The last two weeks I have talked about solo drills and partner drills. There is a final category of drills I’d like to talk about: competitive 2 person drills.

When you do this type of drilling you are training a specific aspect of your game against a resisting opponent. Essentially you are severely limiting the options available to you and your partner, and from this limitation comes refinement of existing techniques and innovation of new techniques.

The aspect that you are working on could be very general (e.g. passing the open guard) or very specific (e.g. getting a certain grip or maintaining a certain kind of posture). The level of resistance that you opponent/partner gives you can vary from about 10% to full out 100% sparring.

This definition of drilling leads to a truly staggering number of possible drills. The best thing for you to do is to try to develop various drills that will develop your game. Consider the process of taking someone’s back and submitting him. If this was an area that you wanted to develop, then here are some of drills you might want to experiment with. Depending on what your strengths, weaknesses and strategies are you may end up retaining some of these drills for a while, in order to hone your ability to attack the back. All these drills start with your partner in the turtle and you on top of him – your goals, however, vary from drill to drill.

1. He tries to put you in the guard, you try to keep him turtled using your bodyweight and moving around him
2. Your goal is to obtain your favorite grip, be it linked hands under-over, double lapel grips through his armpits, or whatever your favorite control grip is. You restart in the same position if you get your grip, or if he puts you in the guard, or if he stands up, or if he rolls you.
3. Your goal is to get both hooks in – restart if you succeed or if he escapes to a safe position.
4. Start with one hook in: your goal is to insert the second hook. His goal is to remove your hook and to prevent the second hook. Go for a defined time period (e.g. 2 minutes) and then switch positions.
5. Your goal is to keep the back and submit him: restart if you submit him from rearmount, or if he escapes, or even if you end up pinning him in any other position than with your chest on his back.
6. etc.
   
7. etc.
8. etc.
   

This is just scratching the surface, and you should now be able to see that you could do similar drills for virtually every position and every submission. All it takes is some honesty and perception on your part to know what your weaknesses are, and some inventiveness to create the drill(s) to fix that weakness.

This sort of drilling is very similar to what I call ‘targeted sparring’. For more information on targeted sparring check out these other tips of the week’:

• Targeted Sparring: Mobility
• Targeted sparring: Position
• Targeted Sparring: Limited Technique
• Targeted Sparring: Bad Positions
  
  

Two-person drills are important training methods to develop skills on the mat. They can be used to warm up at the beginning of your training session, as part of your conditioning program, or as a finishing exercise. You can do these drills to improve your bridging power, refine your hip movement on the bottom, speed up your submissions, or to develop many other skills and attributes.

Today I will give you two examples of two-person drills. Keep in mind that not every drill is useful for every skill level or body type, so there is an onus on every grappler to choose appropriate drills. My ultimate goal is that you will use these examples to develop new drills, specific to your body, your game, and your grappling goals.

In the “kneemount spin armbar drill” (click here to download a QT preview) you are doing repetitions of the 180 degree armbar. This is a fundamental attack in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and submission grappling, but requires lots of repetition to make it smooth and fast. This drill is one way to get lots of repetitions, in a fairly painless manner.

In the final drill, “turtle flips” (click here to download a QT preview) you are developing the back arch, spatial awareness and athleticism. Turtle flips are easier to do if your partner is wearing a gi, but I first saw this exercise in a Shooto class, so it is possible to do them without the gi. This is obviously a fairly advanced drill, and requires that you have put in your time with more basic back arch/bridging drills.

Have fun with these drills.

In this last installment on fine-tuning your sparring time I would like to talk about starting your sparring sessions from bad positions. Starting out in a bad position is a good way to rapidly improve your pin escapes and submission counters. It is also a great way to challenge yourself, particularly when sparring lighter or less experienced people.

Here are some potential ways to start your sparring:

• Your partner pinning you in mount, side mount or rear mount. He should make sure that he is attacking from that position, and is not just holding on for dear life. The sparring round ends when you tap or you escape into a neutral position (e.g. guard).
• Your partner in the armbar position with you clasping your hands together.
• You in the turtle position and him on top of you, with the grip of his choice.
• You in your partner’s guard and in a loose triangle choke, his legs crossed at the ankles.
• You standing and your partner grabbing both of your legs behind your knees, as if he’s just shot in on a double leg (you could also do similar drills from a single leg, high crotch or low single position). His goal is to take you down, and your goal is to escape or counter his takedown.
• Any other bad position you can think of, particularly ones that you have difficulty escaping from in sparring.
  

There are three ways you can do this drill. First: you could simply start your sparring session in this position, and if you escape then just continue sparring until the round ends or someone taps. Second: when you escape from your positional predicament stop and immediately go back to the same position. Third: you and your partner can change positions after each submission or escape, so that you can both get the benefits of being on top and on bottom.

These drills also benefit your partner. For example, while you are working on your mount escapes he is working on maintaining the mount position and attacking from there. No matter who taps, everybody wins!

Letting your sparring partner start in a dominant position is not a training method for people with fragile egos. Understand this: if you let people start in a dominant position you WILL get tapped out more often in training, and you WON’T catch your partners in as many submissions yourself. On the other hand, your ability to defend against submissions and escape from bad positions will skyrocket, and when you do get caught in a bad position it’ll be just another day in the office rather than a reason to panic.

A ‘position game’ is usually characterized by tight transitions between positions, an emphasis on maintaining a position while attacking, and lots of pressure while in a top position. How does one become better at this game?

One good method is to spar and make all your transitions slow, tight and methodical. If you are in your opponent’s guard, then use a guard pass that doesn’t rely on speed and explosiveness – for example the ‘leg on the shoulder’ guard pass. As you go through the guard pass pause after each movement and let your opponent try to fight his way out of it: if your technique and pressure are correct he should be unable to resist, even though you are essentially doing it in slow motion.

You can train this way using all sorts of techniques, including submissions, transitions and even some escapes. It is best to initially stick to training with people either lighter, or less experienced, than yourself. If you pick someone who really challenges you then it will be more difficult to try out a new game. After you have perfected your slow motion crushing guard pass, or the unstoppable armlock from sidemount, then you can try it out on your normal grappling partners.

The ability to lock into a position and feel unmovable to your opponent is central to this game. Think of yourself as a ratchet: once you gain an inch of territory you refuse to give it back. Accordingly, some isometric strength is useful for a position-based game in grappling. You don’t need to be able to deadlift 400 pounds to do it properly, however; good technique can make you feel twice as heavy as you actually are.