Finding your game

As someone who is still very much at the beginning of his BJJ journey, I am in the process of finding my game. Like all sports, there are sets of fundamentals that we all have to learn and then we can begin to apply them in the way that works for us best. As I mentioned in a previous post, the kneeling pass from the closed guard is just not one that works for me, perhaps due to my body type, perhaps due to not having some details quite right, but a standing guard pass works quite nicely (if I could only figure out what to do with the legs after that!)

After about seven months of training I am starting to find my game a bit. I don't particularly care for taking the back, for instance, I don't feel as in control as other members of the team and I prefer to threaten a back take when I am really looking for an opportunity to get to the mount, a position I find much more comfortable and safe, largely due my feeling happier using my body weight and long legs to wrap around my opponent, allowing me to roll with and ride with his/her movements. I also know that there are some submissions that I have not really got the hang of yet - the armbar from closed guard is one that I rarely get as I struggle to throw my legs across the face fast enough. However, the triangle choke is one that I have been practising quite a lot recently, and one that, again with my long and fairly heavy legs I find works very nicely for me, especially now that I feel more comfortable with the movements and am not rushing so much when I go for it. Previously, I would be trying to do everything at once - control the arm, find the diamond, angle my body off and log the figure-four, all at the same time, a patent impossibility. Now I can be a bit more relaxed about things and this has lead me to having a little bit more success.

However, I still don't think I have really found my actual BJJ style, more often going for something of a mishmash of positions and movements. I am fairly simplistic in my rolling, following the same basic patterns - passing the legs, side control and then trying to transition to mount. When this fails, I rarely have a backup plan and end up simply reacting to others' movements, something which is rarely a good thing in any combat sport as it is generally not a great idea to be fighting someone else's fight. Being taken out of your gameplan and into someone else's is frustrating and often tiring. The lack of control and necessity of thinking on the spot all the time is not conducive to succeeding in any sport, let alone one in which the slightest mistake can mean a literal loss of breath or a joint!

Recently at Leverage (the Academy about which this blog is a badly disguised running advertisement!), we had a great session which reviewed a no-gi seminar some of the members had attended. We moved through an armbar from the mount to a spinning escape when stacked, eventually finishing that with a back-take. I am not Grandmaster Flash, break dancing is not my thing and my attempts to go inverted bring a tear to the eye of many (in fact, I once actually blinded myself trying to go inverted when the end of my belt fell into my eyeball, it didn't stop tearing up for days and I kept it a close secret for fear that my life would not be worth living at the gym!) However, I practised the move, just like I practise all such moves as I know that at the moment I don't have the flexibility or smoothness on the ground to be able to achieve it, but one day it may well be a part of my game. I even managed to pull it off a few times and got a nod from the coach.

I think this is the important thing. At the moment, my game is very straight forward, relying largely on strength  and weight to execute my gameplan. My transitions are not particularly slick and my submissions are not going to be winning me any UFC bonuses just yet but I am always watching other people with my body type as well as those with different bodies because I am conscious that my game is evolving and I want it to continue to evolve. As I mentioned, I have recently had some success with triangle chokes and I want to push them to being a real weapon for me. To do this, I have to get into guard and play guard more efficiently. My guard game is not great at the moment and it is time for me to start working on this, the same way as I worked on my side control a few months ago.

This is a reason that I love BJJ so much. I often talk about boxing being simpler, which it is due to a more limited moveset (although I am not disparaging boxing as being easy, quite the opposite), but I know that as I find my way through BJJ, I will have years and years of techniques and movements to play with, use or reject and I can keep my game changing and moving, to the point that I may be able to develop several different styles. Even when I find my style, I will still keep trying the more esoteric moves just in case one day I can put them into my game and become more complete. 'A complete fighter' is one of the highest complements I can think of and, after many years of practice, one day I hope to earn that accolade, for BJJ at least.