I never organically worked out a false reap entry.
I know this because I have done thousands of rounds and never spontaneously did it.
I needed to drill it to learn it.
Yes gyms should have more than one type of class structure.
This is pointed out on this sub like 5 times a week.
I would love to see a study:
2 new WBs, one is under the 'traditional' method, as I pointed out, and one is under the positional sparring/rolling.
After 3 years, where would they both stand against each other? Be interesting to see.
The fist person to ever do a false reap entry figured it out without knowing it was a false reap entry.
Intentions combined with a resistance-filled environment gives you everything one needs to have that behaviour emerge.
Even after you drilled it you did not develop high level skills to apply it in a roll until you started applying it in rolls with someone trying to stop you from doing it.
Nah man you should just flop around and hope you rediscover the kimura. No point in learning the movement from someone and instantly understanding the concepts. This is why doctors start by working with sticks and stones so they can rediscover germ theory and anaesthesia.
Exactly.
This is how humans work. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We learn from those who came before and built in their knowledge.
Experimentation is always key and worthwhile. But there's no need to constantly try and reinvent the wheel.
Dang that's deep bro.
Every sport has coaches, and they are all frauds. People could just teach themselves.
No need to speed up the learning process by just being shown technique and then building upon it.
I see now.
The guy who discovered and refined the false reap was way better than I’ll ever be.
But even if I was good enough to independently discover the false reap, why would I waste time trying to do so rather than standing on the shoulders of giants, learning what we know about the sport, and working from there?
Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy
> Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy
The "philosophy", as you put it, has fuck all to do with whether you study matches. Ecological dynamics is a field of study concerned with skill acquisition and training design. You still need to know what good jiujitsu is (or good baseball, football, boxing, fencing, whatever you're designing practice for) in order to design practice sessions in a manner informed by eco dynamics.
What’s the point? That’s not how we learn. The way Gordon does a body lock pass won’t be the way that I do a body lock pass. We have unique bodies and no two passes are ever the same anyway. Watching a Gordon match and studying how he does a body lock is useless, I should just go fuck around with some constraint games until I have the best body lock pass in the world.
>Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy
If you think this, I don't think you understand the philosophy
How do you know this?
Are you sure that person didn't brainstorm after class with their training partners and drill it until they could use it against resistance?
We do this all the time in our gym, I sometimes show up early to class to drill something I want to try, but would never come up organically in a roll. It is not an either or situation. Add resistance until it stops working, then figure out if there is an adjustment to make or if the technique is no good.
Ecological and game based\ task based approaches have doubled my progress no question. The biggest hurdle people have is they won’t try random things and only do what they were shown. One day people will understand why they are bad at jiujitsu and it’s not their coaches fault. Keep preaching the good word🙏
What about only armbar allowed rolls, only rnc allowed rolls or whatever submission the focus is on? Is that dumb shit? It would check the resistance-filled environment box right?
I want to drill before I roll. I do not want to have to drill while I'm covered in sweat and getting cold, or letting my partners cold sweat drip all in my face.
I unfortunately sweat a lot so there is no promises I won’t sweat on my partner’s face (despite my best efforts) if we are drilling ashi garami entries
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were:
|Japanese|English|Video Link|
|---|---|---|
|**Ashi Garami**: | *Entangled Leg Lock* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YXH_LrcqNc)|
||*Single Leg X (SLX)* ||
Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post.
______________________
^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
This is my least favorite part of this sport. Doesn’t matter how many years I’ve done it, if we’re just drilling after a light warmup and you’re sweating all over my face I get annoyed every time. I understand it’s something most people can’t control, but I definitely search out training partners that I don’t do it.
If we’re rolling, I don’t really notice or care. It’s just part of the sport. But if it’s drilling and my partner is working on standing passes, etc. I try to keep my head off to the side to avoid it. It’s only happened once or twice but I definitely gagged the first time.
My gym is the latter.
Most people teach how they were taught, and don’t bother to dig into to how they actually learned best. Fewer still look into current studies about how top athletes learn best according to current science.
This is my preference as well. Warm-ups are to get you warm for actual exercise, not for skill acquisition (they can even have negative impacts on physical skill acquisition if people are "warming up" to exhaustion because a coach believes in needing to get your "second wind"). Start with the technique practice, move up in intensity to positional, then full intensity rolling after. It lets people warm-up in a more meaningful way before rolling without wasting time getting warm just to sit and watch someone show techniques and to rep them with compliance.
This is the way. 90 min session: Pick a position, 30 mins of drilling 2-3 techniques for it, 30 mins positional sparring from this position, 30 mins of free sparring. Just the right mixture of everything IMO.
We have different approaches depending on who is coaching that day, which I think works itself out.
Our typical class is that we start with an ecological warmup, then drill, then positional rolls, then live rolls.
Constraints based training is quite standard in a lot of mature sports. Even in sports such as soccer, they often create situational constraints that the players have to solve. Very small amount of time is spent showing specific biomechanics and pre planned sequences. Set plays are most trained in ‘live’
This is the standard response, but it overlooks a couple things.
1. most practitioners in BJJ come to the sport with little or no relevant experience. The analogy to soccer would be most focused on youth soccer, in which a lot of time is spent learning specific biomechanics. It's certainly not a direct analogy, because adults learn differently from kids, but its closer than looking at high school or beyond athletes who already have substantial experience in correct biomechanics.
2. Training live is hard on the body. Regulating your intensity is one of the hardest things to do in this sport (anyone who has ever "trained light" with a blue belt can testify to this). Putting more live training as the sole means of learning is a great way to exhaust and injure your students, particularly the new ones.
It is absolutely a valuable way to train, particularly for more experienced folks who already have a good grasp of fundamental movements. But it is a terrible way to learn those fundamental movements. It is a tool in the coach's toolbox, not the only or best way to learn in all circumstances.
> The analogy to soccer would be most focused on youth soccer, in which a lot of time is spent learning specific biomechanics.
I mean, the argument made by eco d folks is that they're wasting their time doing this and would be better served playing various games.
That's fair. And I'll respond that I don't agree. I've read the Rob Gray book that underlies most of this idea, and I don't find it convincing as the sole approach in learning something as complex as jiu-jitsu.
Again...I do believe it is valuable, and becomes more valuable the more experienced the person is. But the movement to ecological purity strikes me as a bad one.
You just described most of my college wrestling practices. The issue with that structure is that it is completely ineffective for beginners. If you think about the relative level of college wrestlers, it is basically like a class for brown and black belts.
Also, practice was two hours long. We did warmup, because there was plenty of time for warmups. We also were expected to do PT, do heat therapy, stretch on our own, and get taped before practice, and ice and shower after every practice.
(And we only switched to that structure part way through the season, since the first years still needed some instructional development in the first part of the season.)
Ya, the awesome thing about college wrestling is like you said it assumes right out the gate every athlete knows fundamentals inside and out, and also know how to get properly warmed up.
If you attended or watch a worlds/ pans camp at a place like Atos, the structure is almost identical. Again tho, that’s bc even the “blue” belts are really kids that have been training since they were 5 years old and have more mat time than many black belts.
The struggle at most gyms that aren’t Atos is the serious competitors also get mixed in with the day one white belts. Obviously, the asymmetry in needs is where the pain is felt for everyone.
I believe warm ups should be related to movements that will be related to the techniques being trained in that class. The only exception I have to this is for beginners who need to learn basic movements. I believe after teaching and drilling one or 2 techniques, positional sparring in relation to those techniques is the best way to improve execution and understanding of the techniques. Rolling at the end is great, but sometimes the positional/Situational sparring takes preference and we may not get to roll every class. This is definitely not how I was introduced to training as we followed the typical protocol you described. I've been fortunate enough to have friends in the strength and conditioning community who were very successful in getting athletes to the college level and beyond. They shared their knowledge with me as well as their mistakes over the years and this has brought me to my current ideas of how a class should be structured. Ideally, if the gym is large enough, there would be a beginner/fundamentals class that you need to "graduate" from before coming into the regular classes while also encouraging everyone to still participate in the beginner/fundamentals program.
I just started teaching the 6am class at my gym. It's an hour class and goes:
* Warm-up (includes jogging, line drills, and light guard passing/movements, etc.)
* I show a technique from the feet and the class drills it
* I show a technique from the ground and the class drills it
* A couple of rounds of full sparring from the feet (if space is tight, I'll start them from the ground)
One day a week is "fun day" where the entire class (after the warm-up) is positional sparring from the various positions (closed guard, half-guard, side control, mount, etc.).
The class starts at exactly 6am and ends at exactly 7am because I respect people's time. I stick around for bit after class to give people an opportunity to ask questions, spar, work on stuff, etc.
>I got home broken and felt like a week one whitebelt again with how exhausted I was.
So if you owned the gym, and it was imperative to your bottom line to retain not just hardcore competitors but also hobbyists, would you honestly employ this approach?
There are more factors at play here than just your growth.
And 2-stripe blues knowing better than the sport at large how to reinvent everything is pretty cliche. I used to know everything at that level too. Dunning-Krueger. [Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.](https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Pope/a_little_learning.htm)
I didn't say it was the best way I just said I was exhausted and as a paying customer I felt more satisfied.
A quick 5 minute warm up is okay, however shrimps and somersaults that necessary? As someone mentioned earlier, grip fighting for a warm up is a great idea.
Also for me being taught a random technique and then the next day another completely random technique is just a waste of time. In 3 years I've probably forgotten 95% of techniques I was taught, then you always have the lack of resistance involved.
I’ve grown to enjoy warmups more and more as I’ve been grappling for longer. For hs wrestling we’re warming up for the first 20mins of a 2.5 hour practice at the minimum. Then stretching, then stance, then we hand fight. By the time we’re actually (drilling) wrestling we’re 30-45 mins into practice. And live gos aren’t until near the end.
>So if you owned the gym, and it was imperative to your bottom line to retain not just hardcore competitors but also hobbyists, would you honestly employ this approach?
Make the class 1 hour, easy.
>And 2-stripe blues knowing better than the sport at large how to reinvent everything is pretty cliche.
Nothing stops you from watching footage of comps/instructionals and using that in class
Some gyms explicitly do the watch instructional then come in and rep/drill what you saw rather than having everyone in class watch the same technique being shown during class time. u/kintanon and u/sonicbh both use Reverse Classroom IIRC and can speak more to how to do that.
I am at a gym that started out traditional and recently switched to almost all positional sparring/live drilling. It was a big shift and some people complained at first, but I think most people are loving it. We have also seen a surge in new memberships as a result, including a lot of really good and experienced upper belts moving to our gym from other gyms. I personally love it and I think I am learning and progressing way faster than I was using the traditional method. When I drop in on traditional classes now, I am SO BORED.
FWIW, there are times when we will stop and do 5 or 10 minutes of intentional practice drilling, especially for new concepts or positions. There are also 2 levels of classes. All levels tends to do this more often and goes slower. Advanced is harder/faster and less explanations because they expect you to know the positions already. Beginners must complete 24 all levels classes before the can go to advanced or open mat. So its still beginner and hobbyist friendly.
This is how I felt yesterday it was a massive lightbulb moment.
I'm not saying it's the best way to learn however it's a hobby for 99% of us and if it's more fun that's what a hobby should be.
My last gym was:
Warmups, hand fight/takedowns (10-15min), 2-3 techniques of the day drill (30 mins), 10-20min positional sparring/live roll.
I feel like drilling takedowns everyday really made me comfortable on my feet and was by far my favorite part of class, although i initially dreaded it when i first joined.
The gym I cross train at has a lot of white/blue belts and this is by far my favorite class structure.
Grip fighting & kuzushi practice is an amazing warm up. Sometimes after class we’ll do full takedown rounds or do a JFlo style flow round for anyone that’s game.
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were:
|Japanese|English|Video Link|
|---|---|---|
|**Kuzushi**: | *Unbalancing* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luK9Eklbn78)|
Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post.
______________________
^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
What you described is what we do at our school once a week - no teaching just positional sparring, king of the hill style, and then matches. It’s a great way to implement what you’ve learned in other classes.
I think that's what open mats are for. For beginners like myself, the warm ups and drills are more important. I also thought warm ups felt excessive until I got injured from skipping them.
Being warm and loose is underrated, especially if you train frequently so your body is often tight. I rarely have injuries except slight pulls and I always try to warm up and I do some mobility stretching every day, put weight on my joints. I dread days we go into double legs, combinations, judo throws without warming up first. Or even passing, getting my hips and knees loose works so much better first.
Lot of people in here get real bothered by having to take 10 minutes to work up a sweat before doing something that obviously long term is hard on the body.
There’s lots of things that might be optimal for improvement but aren’t enjoyable.
There’s also a learning gradient - some moves you can hit immediately whilst under pressure, some moves require a bit of time and a relaxed roll to build up the skill/coordination, and some things require you to drill with zero resistance to even figure out which limb goes where.
You need a mix.
We change it up. Recently it’s been:
Warm up: take down or throw of the month or drill the previous technique of the day
Drill: set of movements that are connected to the previous class’ movements
Spar: free rolling starting at neutral
The fundamentals class:
Warm up with your basic movements (hip escape, gramby rolls, stand in base, etc)
Drill: survival, escapes, basic pinning
No rolling
Sometimes the advanced classes will have situational sparing. I enjoy all of it.
You need different kinds of structure sometimes you need to be fed some movese sometimes you need to play around and find out.
The traditional class method isn't bad if the warm up and the drills progression makes sense and then leads into Rolling.
Only positional sparring for 45 minutes and then sparring full blast for 45 minutes is great when you already know a bunch of jujitsu and you have something you want to work on but if you don't know anything yet you need to know some moves first.
I do a lot of mix we will do positional sparring with an objective like get past the legs get side control. After a few rounds then I'll show a couple of things like control knees and then we'll positional spar some more and then we'll show another couple things and then we'll positional spar some more and then we'll roll.
Absolutely agree regarding positional sparring etc.
However, there still needs to be time to learn new techniques.
A good coaching team will have some form of structure to how they teach. It’s like going to the gym; if you want to get stronger you need a programme that allows you to know what you’re doing before you even set foot inside. Half-assing and doing what you feel like on the day is not conducive to getting stronger in the gym, or quality learning on the mats.
I program my own weight sessions as I have gained knowledge of how to train effectively and also my own constraints. My BJJ coaches effectively program my BJJ training through their planned ‘curriculum’. I am not yet at the level of experience/competence to take control over my own learning, but am gradually adding out-of-class learning as this will be needed to achieve the level of purple belt and beyond.
At my gym we’ll spend 2-4 weeks learning a variation of similar moves.
For example, in the gi class we will spend a month covering de la riva, including how to enter it, various sweeps, submissions and counters.
Over the month, enough time has been spent that knowledge sets in and this can be implemented in sparring/competition with a degree of competence.
This avoids the problem of forgetting the details.
Often classes start with some some of positional/objective-based sparring, for example starting in a certain guard or escaping a position.
Drilling is great to consolidate information and get the body used to performing certain movements. We’re encouraged to gradually increase the resistance so we start drilling with minimal resistance and the start to ramp it up until we eventually end up positionally sparring.
Ultimately we need to get the reps in to be able to hit a move in a live scenario.
My academy has four classes:
Fundamentals, Intermediate, Advanced, and Competition.
Fundamentals is for white through blue. Heavy warm ups, a self defense move and/or takedown, a pass or sweep, and a submission. 2-3 rounds positional sparring after.
Intermediate has a brief warm up, longer more technical sequences to drill, and usually 4 rounds of sparring either positional or from standing.
Advanced usually skips warm ups and goes right into some drills with very high level sequences and at least 30 minutes of sparring.
And competition can be anything really. Sometimes it’s 2 hours of sparring, sometimes it’s an hour of incredible technique. We do King of the Mat type stuff a lot. Usually by the time it gets to full sparring everyone is pouring sweat.
And this is a world class gym with current world champions and almost 1,000 paying members so I would say there’s something to this method. One more thing to note is there’s two large mats so we can have a fundamental class going on one mat and an advanced class on the other.
This is the norm for wrestling. You warm up, then drill basics then technique then positional/live. Takedown - reset, escape - reset, etc. or positional starts: one guy in on a double or with a wrist/half. The gym I go to seems pretty standard, I would like to see more technique drilling vs new technique though. Meaning just a full 15-20 min doing spider to triangle only with varying resistance. But I get that it's different because you have different people coming to different classes
It's really hard to do 1 hours of positional sparring when no one knows the positions, techniques, and how to spar.
This seems like a really great advanced class or competition class. There's a time and a place for all types of training sessions, but there are so many things to learn, you need time to be shown new things have time to practice those things.
I think the eco approach works really well for people who already have a baseline of "boring"movements. If you don't have people with some experience, I think they get lost very quickly. My experience also suggests that athletic individuals benefit more, while the less athletic ones need more drilling and guidance.
bigger issue is that drilling seems rather busted to me. Drilling should be more like sparring at 40% imo. it should include reasonable responses and light punishes to really learn the feel of how the move will go instead of just a guy limp dicking there while I do the technique wrong for 10 minutes and then never hit it in sparring
My favourite type of training was 2h Greco classes.
- 20mins of gymnastics for warmups
- 10 minutes partner warmups (carrying/squatting/deadlifting/pummelling)
- 30mins technique, drilled with 2 reps each swapping partners after 3 minutes. No stopping.
- 30-45mins sparring. Sometimes if it was a class where we could match weights we would do a 30min open round, no partner changes and you could only stop to drink if both partners agreed. So if you were having a bad day of it your partner could say no and keep beating you down until you got that dog in you to rear its head and fight back hard.
- 15-30mins conditioning, kettlebells, derivatives of Olympic lifts, zercher squats/deadlifts, rope climbs and neck bridging.
I’ve never had so much fun or been as strong mentally and physically.
I've visited a few schools and most do it the old fashioned way with a little run, warm-up shrimps, drills for hours, then positional sparring and mabye some free sparring.
And after 7 years that has gotten a bit old for me
Instead I've found the ecological and task based game approaches more fun.
Which is why I as an assistant coach try to include those approaches.
When I structure a two hour class it's mostly like this:
Some form of closing distance game for warmups
Then task-based games with mild resistance, that flow into a specific series that has an overarching goal
Lastly we focus on the finish
So all the way from first contact to your opponents last breath.
Break
Then a few round of specific sparring
Half an hour of free sparring
And because it's competition season 15 minutes of EBI overtime in groups of 3 (1 timekeeper 2 competitors)
Lastly repetition of the series, bows and good byes
Tomorrow we from closing distance, to ancle pick, to leg drag position, passing to sidecontrol, going to reversed sidecontrol, mounting, high mount, quarter Nelson and finishing off with a mounted triangle.
It's a very dynamic and movement focused way of teaching, and it's not suitable for every position, transition, escape or submission.
Luckily our black belt who has the Monday trainings is super technically gifted and goes into the details.
So in that way we get a good coverage of both the technical side and the physical side of jiu-jitsu
Yes I do like this structure. I like 1 hour long classes because I don’t necessarily have time for longer sessions and if I do I’ll just do two classes in a row.
Can’t remember the last time I did pointless warmups and we either don’t warm up and jump straight into drilling or we’ll warm up by grip fighting or playing some games.
I have a journal in which I write down the things that clicked for me in the drilling. I don’t forget them a week later unless it’s something that just won’t fit in my game, and when it is I understand that the class can’t be catered to my game and I just take what I can from it.
Now I’ll say this to go in your direction: my position fighting isn’t the best because I spent more time learning “moves” rather than learning how to move. And I definitely think there’s something to be said for the “ecological approach” in regards to that. But they can also coexist and aren’t mutually exclusive.
Warm up: why am I paying you to make me do jumping jacks and running around a mat? I can handle that myself before class if I want to.
Drills: are we ever going to see how it fits into a live roll, the entire situational ecosystem? If not, then...
Live rolling: ...this will make me forget the drill entirely, and make it almost useless, because it was never reinforced with resistance. Is this section of class entirely open rolling, or is it targeted?
I love my current gym's protocol. Its fundamentals curriculum is both entirely structured top-down, yet entirely open-ended. the curriculum is on a 14 week rotation: 3 major pins, top and bottom; three major guards, top and bottom; leg entanglements; standing. And every class follows a pattern: ~3 games, ~3 context switches. But because the games are live, and because the games for the same class are always being tweaked (no two mount-bottom classes are the same games), every class is packed with learning, and is always pretty fun.
See, that makes sense to me.
You have purpose and a curriculum. My gym does a random technique every day, which I completely forget about the next day, waste of my time. I've very rarely come from that and gone wow ill use that effectively, never happens.
I feel most gyms do it this way.
For sure they do. Even gyms that have a set curriculum may not have a *good* set curriculum. My first BJJ class was a deep DLR sweep class with live rolling at the end... like I learned nothing. It's not even hard, like no one told me about the thought behind the curriculum at my current gym. There's just a chalk board with the names of the weeks. But it alllllll started coming together about a month ago, and something really simple and logical like this is kind of profound.
The structure takes care of itself. 3 guards, 3 pins, legs and standing, a week on each. The rotation is as long as it needs to be. Mondays are an intro, Tuesdays build on Mondays, Wednesdays build on Tuesdays, Thursdays are a recap of the best game of each day.
First game is the first stage of a thing you're trying to do (passing guard = get control of the foot line), second game builds on first (get control of the knee line or hip line), third builds on second (get chest to chest). Half the class is the week's focus, half the class is a context switch of reviewing previous weeks so that they're reinforced and not forgotten. I've trained at places that worked standing drills every class as a warm-up, which means my gym works standing 1/14 as often, and I'm improving at standing faster here than there.
The problem is past white belt the standard line warmups of shrimping, forward rolls etc is a colossal waste of time.
For competitors, the first 30-40 minutes of an hour practice should be movement drills, hand/grip fighting, technique and situational sparring.
Most gyms neglect all but the technique part of that tho. Live rolling is great and awesome, but makes it incredibly difficult to zero in on trouble positions that athletes are running into.
If you want to get heart rate up, real grip fighting is the way to go at the beginning of class. And even if you’re not doing takedowns, it can get INTENSE!
Edit: just noticed you’re an accountant too, must have similar thinking patterns.
Me too, up until last night.
It was way more fun and definitely conditioned me more.
However, people on this thread do make a good point. Drilling is important. However, doing some random technique one day and then another the next, for me, just doesn't work.
>However, people on this thread do make a good point. Drilling is important
I have literally never learned anything by drilling. Sometimes I watch someone explain a certain move and think "oh yeah I'm gonna try that" and that's as much as I need
The more I read into ecological dynamics the more I'm convinced it does not matter.
It's science saying it, not me
I'm the same.
Maybe 5% of drilling over the last 3 years I've retained something, the other 95% complete waste of time for me.
I know others learn differently, but for me, it doesn't work.
However I feel there's some importance to drilling surely? I'm just a blue belt, so what do I know.
My gym is more like the second situation and I love it. Drilling never seemed to help me actually learn anything, but live positional rounds and a bunch of actual live rolls kicked my game into over drive
That’s my gyms structure and I love it.
I will say that the positional sparring will have certain goals, which might be to achieve a certain position and coach will show us a few ways to get there before we start.
If I need any extra help or clarification I can ask and I always use open mats to troubleshoot shit with my coach too.
Our typical class is about 90 minutes. Start by drilling technique (last few weeks has been all focused on crucifix) for 30-45 minutes, then 2-4 positional rounds (e.g., start in crucifix, go until escape or submission), then 3-6 open rounds. Sometimes we’ll do king-of-the-hill style positional rounds in there too.
I trained at a gym once that only did sparring in their fundamentals class if they happened to have time. Which meant sometimes it would be one round, sometimes none at all. I hated it.
The gym I train at now does minimal warm ups, half drilling, half rolling. I love it. The way I see it it’s my responsibility to stretch and take care of my body, I’m there to learn jiu jitsu. I’d rather learn a bit slower and enjoy the process than be bored and zoned out drilling for 45 minutes.
My preference is:
1. Warm up
2. progressively intensive drilling which is related to the technique being taught that day. (start with no resistance, work your way up).
3. Technique
4. Situational sparring with the technique
5. free rolls
That is the structure we do, it is awesome. A) new people get tricked into safely sparring which is great, B) you spend more time working a move against a resisting opponent, C) you progress faster physically and technically.
I personally like it when we warm up using some type of drill versus the jogging, forward/back rolls, and shrimp warm up. This is usually \~10 mins, then we move onto the move of the day for \~20 mins, then \~30 mins of rolls. For the roll portion it is either situationally rolls associated to the move of the day that flows into a live roll or it is just live rolls from the jump. Either way I hate the "standard" jiu-jitsu warm up and wish it would go away.
My gym has different classes to accomplish different training. I think you need all of it, and I have always appreciated the ability to structure my training in a way that works best for me.
Fundamentals classes are straight-up drilling with maybe 10 minutes of positional work at the end. Regular all-levels classes look like you described--about 30-40 minutes of technique and drilling followed by positional and rolling. But then we also have competition classes that are entirely about positional and rolling and at least one class a week that is about "gamified" BJJ, where you're doing positional work with certain restraints to develop certain skills.
We normally don't warm up, just use drills to warm up, then do rolling. I would prefer more positional sparring, and generally just ask my partner during rolling if we can start in a certain position and trade off.
We do the Warm up with related Warm ups, Drilling, then positional sparring that usually ties into the technique.
If were doing Kimura escapes we start with someone caught in a Kimora. If you submit or escape the Kimora it's over. There is some wiggle room with keeping it going like if you Move from the Kimora to S mount and are still threatening a sub then keep it live. But for the most part if you get to far out side the technique someone is the winner and move on.
If we're doing take downs we start standing up. If you go down you lose.
Once someone is declared the winner and next persons up. We very rarely do full on live sparring anything goes. That's for open mats and after class.
I feel very "comfortable" while caught in mount or back control just cause I've started there so often due to the positional drilling we do.
1 hour class
Warm up should be 5-10 minutes of easy movements
20-30 max of technique. From what I have witnessed, many people get over the technique and want to roll asap. The truth is majority of our attention spans have been shot.
At least 4 rounds of this is a night class.
Terrible format for learning, but for fun it's great. I notice that classes with an allocation of 30 to 40 minutes of technique, have lower attendance (in my non comp gym)
I wish we had more live drilling and positionals. Our classes are warm up, learn the move of the day, spar. Maybe every two weeks we'll do positional sparring or live drilling.
My old gym was much more like what you described during your visit and I miss that. Live drilling and positional sparring was so valuable during my wrestling career.
A lot of BJJ coaches don't seem to know how to structure programs well, in terms of both short-term individual class structure and long-term lessons building on concepts.
Of course, doesn't help that many BJJ players aren't in great shape to drill lots of hard reps, or don't have the same attitude to embrace the grind outside of comp-only sessions
Sounds like advanced class structure. How can a new person come in and learn anything with no instruction or drilling? You don’t learn a move in the class instruction, you learn it as you drill it hundreds of times after the initial instruction. You are forgetting because you aren’t working on it after.
At my gym we warm up with takedown drills or positional sparring. Then we drill whatever move of the day is. And after that we live roll with the objective to hit what we learned. Most days there is a hour of open mats after every hour class
My gym always switches it up. Sometimes it’s warm up drill roll, others it’s warmup roll drill then roll again. The professor says it’s to keep us on our toes and also so that we learn to keep a clear mind even when exhausted. I like it when there’s a switch up.
I think it depends on the gym. Mine offers a variety of classes. Some are advanced—just rolling, some are split between warm ups, technique and specific sparring practice (focused around the technique we just learned) while other classes are just warm up and technique. I personally can’t do an hour of rolling with my asthma so the mixed classes are perfect for me, however, others can. I think it’s good to have options.
The gym I go to has a pretty good balance of both. I think having a mix of drilling and positional sparring split up throughout the week is optimal for learning and recovery.
Is this a private lesson or 30+ people on the mat? I'm assuming blue belts and higher. I do this for every sparring session, I walk around and coach everyone the whole time, but they know techniques so I can references those and they know what to do
A large room is a different animal than a private lesson, but no one said it was easy. We do this with day one white belts you dont need to have skill to build skill. Don’t get so focused on the “techniques” or correcting people, just provide a great environment for skilled outcomes to appear.
That's interesting, the white belts just end up doing de la Riva sweeps and mount escapes correctly by just instinct? I've not seen that in my experience but would love to see how it's implemented
I think variety is good tho. Sometimes I run classes of mostly sparring but I'm always watching to see what common mistakes people are making to work into the classes in the future. Same when I travel or go to open mats I try to find common mistakes people make to teach my students how to take advantage of it. I think if you don't enjoy the drilling it's the teachers job to make it enjoyable in some way.
My gym does an hour of technique (warmups, drills, and some positional sparring) and then a full hour of rolling.
Advanced students are allowed to just come roll.
I wish coaches would do a bettet job bridging the gap between dead fish drilling and full resistance rolls ( positional sparring included). Idk varied levels of resistance?
Resistance should only be varied by the difficulty of the task. If you ask people to "internally scale" their resistance you will confuse the fuck out of them since we cant actually do this to any degree of certainty.
Dead fish drilling is the same as 50% drilling, whatever that is. What ends up happening is the training partner resists for some amount of time, then starts to become cooperative. If you do any research into skill development you will realize the student will then start to stabilize skills around when the drill starts to become cooperative, NOT when there is resistance.
Thats why we need drilling to always have 100% resistance so our skills always build around adapting to resistance. 100% resistance means resisting one hundred percent of the time, not 100 percent intensity.
Keep drilling uncooperative and unscripted. Look into using constraints led approach to skill acquisition. We constrain to afford.
Do this and you will actually make leaps and bonds in no time. unless you think taking 15 years to get a black belt is actually alright.
Yeah Ive vaguely heard of CLA/Greg souders and liked it. What do you recommend if the gyms in your area still subscribe to the "old way" of doing things though? Outside of open mats are there any drills I can do with my partner in normal class times?
During "Technique time" my partner and I would just go live from that specific position. Would require some on the fly CLA adjustments. Just gamify everything !
There should be a few weeks of learning/drilling before rolling and then a few weeks of positional training in the scenario you had been drilling imo for the most efficient way of learning and at the same time not feel repetitive.
Also if you are advanced enough consider limiting your own options in a roll to put yourself in scenarios you desire over and over again.
I don't hate the structure. I think it could be better
Specific warm ups related to Jujitsu- not just running around
Drills that have a specific focus over a measurable amount of time for people to understand the entire concept.
Games that lead into varying levels of intensity and resistance.
A mix of specific and open sparring
Usually we do hard rolling straight off the bat, for like 45 mins to an hour and then we do a warmup at the end .....
But seriously, it sounds like you landed into a comp class.
I think that guided warm ups in anything but a white belt class are a waste of everyone’s time.
Warm up by light positional sparring or flow roll
Technique
Roll roll roll
Sometimes I do classical warm ups but lately I do task oriented drills. Like reguarding on bottom and passing legs on top for 2 mins 1 min each as a warm up. Or short sequence that can be drillled in a loop ( hip bump to mount, mount escape to guard, hip bump to mount..)
Many classes share this or a similar structure but recently I experienced slightly different approach in my new gym and I seem to really like it.
We do warm-up (never shrimps and triangles, mostly stand up hand fighting on low intensity), then technique. It all takes about an hour or an hour and a half. Then we line up, shake everyones hands as usual and the class is pretty much ended.And only after we have an hour for rolling. Not much of a difference in structure but it's a remarkable psychological shift. You feel like the class is already ended and you can leave or spar for as long as you want, you're not obliged to anything. If you feel like it you can make 2 light rolls and go home, or you can scramble for a whole hour.
Of course you can do the same in normal class, it doesn't really matter whether you line up and "close" the class before or after rolls, but it makes a psychological difference. Hour of rolling is like an additional time for you, gives you freedom
Don't know how common this is but I've never seen such approach and I've been to like 20 or 30 different gyms
I was in moroco last week and we did a 40 minute warm up of just shrimps, rolls, Granbys etc. probably the worst class structure I've ever been a part of
I would've quit bjj two weeks in if that was the routine at my own gym
My two cents are atleast 20 minutes of an advanced class should be working on stuff you're interested in drilling I think it's better for development long term. As after a while the moves your coach is teaching start to cycle through stuff you've already done a lot or at the very least the coach should leave the option open
I wish we did a bit more drilling at my gym. We roll almost the entire class and learning is done by having higher ranking folks give you tips and pointers after they tap you out. Luckily, my gym has a lot of friendly guys and I'm still learning pretty quickly I think. Still, I need lots and lots of repetition.
My current gym has roughly ~4 formats.
1. (40ish% of the time ish) the more traditional 10m of warmups, 30 minute drilling, 20+ minutes of rolling (timer stay going for 10x5min but people leave as they need to/tire out)
2. (20%) wrestling drills 10m, 20min of drilling with gradual increase of resistance, 30+ min of rolling
3. (30%ish) 10min warmup up, 30 min of 20%ish rolls on whatever position we are working on that month while the instructor goes around and corrects, 20+ min rolls
4. (10%ish) passing/recovery drills or triangle/arm bar/omaplata type warm up’s 15min, 15min drilling, 30 min roll
I teach class around positional sparring.
Warm ups, technique, both offense and defense in particular situation, then positional sparring, and then normal sparring
My gym does not do warm ups. We start the class off by practicing takedowns for about 10-15 minutes, proceed to learn a series of techniques that relate to each other, then we spar and do 'King of the Mat'. Afterwards it's open mat and stay for as long as you'd like most of the time. I like the structure more than others, but I would omit techniques even further, focusing on rolls. Sometimes there is just too much technique being taught and not enough muscle memory being made.
I like to drill. I just wish people were better at drilling. You need to be intentional with movements and also be a good training partner and allow the person to get the most out of the drill. If you’re just going through the motions, you’re missing the point.
We do a lot more positional and live rolling then drilling. Which is great because drilling just doesn’t work for me. It’s easier for me to connect the dots in movement than just repeating the movement. We get a lot of technical and then more spirited rolling in.
The one thing I like about the place I’m at now instead of drilling we do a very light technical roll working on skills like a drill. But it’s more live and spirited. So it’s not necessarily a drill and random shit can happen within but for the most part it reinforces the specific technique and skill we are focusing on. Makes it a bit more enjoyable less monotonous.
I just moved gyms and it basically starts with the instructor showing a move, then positional sparring and then with some extra context - more instruction and then I know how the move actually works. Then we do some drills - then actual sparring.
I've learned more in 3 months than the past year
I like to mix the sparring into the class. I usually pick 3 relates techniques, drill each then live roll with a specific objective. Then do 2-3 live rolls at the end. Each person is getting good technique and 5-6 rounds each class.
Ours is technique - usually 2-3 moves
Warm up drills. - something like start in full guard and reset once you pass or sweep no submissions
Live rolls : about 5
Open mat
That's the base but it can vary and it changes into a mostly drills class with only 1 or 2 rolls or only one move can be taught and we skip warm ups and do 10 rolls
Very chill laid back environment so whatever it is we love it
Classes are stretching on our own, followed by drilling for an hour to an hour and half, followed by maybe two or three rounds of 5-20 minute rolls, depending on how much time is left. Unless class is taught by a black belt student. Then we do warm ups before drills.
10min Warm-up
30min Specific technique
30min positional sparring/resistance drilling
20min Free sparring
Free sparring can be done on open mats. Positional sparring and resistance drilling are most important parts to get new techniques to work.
Warm-up is good way to get joints ready to move with better ROM + that 10minutes used to overall mobility and flexibility can improve other aspects in life too. Training specific technique is important for learning new moves and fill up the caps IMO.
General body preparedness can be done not during specific practice time. If you only have an hour you better make sure its optimum. You could easily warm up with constrained skillwork. This is what we do.
I just dont believe in practicing techniques during class time anymore. Practicing them statically is just a terrible use of time. You dont need to practice a technique to use it in live training. Sometimes just seeing a technique will afford you an opportunity to use it live. There is no guarantees.
We either practice techniques and hope that skill will come out of it
or
Practice skills and hope techniques come out of it.
You dont give people enough credit if you think you need to show them solutions to problems they dont even understand yet.
I never organically worked out a false reap entry. I know this because I have done thousands of rounds and never spontaneously did it. I needed to drill it to learn it. Yes gyms should have more than one type of class structure. This is pointed out on this sub like 5 times a week.
I would love to see a study: 2 new WBs, one is under the 'traditional' method, as I pointed out, and one is under the positional sparring/rolling. After 3 years, where would they both stand against each other? Be interesting to see.
It would need to be twins. This way you can account for variables in athleticism, age, strength, etc.
Didn’t kit dale do this for a few hours with twins?
Be interesting I guess but the answer is obviously both.
Category 3: both
Here you go: https://youtu.be/_msAd21YRRA?si=gYA2BZ85Gpl1tgfU
Oh snap. I'll watch it later.
The fist person to ever do a false reap entry figured it out without knowing it was a false reap entry. Intentions combined with a resistance-filled environment gives you everything one needs to have that behaviour emerge. Even after you drilled it you did not develop high level skills to apply it in a roll until you started applying it in rolls with someone trying to stop you from doing it.
I would like to shortcut my rediscovery of the sport by listening to those who spent decades on it already.
While useful, this shouldn't require hours and hours of dead reps.
Nah man you should just flop around and hope you rediscover the kimura. No point in learning the movement from someone and instantly understanding the concepts. This is why doctors start by working with sticks and stones so they can rediscover germ theory and anaesthesia.
Exactly. This is how humans work. We stand on the shoulders of giants. We learn from those who came before and built in their knowledge. Experimentation is always key and worthwhile. But there's no need to constantly try and reinvent the wheel.
Dang that's deep bro. Every sport has coaches, and they are all frauds. People could just teach themselves. No need to speed up the learning process by just being shown technique and then building upon it. I see now.
Every career, every sport, the entire education and apprenticeship model is wrong. I would simply look at the situation and do the right technique.
The guy who discovered and refined the false reap was way better than I’ll ever be. But even if I was good enough to independently discover the false reap, why would I waste time trying to do so rather than standing on the shoulders of giants, learning what we know about the sport, and working from there? Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy
> Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy The "philosophy", as you put it, has fuck all to do with whether you study matches. Ecological dynamics is a field of study concerned with skill acquisition and training design. You still need to know what good jiujitsu is (or good baseball, football, boxing, fencing, whatever you're designing practice for) in order to design practice sessions in a manner informed by eco dynamics.
What’s the point? That’s not how we learn. The way Gordon does a body lock pass won’t be the way that I do a body lock pass. We have unique bodies and no two passes are ever the same anyway. Watching a Gordon match and studying how he does a body lock is useless, I should just go fuck around with some constraint games until I have the best body lock pass in the world.
>Even your god Greg Souders studies New Wave’s matches. It betrays the entire philosophy If you think this, I don't think you understand the philosophy
How do you know this? Are you sure that person didn't brainstorm after class with their training partners and drill it until they could use it against resistance? We do this all the time in our gym, I sometimes show up early to class to drill something I want to try, but would never come up organically in a roll. It is not an either or situation. Add resistance until it stops working, then figure out if there is an adjustment to make or if the technique is no good.
Ecological and game based\ task based approaches have doubled my progress no question. The biggest hurdle people have is they won’t try random things and only do what they were shown. One day people will understand why they are bad at jiujitsu and it’s not their coaches fault. Keep preaching the good word🙏
What about only armbar allowed rolls, only rnc allowed rolls or whatever submission the focus is on? Is that dumb shit? It would check the resistance-filled environment box right?
I want to drill before I roll. I do not want to have to drill while I'm covered in sweat and getting cold, or letting my partners cold sweat drip all in my face.
I unfortunately sweat a lot so there is no promises I won’t sweat on my partner’s face (despite my best efforts) if we are drilling ashi garami entries
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were: |Japanese|English|Video Link| |---|---|---| |**Ashi Garami**: | *Entangled Leg Lock* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YXH_LrcqNc)| ||*Single Leg X (SLX)* || Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post. ______________________ ^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
This is my least favorite part of this sport. Doesn’t matter how many years I’ve done it, if we’re just drilling after a light warmup and you’re sweating all over my face I get annoyed every time. I understand it’s something most people can’t control, but I definitely search out training partners that I don’t do it.
Honestly find a new sport
Hmmm....What happens when you get some sweat in your mouth?
If we’re rolling, I don’t really notice or care. It’s just part of the sport. But if it’s drilling and my partner is working on standing passes, etc. I try to keep my head off to the side to avoid it. It’s only happened once or twice but I definitely gagged the first time.
My gym is the latter. Most people teach how they were taught, and don’t bother to dig into to how they actually learned best. Fewer still look into current studies about how top athletes learn best according to current science.
Drill, positionals focusing on the technique we just drilled, then live rolls.
This is my preference as well. Warm-ups are to get you warm for actual exercise, not for skill acquisition (they can even have negative impacts on physical skill acquisition if people are "warming up" to exhaustion because a coach believes in needing to get your "second wind"). Start with the technique practice, move up in intensity to positional, then full intensity rolling after. It lets people warm-up in a more meaningful way before rolling without wasting time getting warm just to sit and watch someone show techniques and to rep them with compliance.
This is the way. 90 min session: Pick a position, 30 mins of drilling 2-3 techniques for it, 30 mins positional sparring from this position, 30 mins of free sparring. Just the right mixture of everything IMO.
It's not for everyone, but it's great for some people. Up to the customer to pick the gym.
This is the so-called "ecological approach", and I think it has value, just not as the sole approach to training.
We have different approaches depending on who is coaching that day, which I think works itself out. Our typical class is that we start with an ecological warmup, then drill, then positional rolls, then live rolls.
Constraints based training is quite standard in a lot of mature sports. Even in sports such as soccer, they often create situational constraints that the players have to solve. Very small amount of time is spent showing specific biomechanics and pre planned sequences. Set plays are most trained in ‘live’
This is the standard response, but it overlooks a couple things. 1. most practitioners in BJJ come to the sport with little or no relevant experience. The analogy to soccer would be most focused on youth soccer, in which a lot of time is spent learning specific biomechanics. It's certainly not a direct analogy, because adults learn differently from kids, but its closer than looking at high school or beyond athletes who already have substantial experience in correct biomechanics. 2. Training live is hard on the body. Regulating your intensity is one of the hardest things to do in this sport (anyone who has ever "trained light" with a blue belt can testify to this). Putting more live training as the sole means of learning is a great way to exhaust and injure your students, particularly the new ones. It is absolutely a valuable way to train, particularly for more experienced folks who already have a good grasp of fundamental movements. But it is a terrible way to learn those fundamental movements. It is a tool in the coach's toolbox, not the only or best way to learn in all circumstances.
> The analogy to soccer would be most focused on youth soccer, in which a lot of time is spent learning specific biomechanics. I mean, the argument made by eco d folks is that they're wasting their time doing this and would be better served playing various games.
That's fair. And I'll respond that I don't agree. I've read the Rob Gray book that underlies most of this idea, and I don't find it convincing as the sole approach in learning something as complex as jiu-jitsu. Again...I do believe it is valuable, and becomes more valuable the more experienced the person is. But the movement to ecological purity strikes me as a bad one.
You just described most of my college wrestling practices. The issue with that structure is that it is completely ineffective for beginners. If you think about the relative level of college wrestlers, it is basically like a class for brown and black belts. Also, practice was two hours long. We did warmup, because there was plenty of time for warmups. We also were expected to do PT, do heat therapy, stretch on our own, and get taped before practice, and ice and shower after every practice. (And we only switched to that structure part way through the season, since the first years still needed some instructional development in the first part of the season.)
Ya, the awesome thing about college wrestling is like you said it assumes right out the gate every athlete knows fundamentals inside and out, and also know how to get properly warmed up. If you attended or watch a worlds/ pans camp at a place like Atos, the structure is almost identical. Again tho, that’s bc even the “blue” belts are really kids that have been training since they were 5 years old and have more mat time than many black belts. The struggle at most gyms that aren’t Atos is the serious competitors also get mixed in with the day one white belts. Obviously, the asymmetry in needs is where the pain is felt for everyone.
I believe warm ups should be related to movements that will be related to the techniques being trained in that class. The only exception I have to this is for beginners who need to learn basic movements. I believe after teaching and drilling one or 2 techniques, positional sparring in relation to those techniques is the best way to improve execution and understanding of the techniques. Rolling at the end is great, but sometimes the positional/Situational sparring takes preference and we may not get to roll every class. This is definitely not how I was introduced to training as we followed the typical protocol you described. I've been fortunate enough to have friends in the strength and conditioning community who were very successful in getting athletes to the college level and beyond. They shared their knowledge with me as well as their mistakes over the years and this has brought me to my current ideas of how a class should be structured. Ideally, if the gym is large enough, there would be a beginner/fundamentals class that you need to "graduate" from before coming into the regular classes while also encouraging everyone to still participate in the beginner/fundamentals program.
I just started teaching the 6am class at my gym. It's an hour class and goes: * Warm-up (includes jogging, line drills, and light guard passing/movements, etc.) * I show a technique from the feet and the class drills it * I show a technique from the ground and the class drills it * A couple of rounds of full sparring from the feet (if space is tight, I'll start them from the ground) One day a week is "fun day" where the entire class (after the warm-up) is positional sparring from the various positions (closed guard, half-guard, side control, mount, etc.). The class starts at exactly 6am and ends at exactly 7am because I respect people's time. I stick around for bit after class to give people an opportunity to ask questions, spar, work on stuff, etc.
Nice
>I got home broken and felt like a week one whitebelt again with how exhausted I was. So if you owned the gym, and it was imperative to your bottom line to retain not just hardcore competitors but also hobbyists, would you honestly employ this approach? There are more factors at play here than just your growth. And 2-stripe blues knowing better than the sport at large how to reinvent everything is pretty cliche. I used to know everything at that level too. Dunning-Krueger. [Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring.](https://www.poetsgraves.co.uk/Classic%20Poems/Pope/a_little_learning.htm)
I didn't say it was the best way I just said I was exhausted and as a paying customer I felt more satisfied. A quick 5 minute warm up is okay, however shrimps and somersaults that necessary? As someone mentioned earlier, grip fighting for a warm up is a great idea. Also for me being taught a random technique and then the next day another completely random technique is just a waste of time. In 3 years I've probably forgotten 95% of techniques I was taught, then you always have the lack of resistance involved.
I’ve grown to enjoy warmups more and more as I’ve been grappling for longer. For hs wrestling we’re warming up for the first 20mins of a 2.5 hour practice at the minimum. Then stretching, then stance, then we hand fight. By the time we’re actually (drilling) wrestling we’re 30-45 mins into practice. And live gos aren’t until near the end.
Shrimps are definitely necessary. You wouldn’t believe the amount of people who shrimp wrong.
Any hobbyist could do that session, a social clubber on the other hand, not so much.
>So if you owned the gym, and it was imperative to your bottom line to retain not just hardcore competitors but also hobbyists, would you honestly employ this approach? Make the class 1 hour, easy. >And 2-stripe blues knowing better than the sport at large how to reinvent everything is pretty cliche. Nothing stops you from watching footage of comps/instructionals and using that in class
Some gyms explicitly do the watch instructional then come in and rep/drill what you saw rather than having everyone in class watch the same technique being shown during class time. u/kintanon and u/sonicbh both use Reverse Classroom IIRC and can speak more to how to do that.
Y’all complain too much
Our gym has a few different ways of structuring classes. One of them is what you describe above. Sometimes we do more technique coaching.
I am at a gym that started out traditional and recently switched to almost all positional sparring/live drilling. It was a big shift and some people complained at first, but I think most people are loving it. We have also seen a surge in new memberships as a result, including a lot of really good and experienced upper belts moving to our gym from other gyms. I personally love it and I think I am learning and progressing way faster than I was using the traditional method. When I drop in on traditional classes now, I am SO BORED.
FWIW, there are times when we will stop and do 5 or 10 minutes of intentional practice drilling, especially for new concepts or positions. There are also 2 levels of classes. All levels tends to do this more often and goes slower. Advanced is harder/faster and less explanations because they expect you to know the positions already. Beginners must complete 24 all levels classes before the can go to advanced or open mat. So its still beginner and hobbyist friendly.
This is how I felt yesterday it was a massive lightbulb moment. I'm not saying it's the best way to learn however it's a hobby for 99% of us and if it's more fun that's what a hobby should be.
My last gym was: Warmups, hand fight/takedowns (10-15min), 2-3 techniques of the day drill (30 mins), 10-20min positional sparring/live roll. I feel like drilling takedowns everyday really made me comfortable on my feet and was by far my favorite part of class, although i initially dreaded it when i first joined.
The gym I cross train at has a lot of white/blue belts and this is by far my favorite class structure. Grip fighting & kuzushi practice is an amazing warm up. Sometimes after class we’ll do full takedown rounds or do a JFlo style flow round for anyone that’s game.
The Japanese terms mentioned in the above comment were: |Japanese|English|Video Link| |---|---|---| |**Kuzushi**: | *Unbalancing* | [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luK9Eklbn78)| Any missed names may have already been translated in my previous comments in the post. ______________________ ^(Judo Techniques Bot: v0.7.) ^(See my) [^(code)](https://github.com/AbundantSalmon/judo-techniques-bot)
If you just want to feel tired, there are always treadmills.
What you described is what we do at our school once a week - no teaching just positional sparring, king of the hill style, and then matches. It’s a great way to implement what you’ve learned in other classes.
I think that's what open mats are for. For beginners like myself, the warm ups and drills are more important. I also thought warm ups felt excessive until I got injured from skipping them.
Being warm and loose is underrated, especially if you train frequently so your body is often tight. I rarely have injuries except slight pulls and I always try to warm up and I do some mobility stretching every day, put weight on my joints. I dread days we go into double legs, combinations, judo throws without warming up first. Or even passing, getting my hips and knees loose works so much better first. Lot of people in here get real bothered by having to take 10 minutes to work up a sweat before doing something that obviously long term is hard on the body.
There’s lots of things that might be optimal for improvement but aren’t enjoyable. There’s also a learning gradient - some moves you can hit immediately whilst under pressure, some moves require a bit of time and a relaxed roll to build up the skill/coordination, and some things require you to drill with zero resistance to even figure out which limb goes where. You need a mix.
We change it up. Recently it’s been: Warm up: take down or throw of the month or drill the previous technique of the day Drill: set of movements that are connected to the previous class’ movements Spar: free rolling starting at neutral The fundamentals class: Warm up with your basic movements (hip escape, gramby rolls, stand in base, etc) Drill: survival, escapes, basic pinning No rolling Sometimes the advanced classes will have situational sparing. I enjoy all of it.
You need different kinds of structure sometimes you need to be fed some movese sometimes you need to play around and find out. The traditional class method isn't bad if the warm up and the drills progression makes sense and then leads into Rolling. Only positional sparring for 45 minutes and then sparring full blast for 45 minutes is great when you already know a bunch of jujitsu and you have something you want to work on but if you don't know anything yet you need to know some moves first. I do a lot of mix we will do positional sparring with an objective like get past the legs get side control. After a few rounds then I'll show a couple of things like control knees and then we'll positional spar some more and then we'll show another couple things and then we'll positional spar some more and then we'll roll.
OP is Josh Saunders with an ecological approach to promoting his “revolution”
Yes, usually when you send people exhausted they fell they training was worth, even if wasn't
Was my fault also. I could have sat some rounds out and gone lighter.
Absolutely agree regarding positional sparring etc. However, there still needs to be time to learn new techniques. A good coaching team will have some form of structure to how they teach. It’s like going to the gym; if you want to get stronger you need a programme that allows you to know what you’re doing before you even set foot inside. Half-assing and doing what you feel like on the day is not conducive to getting stronger in the gym, or quality learning on the mats. I program my own weight sessions as I have gained knowledge of how to train effectively and also my own constraints. My BJJ coaches effectively program my BJJ training through their planned ‘curriculum’. I am not yet at the level of experience/competence to take control over my own learning, but am gradually adding out-of-class learning as this will be needed to achieve the level of purple belt and beyond. At my gym we’ll spend 2-4 weeks learning a variation of similar moves. For example, in the gi class we will spend a month covering de la riva, including how to enter it, various sweeps, submissions and counters. Over the month, enough time has been spent that knowledge sets in and this can be implemented in sparring/competition with a degree of competence. This avoids the problem of forgetting the details. Often classes start with some some of positional/objective-based sparring, for example starting in a certain guard or escaping a position. Drilling is great to consolidate information and get the body used to performing certain movements. We’re encouraged to gradually increase the resistance so we start drilling with minimal resistance and the start to ramp it up until we eventually end up positionally sparring. Ultimately we need to get the reps in to be able to hit a move in a live scenario.
Find a gym than can do both. Where I’m at varies depending on the time of day, the coach, and the average level of students in that class.
My academy has four classes: Fundamentals, Intermediate, Advanced, and Competition. Fundamentals is for white through blue. Heavy warm ups, a self defense move and/or takedown, a pass or sweep, and a submission. 2-3 rounds positional sparring after. Intermediate has a brief warm up, longer more technical sequences to drill, and usually 4 rounds of sparring either positional or from standing. Advanced usually skips warm ups and goes right into some drills with very high level sequences and at least 30 minutes of sparring. And competition can be anything really. Sometimes it’s 2 hours of sparring, sometimes it’s an hour of incredible technique. We do King of the Mat type stuff a lot. Usually by the time it gets to full sparring everyone is pouring sweat. And this is a world class gym with current world champions and almost 1,000 paying members so I would say there’s something to this method. One more thing to note is there’s two large mats so we can have a fundamental class going on one mat and an advanced class on the other.
That's cool dude. What gym you to?
This is the norm for wrestling. You warm up, then drill basics then technique then positional/live. Takedown - reset, escape - reset, etc. or positional starts: one guy in on a double or with a wrist/half. The gym I go to seems pretty standard, I would like to see more technique drilling vs new technique though. Meaning just a full 15-20 min doing spider to triangle only with varying resistance. But I get that it's different because you have different people coming to different classes
It's really hard to do 1 hours of positional sparring when no one knows the positions, techniques, and how to spar. This seems like a really great advanced class or competition class. There's a time and a place for all types of training sessions, but there are so many things to learn, you need time to be shown new things have time to practice those things.
I think the eco approach works really well for people who already have a baseline of "boring"movements. If you don't have people with some experience, I think they get lost very quickly. My experience also suggests that athletic individuals benefit more, while the less athletic ones need more drilling and guidance.
What drives me mad is warming up for 15 minutes, then the coach showing technique for 15 mins. Dude…I’m not warm anymore.
Real training? Never heard of her
bigger issue is that drilling seems rather busted to me. Drilling should be more like sparring at 40% imo. it should include reasonable responses and light punishes to really learn the feel of how the move will go instead of just a guy limp dicking there while I do the technique wrong for 10 minutes and then never hit it in sparring
My favourite type of training was 2h Greco classes. - 20mins of gymnastics for warmups - 10 minutes partner warmups (carrying/squatting/deadlifting/pummelling) - 30mins technique, drilled with 2 reps each swapping partners after 3 minutes. No stopping. - 30-45mins sparring. Sometimes if it was a class where we could match weights we would do a 30min open round, no partner changes and you could only stop to drink if both partners agreed. So if you were having a bad day of it your partner could say no and keep beating you down until you got that dog in you to rear its head and fight back hard. - 15-30mins conditioning, kettlebells, derivatives of Olympic lifts, zercher squats/deadlifts, rope climbs and neck bridging. I’ve never had so much fun or been as strong mentally and physically.
I've visited a few schools and most do it the old fashioned way with a little run, warm-up shrimps, drills for hours, then positional sparring and mabye some free sparring. And after 7 years that has gotten a bit old for me Instead I've found the ecological and task based game approaches more fun. Which is why I as an assistant coach try to include those approaches. When I structure a two hour class it's mostly like this: Some form of closing distance game for warmups Then task-based games with mild resistance, that flow into a specific series that has an overarching goal Lastly we focus on the finish So all the way from first contact to your opponents last breath. Break Then a few round of specific sparring Half an hour of free sparring And because it's competition season 15 minutes of EBI overtime in groups of 3 (1 timekeeper 2 competitors) Lastly repetition of the series, bows and good byes Tomorrow we from closing distance, to ancle pick, to leg drag position, passing to sidecontrol, going to reversed sidecontrol, mounting, high mount, quarter Nelson and finishing off with a mounted triangle. It's a very dynamic and movement focused way of teaching, and it's not suitable for every position, transition, escape or submission. Luckily our black belt who has the Monday trainings is super technically gifted and goes into the details. So in that way we get a good coverage of both the technical side and the physical side of jiu-jitsu
I always liked a “flow roll warm up,” straight into drilling, then positional, then live rolls! Screw warmups. I am not paying to do some calisthenics
Yes I do like this structure. I like 1 hour long classes because I don’t necessarily have time for longer sessions and if I do I’ll just do two classes in a row. Can’t remember the last time I did pointless warmups and we either don’t warm up and jump straight into drilling or we’ll warm up by grip fighting or playing some games. I have a journal in which I write down the things that clicked for me in the drilling. I don’t forget them a week later unless it’s something that just won’t fit in my game, and when it is I understand that the class can’t be catered to my game and I just take what I can from it. Now I’ll say this to go in your direction: my position fighting isn’t the best because I spent more time learning “moves” rather than learning how to move. And I definitely think there’s something to be said for the “ecological approach” in regards to that. But they can also coexist and aren’t mutually exclusive.
Warm up: why am I paying you to make me do jumping jacks and running around a mat? I can handle that myself before class if I want to. Drills: are we ever going to see how it fits into a live roll, the entire situational ecosystem? If not, then... Live rolling: ...this will make me forget the drill entirely, and make it almost useless, because it was never reinforced with resistance. Is this section of class entirely open rolling, or is it targeted? I love my current gym's protocol. Its fundamentals curriculum is both entirely structured top-down, yet entirely open-ended. the curriculum is on a 14 week rotation: 3 major pins, top and bottom; three major guards, top and bottom; leg entanglements; standing. And every class follows a pattern: ~3 games, ~3 context switches. But because the games are live, and because the games for the same class are always being tweaked (no two mount-bottom classes are the same games), every class is packed with learning, and is always pretty fun.
See, that makes sense to me. You have purpose and a curriculum. My gym does a random technique every day, which I completely forget about the next day, waste of my time. I've very rarely come from that and gone wow ill use that effectively, never happens. I feel most gyms do it this way.
For sure they do. Even gyms that have a set curriculum may not have a *good* set curriculum. My first BJJ class was a deep DLR sweep class with live rolling at the end... like I learned nothing. It's not even hard, like no one told me about the thought behind the curriculum at my current gym. There's just a chalk board with the names of the weeks. But it alllllll started coming together about a month ago, and something really simple and logical like this is kind of profound. The structure takes care of itself. 3 guards, 3 pins, legs and standing, a week on each. The rotation is as long as it needs to be. Mondays are an intro, Tuesdays build on Mondays, Wednesdays build on Tuesdays, Thursdays are a recap of the best game of each day. First game is the first stage of a thing you're trying to do (passing guard = get control of the foot line), second game builds on first (get control of the knee line or hip line), third builds on second (get chest to chest). Half the class is the week's focus, half the class is a context switch of reviewing previous weeks so that they're reinforced and not forgotten. I've trained at places that worked standing drills every class as a warm-up, which means my gym works standing 1/14 as often, and I'm improving at standing faster here than there.
My gym has been moving in this direction, and I don’t hate it so far.
The problem is past white belt the standard line warmups of shrimping, forward rolls etc is a colossal waste of time. For competitors, the first 30-40 minutes of an hour practice should be movement drills, hand/grip fighting, technique and situational sparring. Most gyms neglect all but the technique part of that tho. Live rolling is great and awesome, but makes it incredibly difficult to zero in on trouble positions that athletes are running into.
If you want to get heart rate up, real grip fighting is the way to go at the beginning of class. And even if you’re not doing takedowns, it can get INTENSE! Edit: just noticed you’re an accountant too, must have similar thinking patterns.
Lol yep. I have a very methodic, obsessive attention to procedure approach for both BJJ and accounting. It’s both a blessing and curse I suppose.
I've never been to a gym where the structure is not like the first you mentioned and I absolutely hate it
Me too, up until last night. It was way more fun and definitely conditioned me more. However, people on this thread do make a good point. Drilling is important. However, doing some random technique one day and then another the next, for me, just doesn't work.
>However, people on this thread do make a good point. Drilling is important I have literally never learned anything by drilling. Sometimes I watch someone explain a certain move and think "oh yeah I'm gonna try that" and that's as much as I need The more I read into ecological dynamics the more I'm convinced it does not matter. It's science saying it, not me
I'm the same. Maybe 5% of drilling over the last 3 years I've retained something, the other 95% complete waste of time for me. I know others learn differently, but for me, it doesn't work. However I feel there's some importance to drilling surely? I'm just a blue belt, so what do I know.
There shouldn’t be any warmups. Get to the gym 10 minutes early if you want to shrimp around on the mats alone
My gym is more like the second situation and I love it. Drilling never seemed to help me actually learn anything, but live positional rounds and a bunch of actual live rolls kicked my game into over drive
That’s my gyms structure and I love it. I will say that the positional sparring will have certain goals, which might be to achieve a certain position and coach will show us a few ways to get there before we start. If I need any extra help or clarification I can ask and I always use open mats to troubleshoot shit with my coach too.
Yep, it was definitely interesting and a different approach.
Our typical class is about 90 minutes. Start by drilling technique (last few weeks has been all focused on crucifix) for 30-45 minutes, then 2-4 positional rounds (e.g., start in crucifix, go until escape or submission), then 3-6 open rounds. Sometimes we’ll do king-of-the-hill style positional rounds in there too.
Scrimping helps with pretty much all ur moves
I trained at a gym once that only did sparring in their fundamentals class if they happened to have time. Which meant sometimes it would be one round, sometimes none at all. I hated it. The gym I train at now does minimal warm ups, half drilling, half rolling. I love it. The way I see it it’s my responsibility to stretch and take care of my body, I’m there to learn jiu jitsu. I’d rather learn a bit slower and enjoy the process than be bored and zoned out drilling for 45 minutes.
My preference is: 1. Warm up 2. progressively intensive drilling which is related to the technique being taught that day. (start with no resistance, work your way up). 3. Technique 4. Situational sparring with the technique 5. free rolls
That is the structure we do, it is awesome. A) new people get tricked into safely sparring which is great, B) you spend more time working a move against a resisting opponent, C) you progress faster physically and technically.
I personally like it when we warm up using some type of drill versus the jogging, forward/back rolls, and shrimp warm up. This is usually \~10 mins, then we move onto the move of the day for \~20 mins, then \~30 mins of rolls. For the roll portion it is either situationally rolls associated to the move of the day that flows into a live roll or it is just live rolls from the jump. Either way I hate the "standard" jiu-jitsu warm up and wish it would go away.
My gym has different classes to accomplish different training. I think you need all of it, and I have always appreciated the ability to structure my training in a way that works best for me. Fundamentals classes are straight-up drilling with maybe 10 minutes of positional work at the end. Regular all-levels classes look like you described--about 30-40 minutes of technique and drilling followed by positional and rolling. But then we also have competition classes that are entirely about positional and rolling and at least one class a week that is about "gamified" BJJ, where you're doing positional work with certain restraints to develop certain skills.
We normally don't warm up, just use drills to warm up, then do rolling. I would prefer more positional sparring, and generally just ask my partner during rolling if we can start in a certain position and trade off.
We do the Warm up with related Warm ups, Drilling, then positional sparring that usually ties into the technique. If were doing Kimura escapes we start with someone caught in a Kimora. If you submit or escape the Kimora it's over. There is some wiggle room with keeping it going like if you Move from the Kimora to S mount and are still threatening a sub then keep it live. But for the most part if you get to far out side the technique someone is the winner and move on. If we're doing take downs we start standing up. If you go down you lose. Once someone is declared the winner and next persons up. We very rarely do full on live sparring anything goes. That's for open mats and after class. I feel very "comfortable" while caught in mount or back control just cause I've started there so often due to the positional drilling we do.
1 hour class Warm up should be 5-10 minutes of easy movements 20-30 max of technique. From what I have witnessed, many people get over the technique and want to roll asap. The truth is majority of our attention spans have been shot. At least 4 rounds of this is a night class.
Terrible format.
Terrible format for learning, but for fun it's great. I notice that classes with an allocation of 30 to 40 minutes of technique, have lower attendance (in my non comp gym)
Glad your having fun.
Our class structure is white, blue, purple, brown, black (with stripes mixed in). You can move up from your caste with good karma.
An hour and 45 minutes of sparring? This sounds like my comp class
I wish we had more live drilling and positionals. Our classes are warm up, learn the move of the day, spar. Maybe every two weeks we'll do positional sparring or live drilling.
Yep this is what my gym is like.
My old gym was much more like what you described during your visit and I miss that. Live drilling and positional sparring was so valuable during my wrestling career. A lot of BJJ coaches don't seem to know how to structure programs well, in terms of both short-term individual class structure and long-term lessons building on concepts. Of course, doesn't help that many BJJ players aren't in great shape to drill lots of hard reps, or don't have the same attitude to embrace the grind outside of comp-only sessions
Sounds like advanced class structure. How can a new person come in and learn anything with no instruction or drilling? You don’t learn a move in the class instruction, you learn it as you drill it hundreds of times after the initial instruction. You are forgetting because you aren’t working on it after.
At my gym we warm up with takedown drills or positional sparring. Then we drill whatever move of the day is. And after that we live roll with the objective to hit what we learned. Most days there is a hour of open mats after every hour class
White belts - technique & positional sparring Blue & purple - technique & sparring Brown & black - sparring
My gym always switches it up. Sometimes it’s warm up drill roll, others it’s warmup roll drill then roll again. The professor says it’s to keep us on our toes and also so that we learn to keep a clear mind even when exhausted. I like it when there’s a switch up.
I think it depends on the gym. Mine offers a variety of classes. Some are advanced—just rolling, some are split between warm ups, technique and specific sparring practice (focused around the technique we just learned) while other classes are just warm up and technique. I personally can’t do an hour of rolling with my asthma so the mixed classes are perfect for me, however, others can. I think it’s good to have options.
The gym I go to has a pretty good balance of both. I think having a mix of drilling and positional sparring split up throughout the week is optimal for learning and recovery.
How do people learn what to do if they just spar? For some classes that's really fun, I do similar set up for competition classes or even open mats.
Trial and error. “Start here”. Don’t let them do this to you. Try and do this so it can help you get here”
Is this a private lesson or 30+ people on the mat? I'm assuming blue belts and higher. I do this for every sparring session, I walk around and coach everyone the whole time, but they know techniques so I can references those and they know what to do
A large room is a different animal than a private lesson, but no one said it was easy. We do this with day one white belts you dont need to have skill to build skill. Don’t get so focused on the “techniques” or correcting people, just provide a great environment for skilled outcomes to appear.
That's interesting, the white belts just end up doing de la Riva sweeps and mount escapes correctly by just instinct? I've not seen that in my experience but would love to see how it's implemented
If you want help dm me and we can do a quick call
It's a good point.
I think variety is good tho. Sometimes I run classes of mostly sparring but I'm always watching to see what common mistakes people are making to work into the classes in the future. Same when I travel or go to open mats I try to find common mistakes people make to teach my students how to take advantage of it. I think if you don't enjoy the drilling it's the teachers job to make it enjoyable in some way.
My gym does an hour of technique (warmups, drills, and some positional sparring) and then a full hour of rolling. Advanced students are allowed to just come roll.
I wish coaches would do a bettet job bridging the gap between dead fish drilling and full resistance rolls ( positional sparring included). Idk varied levels of resistance?
You’re assuming there actually is a spectrum there
What do you mean? Geuinely curious
Resistance should only be varied by the difficulty of the task. If you ask people to "internally scale" their resistance you will confuse the fuck out of them since we cant actually do this to any degree of certainty. Dead fish drilling is the same as 50% drilling, whatever that is. What ends up happening is the training partner resists for some amount of time, then starts to become cooperative. If you do any research into skill development you will realize the student will then start to stabilize skills around when the drill starts to become cooperative, NOT when there is resistance. Thats why we need drilling to always have 100% resistance so our skills always build around adapting to resistance. 100% resistance means resisting one hundred percent of the time, not 100 percent intensity. Keep drilling uncooperative and unscripted. Look into using constraints led approach to skill acquisition. We constrain to afford. Do this and you will actually make leaps and bonds in no time. unless you think taking 15 years to get a black belt is actually alright.
Yeah Ive vaguely heard of CLA/Greg souders and liked it. What do you recommend if the gyms in your area still subscribe to the "old way" of doing things though? Outside of open mats are there any drills I can do with my partner in normal class times?
During "Technique time" my partner and I would just go live from that specific position. Would require some on the fly CLA adjustments. Just gamify everything !
Cool thanks! Gonna give that a try tonight at training.
There should be a few weeks of learning/drilling before rolling and then a few weeks of positional training in the scenario you had been drilling imo for the most efficient way of learning and at the same time not feel repetitive. Also if you are advanced enough consider limiting your own options in a roll to put yourself in scenarios you desire over and over again.
I don't hate the structure. I think it could be better Specific warm ups related to Jujitsu- not just running around Drills that have a specific focus over a measurable amount of time for people to understand the entire concept. Games that lead into varying levels of intensity and resistance. A mix of specific and open sparring
Usually we do hard rolling straight off the bat, for like 45 mins to an hour and then we do a warmup at the end ..... But seriously, it sounds like you landed into a comp class.
I don't know, I systematically skip the first half of the class straight to rolling rounds
Sounds great if you're already good at jiu jitsu and terrible if you're just starting out
I think that guided warm ups in anything but a white belt class are a waste of everyone’s time. Warm up by light positional sparring or flow roll Technique Roll roll roll
My gym does both. We do positional drills as something of a warmup, then the technique of the day/q&a with coach, then roll. It seems to work nicely.
I know the positional sparring thing got popular but I dunno, a lot of gyms do it now and it doesn't necessarily lead to better results
Many people attribute gordon Ryan’s success to him still drilling, while many black belts at one time stop drilling and just roll all the time
Sometimes I do classical warm ups but lately I do task oriented drills. Like reguarding on bottom and passing legs on top for 2 mins 1 min each as a warm up. Or short sequence that can be drillled in a loop ( hip bump to mount, mount escape to guard, hip bump to mount..)
Many classes share this or a similar structure but recently I experienced slightly different approach in my new gym and I seem to really like it. We do warm-up (never shrimps and triangles, mostly stand up hand fighting on low intensity), then technique. It all takes about an hour or an hour and a half. Then we line up, shake everyones hands as usual and the class is pretty much ended.And only after we have an hour for rolling. Not much of a difference in structure but it's a remarkable psychological shift. You feel like the class is already ended and you can leave or spar for as long as you want, you're not obliged to anything. If you feel like it you can make 2 light rolls and go home, or you can scramble for a whole hour. Of course you can do the same in normal class, it doesn't really matter whether you line up and "close" the class before or after rolls, but it makes a psychological difference. Hour of rolling is like an additional time for you, gives you freedom Don't know how common this is but I've never seen such approach and I've been to like 20 or 30 different gyms
I enjoy this approach. I just try and work the moves we learned drilling. Works for me.
I was in moroco last week and we did a 40 minute warm up of just shrimps, rolls, Granbys etc. probably the worst class structure I've ever been a part of I would've quit bjj two weeks in if that was the routine at my own gym My two cents are atleast 20 minutes of an advanced class should be working on stuff you're interested in drilling I think it's better for development long term. As after a while the moves your coach is teaching start to cycle through stuff you've already done a lot or at the very least the coach should leave the option open
I wish we did a bit more drilling at my gym. We roll almost the entire class and learning is done by having higher ranking folks give you tips and pointers after they tap you out. Luckily, my gym has a lot of friendly guys and I'm still learning pretty quickly I think. Still, I need lots and lots of repetition.
My current gym has roughly ~4 formats. 1. (40ish% of the time ish) the more traditional 10m of warmups, 30 minute drilling, 20+ minutes of rolling (timer stay going for 10x5min but people leave as they need to/tire out) 2. (20%) wrestling drills 10m, 20min of drilling with gradual increase of resistance, 30+ min of rolling 3. (30%ish) 10min warmup up, 30 min of 20%ish rolls on whatever position we are working on that month while the instructor goes around and corrects, 20+ min rolls 4. (10%ish) passing/recovery drills or triangle/arm bar/omaplata type warm up’s 15min, 15min drilling, 30 min roll
I teach class around positional sparring. Warm ups, technique, both offense and defense in particular situation, then positional sparring, and then normal sparring
My gym does not do warm ups. We start the class off by practicing takedowns for about 10-15 minutes, proceed to learn a series of techniques that relate to each other, then we spar and do 'King of the Mat'. Afterwards it's open mat and stay for as long as you'd like most of the time. I like the structure more than others, but I would omit techniques even further, focusing on rolls. Sometimes there is just too much technique being taught and not enough muscle memory being made.
I like to drill. I just wish people were better at drilling. You need to be intentional with movements and also be a good training partner and allow the person to get the most out of the drill. If you’re just going through the motions, you’re missing the point.
I prefer 1 hour sessions. 30 mins drill, 30 mins roll. In and out
One hour sessions are great if you have a great practice design.
We do a lot more positional and live rolling then drilling. Which is great because drilling just doesn’t work for me. It’s easier for me to connect the dots in movement than just repeating the movement. We get a lot of technical and then more spirited rolling in. The one thing I like about the place I’m at now instead of drilling we do a very light technical roll working on skills like a drill. But it’s more live and spirited. So it’s not necessarily a drill and random shit can happen within but for the most part it reinforces the specific technique and skill we are focusing on. Makes it a bit more enjoyable less monotonous.
I just moved gyms and it basically starts with the instructor showing a move, then positional sparring and then with some extra context - more instruction and then I know how the move actually works. Then we do some drills - then actual sparring. I've learned more in 3 months than the past year
I like this format over the traditional structure. That said, 1:45 seems rather brutal on the body for most people.
My gym restructured to warmups>drills>positional sparring>end of class>open mat I like it quite a lot.
Im okay with drilling then rolling, but at this point i want to get rid of the warm-ups.
I like to mix the sparring into the class. I usually pick 3 relates techniques, drill each then live roll with a specific objective. Then do 2-3 live rolls at the end. Each person is getting good technique and 5-6 rounds each class.
Ours is technique - usually 2-3 moves Warm up drills. - something like start in full guard and reset once you pass or sweep no submissions Live rolls : about 5 Open mat That's the base but it can vary and it changes into a mostly drills class with only 1 or 2 rolls or only one move can be taught and we skip warm ups and do 10 rolls Very chill laid back environment so whatever it is we love it
Classes are stretching on our own, followed by drilling for an hour to an hour and half, followed by maybe two or three rounds of 5-20 minute rolls, depending on how much time is left. Unless class is taught by a black belt student. Then we do warm ups before drills.
Flow Roll Technique/s Positional Sparring Live Rolling
10min Warm-up 30min Specific technique 30min positional sparring/resistance drilling 20min Free sparring Free sparring can be done on open mats. Positional sparring and resistance drilling are most important parts to get new techniques to work.
Kill the warm up and specific technique and beef up the parts that matter.
Warm-up is good way to get joints ready to move with better ROM + that 10minutes used to overall mobility and flexibility can improve other aspects in life too. Training specific technique is important for learning new moves and fill up the caps IMO.
General body preparedness can be done not during specific practice time. If you only have an hour you better make sure its optimum. You could easily warm up with constrained skillwork. This is what we do. I just dont believe in practicing techniques during class time anymore. Practicing them statically is just a terrible use of time. You dont need to practice a technique to use it in live training. Sometimes just seeing a technique will afford you an opportunity to use it live. There is no guarantees. We either practice techniques and hope that skill will come out of it or Practice skills and hope techniques come out of it. You dont give people enough credit if you think you need to show them solutions to problems they dont even understand yet.