Is Brazilian Jiujitsu (BJJ) really for everyone?

Is BJJ really for everyone?

Have you ever heard anyone claim that mountain climbing or skateboarding is for everyone? How about running marathons, cross country skiing or swimming the English Channel?

There’s a common trope in the online jiujitsu landscape that BJJ is for everyone, but as with everything else in life, some people love it and others not so much.

Beginners are often exposed to many hurdles to overcome including close body contact, fatigue and even information overload, each providing many good excuses to quit and move onto something less taxing.

Thankfully our beginner BJJ program at SBG Australia minimises these hurdles and gives you the best possible jiu-jitsu experience from your first day of training.

Is Brazilian Jui-jitsu (BJJ) fun?

The honest truth is it can be a bit of a journey to progress to the ‘fun’ stage of rolling in jiujitsu. Typically, as mentioned above, there are many struggles to overcome in the early days.

Everything from your body bending in strange ways it hasn’t for years, to memorising a new language of positions, submissions and techniques. And that’s all before the tapping (losing!) starts which can test even the most stoic person’s ego.

At SBG Australia we’ve streamlined the BJJ learning process by simplifying language (using basic anatomy), constraining movement tasks (CLA) and helping beginners explore the main positions of jiujitsu in a more efficient and effective manner.

Can older people still learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu?

Just as climbing mountains and running marathons get harder as you age, so too does any participation in combat sports.

With that said however, there’s no reason why you can’t get on the mats in your 30’s, 40’s and 50’s provided you find the right gym with a supporting, collaborative environment.

Thankfully for older athletes the majority of BJJ training time is spent on the ground, reducing potential impacts on the body and allowing for a safer and more reliable learning experience than many other contact sports and activities.

At SBG Australia we’ve had everyone aged from 6yrs - 60yrs old on the jiujitsu mats learning, training, teaching and thriving together.

Is learning Jiujitsu really worth it?

Absolutely! Thankfully once those initial hurdles have been overcome BJJ becomes an incredibly fun sport to play and can deliver amazing positive benefits to long term practitioners

It’s essentially a never ending game of moves and counter moves that challenge your mind and body while fostering friendships on and off the mat, often with otherwise unlikely comrades.

Add to that the bonus of learning skills that may potentially defend yourself, your friends or family in a dangerous situation and you have a winning formula for a lifelong pursuit.

If you’re keen to get of the phone or couch and finally give BJJ a try then click the Free Trial button on this page, fill out your details and we will contact you with a time to get started.

We look forward to seeing you on the mats : )

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach

4th Degree BJJ Blackbelt

SBG Australia 🇦🇺

Are combat sports Complex or Complicated? Or perhaps both?

Combat sports often appear very chaotic to the untrained eye. It can be difficult to comprehend what’s going on when wrestlers are scrambling and cartwheeling all over the mat or kickboxers are throwing punches and kicks from seemingly impossible angles.

So how can we make sense of all this chaos? Is there a reliable way to simplify what we’re looking at?

Understanding the difference between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’ systems is a useful place to start. I only very recently grasped this idea after reading a fantastic book titled “The Resilience Shield” written by three former Australian SAS troopers. They point out that something complicated is highly predictable, interconnected and reproducible while something complex is more a collection of different, yet connected variables.

A good example of a complicated system might be an aeroplane which, despite all its sophistication, can essentially be pulled apart and put back together again if we have the requisite blueprint and manufacturing skills. On the other hand a complex system like international aviation has thousands of interacting variables (including complicated airplanes) influencing each other all across the globe in real time. As most of us know even the most complicated planes rarely crash (thankfully) but delays are an everyday occurrence at airports worldwide given the complex nature of their operations.

So how does this thinking apply to combat sports?

A classic example of complicated technique is boxing padwork. The coach or trainer usually calls out or signals a particular sequence which the athlete then performs. With enough repetition these linear padwork drills can take on an almost hypnotic, dance like quality and look very impressive (check instagram!). But when was the last time you saw a boxer throw a perfect 5 or 6 or 7 shot combination against a legitimate, defending opponent in a real boxing match? Never right! So why is that?

Quite simply, boxing is incredibly complex. You have two individuals who can both move in multiple directions so as to fake, feint and hit numerous targets above their opponents waist with their left and right hands. All while simultaneously not being hit themselves! When you add up all the variables in play the number of potential interactions between competitors is staggering. And that complexity only increases when we add in extra weapons like kicks, elbow, knees and the takedowns of MMA.

Currently there is a lot of debate in the jiujitsu community about the value (or lack thereof) of ‘drilling’ moves against a compliant opponent. Most of this debate is centred around competing psychological frameworks that explain learning behaviours, but perhaps we can gather some clues by looking at movement through the complicated / complex framework.

Individual grappling moves may be viewed as complicated. That is, when practising  any given technique against a static opponent it is highly predictable and reproducible. Grappling another resistant human being in a competitive match however is complex and for the most part very unpredictable. But not always.

Unlike boxing and other striking martial arts grappling requires we grip or attach to our opponent and the better the attachment the more we can restrict our opponents movement options. As their movement options reduce so does the complexity of the interaction between players and we can start to predict complicated finishing sequences with a much higher degree of success. Let’s consider 2 very different grappling scenarios. Performing a takedown or finishing an armbar submission.

When attempting a takedown both players begin unattached with the ability to move in many directions (in reality only 4 but that is a discussion for another day). As with our boxing example above the number of possible outcomes from this situation is immense. As soon as a grip is established (usually but not always with hands) those movement options are slightly reduced. As attachment and connection to our opponent improves (e.g. single wrist control to a rear body lock) an opponent’s movement options are diminished even further. This process culminates with submissions where we immobilise our opponents torso to attack their limbs. When we get to this end stage of the grappling game our opponent’s movement options are severely (but never completely) restricted which gives us more time and opportunity to execute complicated finishing sequences. In a classic armbar scenario our lower body immobilises the opponent’s upper torso creating time to separate and expose the opponents arm to hyperextend it.

So in summary  disconnected, dynamic situations in fighting like striking, standing grappling and open guard play are extremely complex while the more static conditions of end stage submission attempts become more complicated and predictable in nature. Understanding these difference should greatly influence how we choose to coach and train our students as we help them to become proficient and efficient combat sports athletes.

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach

4th Degree BJJ Blackbelt

SBG Australia 🇦🇺

Games based fundamentals. A better way for beginners?

The first “drill” that truely caught my imagination for games based jiujitsu training was the “guard defence” drill as taught by the ‘Godfather of Australian BJJ’ John B Will @johnwillbjj during a seminar in Brisbane in 1996. It’s a simple drill he’d learnt directly from @riganmachado that involved ‘just’ surviving in someone’s open guard without actively trying to pass. It’s such a great drill we continue to use it today in what we now call our “guard safety” game.

I had my own little eureka moment soon after when I realised that if we switched the drill around and applied the same mindset to maintaining guard without actively attacking then my overall guard ‘should’ improve as well and the “guard retention” game became my new favourite. I noticed so much improvement with this approach that I started to deliberately ‘limit’ what techniques I would utilise in a round or even an entire session with great success.

When I travelled to San Diego to attend the 2010 Mundials (BJJ Worlds) training camp hosted by the multiple world champion @xanderibeirojj this idea was further reinforced as most sessions focussed on “partial training” rounds before any open sparring rounds began. A similar approach has long been advocated by @aliveness_ape in the SBG coaches manual where resisted isolation rounds with different criteria, including reset or ‘flip flop’ rounds, have been part of the curriculum for decades.

So while this methodology isn’t entirely new it’s taken on a life of its own more recently and has been systemised and codified into something seemingly greater than its predecessors. All revolutions require early adopters and many of the biggest names in today’s ‘constraints based’, “task based”, “games based” or ‘ecological learning landscape’ have been ruffling some feathers of their traditional coaching counterparts.

While Australia’s own @kitdaleofficial was one of the first to advocate for this training approach many jiujitsu pundits have more recently been ‘triggered’ by @gdsouders, whose blunt and honest appraisals of the weaknesses of traditional BJJ coaching have certainly stirred the pot. While I query the depth of trust in the transfer of ‘the ecological science’ from other sports directly to BJJ, Greg certainly makes some excellent observations and arguments as to the veracity of a games based coaching approach.

The biggest ideas that have resonate with our coaches and students are as follows:

• beginners respond remarkably well to full resisted constrained training

• constraints based training is no more dangerous than traditional approaches

• anatomical language transfers information more meaningfully to students than BJJ jargon

• time is the ultimate constraint to control resistance levels

• focus can be redefined as ‘intention and attention’

Interestingly this approach stands in stark contrast to the ‘information processing’ method of the man widely regarded as the world’s best BJJ coach @danaherjohn. I’ve been fortunate enough to experience John’s coaching style first hand on a number of occasions now and while I’ve personally loved the way he’s taught classes his richly detailed technical approach has been difficult to translate to beginners. John has an extraordinary record of taking talented young athletes with some level of experience and turning them into world champs. Perhaps a mixture both methods might to be successfully taught to the same individual?

Strong cases can be made for both teaching methodologies and the dust will probably settle somewhere in between but for now we’ve flipped the script so to speak with our traditional approach and are now teaching rank beginners in a fully resisted, constraints based manner before dialling in on technical details as they progress through the ranks. This process has resulted in students asking ‘better’ questions to problems they’ve encountered directly during resisted rounds and answers to these experiential questions seem to resonate more with individuals, helping them absorb and retain information more efficiently.

So for now we’ll keep tweaking the game and see where we land.

To be continued…….

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach

4th Degree BJJ Blackbelt

SBG Australia 🇦🇺

Anything is possible

When I returned home to Australia in 2003 after a couple of years globetrotting around the world I settled into working life as a physiotherapist in Sydney’s Inner West.

Every month I’d see hundreds of injured patients with ailments from all different sporting endeavours and walks of life.

After sifting through the details of their problems most people would inevitably turn the tables on me and ask, “what sport do you play?”.

At the time MMA was still in its relative infancy so for a few years I did my best to explain the virtues of “reality fighting” but this was generally met with a sense of collective horror!

Eventually I just gave up and resorted to telling everyone I ‘did boxing and wrestling’ and even then most people were bemused (mainly the cyclists! 😉).

The other day I turned on the TV at my physio practice in Leichhardt to see the mainstream news channels sprouting the fact that the UFC would be returning to Sydney for the first time since 2017. The NSW premier (himself a big @ufc fan) stood side by side with “Bam Bam Tuivasa” celebrating that his government had specifically sought out and secured the UFC to come back to our city over the next 4yrs. It was surreal!!!

To think that our sport could go from being a sporting pariah to headliner in only 20yrs is nothing short of amazing. To top it off Australasia now has some of the best combat sports athletes on the planet to showcase in front of their home fans.

A sport that was almost over before it started, which was kept on life support by a worldwide grassroots movement at the advent of the internet and then catapulted into the public eye by some canny casino businessmen had finally arrived on the evening news.

Maybe anything is possible?

Go get training and find out : )

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach

4th Degree BJJ Blackbelt

SBG Australia 🇦🇺

Timing and tempo - when exactly should I do that move?

As we progress along our grappling or striking journeys we’ll often hear coaches and athletes mention the importance of timing.

Someone could have great timing, another might be off on a given day or worse still have lost their timing all together after an extended period off the mat with injury.

The essence of timing is doing the right thing at ‘precisely’ the right time.

It’s an easy concept to describe but in practice very difficult to master.

Good timing is the heart and soul of any high level game and builds from a combination of skilled movement, tactical mastery and subtle misdirection.

A less mentioned topic is tempo. Different positions and techniques require differing speeds to be effective.

We understand this intuitively when striking or wrestling on the feet but this idea can sometimes be confused once the action hits the ground.

Imagine a perfectly executed jiu-jitsu bridge done at 1/4 optimal speed. Is it likely to be effective against an equally sized and skilled opponent. Probably not. Why? Because as any amateur physics enthusiast will tell you speed determines ‘power’ (F/t).

A slowly applied bridge won’t develop the required power to move our opponent where we need them to go quickly enough and instead will gift them ‘relatively’ more time to execute an appropriate counter.

So what does that mean? Should we be blasting away at full speed with every technique? Of course not. Moving fast all the time is an unsustainable strategy which inhibits your technical growth and inevitably leads to fatigue.

Like many other elements in fighting and grappling timing and tempo are intertwined and just as we actively discourage bigger or stronger practitioners from relying on their weight and strength advantage so too we don’t want beginners racing from one position to the next missing the details and nuance needed to develop their technical skills.

Don’t be fooled though. Not every movement can or should be performed slowly and learning when and where to turn up your speed can often be the difference between success and failure.

As with utilising our strength there is a time and a place for doing things as fast as possible.

Just make sure it’s not all the time!

See you on the mats!

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach

4th Degree BJJ Blackbelt

SBG Australia 🇦🇺

When can I start sparring?

Another common question we get asked by beginners is, “when will I be allowed to start sparring”?

It’s always exciting when new students express an immediate desire to test themselves right from the get go and some will talk at length of their favourite fighters and long held ambitions to compete. 

Nothing beats a beginner’s enthusiasm and while we encourage everyone to try sparring and competition at some point in their martial arts journey I like to quickly remind them they didn’t learn to drive in a formula one car!

All skills, whether steering a car or playing guitar are usually best learnt at a slower pace and in the case of mixed martial arts training, lower resistance. 

Training should gradually introduce a student to fundamental concepts, positions and movements before pressure testing them with “live” sparring. 

Once we enter the sparring realm we can modify the speed, intensity and goals of resistance in numerous ways to maximise student progression while minimising the potential risk of injury. 

At SBG Australia we have a tried and true system for safely guiding new students into full resistance training in our BJJ, Striking and MMA programs. 

So if you’re looking to finally get off the couch and start your martial arts journey rest assured our number one goal is to create the safest training environment possible to keep you healthy and happy while you chase your goals. 

See you on the mats 💪🦍🇦🇺

Ben Power 

Head Coach

SBG Australia 🇦🇺 

Is training once a week enough to get better?

Is training once a week enough to get better?

A question we often encounter from prospective members when they attend our academy for an initial induction and free private lesson is, “Is training once a week enough to get better?”.

It’s been my experience that most people who ask such questions tend to be classic commitment phobes, eagerly looking for an excuse to walk out the door and quit before they even begin ; ) I’m sure some of them expectantly hope for me to say they’d be wasting their time and shouldn’t even bother starting up. Needless to say I’m always pleasantly surprised by their reactions when we sit down in my office and I offer my standard reply.

I ask them, “have you ever played another sport?.....or musical instrument?.......learnt a second language?......cooked a new recipe?.......built something from scratch?”.

Then I follow with, “Were you better at it (pick one of the above!) after doing it the first time or the 50th time?”.

Most people roll their eyes and answer as you’d imagine. Of course they were much better after 50!!!

“Then imagine how much better at martial arts you’ll be sitting here in a years time if you take the plunge and get started training once a week today”. As their eyebrows raise then lower I add, “and think how good you could be after 100 sessions if you juggled your time to commit to a second session a week?”.

If you want to get proficient at anything you need 3 basic things. Attributes (keep an eye out for a future blog on this), world class coaching and deliberate practice.

Any commitment is better than none, but you’ll never get anywhere just thinking about it. So as Jocko Willink says you just need to “get after it”. So what are you waiting for?

NEWS: Cardiac arrest patient reunites with fellow gym members who ‘saved his life’ in a Brazilian jiu jitsu class

Fantastic to see our hero's efforts recognized in the Inner West Courier. Take home messages: if you are feeling 'off' see a Dr, update your emergency details on your phone and learn CPR! So proud of all involved.  

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/newslocal/inner-west/cardiac-arrest-patient-reunites-with-fellow-gym-members-who-saved-his-life-in-a-brazilian-jiu-jitsu-class/news-story/a187442061cf5fa3020913794d0cc478 

Picture: Jane Dempster

"What am I doing wrong coach?"

One of the common questions higher belts confront after rolling with lower belts is "what did I do wrong?"

While sometimes there will be obvious errors to point out often the answer is simply 'you were just a little behind the game'!

Why is it that a blackbelt and a blue belt can demonstrate a technique almost identically yet only the blackbelt can make it work in practice?

It's all in the application

Beginners to BJJ often describe it as like seeing magic for the first time. In practice, good Jiu Jitsu is a game of making your opponent think one thing whilst doing another.

Improvement is directly linked to your ability to process information quickly and react accordingly.

Information Processing

How we learn (or more precisely how we are coached!) has a great impact on the speed and effectiveness of our information processing.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to appreciate it's easier to remember 3 or 4 fundamental concepts or principles that can be applied for each situation than to recall dozens of techniques every time a position changes.

How we train

How should our training be structured to maximise learning and improvement?

Training that focuses on graded exposure to resistance offers our brains (and bodies) a chance to develop processing power.

Isolating specific positions and situations helps develop conceptual understanding within limited frameworks and lays the foundations for progressive improvements across your entire game.

In short, think faster.......roll better!

Happy training

Ben Power
Director/ Head Coach, SBG Australia
Practice Principal, Leichhardt Sports Physiotherapy

When should I get back to training after injury?

It doesn’t matter whether you run, swim, kick, lift, box, throw or wrestle, injuries can be debilitating and infuriating when your goal is to get back to training as quickly as possible.

Injured athletes tend to go through a modified Kubler-Ross five stages of grief; firstly denial, then acceptance, followed by anger, depression and finally bargaining.

Denial

To give you an example, a friend of mine snapped his Achilles Tendon dancing at a wedding yet managed to hobble around for three days with a massively swollen leg in complete denial of his injury.

Acceptance

It may have been mildly amusing for his mates to watch him fall off a jet ski while attempting to mount it, but it did at least force him to face the inevitable truth and accept the severity of his injury.

Anger

We may eventually accept something, but it doesn’t mean we’re always happy about it. Anger and frustration can bubble up during lengthy recovery periods, especially if an injury is the result of our own foolishness.

Depression

Anger while often loud, can quickly fizzle out and turn into a depressive state where nothing much gets done. For my mate, this was thankfully short lived before he finally faced the music and got checked out by a professional.

Bargaining

Which brings us to bargaining! It never ceases to amaze me as a coach how an enthusiastic student with a massively swollen knee can ask “soooo can I still roll tonight?” Most people ‘get’ you’ll be out of action for six weeks or more if you break a bone in your leg but many struggle to appreciate similar rules often apply for damaged joints, tendons, muscles or ligaments.

What you need to consider when recovering from your injury

Knowing if you're ready to get back on the mat is challenging but super important if you hope to be training for years to come. Stressing injured body parts too vigorously risks damaging healing tissue and further delaying recovery so it's always best to have your injury assessed by a suitably qualified professional and get the all clear before gradually returning to training. 

Your body will thank you later (trust me I'm a physio).

Ben Power

Director/ Head Coach, SBG Australia
Practice Principal, Leichhardt Sports Physiotherapy