Basics of BJJ Exercises

Basics of BJJ Exercises

by | Dec 10, 2015 | Grappling/BJJ

I consider BJJ exercises are practicing fundamental moves that I have to do every time I roll.  Going back to the 80/20 principle, these moves are moves that i have to do 80% of the time in sparring sessions.
Funny thing is that there are so many techniques and moves in BJJ, but if you pay attention, only 20% of those are used consistently 80% of the time.
These are few of BJJ Exercices that I do and i think student should do every time before practice:
  1. Bridging or Upa technique. Many submissions that we do in BJJ are done by bridging. For example: straight arm lock, ankle lock, guillotine choke, rear naked choke and knee bar. In addition, many of the escape attempts from inferior positions are also utilizing Upa technique such as: bridge and roll vs mount, creating momentum for elbow knee escape, kesagatame escape, etc. Therefore; practicing this is very important.
  2. Shrimping is the second most important exercise for escaping inferior positions and guard retention. Almost all efforts to escape all inferior positions have the need to shrimp or move your hip away from the opponent. Therefore; this skill is paramount.
  3. Getting to your knees. Often times when you someone pass your guard or that they hold you in side control by hugging your hip, you lost any chance to put them back in your guard. Sometimes the only chance you have is to get to your knees and fight back from there.  In the old days, i was taught to never go to your knees because they might back mount you and attack you with strikes from behind or rear naked choke.  On the other hand, it might be your only chance to survive. Now with the help of wrestling that becomes part of BJJ, getting to your knees to survive might be a good idea.
  4. Technical stand up. Its a great technique to practice for both grappling or self defense. The technique is good for student to be able to stand up quickly from some types of guard. This ability helps us to be able to snap down opponent’s head  and for us to get up so we can attack from the top, or self defense wise to get up so we can attack using strikes and takedown.
  5. Roll over your shoulder. Rolling over forward, back and side to side can help us recover our guard very quickly when someone has passed our guard or when you are on your knee and he wants to take your back.
These five exercises are some of the very imporant routines that anyone needs to practice. There are more, but these are a good start.
Awareness in Martial Arts.

Awareness in Martial Arts.

by | Dec 8, 2015 | Martial Arts

When you have been training martial arts for decades like I do, you realize that as you age, your speed, strength and explosiveness will probably go down.
As you spar others who give you good resistance, you realize that to overcome that challenge, more techniques might not be the answer. So if that is not the answer, what is?

Awareness, that is the answer to overcome challenges in sparring and fighting. I can only speak from experience and I hope it is useful.  Flight time in praticing, drilling and sparring a particular art in a right way consistently over a long period of time will build awareness at the very high level.

In the beginning, I always think off adding more techniques to be better than my opponent. Evertime I try to do something and I failed, I would always look for a new answer, usually new technique to overcome that problem. This is very common for a beginner. What I realize after 2 decades of training, my focus shrink on not just adding techniques, but I am more interested in going deep, understanding the techniques I already own and know, so that I can pull them off more efficiently without facing any new obstacles.

I am not saying that it is not important to learn and add new techniques.  What I am saying is when you have a high level awareness, you can most of the time avoid common problems in executing your techniques successfully.

So how do you build high awareness in fighting? Master the basics at the deeper level. Learn the technique correcly, drill them hundreds of times, isolate spar them on many different fighting scenarios, integrate the scenarios. You also need to tape yourself in sparring, jot down notes on what to work on. Most importantly, be patient and don’t give up. Without you knowing it, your awareness will skyrocket.

BJJ Skills That Matter Most.

BJJ Skills That Matter Most.

by | Dec 7, 2015 | Grappling/BJJ

Empowerment is always a personal resource that I take very seriously. It all started when I was in elementary school when I used to be bullied a lot. As I get older, bullying continous to happen to me and other people that I know.

Bullying can also happen in the academic world and professional world. I always know that being resourcefull is my only remedy to go through life full of odds.  Martial arts for me is great tool to use to empower myself.  For me, martial art is a way of life to always be resourcefull in achieving one’s dreams and goals. Achieving proficiency in the arts is the goal, its not just about fighting or even tournaments.
In Brazilian Jiujitsu, i always see this art as a tool to complete the whole package. Empty hand fighting for me consist of kicking range, punching range, clinch range and ground range. BJJ completes the ground range.
With 17 years of experience in training and learning BJJ, here are what I think one should focus in mastering 80% of the time, when they practice for BJJ:
  • Side mount and mount control. I always start with these when I teach my students. Positional control training in these areas first will help any student achieve phenomenal confidence in BJJ. He or she will understand the whole game and what needs to be accomplished in grappling.
  • Side mount and mount escapes.  These are the next area that one needs to master and have confidence in.  Many different hold downs from side control and mount need to be dealt seriously with one ability to escapes the positional dominance. Having proficiency in positional escapes on these will skyrocket one’s confidence in grappling. I would say, get good at positional dominance and then get good at positional escapes.
  • Guard control and guard passing. I say that guard is 50% of what separates BJJ with other grappling arts. Your ability to have excellent skills in guard control and guard passing will create headache to most people that will grapple you, so make sure you get good at guard control on at least 4 areas: closed guard, spider guard, butterfly guard and half guard. Also get good on passing these 4 guards.
  • Sweeps and submissions.  Sweeps are the tool that one can use to reverse the situation from inferior to superior.  Having few reliable techniques to sweep from 4 types of guard is paramount. Get good at sweeps, you will thank me later. Submissions is offcourse the whole outcome one wants to achieve. Never forget the ultimate goal of any grappling match is to finish with submissions. Dont just get good at pulling them off. I suggest, first get good at escaping from any of the submissions first. That way you can then relax and start focusing on developing skills on how to sink more submissons in a fight both grappling match and self defense.
Thats it. I think if you put good amount of time, energy and money in improving the 4 areas above, you will enjoy your grappling experience much more as well as having confidence in grappling and fighting in general.

Foundation of Self Defense

Foundation of Self Defense

by | Dec 5, 2015 | Self Defense

The need of good self defense skill is usually what make people want to take up martial art training. That was what made me started. Getting bullied was not fun and that regardless of worldwide movement against bullying, at the end of the day, the victims are the ones who need to empower themselves for self preservation.
When I look at the outcome of self defense, I find that it is self preservation.  In order to achieve this, one needs to understand the building blocks foundation of self defense, what are they?
They are four big areas that one needs to master (foundation) of self defense ( I borrowed this idea from Burton Richardson):
  1.  Awareness. This is huge. Just by this alone, you will be able to avoid most of dangerous situation. Awareness is the critical key that will determine you on preserving life or not. It covers beyond just hand to hand combat, it also covers prevention, the difference between winning and losing or even life and death.  For example, checking your locks at home, your electricity switch and other crucial things in your house can be the best way to prevent potential robberies or your house burned down due to negligence.
  2. Hand to hand combat or empty hand fighting. Ability to fight empty handed really boost self-confidence   for real. When you are training the right way, you cannot BS yourself about what you are good at, what you are bad at and what you are afraid of. Having proficiency in this area will really help you in most of combat situation that you might face.
  3. Weaponry training. Most real street fights will probably use some weapons like knife, stick and gun. I think its important to know how to use weapons before knowing how to defend against them. Also, using weapon is maybe the only equalizer you have against multiple opponents.
  4. Multiple opponents. I think facing multiple opponents is difficult, but one needs to prepare for this. To achieve that, getting good at fighting one opponent is a must. If you suck at fighting one opponent, imagine fighting multiple of them, forget it.  So besides investing time to be excellent in empty hand fighting, one needs to learn the strategies in facing multiple opponents.

Those four is what I think the foundation of self defense. When you cover all four well, i am confident that you have massively reduced your chance of becoming a victim.

Why Train in Martial Arts?

Why Train in Martial Arts?

by | Dec 4, 2015 | Martial Arts

I have been training i martial arts almost all of my life, starting from Tae Kwon Do, to Jeet Kune Do to Kali and now to BJJ and MMA.  Why do I spend so much time training where I hardly use my skills every day against someone who is trying to attack and hurt me?

This story is my story and I am not representing anyone. I only hope that you find some benefits in hearing my story.

I see my martial arts training now as a life performance tool to help and better me in many areas of my life both spiritually and physically.
I started martial art training because i was always bullied as a kid. So my Dad, enrolled me in a martial art and  I continue from that point on. I always see this training is for self defense purpose only.
Watching Bruce Lee movies made me fall in love with martial arts. For a long time, i was always worried about losing and always strive to have the edge on the latest techniques.

By sparring with many people and competed in few tournaments I started to learn a lot about myself. During training, preparation and practice, i got to know what I was good at, what I was bad at, what I was afraid of,etc. Therefore, the focus of my training switched from how to look good from the outside to more of how to better myself every day such as facing my fears, how to have courage, how to improve on daily basis, how to questions things, learning how to think, not what to think, etc.

These habits then spread to other areas of my life, not just martial arts. I started to be more interested about finding truths than that of protecting my ego. It started to make me question my self limiting beliefs, question about purpose and more willingness to others’ success than trying to be self serving all the time. In a nut shell, it makes me better.

Its a funny thing to experience where combative physical activities could actually have been transformimg me physically and mentally.
The last part that I realize is that i am more concern about helping others get what I have achieved with myself.

I love teaching, coaching and helping others in martial arts and transforming them in their own way. I love to see people that I help succeed.  That’s why I do martial arts now, its addictive and fulfilling my life and others.