What ever game your known for makes your BJJ flaws in fact more obvious! (true story)
Which one are you? Be honest!!! Pick one!!
Top Player, Guard Player (this includes half guard so calm down), Berimboloist or Leg Locker?
Whatever you are only means the rest of your Jiu Jitsu needs to be polished up! (maybe)
People do rely on their “game” yet this means you have more holes in your “game”.
Jiu Jitsu as an art affords the practitioner an incredibly high level of self-expression. One can spend a lifetime without even scratching the exponential surface of hundreds of techniques, sequences and variations. The most BJJ practitioners can hope for is to find a small reef in this ocean and create a domain from it. After all, Bruce Lee once said, “I fear not the man who has practiced 1000 submissions one time, but I fear the man who has practiced one submission 1000 times.”
LISTEN CLOSE: Even if we can only claim dominion over one small part of the ocean of Jiu Jitsu, victory will often force us to go beyond our comfort zone. Would you rather maintain your ‘style’ or would you rather get more taps? I am personally a guard player and find myself taking time to put myself in more uncomfortable positions as well as taking more risks on submissions. You cant play guard forever (although the idea seems pretty cool).
Let’s go back to the quote from Bruce Lee. Throughout our jiu jitsu careers we will find ourselves practicing our spider guard sweeps 10,000 times and then some. In our practice of our favorite techniques, we’ll use our ‘style’ as an excuse for staying in our bubble or what we like to call “our game”. I am also very guilty of this and often pull guard. This can be fun but also can get very boring. Plus we have to take into consideration that we are going to be exposed to a variety of styles during our journey. Why not get better and evolve?
For example “hey bro, that guy has a sick berimbolo” yeah he does but he cannot escape side control so let's see what he does after getting smash passed! OSS!
“I’m a leg locker, I don’t care about passing.”
“I’m a guard player, I don't need to pass”
“I’m a top player, I DON’T NEED A GUARD!”
The leg locker that has only practiced his inside heel hook 1000 times will get crushed once they cannot put you in a leg entanglement, same with the guard player when they get passed, and again with the top player that gets swept or placed in a leg lock entanglement.
In all 3 aforementioned situations, those players have had their ‘style’ nulled by very common responses AKA BJJ Basics or an alternate path to advance upon. Everyone’s game is different yet no matter how amazing your game is there is always someone with an answer. NO MATTER HOW HIGH LEVEL YOU ARE! Does this mean that we need to spread ourselves thin, chasing after the idea of learning everything?
FAR FROM IT! Take our leg locker for example, instead of practicing another technique or setup 100 times, start getting some practice in other areas that you know is considered your kryptonite. Work on areas that you are truly uncomfortable in.
WHATS MY POINT? Don’t have a style! Be well rounded! Allow your style to be the flag you wave and the set of sequences that our professors call our “game”. It's okay to have an unstoppable guard pass, it's okay to have amazing guard retention and it's okay to entangle legs like no other.
Its probably not okay to rely on only one!
Train Safe and Train Often,
Matthew Tropp | BJJ Report