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Thursday, July 30, 2015

Keep your friends close and your elbows closer...

When teaching in my class I have again and again found myself repeating the same principle, to the point that I have given it a nickname: “the primary goal of Jiu Jitsu”. If I ask my class now to tell me what the primary goal of Jiu Jitsu is I will have a good few people say: "Keep your elbows as close to your ribs as possible while taking your opponent's elbows as far from their ribs as possible". This is really an overly elaborate way of saying “Maintain your posture, while preventing your opponent’s posture.”

Or as the Spartans would say.....
There are many times that maintaining a strong posture while putting your opponent in the reverse situation can be achieved solely based on elbow position. This isn’t to say that your arms are never extended away from your body. However, this will usually only occur if your opponent’s arms are even further from their own body than yours are, or if you have them in a position where their arms don’t affect you.

An example of an offensive position that highlights this rule is the position known as “Up & Crush” used to set up a Kimura from Front Control. In this scenario we use our forearm to wedge between our opponent’s upper arm and rib cage, both isolating the arm for our attack and also disrupting the effectiveness of their lats and rear delts in pulling their arm back to safety. Notice as well that this is all done with our own elbow close to our own body, which maximises our postural strength. This picture shows the strong posture in Up & Crush as well as a weak gripping position with the arms extended to try and attack the Kimura.



When a student is having trouble with a technique and I look to help with it, I often find that the problem is related to their posture and the muscle groups that they are using. As an example a common error I see in completing the Double Lapel Choke from Back Control is to try to tighten it up by stretching the arms away. This isolates the movement to be almost solely a tricep operation. The correct way to do this is keep the arms and elbows close to your body and finish the choke by bringing the elbow of your choking arm behind their back as pictured below.



Isolating the triceps in this choke is only a problem if you don’t have the strength in your triceps to finish the move. However as a principle it is a problem as we should be aiming to use the larger and stronger muscle groups, because we do not need to expend as much energy to get the same result. Also a small muscle will have to work harder to achieve the same result as a large muscle and as a result will fatigue faster.

The last image is of a basic collar sleeve and grip in guard, while there are many variations of the exact grip, the same principle applies. If you have your elbows close and your opponent doesn’t, then you are winning that battle, of course the opposite can equally be true.



So to summarise having elbows close to your body increases your effectiveness by:

·         Maintaining a powerful and safe posture
·         Maximising your muscular strength and efficiency
·         Recruiting multiple muscle groups for one movement


And it goes without saying that if it is good for you, then you don’t want your opponent to have it, so maintain posture while preventing your opponent’s posture.

Have fun and keep your elbows close!

Friday, July 17, 2015

Nice Little Write Up

Check out this great article by BJJer Gabriel Rodriguez, true he is American but let's not hold that against him. Gabriel and his partner Hailee recently visited us in Tassie as part of their Australian training holiday.

This is the write up that Gabriel did of his experiences, there is poetry in his words and he provides a great outsider's perspective, he also quotes a good looking, bearded Tassie coach.

http://languagefight.blogspot.com/2015/06/the-fair-roll-jiu-jitsu-in-australia.html