When gravity is against you, maintaining contact is your friend. Two points are not enough, because when you lose one you’re basically hanging on by a thread. If you’ve ever tried to play guard without your hands, you know how difficult it is, and there is no guard without your legs. Look at the guards you play, and watch matches of people who play those guards, watch where they place their body. Grips, hooks, posts, and any other contact you see could be key to a successful guard.

The emphasis on guard position is what separates BJJ from other grappling arts, and having a good guard is critical to your success. Guard requires a lot of work to be proficient, and usually the development of skills that until you began jiu jitsu, you didn’t use.
Basic Guard:
3 points of contact minimum
keep one shoulder blade off the mat at all times
break opponent posture
try to stagger points of contact and not isolate one side of your opponents body
some of these things I’ve talked about previously, but it will be nice to go more in depth in the next few posts I put out

I wrote this on Instagram the other day, but I’ll talk about it here. I believe part of success in Jiu Jitsu is having a person that’s roughly on the same journey your on. Someone who has a similar mindset, shows up, and wants you to be the best you can. I have seen this many times, that having a friend that holds you accountable, keeps you on the journey when it gets hard. Two years into my BJJ journey a guy that would stick with me throughout my entire career walked in the door. Even though I was a teenager full of vinegar, and did some Jiu Jitsu that maybe was a little grey, Jason trained with me. We went through everything together, training, tournaments, and I chose him to coach me in my professional BJJ matches. We just went to a seminar, and even now that we’re both black belts, we put a pace on drilling, outworking other people in the room. Make a friend and it will make your BJJ better

If you find yourself on bottom and you’re not playing guard, you need to move. Even if you move incorrectly...move. Especially at the beginning stages, it’s better to make mistakes and learn than curl up and pray for mercy. The more you get caught trying, the more you improve. Even if you feel crushed into the ground, make little movements, cause reactions, do something to improve your position. Even when I roll with Tanquinho, I may get stuck, or get whacked, but I’m constantly doing something to make it harder on him. Move as much as you can as often as you can until you improve your position or you get whacked.

Pressure comes from technique, in my BJJ life I’ve been crushed by small people and moved 400 pounders around with ease. If you know how to use the weight you have, you become more dangerous. Every person needs to apply pressure differently, and so it comes down to spending time on making your squeeze as effective as possible and maintaining that pressure as you move. Pressure is something good to have at your disposal, because it gives your game longevity. Eventually you won’t be the fastest guy in the room, but if you stick somebody to the ground, how fast it happens isn’t relevant. Squash your friends it’s good for everybody.

I absolutely believe in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as a self defense martial art, but not because of the techniques it teaches. I believe in it because of the very nature of learning BJJ. It is critical thinking under duress. It is someone constantly invading your personal space and trying to impose their will on you. It is chaos and abnormal situations day in and day out endlessly. More than the memorization of techniques or understanding of concepts, Jiu Jitsu conditions the brain in a very practical way to make good choices in keeping yourself safe. Whether you are attacked or you need to defend someone else, the ability to stay composed and not panic is crucial.

You don’t have to be athletic to do Jiu Jitsu, but it helps. If you’re not athletic, BJJ is probably going to be an uphill battle for longer. So how do you make it through the levels when it’s so hard? Mostly being stubborn, the only way to make it to BJJ black belt is force of will. You’re going to get beat up, injured, sore, and possibly discouraged the only way through that is to show up. Eventually you’ll make progress, and continual progress makes a black belt.

This post is credited to Jason Contreras, because he’s done most of the wording and I’m just writing it down.
Walking is falling. It is calculated falling, where you consistently catch yourself...mostly. When you pick your foot up, you have a trajectory in mind and when you set it back down this controlled forward falling progress continues. So what does that mean for BJJ? Well we do our best work on the ground. So we have to make people fall. If you stop the step but the trajectory continues people fall. This applies to both takedowns and sweeps. At the base level, all takedowns and sweeps are stopping someone’s ability to catch themselves as they move in a given direction. When you tie in kuzushi with this concept it becomes “shockingly effective”.

Lots of people will impact your BJJ game over your career. They won’t always be your instructor. My head instructors over my career absolutely had a huge impact on my trajectory, but I also learned a lot from guys who weren’t the face of the gym. I learned a lot by just rolling with people and ending up in weird places. Be open to everyone’s knowledge, no matter what someone’s rank is they have lessons to give, and maybe the contributions you make to each other’s game will create something revolutionary?