Ultimate Dirty BJJ Tactics

A lot of people are foolish enough to mess with a BJJ player on the street. The surprise is on them, their dirty Tae Kwon Do, Dirty Muay Thai, Dirty Sanchez won't work against you because you now know the Inner BJJ Dirty BJJ Tactics.

They make the stupid assumption that you will pull guard. Nope, we will take you down and sit on top of mount, from there we attack, submit, or pull out our revolver.

The streets have forever changed. All you dirty fighters be on watch.

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All Out Effort Personal Training
http://www.allouteffort.com

The Guardians Of BJJ

The Ultimate Defense To Side Control

Ever been stuck in side control and wondered if there was a better way to defend against it besides framing or hip escaping or trying to break your neck going inverted?

Side control has been used for years by bigger men to hold down smaller men. Well not any longer, it is now obsolete.

Why Malcolm Gladwell Doesn't Know Jiu Jitsu

Malcolm Gladwell wrote a best selling book called Outliers

And one of the things that book talked about was numbers of hours of practice you need to attain greatness. 10,000 being the minimum. Since then a whole host of other books have come out. From Talent Code, Talent Is Overrated, Bounce, Mastery, etc.

Americans have been using this in sports anyway, starting kids specifically in a sport early and grooming them.

Now with something as simple as a swing a throw, a kick, or certain skills that are needed for one position in the sport, things become a lot simpler. Or if you are practicing an instrument, you just need some time with the instrument to practice.

And even then 10,000 hours of practice (which is a scientific look at talent being acquired not something you are born with) doesn't look into genetics at all or the physical and mental aspects involved.

What I mean to say is, for example sprinting. If you practice an insane amount of hours but was born with more slow twitch muscle fibers than fast twitch, you will never be champion (unless everyone else trips). Or you want to be a body builder, only a small percentage of the population were born with the genes to gain that much muscle growth (which requires more than a normal amount of muscle fiber). Well what about steroids? Look if steroids was the secret to body building success, then all the guys on them would be champions. There's not enough titles to go around. A normal guy on steroids who lifted a lot, and a guy who had the right genes to be a body builder was on steroids and lifted a lot, they would look very very different.

In the world of lifting, the best guys didn't lift since they were small boys. Especially not in the Eastern European countries. Their bodies shouldn't lift heavy weights, and they don't have the coordination yet. What they do is work on general physical preparation. Meaning they play everything, and overall get physically prepared, then in their teens they start training specifically in their sport. And often times coaches at that point recruit based on their body types, gymnastics, weight lifting, wrestling, and boxing. If you have a longer reach, you will naturally be a better boxer, along with reach, if you are fast, then you are even more dangerous. So they start their training later than us, but because or our mindset, we assumed oh they must be ruthless and have them training out of the womb. As if they were doing a better version of our system. Also we pick the sport or talent based on what the kids like, or what we want them to like, not based on what they would be good at and help them cultivate a love for it. Another key difference.

So what about Americans who start their kids out really early and they just have more hours of practice than their counterparts from other countries? Well in sports like wrestling, gymnastics, or weight lifting, we are the underdogs for this reason. They are just better prepared for these sports and don't need as many hours as us. More is not always better. There is a optimal effective dosage.

There have been many champions in boxing who started boxing later in life, some even as late as their 20s and they beat opponents who have trained longer than them. You also see it in wrestling, in MMA, in BJJ. There are very few champions at black belt who started training as a little boy, most started in their teens, and a handful in their 20s. Are these people prodigies? Like we used to call BJ Penn? What about Rubens Charles Cobrinha, Marcelo Garcia, Georges St. Pierre, Michael Langhi, Fernando Terere Augusto? GSP started in karate and is the best wreslter in MMA, Marcelo a Judo guy and one of the best guard players, Cobrinha, Michael Langhi, Terere all in Capoeira first and BJJ later in life. With Cobrinha in his 20s.

Was it more hours or they played everything and came in with better physical preparedness, or with better genes and was able to defeat opponents with longer training time? On rare occasions a kid with the right genes will be put into the right sport early on and they will do well regardless. But even with them its probably better to start them a bit later after they learn all their other athletic skills. Unless they wanted to be a pitcher (in which case they need to lengthen out those tendons early, which will also cause a lot of issues later in their life but that's another issue).

Martial arts or any sport for that matter is a small bubble in the huge umbrella of movement. So shouldn't you move better before you learn to move specifically?

BJJ is a Brazilian art, but a lot of the best weren't born a Gracie. Their parents didn't teach them. A lot of them played soccer, foot volley, surfed, and even Judo. And then by the time they started BJJ they were primed and ready. I talked about genetics and when the Gracie brothers first came to the US, from Relson to Royce, the family champion, the best was Rickson. He started early right? But he was the only one who was naturally strong, naturally muscular, naturally flexible, and basically had the best genes out of the family. They picked Royce not Rickson for the UFC because it wouldn't look as impressive if this Brazilian beach body came into the UFC and choked every one out, people would say it was because he was so athletic. So was he the best because he started so early? Well all the brothers started early, his older brothers trained even longer than he did. Or was he the best because he was the one born with the best genes. There's a reason the only one in the family with a 6 pack was also the best. Good genes and athleticism count for a lot.

If a young boy started boxing at age 5, by the time he's 20 how much head trauma has he sustained? If you take a kid who can't tell his right from his left, or can't even stand up straight with good posture, and throw them into BJJ, will BJJ correct those athletic weaknesses? There's a reason we crawl before we walk, its part of development and if you try to get them to walk too early, it detriments the development not only of their brain but their athletic skills. They need maximize their skills and nervous system conditioning from crawling, and once they have exhausted that they can move on to standing, then walking, Because once you move on ahead, you can't regress backwards and try to gain that knowledge you skipped over.

You see it in MMA all the time as well, "I've been training MMA since I was 5, my dad got me started." Or "I've been kickboxing since I was 6." I don't know how many times I've seen guys like that get knocked out in the UFC by a guy who's only been training for 5 years but was an athlete in every sport growing up.

So what about hours developing physical preparedness? Where does that go into the equation?

I saw guys at my gym doing something called Deliberate Practice. Which is, you practice a skill as slow as possible and you drill it as such until you know it inside and out. This type of training is what's recommended in all the talent books from piano to soccer. Well what happens when you only have a limited amount of time? For instance in BJJ what if you only have 5 minutes to drill each move. What if you and your partner got 3 reps in each, while the guys next to you got 15 each, who's better off? Even with the piano, how much can you get done in a 24 hour day if you only play fragments and as slow as possible?

Combat sports also needs a partner, and you have to take into account their schedule, and the schedule of the gym. Is it better to do it this deliberate way or to try to maximize whatever time you have with your partner? Also is rolling part of practice? Because in the 10,000 hours theory, the actual game itself or playing the whole song is the least beneficial form of practice.

But what if you have to kick a game winning kick, shouldn't you train to do it the way its going to happen? With the helmet and pads on, with maybe an audio recording of the crowd, on an actual field? Because that's what ALL NFL kickers do. So if you are training to compete, shouldn't you also put in a certain number of hours practicing live rolls that are as close to competition rolls as possible, counting points, and using the same time limits?

Boxers train 3 minute rounds because come fight time they will be fighting 3 minute rounds. BJJ and MMA is a newer sport so they don't know better yet, so they assume oh well my time limit is 5 minutes, so I will train 10 minute rounds. But the adaptations your body will make will be specifically for 10 minutes not for 5. It's like you're going to get ready for a 100 meter dash by running 5ks. It will not be the same.

I tell people all the time, you are never too old to start martial arts. There is such a thing as starting too early though. Kron is super good at BJJ, so are all the Gracie kids. And they have all been beaten. And all been beaten by guys who haven't even put in half the time as they did. So maybe they blame the rules. But maybe its not the rules, maybe they just started training BJJ too early.

Let me rephrase that, you can start a sport early, but you shouldn't get sports specific and only dedicate to that sport until your teens.

So what's the magic formula if its not as simple as a number of hours? Nothing in life is simple, its all a game of maximizing time, allocating skill sets, and mitigating weaknesses. I am sure if you are born with the right genes, was athletic growing up, started BJJ and drilled, rolled, competed often, you will be a great BJJ player.

Here's the other thing. You see these genetically gifted champions and you see them do a new strength program, a work out, a supplement. You can't make money off of genetics, but you can through endorsing products and say that's how you got so good. But for them to be in a position to get those endorsements or sponsorship, what got them there? If they get to train for free and are sponsored by a certain strength facility, well how did they get enough notoriety to get noticed by that strength gym? Because they weren't training there yet right? Would some of these guys be good no matter what supplement they took, sports drink they drank, or where they do their strength and conditioning?

I see so many people seduced by a big name endorsing a new thing. And they go from thing to thing. Crossfit, to kettlebells, to acai, to this or that. I'm a strength and conditioning guy myself, but I am also a man of science. We put too much emphasis on the crap we can buy and not enough on the stuff that person was born with. The best supplements, work outs, rehab programs are the ones with the best marketing machine behind it.

Sometimes you can do a lot more with less. People are so afraid they are not doing enough. Fight the right optimal dosage of training. If you are 50, you would be far worse off training twice a day every day in comparison to training 3 - 4 times a week hard.

Outliers and the 10,000 hours idea was popular and did well because it exploited a weakness in our psychology. We are mostly control freaks and want to believe everything is in our control. Eat this, train at my gym, watch that, read this, sign up for this newsletter, join my millionaires club, buy this bridge in Louisiana, if you do this it will supplement and improve your BJJ game and take it to the next level! You all need to relax and do what you can when you can. Instead of signing up for more stuff, save your money, stop living off your parents, save for retirement, use recovery as your friend, drink more water, sleep better, and go make some non-BJJ friends.

The Secret To Getting Good Fast

People who don't train a lot think being good fast at BJJ means you came into BJJ already a good wrestler. People who train a lot know that being really good fast at BJJ means training 2-3 times a day consistently.

The Art Of Baiting For BJJ

At the school I attend, I train under Rubens Charles "Cobrinha" Maciel. With guys like him, Andre Galvao, Mendes brothers, Roger Gracie, Marcelo Garcia, and all the other elite level black belts, in some ways, they are blind to why they are so good. They live with it daily so it's hard to pin point what makes their game better than everyone else's. Obvious answers are mat time, amount of drilling, killer instinct, athleticism, and an great ability to learn.

A motto Cobrinha often talks about is action/reaction. That BJJ is a game of actions and reactions. That's an obvious idea, every game is based on action and reaction.

None of that hit home for me personally until he said something casually. And maybe to him it was just an obvious thought, but to me it put it all together.

We were working a move, to take the back. I've seen this move taught by Cobrinha before, and his system of BJJ has a lot of set patterns and key positions and transitions. So I got used to it and noticed all the little details and tried to master all the details and getting completely confused. But while I was looking at all the little things, I was missing the big picture.

A visitor asked why he baits before he commits to the move. In this case why he baits the sidemount before he takes the back. His answer was, unless you are really really really really good, you almost always need to bait.

Without baiting, your timing has to be perfect, your technique perfect, perfectly accurate in placement of grips and other limbs, strong, fast, tight, and basically there can be no room for error. Infallible. But when you bait a move, your opponent's reactions will be a little bit more exaggerated, bigger, which gives you a slightly longer window, a slightly bigger hole.

In this particular move, you pass and try to control position, your opponent tries to give up his back to escape and recover guard before you establish the pass, instead of taking his back, you bait him by trying to pull him into sidemount. He pulls away even more aggressively, and then you take the back. He creates bigger holes for the hooks, it buys you a little time, you can use his momentum against him. The bait is committing to sidemount, then you commit to the back. Instead of also what some people might do, pretend to sidemount when you really want the back, people can tell when you are pretending.

Then I realized, almost every move he shows begins with baiting. That's the action reaction he is talking about. Yes its your opponent doing something and you reacting, or you doing something and your opponent reacting, but it's also you baiting, and using that to set up your ultimate move. In the transition there's more baits and more moves.

Now am I giving away Cobrinha's secret game? No. Every high level competitor does it, it's their preferences in baits that sets them apart. Roger baits you to defend armbar and cross collar chokes. Mendes baits sweeps to get triangles.

People often talk about how you know what they are going to do, and you can't stop it. They are just so tight with it. But often times you overall know what they are going for but in between that infamous move is a lot of smaller less infamous moves, which is basically all the jiu jitsu before their signature finish. It's in one of those moves unrelated to their famous move which they bait you to defend, which ultimately gets their infamous move. So no, you didn't know what they were going to do.

Remember when Ryan Hall was triangling everyone? People knew it was coming, they just didn't know how it was going to come.

It's like breaking a leg, there's many things that leads to a broken leg. There is not one single path. In that way, you know the end result, but you have no idea which baits or which road they will take you to the finish. That is the key to why their move is unstoppable. You know their finish but not the bait.

During a certain era, Marcelo Garcia was finishing everyone with the rear naked. Everyone knew it but couldn't stop it.

In this match he is facing Alexandre "Xande" Ribeiro. Xande is well aware of Marcelo's preference for the back and the choke.



3:14 Marcelo passes.

3:15 Xande tries to stop Marcelo from establishing sidemount by giving up his back and rolling away. But unlike what most people would do, Marcelo doesn't commit to the back. He has a tight bear hug around Xande's waist and hips, trying to clamp him down. Xande tries to sit up and clear his hands to the other side to complete his roll. But Marcelo puts his head in the way.

3:17 Xande pushes Marcelo's head out of the way to clear his hands to the other side to escape sidemount, all the while Marcelo has him around the waist, trying to pull him down to sidemount.

3:19 You look at Marcelo's head position and it is not someone who wants to take the back, his head is in a position to try to push his opponents shoulders flat down. To take the back his head should be right next to his opponents head.

3:40 Xande rolls to his knees. Marcelo spins with him and THIS time he commits. The bait is over the trap has sprung.

3:48 Marcelo repositions, gets his hook and grips for the choke.

5:09 Marcelo finishes.

Marcelo passes at 3:14 and could have went straight for the back but he didn't. Actually he never initiated the back take, it was only when Xande fully committed to the roll and rolled to his knees at 3:40 did Marcelo do his signature spin to the back. What was Marcelo doing all this time?

In a BJJ match this is a long duration and I'm sure for Xande it felt like it as well. He was baiting Xande to defend the sidemount. Xande tried to give up the back twice. First at 3:15 and the second time at 3:40. The second time much more pronounced, much bigger holes for the hooks to go in. Even a lower rank would have been able to take the back with those big opportunities.

But only someone at Marcelo's level could bait reactions like that whereas the rest of us try to insist, force, or just fake you out to try to get a move to work.

This act of baiting before the finish of the move is an art in itself, it's something all the high level guys have seemed to have mastered. All your reactions are WRONG.

But that's jiu jitsu, making you pay for your natural reactions. Someone armbars you, your reaction is to stand up, they armbar. They take you down, you try to get up, they take your back. All of the principles of the art were created in a reaction to people's natural instincts. In a real fight, all your natural reactions are wrong. Reaching for punches, trying to swat punches away, trying to get up on hands and knees, lifting your chin.

High level guys just make even trained people's reactions wrong. Action/reaction. It makes perfect sense now!

The Every Man BJJ

If the original Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, the basics, are moves that were meant for the average to be able to do and if its something that only an athletic person can do is deemed fancy...

Then what happens when the average person becomes more and more sedentary? The definition of something anyone can do in Helio's day and today has changed. Many people, especially Americans have a hard time touching their toes.

So then if you tell me the best moves are the basics, the moves anyone can do, then those moves will become worse and worse over time because people's postures, weight, flexibility are all getting worse.

So is that concept of basics and the original BJJ and moves that anyone can do even good for BJJ or will it make BJJ like any other McDojo?

Shouldn't becoming more athletic and adapting to the art be a part of becoming a martial artist? I mean after all martial arts was invented in the Shaolin Temples because the monks were getting too out of shape.