How to Defeat the Younger, More Athletic Opponent, Vol 1
by Rob Biernacki and Stephan Kesting
Being on the wrong side of 40 sucks if you want to train BJJ. I know from experience that the game changes significantly once you cross this line.
After every training session you limp off the mat in search of Ibuprofen. Hard training leaves you completely destroyed and recuperation takes much longer. Injuries become more frequent and start to add up.
You’re trying to keep up with young studs who do nothing but train all day, but your body can no longer do what it used to do.
Muscles are weaker, joints are tighter, bones are more brittle, you get tired faster and it takes forever to recover.
So what to do? Pack it all in? Burn your gi? Book your ride to the glue factory?
No!!! You can still train. You can still wreck those younger grapplers. All you need is a new approach.
The truth is that after age 40 you need to use different techniques, apply different strategies, and implement different training methods.
INTRODUCING ‘BJJ FOR OLD F***S, VOL 1 – THE GUARD
BJJ for Old F***s is your guide to surviving and thriving in BJJ after age 40.
This instructional focuses on the guard position. It includes the concepts, techniques, combinations, strategies and drills you need as an older grappler to hold your own against – and even dominate – younger, more athletic opponents.
Every technique in BJJ for Old F***s is chosen to work to be as low risk and high reward as possible because we know that if you’re injured you can’t train.
This instructional gives you the very best shortcuts gleaned from 55 years of jiu-jitsu training (and 70 years of martial arts training) by the two authors combined.
I think grapplers age 40 and above will get TREMENDOUS value from the this instructional. Take me up on my unconditional 365 day guarantee if you get it and don’t agree!
Now available in online streaming, physical DVD, and app-based formats.
ORDER THIS NEW INSTRUCTIONAL BELOW AND START CRUSHING YOUNG PUNKS!
BJJ for Old F***s, The Guard. Online streaming access anywhere using your computer, smartphone or tablet.
ON SALE $127 (Regular $147)
Also available app format for your phone in the Grapplearts BJJ Master App!
CHOOSE YOUR TECHNIQUES CAREFULLY
As an older grappler you just can’t use techniques that rely on athleticism, flexibility, or scrambling.
You can’t do techniques that require you to contort your body into a pretzel. You can’t maintain the pace required to ‘wrestle up’, scramble or explode into submissions.
Pretending you’re a bendy 20 year old will only result in a loud ‘POP!’ sound, agonising pain, and never ending parade of visits to your doctor, chiropractor and physiotherapist.
Instead you need a game that works for older body types. What you’re looking for are techniques that are effective at high levels of competition, but DON’T require a ton of athleticism, explosiveness, or flexibility.
The techniques with the highest return on investment are the ones where you use leverage to manipulate your opponent however you want. Look to use leverage instead of strength, muscle or flexibility wherever you can .
RECONSIDER YOUR GUARD GAME
Maybe nothing changes for the older grappler more than how they use the guard. A young punk can afford to lie on his back, let his opponent get grips, then spin, invert, and high leg to his heart’s content. He can twist into sweeps and contort into submissions.
If you try that same approach – excuse my French – you’re f***ed!
After age 40 not all guards are created equal. You need to become much more picky about which types of guard you’re going to play. Forget about rubber guard, spider guard, inverted guard, reverse de la Riva guard and most of the modern guards.
Next you need to pick the right techniques from your guard. Obviously the attacks that require a ton of flexibility have to be kicked to the curb. Also ditch those inverting attacks and explosive moves.
Finally consider the downside of every attack. What can go wrong with them and can you get injured if that happens? For example, what if some young guy hulks his way out of a submission, maybe by rolling you up onto your head? Getting stacked like that has herniated more than one disk in more than one friend of mine.
Fortunately you can definitely still have a very effective guard even as you get older. The key is to use techniques, positions and strategies that slow the other guy down…
SLOW THOSE YOUNG PUNKS DOWN
As an older grappler you don’t have a bottomless gas tank anymore. But those young guys by contrast are like the Energizer bunny – they keep going and going and going…
Fighting like this drains your gas tank. While you might be able to match a young guy move for move for a little while, inevitably this strategy ends up failing in the long run. You’re going to get tired and he’s going to smash you, simple as that!
So what’s a good strategy against those young punks?
For the guard the first step is to win a dominant grip. He who wins the grip usually wins the next exchange, but at the very least a good grip means that the other guy isn’t likely to pass your guard or snap on a submission.
From your grip you then need to win meaningful control over his body. By limiting the other guy’s movement you now don’t have to deal with a whirling dervish anymore, and your chances of getting injured just went down significantly.
From that control position you can now begin to off balance him, set traps, use old guy patience, and lure him in to his doom.
Finding ways to control the match as a cunning older grappler is much better than trying to match the pace of some young stud.
GUARD RETENTION CHANGES AS YOU GET OLDER
Guard retention is your ability to keep your opponent safely in your guard and shut down his guard pass. This is an essential skill in BJJ because you can’t win a fight from the guard if the other guy has already blown past it!
Younger jiu-jitsu players often rely on their extreme flexibility to stop the guard pass. They’ll spin into inversions, retract their knees into their armpits, or fold in half with their feet beside their own ears.
Another young guy style of guard retention that you shouldn’t use is based on strength, timing, and explosiveness. People who use this strategy usually try to ‘wrestle up’ against a guard pass, grind their way up back to their feet, fight for a single leg or a double leg position, and then scramble to finish the takedown in a wild free-for-all.
Both of these are fine strategies for the youthful athlete, but become much more dangerous as you get older; you’re guaranteed to get injured.
Reduced flexibility, a more breakable body, slowed reaction times, and less cardio make injury much more likely if you try to use these ‘young guy’ guard retention strategies.
As an older grappler you need to throw out those guard retention techniques and work smarter, not harder. You need to develop a new toolbox of techniques and strategies that are safe and work for any body type.
The big game changer here is the intelligent use of frames. Block his forward progress with your bones rather than your muscles, and transfer that force into the floor rather than into you. Then, protected by your frames you can easily re-adjust your hips and legs to unwind his guard pass and get back to your own attacks.
A solid frame is worth its weight in gold, and multiple overlapping frames make your guard damn near unpassable.
COMPENSATING FOR SLOWER REFLEXES WITH SNEAKINESS
There’s no sugar-coating it: your reflexes get slower as you get older.
Sometimes this is because our brains ossify as we get older, but it could also be because we don’t have the time to spend all day on the mat anymore.
The best way to look like you’ve got god-tier timing in BJJ isn’t by getting faster! Instead it’s to set up a situation where you funnel the other guy into a position where he’s only got a small set of possible options.
That small set of options means that you can already have a pre-planned response for everything he’s likely to do. Now you’re just waiting for his reaction and can totally beat him to the punch.
Knowing what his response is going to be in advance beats having fast reflexes!
MAXIMISE YOUR TRAINING AND DON’T GET INJURED
As you get older you can’t recover as fast anymore, and you’ve also probably got less time you can devote to training.Because of that it becomes incredibly important to train as efficiently as possible.
Your time is limited, so you want train smarter and maximise your results to improve as much as possible within a given amount of time.
For the older grappler the answer is NOT to put in countless hours of sparring and grind yourself into oblivion while hoping that you’ll somehow get better.
You do need to train hard – there’s no way around that – but instead of trying to develop everything all at once you want to structure your training so that it develops specific skill sets. And if you can develop those skill sets in a safe manner, without getting injured, then so much the better!
The best way to get good quickly is by introducing limitations to your sparring.
For example you might want to do rounds in which one player is in seated guard and the other is standing. The top player has to stay on his feet, has to approach, and is allowed to do light gripfighting but is NOT allowed to pass the guard
The bottom player by contrast can work on anything: offbalancing, sweeps, submissions, you name it! Then at the end of the round you change positions.
Training like this allows the bottom player the opportunity to refine skills and techniques they’ve learned in a relatively safe environment. It also means that he’s not going to play guard for 10 seconds, get his guard passed, and then spend the rest of the round getting crushed on the bottom.
There are many forms of constrained and situational sparring to refine specific strategies and as you get older you should use them all!
WHO ARE ROB BIERNACKI AND STEPHAN KESTING?
Your guides in the BJJ for Old F***s instructional are, Rob Biernacki (46) and Stephan Kesting (52), both of whom are very experienced BJJ black belts
Rob Biernacki is a BJJ black belt, and head instructor of Island Top Team. He’s among the forefront of the new wave of BJJ instructors, using sports science, biomechanics, kinesiology and a conceptual approach to the martial arts.
Rob has traveled to train with Marcelo Garcia, Caio Terra, Eddie Cummings, Paul Schreiner, and Henry Akins, Ryan Hall, Dean Lister, Jake McKenzie, Ricardo Liborio, and Charles McCarthy from ATT from whom he received his black belt.
He frequently teaches seminars at academies throughout North America and is sought after for private instruction by other BJJ instructors seeking cutting edge information.
He has also coached high level competitors like BJJ legend Yuri Simoes, Bill Cooper, Kyle Boehm and others to victory in high level competition.
Stephan Kesting is a BJJ black belt who has trained for over 40 years in the martial arts, including many grappling arts like BJJ, sambo, judo, submission wrestling and shoot wrestling.
His Youtube BJJ videos have over 64 million views. He’s produced 36 BJJ instructionals, and has published 3 books on the topic.
Stephan has worked with Rob Biernacki on a number of very successful instructionals including The BJJ Formula, The Modern Leglock Formula, The No Gi de la Riva Formula and The Submission Formula.
The underlying theme of their previous work is scientific and biomechanically-based approach to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. These instructionals have been described by many as the best, most useful instructionals they had ever seen.
The BJJ for Old F***s instructional will definitely improve your skills, reduce your injuries, and improve your longevity on the mat. And help you tap out lots of young punks. What’s better than that?
WHAT EXACTLY ARE YOU BE GETTING IN THIS INSTRUCTIONAL?
This instructional contains 7 and a half hours of material focussing on building an efficient and effective guard game applicable for older grapplers.
It’ss arranged in six volumes. Each volume has a logical progression of techniques, concepts and drills that’ll make learning and retaining the material easy. This is emphatically NOT some scattershot collection of moves dreamed up on the day of filming!
With the exception of one or two techniques, all the material is applicable to both gi and no gi grapplers.
You’ll also get innovative training drills to allow you to safely incorporate these new movements into your technical repertoire as fast as possible.
Let’s briefly go through what’s in each volume…
VOLUME 1: BJJ CONCEPTS FOR THE OLDER GRAPPLER.
We start out by giving you the concepts that are most important for your success as an older grappler. This is the view from 30,000 feet that’ll double the speed at which you incorporate all the other material in this instructional.
You’ll learn how to use alignment to stay safe and multiply the effectiveness of your techniques, how to limit your opponent’s movement, what kinds of guard you should focus on, how to win the engagement phase of guard, and much more.
VOLUME 2: OLD MAN SEATED GUARD VS STANDING PLAYERS
Knowing how to use the seated guard is a critical skill for an older grappler, ESPECIALLY against standing guard passers. That’s because it allows you to win the engagement phase of guard with handfighting rather than relying on dextrous legwork like the young punks do.
By sitting up and using a few simple distance maintenance mechanisms you force your standing opponent to engage in certain predictable ways. When he does that then – BOOM – you can use the pre-programmed attacks you’ll learn in this volume to sweep him and begin your own attacks!
VOLUME 3: OLD MAN SEATED GUARD VS KNEELING PLAYERS
In a grappling situation your opponent gets a vote too! Sometimes he’ll approach your seated guard on his knees, hoping to move into some form of pressure passing to smash his way past your legs.
In this volume of BJJ for Old F***s you’ll get a highly effective but low-energy guard retention system that’ll frustrate the crap out of your opponent and allow you to get back to your own attacks!
VOLUME 4: OLD MAN RECUMBENT GUARD VS KNEELING PLAYERS
Your days of getting put on your back, cross-faced, crushed and mangled are over! This volume gives you the tools you need to dominate your opponent from a recumbent guard with your back on the ground.
You’ll learn how to shut down his forward pressure, off-balance him, and then use his own reactions against him by attacking with a series of chained and interconnected sweeps. As always, strength and flexibility are NOT required!
VOLUME 5: OLD MAN RECUMBENT GUARD VS STANDING PLAYERS
Being flat on your back against a standing younger opponent who’s constantly trying to sprint, jump, and dive past your guard is a formula for getting injured and smashed. There’s just too much momentum and uncontrolled energy going on!
Fortunately in Volume 6 you’ll learn exactly how to get this situation back under control safely and in a manner that puts you back on the offensive. As always we’ll also show you exactly how to train this material so you learn it as fast as possible and in maximum safety.
VOLUME 6: OLD MAN CLOSED GUARD
The closed guard is the classic old-school position that many younger grapplers neglect, giving you an opportunity to frustrate the crap out of them with it.
In this volume you’ll learn how to safely control your opponent and submit him with attacks that don’t put your neck and limbs at risk if the young guy spazzes out on you. If you combine this material with the previous volumes then the young punks won’t feel like they have anywhere safe to hide from you on the mats!
100% Money Back Guarantee.
If you want to beat up the young guys on the mat then grab this instructional right away. I endorse it completely.
In fact I’m so confident that you’ll LOVE BJJ for Old F***s that I’ll back it my endorsement with a 100%, no wiggle-room, zero hassle money back guarantee.
My return policy here is really simple: if you don’t like the material, if you don’t find the format useful, if you’re offended by Rob’s jokes – anything – then you have 365 days to let me know and I’ll give you a complete refund.
Nobody else does this but I don’t care. I don’t want to ‘trick’ you into buying something you don’t find useful. I’ve been running Grapplearts since 2002, and that’s why I’d rather keep you as a satisfied friend than an unhappy customer.
Check out this instructional with confidence that it’s going to work, or all your money back. It’s really that simple.
Stephan Kesting
ORDER THIS NEW INSTRUCTIONAL BELOW AND START CRUSHING YOUNG PUNKS!
BJJ for Old F***s, The Guard. Online streaming access anywhere using your computer, smartphone or tablet.
ON SALE $127 (Regular $147)
Or check it out on your phone in the Grapplearts BJJ Master App!