Grappling Tips Newsletter

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!

Labels: drills, training

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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:

1. Easy bodyweight exercises: pushups, pullups, squats, shrimping, hip heists, etc. Nothing too strenuous and certainly nothing to failure.
2. 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:

1. Get my body used to the physical strain of exercising again.
2. To recover a bit of timing and help my body to remember how to move like a grappler.
3. 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!

Labels: drills, Injuries, overtraining, training

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