Over the long haul, I've found it necessary to spend longer periods of time largely focused on one area of my game. Having played Judo before I tried Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and because I had plans of fighting MMA, my first JiuJitsu coaches forced me to start on my back. I spent the better part of a year or 2 working for submissions off my back in the Gi, and when in training MMA to fight in the cage, getting off my back and back to my feet. One of the first names I watched and found online to take from for this skill was BJ Penn. As I got better at submitting, but also the overall level of guys improved, and against heavier opponents, it was time to start sweeping. I spent most of my blue belt (close to 2 years - part of which was spent returning from full knee/ACL reconstruction) sweeping: deep half guard, reverse de la riva, combinations of spider and reverse de la riva et cetera. I got to purple belt and spent the first year or more working on my guard passing in an effort to catch it up to my bottom game. I moved to NYC, joined Renzo's and due to my work schedule and training, I had no real direction. I trained in the Gi, but had no overlying direction to where I was going. I finally sorted out work, and life, and the balance necessary to train when I wanted to and.......
About a year ago I transitioned to focusing on NoGi full-time. I spent the better part of that first year attacking the legs from the bottom, and elevating, hand fighting, making angles, but again - with the sole purpose of attacking the legs. Due in large part to the positional rounds we do every training session in the blue basement, I never left other skills very far behind (back attacks, armbar defense, attacking the turtle, referee's position, wrestling - we've spend extended periods of time both learning and doing positional rounds for all of the above and more). When I competed NoGi for the past year I almost exclusively attacked the legs.
Rewind to two months ago: now I'm focusing on passing the guard/legs again. My NoGi passing game is bare bones to say the least, but it's time, as passing results in back exposure and opportunities to threaten the legs. The real question looming: do you invest ALL your time and energy into a very narrow range of the game, for example: bottom position, open guard, attacking the legs and sundry other submission and getting to the back, or for example: your wrestling, fighting for top position and passing and getting to the back et cetera.
Danaher always stresses the importance of both having competency in all areas of grappling (both Gi and NoGi) but at the same time that real progress is made by truly delving into a position and/or submission on an exceedingly deep level.
I've been doing grappling as a whole for coming up on 15 years (between Judo and the overlap into JiuJitsu), and yes, there's a million techniques, but then again, in the big picture, there's essentially a -10 set of skills within which to work.
In NoGi (for the sake of simplicity):
Bottom position -- sweep, submit (upper body or lower body), get to the back, back to your feet
top position -- pass, submit (upper body or lower body), back take, attack the legs,
There's some overlap in the above, of course, but you get the idea.
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When you compete sub only & with all leg locks, the nuances between the positions and transitions change pretty significantly - as evidenced by the fact that experienced leg lockers have not won black belt level nogi world titles and black belt world champions have not fared well in EBI. Counter point? What about ADCC? ADCC is submission wrestling, and those 40 minute finals matches, or the fact that Orlando Sanchez won it without actually scoring any points, leaves it as a strange sort of outlier grappling entity that's not really a mix of sub only and IBJJF as some would like to partition it. There's a lot of overlap between the two, but ADCC, to me, really is an option C in terms of skills.
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At any rate, in my match last weekend, I defended a back take, came up to top position into a guard pass, forced enough pressure from the pass to create back exposure, locked up the kimura grip, and transitioned to a back triangle, forcing the tap via armbar a good bit later.
Sub Systems/Skills at work over the course of the last 2 minutes of the match:
Back Defense + guard passing leading to back exposure + kimura grip + back triangle + control and several submission attempts ultimately resulting in a back-triangle- armbar.
When you begin to see grappling as a macrosystem of microsystems connected together, and the real skill becomes forcing errors, capitalizing on the mistakes, or progressing in a repeatable fashion to the same junctions whereby you then overwhelm the defenses leading to a submission, the attributes of speed, or athleticism, or courage blah blah blah, while necessary, seem to fade into the background, and it becomes more about sensible structure of training, details, and problem solving under duress.
About a year ago I transitioned to focusing on NoGi full-time. I spent the better part of that first year attacking the legs from the bottom, and elevating, hand fighting, making angles, but again - with the sole purpose of attacking the legs. Due in large part to the positional rounds we do every training session in the blue basement, I never left other skills very far behind (back attacks, armbar defense, attacking the turtle, referee's position, wrestling - we've spend extended periods of time both learning and doing positional rounds for all of the above and more). When I competed NoGi for the past year I almost exclusively attacked the legs.
Rewind to two months ago: now I'm focusing on passing the guard/legs again. My NoGi passing game is bare bones to say the least, but it's time, as passing results in back exposure and opportunities to threaten the legs. The real question looming: do you invest ALL your time and energy into a very narrow range of the game, for example: bottom position, open guard, attacking the legs and sundry other submission and getting to the back, or for example: your wrestling, fighting for top position and passing and getting to the back et cetera.
Danaher always stresses the importance of both having competency in all areas of grappling (both Gi and NoGi) but at the same time that real progress is made by truly delving into a position and/or submission on an exceedingly deep level.
I've been doing grappling as a whole for coming up on 15 years (between Judo and the overlap into JiuJitsu), and yes, there's a million techniques, but then again, in the big picture, there's essentially a -10 set of skills within which to work.
In NoGi (for the sake of simplicity):
Bottom position -- sweep, submit (upper body or lower body), get to the back, back to your feet
top position -- pass, submit (upper body or lower body), back take, attack the legs,
There's some overlap in the above, of course, but you get the idea.
----
When you compete sub only & with all leg locks, the nuances between the positions and transitions change pretty significantly - as evidenced by the fact that experienced leg lockers have not won black belt level nogi world titles and black belt world champions have not fared well in EBI. Counter point? What about ADCC? ADCC is submission wrestling, and those 40 minute finals matches, or the fact that Orlando Sanchez won it without actually scoring any points, leaves it as a strange sort of outlier grappling entity that's not really a mix of sub only and IBJJF as some would like to partition it. There's a lot of overlap between the two, but ADCC, to me, really is an option C in terms of skills.
---
At any rate, in my match last weekend, I defended a back take, came up to top position into a guard pass, forced enough pressure from the pass to create back exposure, locked up the kimura grip, and transitioned to a back triangle, forcing the tap via armbar a good bit later.
Sub Systems/Skills at work over the course of the last 2 minutes of the match:
Back Defense + guard passing leading to back exposure + kimura grip + back triangle + control and several submission attempts ultimately resulting in a back-triangle- armbar.
When you begin to see grappling as a macrosystem of microsystems connected together, and the real skill becomes forcing errors, capitalizing on the mistakes, or progressing in a repeatable fashion to the same junctions whereby you then overwhelm the defenses leading to a submission, the attributes of speed, or athleticism, or courage blah blah blah, while necessary, seem to fade into the background, and it becomes more about sensible structure of training, details, and problem solving under duress.
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