Saturday 7 September 2013

On the Mat Day 407: Yoshida's Night of Drilling

Yoshida taught the class last night and said he just wanted to do an entire night of drills. If you wanted to do sparring you could do it at the end in extra time.

In periods of five minutes we worked on the following:
Armbar from guard
Omoplata from guard
Escape from half-guard
Escape from side control
Escape from back control
Escape from mount
Closed guard breaks
Favourite open guard sweeps
Escapes from triangle
Escapes from armbar

As you can see, we covered a lot. He basically wanted to give us an opportunity to solidify what we know and practice it over again. Any holes in our game would show when we did not know what to do in the situation. He walked around and gave advice to folks who were unsure how to perform the escape and such.

At the end of class he mentioned that about four years ago, about one year into his BJJ journey, he had decided that more than hunting for submissions, it was better to work on his guard and escapes, and that the submissions would come later on as a result of this. I agree with this. He also said talked about how we cannot rely on strength to win at BJJ but must develop technique because there is always someone athletic and young who will come to train and we will lose if we rely on strength and power.

This made me reflect a bit on my style. I think I tend to rely on a 50-50 scenario of technique and strength, and force techniques on my opponent, rather than tricking them into giving me something. Like using a choke to setup an armbar, etc. I should work more on combinations and forcing the opponent to make mistakes.

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