Chuva Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

"If you have confidence in your own words, aspirations, thoughts, and actions and do your very best, you will have no need to regret the outcome of what you do. Fear and trembling are lot of the person who, while stinting effort, hopes that everything will come out precisely as he wants." ~ Mas Oyama

"Behind each triumph are new peaks to be conquered." ~ Mas Oyama

"One must try, everyday, to expand one's limits." ~ Mas Oyama

If you aren't in class, do you think about grappling? If the answer is no, then you are missing a way to improve your jiu jitsu outside of the gym. There are two kinds of really beneficial study for making yourself more successful on the mat. The first one is analyzing your class performance which requires no research or outside sources, just simply think about what was and was not successful from class that day. If it helps keep a log and refer back to it. The second is watching matches. It doesn't matter if it's judo, wrestling, MMA, sumo, or jiu jitsu, whatever grappling you watch can be beneficial. Technical instructionals are interesting, but watching matches shows what works at an elite level. Those ideas can then inform your ex*****on. You don't have to be like me and spend significant amounts of free time watching old ADCC and IBJJF tournaments, but if you feel like you are stagnating, start thinking about grappling differently utilizing examples of more skilled practitioners.

Ex*****on is hard, Jiu Jitsu is simple. There’s a limited number of things that you need to do to win in grappling. Combat sports are very simple games. In the most general sense I need to inflict more damage on you than you do on me. Damage in Jiu Jitsu comes from dominant positions and submissions. There’s only so many ways to submit someone and so many ways to hold them down. If you make things harder unnecessarily, you lose the fun part of doing this.

Your body type can make things both easier and more difficult in grappling. It’s easier for a longer person to get to a triangle position, but if a shorter person gets to a triangle, it’s tight from the start. This applies across many things and is why I suggest watching people that have similar attributes to yourself. Once you start to use the body you have instead of trying to make things work that you’re not uniquely suited to, a lot of this becomes easier.

if you’re not offensive or aggressive you have to be stingy. Without the advantage of being in someone’s face attacking, at the very least they can’t attack you. If you aren’t putting out any offense, neither should they, and if you can’t stop them, then you need to change something. You can only be stingy to a certain point though. Not doing anything and preventing them from doing anything doesn’t win matches. If you want to be a counter fighter, you actually have to counter not just roll from turtle to your back waiting for the bell to sound. At the very least make it one sided in your favor.