We have a recording with Steve Kwan from BJJ Mental Models here to serve as an introduction to grappling here:
https://www.bjjmentalmodels.com/offers/GH4q2sUf?coupon_code=GOLDENINTRO
It also includes his introduction to mechanics course for free, which we highly recommend checking out as these mechanical models serve as the foundation for all of the concepts we teach at Golden Jiu Jitsu.
If reading is more your jam compared to podcasts, you can read our brand new guide to grappling here:
The biggest things that you NEED to do in order to learn fast are invest in loss, maintain a curious mindset, and treat the gym as a learning PLAYground. This is a big ask of you as a student, and is something that most people struggle with. Grappling is often scary and overwhelming when we start, and our fight our flight responses get triggered.
This is the most common feedback I give to students, but when I see the switch from members to focus on playful learning over winning, their development rate skyrockets.
All mammals play fight, especially when they’re young. If you have (or have had) pets, you’ve probably seen a lot of this. This behavior exists for a reason and is healthy for not just dogs, cats, and meerkats, but also humans.
Most of us have also seen animals that escalate playful exchanges into more serious fights, and it ruins the fun for everyone involved and immediately stops the game. Likewise we’ve seen animals that refuse to engage in the first place, or only half engage so that no play really happens.
If you are new to grappling, it is normal to find it difficult to play. There’s nothing wrong with you if it doesn’t come naturally or feels hard to get out of the “fight or flight” mentality at first. Some people are playful on their first day, but others take a long time to get there. Being playful is a skill. If you haven’t already developed it, you will need to work on it. There is no shame in developing a new skill.
Our #1 goal for people that join our gym is to get them to embody playfulness in class. I have seen black belts that are not playful, and it feels similar to my dogs experience when another animal doesn’t want to play but just wants to bite him aggressively. It’s not fun. It makes me not want to train with them.
Play is give and take, not complete domination. When you see dogs wrestle, the ones that are having fun will often give up position, fall to their sides, and let another dog push them around even if they’re much bigger. The same is true for jiu jitsu.
If you are trying to win every part of every exchange, you’re not playing.
If you’re not playing, you’re not going to have fun for very long and will burn out.
When I spar with students I’m generally very playful. I intentionally lose exchanges all the time and see how students react to dominant positions. This means that students catch me. This happens fairly regularly. Yesterday when working legs with a student that I want to get better at attacking from certain leg entanglements, I tapped over 10 times in 30 minutes. That doesn’t mean that they’d catch me once if we were competing with each other. It doesn’t mean that I’m bad at grappling, or that I don’t deserve my belt.
I also intentionally lose exchanges regularly with higher belts that outrank me, especially if I’m just getting to know them. We had a visiting black belt come in recently who has been a black belt longer than I’ve been training and outweighs me by 60 pounds. When we sparred, I didn’t try hard to win all the exchanges - we’re still just playing. I tried not to let him tap me, but if he had it wouldn’t have mattered one iota. My goal was to move, transition, and see how he plays the game trying to learn as much as possible.
Play also doesn’t mean disengaging. You can be un-playful by being hyper aggressive, but you can also be un-playful by refusing to play in the first place. If you disengage from rounds, pull away from your training partner so that no grips, movement, or transition happens, you’re still not truly playing. Play is give and take, you must do both.
Lastly, being playful doesn’t inherently mean rolling super light, nor does it mean just letting someone tap you. The better you are, the more you’re able to dial up the intensity and resistance while still keeping it playful. We can give and take while actively trying to win, but there’s a limit on how much you try to win. Winning at the cost of potential injury to a training partner = not playful. Using all of my strength and weight against a person I outweigh by 30 lbs = not playful. The important thing is to keep it fun for both training partners.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bjj-mental-models/id1448833161?i=1000625101288
https://podcast.bjjmentalmodels.com/243161/12921833
This is another take on the same topic of being playful.
When you’re in the gym, 99% of the time your goal should be growth, not performance. THESE ARE OPPOSING GOALS.
When you’re looking to improve performance, you should be trying to polish existing skills rather than investing in new skill development. If you’re interested in improving your performance results, you should come to a comp class and play in those environments.
If you’re looking to grow as an athlete, you should be spending time working on growth of new skills. WORKING ON NEW SKILLS INHERENTLY WILL INVOLVE DECREASED PERFORMANCE AKA YOU WILL LOSE MORE.
If you invest in this loss, and invest in your growth, you will learn 10x as fast. Over time, your performance will improve much faster, but in the short term it will decrease.
This is a difficult conundrum that most beginners struggle with. The #1 goal for our gym as coaches is to get students to invest in loss and playfulness, and prioritize that over their performance in class.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/bjj-mental-models/id1448833161?i=1000602916524
https://www.buzzsprout.com/243161/11838467
If tennis players are hitting a ball back and forth, they are rallying.
One person hits the ball, then the other, so on and so forth.
When we’re learning jiu jitsu, one of the best things we can possibly do is to try and rally as much as possible. I attempt a sweep, you rally by adjusting your weight and grips, I attempt a second sweep, you rally by adjusting again and moving into a passing position, I respond with a retention movement, you respond with a new guard passing attempt, etc..
Being able to shut someone’s game down completely and never let them get near the ball is a good skill to have. However, it’s not a good way to develop new skills. It’s not how we learn to play the game.
When some beginners come in the gym, they hit the ball as hard as possible with poor direction and knock it into the bleachers. This repeats several times until the timer goes off with no noticeable improvement on being able to hit the ball in the general vicinity of the court. They’re so worried about trying to WIN the exchange that they never manage to HAVE an exchange in the first place.
For a good while when you start grappling, your goal is just to keep the rally going as long as possible.
If you focus on winning above learning, you might have 20 exchanges in a 5 minute round. This is common when we watch beginners that are focused on winning. If you focus on keeping the rally going, you might have 200 exchanges in a 5 minute round. You will learn 10x faster if you do 10x as much jiu jitsu in a given block of time.
Grabbing the tennis ball and walking off the courts is a sure fire way to make sure that you don’t lose the point. However, it also ensures that you don’t play the game.
When you’re in a bad position, like being on the bottom end of a pinning engagement, it’s hard to get a submission if you curl up into a fetal position and don’t try to get out. If someone is only focused on defense, they tend to be hard to submit. That being said, they’re also not going to learn much from that encounter that will help them in the long run.
You won’t learn how to escape safely, you won’t learn how to attack, you’ll just learn how to shell up on the bottom of side control to not get tapped with something.
This is akin to taking the ball and going home. Your goal should be to rally as long as possible to increase learning, not to try and win every exchange. If you’re new, the more you play, the more you will lose. However, without playing the game you’re just going to prevent learning. Invest in this loss.
We play a game called F Your Jiu Jitsu a lot. There are several goals for these games, but one of the biggest is to get players in the mindset of playing instead of competing. The idea behind this game is that we have low resistance opportunities to practice skills and self handicap as much as possible to make the game interesting. If we’re playing a sweeping variation, then the person on top is trying to handicap their ability to prevent the sweep.
If you’ve been training for less than a year and I don’t want you to sweep me, you’re not going to. The end. If we play a game where I’m trying to pass your guard and you’re trying to sweep me, and we play 100 times, I’m going to pass your guard 100 times and you’re going to sweep me 0 times. That’s not that helpful for you, and it’s also not very helpful for me.
When we play FYJJ, I can self handicap so that a week two white belt has a chance of sweeping me. I can give them sleeve grips, let them break my posture, etc.. to make it difficult to prevent the sweep. This gives them real practice at actually trying to sweep a resisting opponent without the threat of having their guard passed, and it gives me the opportunity to work very late stage resistance to sweeps.
If I play with someone who’s been training for several years, I can handicap myself a little less, maybe letting them get dominant grip with their hand but not two. I can work more mid stage sweep defense, and they get practice sweeping a resisting opponent without the threat of having their guard passed.
If I work with a brown or a black belt, I can give them yet more resistance trying to work earlier stage sweep defense and my ability to stay in the pocket in guard passing positions. They get to work earlier stage sweep setups and ability to secure dominant positions in guard.
The game stays interesting despite the skill disparity. Both players still have the opportunity to learn despite skill disparity. Both players do more jiu jitsu. Both players have more fun.
This also develops our ability to vary our resistance levels for our training partners in a linear and non clunky fashion. It helps give us the opportunity to learn how to best train with people who are older, much younger, or smaller than us.
We got this game from Rob Biernacki, who got it from Ryan Hall. Here’s a podcast about it (warning it’s lewd and condescending at times towards beginners, but you don’t have to like a source of information in order to find that information valuable):
https://www.buzzsprout.com/243161/10702898
If you’re a beginner, play with everything. I’ve been training for a good while, and I still play with everything and am always trying new positions and new ideas. If you try to specialize in specific areas of the game, you’ll get better at those positions, but it will come at the cost of getting better at everything else. Play the whole game.
Try everything with an open mind. Until you’re probably around purple belt, you really won’t have a good idea of what style you like to play - and even then it will change over time! Explore the whole game as much as possible and just try to be a sponge learning a little bit about everything.
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Here’s a great podcast on alignment:
https://www.buzzsprout.com/243161/15154544
Here’s two mini episodes from the same podcast that are much shorter about alignment:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/mini-ep-4-alignment/id1448833161?i=1000657259236
https://www.buzzsprout.com/243161/15154544
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/mini-ep-5-the-alignment-scorecard/id1448833161?i=1000658018914
https://www.buzzsprout.com/243161/15202951
Here’s our article on the core mechanics of jiu jitsu: