Maximizing Your Attacking Efficiency

Over the years of practicing jiu jitsu, there have been many lessons that show themselves through pure experience alone. Whether or not you develop the knowledge based on being taught by someone or your own personal revelation can vary, but the time on the mats usually shows you useful concepts if you have an open mind and open eyes. A couple of the things that have stood out the most to maximize the efficiency of an attack are forcing reactions and manipulating alignment to the isolated joint/area.

Let’s take a look at what this means in more detail.

Reactionary based attacks cause the opponent to not on defend the attack, but also defend for control of their body positioning. If you were to knock someone off balance or even cause them to reposition their body to maintain stable, you have forced the individual to compensate for your own movement. By taking this idea into mind, you can begin to develop a series of expected reactions that are directly related to the specific push or pull you perform to your opponent. Think of one of the most fundamental sweeps from inside of the guard; the hip heist/bump sweep. This move causes the opponent’s base to collapse because they cannot post out their arm or leg in the direction that they are being pushed.

When removing a piece of this movement, such as the control of the opponent’s arm, you can see that most of the time the opponent will use that as a tool to prevent the sweep. Now depending on where the arm gets placed, you can attack or redirect your attack to a newly opened option. If the opponent posts near with good posture, the neck is open for attack. If the opponent posts far, there is now an opening to climb for a floating triangle. If they hunker down their posture, the opportunity to swivel to attack the arm is now open. Finding common reaction-based themes for a position can open up an easy way to read an opponent and also create a flow chart-like game plan.

Whenever you are attempting to sweep or off-balance an opponent, you force your opponent into your game. This can be the time to capitalize on their mistakes and short-comings.

Now moving onto the concept of manipulating alignment. In every individual, the alignment of their body effects the level of power they can produce and their ability to move efficiently. By taking their body out of alignment, one can immediately reduce their opponent’s ability to be successful with their movement. This is what we always attempt to do when we isolate and control a limb before attacking it. It is always why we try to immobilize the hips or the shoulders; it exponentially cuts the opponent’s power down.

Something as simple as lifting or bending your opponent's head off of center line can be enough to cause this reduction in power.

Another part of manipulating alignment is added stress to a joint that is being attacked. By pushing or pulling the opposite sides of the joint, an abnormal stress gets applied to the joint causing it to become damaged faster. The same goes for twisting the pushed/pulled portions to create a tremendous amount of torque. This pressure maximizes the lethality of the submission.

Reflection: The Kaleidoscope of Development

Reflection is a huge part of growth, especially in the martial arts realm. By taking the time to look back where you started and see how far you have come is a very empowering feeling. When you apply the same mindset to a recent class or match, you can maximize your ability to grow. Also, when you start to do this it opens up more planning opportunities and ways to approach future classes and matches.

I am a big advocate for setting goals, as you may have heard before, but more specifically writing things down. This usually happens in the form of a list, but the whole idea behind it is to force myself to gather my thoughts and put them in a specific location. In essence I am brainstorming for the past, present, and future to free up space in my mind. It can get pretty cluttered with all these ideas floating around, so it is helpful to clear my head in this fashion.

Now tailoring this list or ideas to provide a benefit to future training can be pretty simple… First off, ask yourself what happened in the class or match? How did you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally that day? What weaknesses did you spot and what strengths did you have? Can you implement a change for next time?

These are just some questions to get you thinking about the experience and based off your answers you can begin to see where you need to shift your attention. For example, in my last tournament I noticed that my cardio was sound, yet I was getting over-powered and suffered a lot of losses. This brought up the question of why was I losing? Was it poor technique? Maybe it was to an extent, but I didn’t feel as though that was the main cause this time around. What about my lack of aggressiveness, how did that come into play? I felt as though being matched against a lot of opponents with a wrestling or MMA background worked to my disadvantage. So what do I do with this information? I need to incorporate more training that involves wrestling and build a strength training program into my schedule.

You know yourself best. When you take an honest look into the mirror, you will be able to figure out what you have been doing and have not been doing. Sometimes you need some external feedback; whether the feedback is from a peer/coach or video, use it to shine light to the problems and improve. Dwelling on a loss or losses will not solve your problems, it is your responsibility to do that part!

As for the class setting, when it comes to a plateau in improvement take a hard look at your focus and goals. Are you just showing up going through the motions? Do you skimp out on drilling or sit rounds out when you should be rolling? What are you doing to supplement your training (nutrition, conditioning, research, reflection, etc.)? The class is not your only means of learning, but when you are there you should set yourself up for success. Try not to show up without a basic plan or you will pay for it. Improvement starts with you.

I had a buddy that once told me that no one cares about your success as much as you do; so act like it! Taking an active approach to goal setting and planning through reflection is a key component to grow. Having that plan set in place helps set a purpose to your training and same goes for a performance during competition. Try not to turn a blind eye to mistakes; learn from each and every one! Being self-critical is important for improvement, but do not be afraid in easing off every now and again. At the end of the day you want to enjoy doing what you love, so finding a balance in discipline will be crucial to maintaining happiness. Keep up with the highs and lows, and you will be able to reap what you sow before your know it!

Learning To Teach (Part 5): Becoming A Coach

Coaching was never something that I thought would be for me. I never thought of myself in my younger years as someone who would strive to help others improve, but also never ruled it out of the equation. My main fear was to be put into a setting that would take me out of my comfort zone and speak publicly. Sure I had a lot of class clown moments in grade school, but that was on a smaller scale. It’s funny to think of the amount of growth it took to get from an uncomfortable, anxiety driven kid to the kind of person that is in a teaching/coaching position in all aspects of life.

Similar to when I finally found the spark that ignited my love of reading books, I found that through pursuit of passion I could find the desire to teach. There was never the inability to read that stopped me from picking up a book, but the lack of want to read a book. I could not figure out why my focus was lacking until one day I found something that I really wanted to read about: Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. By discovering that with the proper material to keep my attention, I suddenly opened a new set of doors to expand my horizons. I no longer felt trapped within my own limitations of belief that I could not do something, I finely found the key that had been supposedly missing all those years.

Now it might sound a little much to say reading a book about jiu jitsu changed the way that I think in such a drastic way, yet deep down I feel like that is exactly what triggered the change. From my own limitations I set in my mind, I had become the type of person that I thought I was. In order to grow out of that mindset, I had to adopt a new one and continue to expand and live by it. I had to develop a new lifestyle; one of continuous improvement, self-respect, and try to help others achieve what I had fortunately conquered (in time). This simple experience made a huge impact and the seed of teaching began to grow.

Eventually I had the opportunity to begin teaching classes at my jiu jitsu gym. It started as covering a class or two and eventually filling-in for instructors who had time off due to various reasons. Each time I had the opportunity, I began to see the wonder of teaching. The idea of helping others learn and actually seeing their progress over time was a feeling beyond words. It truly warmed my heart. Yet I still felt a lack of confidence when trying to sit on the sidelines to help them out during a competition. What was the difference here, and why was it harder for me to speak up with the right words? Was I not a good enough teacher yet? Maybe I still lacked knowledge and it translated to fear of saying the wrong thing. Through constant analysis I came to a conclusion that there is a difference between a teacher and a coach.

The two definitions that I had come with were that: A teacher helps individuals learn new information and process old information externally, and a coach helps an individual on an internal level by aiding them break through their own limitations that they set in their own mind. It was exactly what I had experienced with the books! In order to be a good coach, I had to understand an individual on a deeper level. There was a need to understand what limitations they set for themselves and figure out how to assist them to newer heights. Sometimes the biggest roadblocks that someone has to overcome are not a specific position or submission, but a wall of fear that they need help to overcome. To be a coach is to be a positive influence, not just a preacher.

In that competition standpoint I did not need to know exactly how to fix the situation they were in; they already knew how to do that. They needed the bird’s eye view and a conceptual based approach on how to maximize their efficiency with the cards that they were dealt. A relationship of trust is built from the coach and individual being coached, that goes beyond just telling them how to do a move. By giving your all, they can begin to give their all.

Like I had mentioned before, it is amazing to look back and see how far I’ve come as a teacher and coach. The person I once was has awakened by a simple opening of the right book. Ironically it was a jiu jitsu book, but life can be ironic. This is more of a recollection of my own thoughts of my journey of learning how to teach and adopting the coach’s mindset. I am excited to see how my perception of a coach will evolve overtime, as well as my teaching style. Martial Arts is a never-ending journey, and it just goes to show that no matter what you do in like, even if it is as small as opening up a book, big things can alter your life in a tremendous way. Always be open to the idea of something new.