured my chest. This interfered with most aspects of my training, and so I was only on the mats once or twice a week in December.

One and a half months ago – on New Year’s Day no less – I was shocked to find out that I had a hernia (a direct inguinal hernia, to be precise). It didn’t hurt, but I really didn’t want to make it worse, and so I stopped ALL training and ALL conditioning until my surgery.

Three weeks ago I had surgery, during which they lined my abdominal wall with a prolene mesh. The recovery has gone well, and I’ve just been cleared to get back to strenuous physical actiivity

So I didn’t train much for a couple of months, and then not at all for the last 6 weeks. I’m recovering from two injuries and one surgery. Should I just jump back into class and start training, hell bent for leather?

Obviously not.

I really, really want to get back to training, but I’ll have to make haste slowly. It would really suck to have my repaired hernia explode again (or to injure myself somewhere else).

My back-to-the-mats program has consisted of two things so far:

Easy bodyweight exercises: pushups, pullups, squats, shrimping, hip heists, etc. Nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing to failure.
Non-competitive partner flow drills for repetition of basic grappling techniques. And I’m only using sane, in-control, and relatively light partners for this drilling.

I feel like a bit of a wimp going so light and easy, but there are three things I’m trying to do with this program. I’m trying to:

Get my body used to the physical strain of exercising again.
To recover a bit of timing and help my body to remember how to move like a grappler.
To test things out in a nice controlled environment. If either injury flares up again, I want that to happen in a controlled setting, and not with some bozo doing a flying knee-on-belly technique on me in sparring.

In another couple of days I’ll start with some (light) sparring. And here I’m going to pick and choose my partners very carefully: lighter guys with self control only, thank you very much.

For once I’m taking my own advice, and it feels weird!

Posted in Injuries, drills, overtraining, training | No Comments »

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