I think doing some take downs in class is always good, but you really have to take up wrestling or judo or something else to really get good at them. Just like you see on average, the skill level at groundwork in judo practices isn't as detailed or indepth enough to attain the level more easily attained training in bjj practiced, you'll find the same for takedowns in bjj practices. You really do just have to put the time in for takedowns to get really good at them. Not to mention how the rules of bjj sparring don't really help to develope takedowns as well. You really need to compete under wrestling or judo rules to develope those skills, since they force you to do or fail. If you have the choice of retreating to your guard, you're more likely to do that than develope your takedown skill in a sparring session.
they way I feel a bjj class should be run to get the most out of it is. the first half hour would be just takedowns. But during that half hour you will learn one takedown, then drill it, and for about 10 to 15 minutes of that half our your spar life from standing.
Then the next half hour you go over about two tech's of groundwork, drill it, and if you have time about 10 minutes of sparing from a position where you have to work on what you just learned.
Then that last half hour you just roll live. If you are able to start standing the whole time I would prefer that. If not then start standing sometimes and and the groud sometimes.
I understand what you mean, about the just training judo and wrestling, but the thing is that people need to make the most out of the time they have.
Jason
"I dunno...I'm personally not interested in training in BJJ if it's just focused on sport and tournament applications 99.999999% of the time...and not a single take down taught in 4 months of training"
I agree completely with that. Just my opinion, but I think the sport rules are flawed a little too. My club trains for just freestyle, anything goes. Of course heel hooks are off limits unless you know what you're . The way we teach achilles locks, they're interchangable so you can choose to do either one, so if you needed to do a heel hook, you'd know how.
We do takedowns, but for raw beginners, it is just the first 20-30 minutes of class that they're exposed to it. We sometimes will focus a whole class on them, but not that often. From this I picked up a lot of off the wall takedowns and a good front headlock series. Takedowns like shots and throws(throws being my favorite) take a lot more effort to develope. I put in a lot of time in judo practices and making it my own main concentration for a while to develope my throws. Getting a lot of reps in just doing them is really what makes the difference, and then just going after them in sparring or see if you can get one of your sparring partners to do some sessions of takedown only sparring where you just start over as soon as someone hits the mat.
For younger people though especially, we have always started them sparring on the ground only. ( I spent a year sparring only on the ground)Let them get experiece and comfort doing that, since there is a lot more risk if they're nervous and get thrown or slammed. Plus there's learning how to take a fall properly which takes time to pickup.
I'm under Dave Vannest in Ohio Valley Jiu-Jitsu in bridgeport, OH. Dave is living down in southern WV right now near the New River Gorge and is going to open a new club up down there right now. He's still up here half of his time right now to get teach and work right now. To keep ohio valley jiu-jitsu alive here in this area, I'll be opening my own club in Wheeling, WV(right across the river from bridgeport, oh in the next so many months once I have my location setup. I'll be teaching under Dave's association still. We've always called our style freestyle jiu-jitsu or american modified sambo.
If you want to check out a clip of dave demoing some moves on me, check out www.thezombieroom.com. There is a large clip of him demoing and a small 30 sec clip of him teaching the last part of a technique(the 30 sec is a sneak peak at the first instructional he's going to release soon.) It's in editing right now and will be available on DVD.
yeah, pretty much. He's been a wrestler since he was a kid, and later he took up judo and did some bjj, and some sambo. It's like going to any club under different instructors I think. Everyone has their own unique twist on things and Dave has one of the most solid approaches I've seen to working stuff. I follow his theories on how to approach stuff like doctrine and it's good stuff. Dave has an awesome guard so we have no lack of guardwork, we use the full spectrum of leg locks, but value position over everything else. Despite this, dave used to be known for hitting flying armbars like nothing in competition. So I'd say it's a pretty well balanced system.
well, that's just up to your personal opinion of what you want to learn. I think being a technician on the ground personally is definately what to aim for. If you're not at a blue belt level at least in your groundwork yet, I think the groundwork is more important. Once you have a base on the ground, then you can diversify more easily. I always set goals when I'm training. I pick an area I want to work on and I concentrate on that as my primary goal. I may work some of the stuff that is covered in class and absorb it, but any extra drilling time or what I go for in sparring, I always go for my primary goal that I want to get better at. I'll usually do that for a couple of months straight before switch goals. Since I was smaller than my training partners when I started I had to learn guard... then when that got good, I got good at my top game. Then I went on a stint with leg locks. I've been on takedowns for a couple years now... That's just to show you the ammount of time it can take to develope solid takedowns. I'm just recently shifting some of my attention back to guard to do a 50/50 split between gaurd and takedowns.
angelo. i'd like to talk with you about the school where i'm teaching bjj.
animalinstincttraining.com
we're moving to a bigger place soon. 6000 sq ft.
do you have an email address?
stephen
no problem zip zin. I always like to help out if I can.
got it.
stephen
great thread thanks Angelo!!
jason
great thread thanks Angelo!!
jason
I didn't read all of this, but you really have to know your client base. A lot of people suggested more self-defense, less intense sparring. I would hate this, and this is exactly what I don't want in a bjj program, and if a school did a lot of it, I wouldn't sign up. My time is relatively limited, and I can't keep a fixed class schedule, if there are a lot of self defense classes this just makes it more difficult for me to schedule the training I want.
ttt 4 -loki-
[edited to say: i'm not a school owner just a student]
i'd say it comes down to motivation.
i think one of the reasons that TMAs have an easier time retaining
students is because of how little time in between these belts there are.
i don't agree with belt factory practices at all, but the difference is that
with BJJ, the belts can be many years in between and for those students
who don't compete, there isn't really any other tangible goal in sight
(like winning a competition). granted the real goal is to "get better"
and learn more and more efficiently.
one thing which my coaches have been doing, i think without even
being aware of it, that has been a motivation factor for me is that
they'll every now and again make give me a sort of "progress report"
type of comment such as, "your spider guard is getting really good" or
something as simple as "spend less time working just for subs from
the closed guard and more on sweeps".
these are generally just friendly comments, but i have taken many of
them to heart and have spent much of my rolling time putting these
comments into practice, really trying to develop those parts of my
game which my coach has pointed out.
maybe some "official" system of "progress reporting" would help retain
those students who aren't training for competition and who have a few
years to go before the next belt level. i personally would love these
little individualized assessments of my "game" on paper to let me know
what to work on, what i'm doing well/not so well.
don't know. everyone is motivated for different reasons. maybe this
would help. hell, you could even set up a special "assessment" class,
where the coaches watch their students roll with different students
(and the coach!), charge a small fee for the extra time it will take you to
write these things up (i recommend a standard form to save time) and
give it to them the next time they show up to class. hold these every-
other month or so. go have beer afterward :)
thoughts?
I have a complely different take on this.
First and formost, you are selling a product, the customer is buying a product he wants.
If a customer doesnt want a certain product from your BJJ store, why should you try to force it on him?
I ran a school several years ago and literially ran most of the students off because of the intensity.
The guys that stayed were extremely hard core, and did excellent at compeptitions, however, as a business side of it, it failed, as there isnt that many hardcore students to pay for rent, ins, heat, and everthing else.
Lets take takedowns for an example, I personally CAN'T do them anymore, im 50 yrs old and have an injuried spine, should i be forced to do them anyway?
This is one reason i wont join a school i really want to join!
Some people simply dont want intense training, some dont want to roll, some when they roll, want it light and not a competition.
If you want to make money at this you HAVE to treat it like a business and offer what people want...plain and simple, if people want your product...you sell, if they dont, you dont sell.
The progress report idea looks like a good one.
cdog, I don't think people like asymmetrick are saying you have to be intense 100% of the time and yell and run crazy classes to motivate students. With that being said, asymmetrick has a very simple approach that works wonders and doesn't cost a penny.
Since BJJ doesn't have 20 belt levels that allows students to test/get promoted every other month, there needs to be some sort of motivation. A simple thing to do is take each student aside and tell him or her 2 or 3 areas of their game they should work on. This gives the student a short term goal, and allows them to see that you pay attention to them as an individual and care about their progress.
cdog is also correct, our biggest classes are the beginner classes, where there is no rolling, only light drill work, and our self-defense class which also has limited drill work. Basically, you have to have something for everyone.
:), no problem my friend. This thread is gold!
I'm not an instructor - but I can answer from the perspective of new/beginning student, with respect to two visits I recently made to BJJ schools while shopping for a place to study.
FIRST SCHOOL
A couple of recognizable MMA fighters and trainers. Nice clean mats, instructors present at all hours, family atmosphere - aura of self-respect, generally, and goodwill. Instructor was in Gi for start of class, although warm-ups were led by brown belt.
Instructor took time to make sure I was attended to by a couple of blue belts, who gave me private instruction for the first segment of the class, so that I would have something to drill when resistance drilling began. This might seem minor, but to me it was major: when I rolled with students, all of them had clean gis; I look at it as major because I connect it to the clean mats, and the instructor's aura of self-respect, and the general cooperative atmosphere in the gym generally.
Lower belts were very aware of higher belts, spacewise, and people were generally very considerate of each other while rolling. Big class, so mat space was limited, and nobody was trying to cheat the exercises by restarting in more advantageous positions when a restart was called for by having to move.
Just very cooperative, team spirit overall, at this club.
Head instructor is a GB black belt.
Needless to say, I would go back here, and it is at the top of my list for a membership commitment.
SECOND SCHOOL
Name brand school. Head instructor also a GB black belt. This school was BAD, though, and I would only go back on a mat fee basis.
Mats were filthy, full of hair and obviously not regularly swept, let alone disinfected in any way. The white belts at this school (remember I'm a beginner) were terrible compared to the first school. Several people with whom I rolled had very ripe gis. Technique was sloppy overall, and the sparring tended to be much less cooperative than the first school, with a number of people trying to prove themselves - or that being their attitude & training motivation. My first day there I got paired with the "Meathead" (a guy about 5 inches taller than me with some form of mental deformity - no joke). Needless to say, he gave me an injury that I'm still healing from today, because during instruction phase he executed a technique completely incorrectly with too much aggression.
The purple belt assistant was really a great guy, and extremely helpful to me generally, but pairing me with the resident Meathead on my first day was not a great move, in terms of getting me to come back to the school.
Instructor was present at class time, but not in gi, and he left as soon as class time ended, not a moment later. He spent very little time with me as a new student, maybe less than 2 minutes total. I was helped here by the purple belt I mentioned earlier, who paired me with the resident Meathead.
Generally, at this school, people were extremely inconsiderate of each other, particularly in terms of matspace while drilling and sparring with resistance. I saw blue belts not responding at all when given obvious (even aggressive) physical notice to move by higher belts while rolling, I saw a fight nearly break out between two higher belts, and while I was rolling I (even being the newcomer) had to initiate the restart every time I and another white belt were encroaching on higher belts's space.
More, my sparring partners - with the exception of one higher belt who was extremely cool - tended to be overly competitive & non-cooperative in their sparring. One of the better white belts was embarrassed that I was able to dominate him positionally, for example, so he kept trying to cheat on position every time we'd restart. I'd have him mounted, for example, and then I'd voluntarily get off him to restart, and he'd be trying to lock me in his closed guard before even reaching a new, more clear spot. I took it as a compliment, but still it was a hindrance to my drilling submissions from those advantageous positions, and showed again the non-cooperative spirit at work at that school. I'm only relating this because of what it indicates about the spirit of cooperation (lack thereof) governing all aspects of this more name-visible school.
My experience seems to tell me that every aspect of how a dojo runs comes down to the spirit in which the instructors come to the school, and their students, from minutiae to obvious and more general things.
I guess that is what I am looking for, as a new student, even when I'm not conscious of it - that "healthy" learning situation where the instructors genuinely create a cooperative team spirit among students. It seems to me alot of this comes down to fairly obvious things, such as respect for the physical space, and for the professional situation. Honestly, my intution is that at the second dojo the main instructor was probably not content with his professional situation - possibly related to being at a name brand school that isn't managed incredibly well - and that this has many effects on the space and his students.
[ed for clarity]