Advice for Beginners in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu: Stiff Arming, Holding and Muscling

Sometimes, Jiu-jitsu seems to require us to move in exactly the opposite way than what seems logical. We have to work against what many of our instincts tell us and train our bodies to move in more effective ways.

One example of an instinctive habit that has to be broken in order to do bjj well is stiff-arming. A good example of what I mean when I say stiff-arming is what most people instinctively do when someone gets into mount and puts all their weight on you. For most people just starting out, their reaction to all that weight is to push the person off of them and try to keep them off with stiffened arms. Another time when I really notice it is when a person's guard has being passed and they are trying to keep the person from getting into side control by pushing them away with their arms, using all their strength.

There are a number of reasons why this is not the best method to get out from under someone. I'll outline the ones I can think of. If you have any to add, feel free to post them:

1. When your arms are completely outstretched, they are vulnerable to attack. This is especially true when you are under someone mounted on you, but it is also true if you are under someone's side control. Stretching out your arms to try to push someone off is like handing them an armbar on a silver platter.

2. The stiff-arm will wear you out. If you are pushing someone off of you, or holding them at bay with all your strength, you are losing energy that you could be using much more effectively. You can tell if this is happening by the feeling of having "jello arms" or "heavy arms" after you just spent thirty seconds trying to push some heavy dude--or dudette--off of you. Those feelings of muscle exhaustion happen after you've put them through a sustained contraction. Simply put, you deplete your muscles of their energy.

3. Stiff-arming is ineffective. After all that energy exertion, most of the time you will find that you either were not able to push that heavier person off of you or that you ended up having your guard passed and are caught in side control. The reason why is that your arms vs someone's entrie body weight is not really a fair match up.

Another common instinct that has to be overcome is holding. Holding happens usually when a person doesn't know what to do and is worried about either losing control of the other person or are scared of what the other person might be trying to do to them. So, for example, when starting out, you might be worried about what the other person has planned, so you grab onto their wrists and hold on for dear life, using your strength to keep the other person from moving their arms. Or, if you happen to get into a bad position, like bottom mount, you might respond by latching onto the persons arms or neck, using muscle to hold them so they can't try to submit you. It can even happen when you get into a dominant position, like side control. You hold onto them as tight as you can because you don't want them to escape.

The same general downfalls that apply to stiff arming, also apply to holding.

1. Whenever you are holding onto someone with all of your strength, you have committed to that position and other people can use it against you. While you are expending all your energy trying to hold him, he is working underneath you--getting underhooks, slipping a knee in, setting up a sweep.

2. Again, you are depleting your muscles and tiring yourself out.

3. Holding only works if you are stronger than the other person. If a person--bigger or smaller than you--knows more technique, they will be able to use your holding against you, like in the video I posted. So you will have wasted your energy.

Stiff arming and holding are both examples of what people who pracitce jiu-jitsu call "muscling". If you are wondering whether something you are doing falls under that category, here are some tell tale signs you can check to see:

1. If you are doing something with so much force that you are using all your strength and you can't breathe easily, then chances are whatever technique you are trying to do has gone awry somewhere and you are now trying to make it work out of sheer strength and will power. That might get you somewhere with smaller people. But people your size or people who out rank you will overcome that.

2. If you don't know what to do and so you are using all of your strength to try to keep a person off of you, that's using your muscle instead of technique.

3. If someone is trying to submit you and your only way to escape is to try to rip your arm out of their grasp like the hulk, that is muscling. Again, you might be able to pull your arm out if the person is smaller, but if it is someone your size or someone who ranks higher, chances are that your arm will end up barred.

If you are a stiff armer or a holder, don't worry. Everyone who does bjj starts out doing these things. We don't know what else to do. As you start to learn more and the number of techniques and concepts you understand increases, the less muscling you will do. You will replace your instincts with new, more effective ways to move out from under heavy people. You will learn how to do escapes that don't rely on brute strength and how to do submissions that don't drain every ounce of life out of you while you're applying them.

Like so many things, it just takes time. As a beginner, the best thing you can do is to try to not rely on your strength. Focus on figuring out what the problem is (ex: that you are under mount) and ask your instructor what techniques you need to learn to get out from under mount (ex: hip out or an upa roll).

At first, you will feel like you are getting squashed and submitted all the time. You might think the techniques aren't working and be tempted to fall back on strength. But keep working on the little details, and through trial and error find out how to make those techniques work for you. As you add more and more tools to your toolbox, you will start to find out that you know what to do when someone gets into mount and you won't have to rely on the instinctive urge to try to push them off of you. You will re-train your brain until your instincts line up with the techniques you are learning in class.

How Do You Measure Success?

Tonight was a small class, so I ended up rolling with some people I don't normally grapple. One is a white belt guy who has been grappling about a year and is very strong. The whole grapple, I had to fight to keep myself calm. I kept trying to pass his open guard, but he kept doing sipder guard and yanking my arms a lot. He was pulling on my sleeves so much that I spent literally the last minute and half of the grapple with my gi top up over my head.

I would try one pass, break his grips, start to pass, get muscled around, sit back in my base, come to the other side, start passing that way, get yanked around, sit back in my base. Rinse, wash, repeat. Much of the time with my gi over my head. I started to get claustrophobic at one point and had to silently tell myself, "You can still breathe. You're fine. It's nothing. Keep going."

I passed only twice in five minutes and did not retain mount or side control for very long before he heaved me off and I would have to perform evasive maneuvers to keep from getting squashed. The whole grapple, I only went for a couple of submissions, and mostly they were threats in order to distract him from flinging me around more than solid attempts.

Afterwards, I felt like I hadn't done well. I felt like I should have been able to pass more and maintain the few dominant positions I had gotten to. I asked Fabio after class if he had seen that roll. He nodded. He told me I did good. I asked him another question, telling him that I had felt frustrated and he said, "Porra, Allison, I am telling you that you did good."

So I dropped it. And thought about it.

Some of you guys on here talk about how sometimes victory is not in submitting someone or dominating someone, but in surviving. I think I am finally starting to believe that. I am a small(ish) girl. That guy is bigger and stronger. When I started BJJ, he would have trounced me like a bug. Last night, he couldn't trounce me. He couldn't submit me. He couldn't get into a dominant position on me. And I was on offense, albeit a lame offense.

To me, that if progress. It's not mind boggling, genius level progress. It's more like short bus progress. But I'll take it.

I think I have to learn to notice the small steps forward, and not set my sights on perfection. I could get down on myself and lament over the fact that I didn't dominate that guy like I wanted to. But instead, I am trying to accept the fact that, with guys like that, it is a victory if I don't spend the whole five minutes eating mat.

I Need to be a Parasite

Weird title? Yeah, well I'm a weird girl. But that is an actual thought that went through my head while I was grappling someone yesterday afternoon.

I was grappling a guy who weighs a somewhere close to twice my body weight. Literally. I cannot close guard or a triangle around him. Even though he's a big guy, he moves a lot. He makes a noticeable effort to use technique and not muscle, but he is still a heck of a lot stronger than me. I was feeling tired yesterday and had just gotten out of the grapple where I rolled the wrong way and tweaked my knee. I wasn't really looking forward to grappling this guy.

When we sat down to start, I thought, "I need to be a parasite and move around him. Or else I am about to be pancaked."

The whole grapple, I tried to think like that. I didn't worry about trying to control his whole body. I couldn't do that. Instead, I used my whole body to attack either his upper half or his lower half.

I would have thought it would be harder to sweep him doing things this way, but I actually found it to be a little easier. If one half of his body is going a certain way, the other half really has no choice but to follow. It was also a lot less intimidating for me. I know it doesn't make much logical sense, but dividing him up that way in my mind made him seem less scary. lol

One thing I noticed that I need to improve on is being tight while at the same time not being tense. I need to leave less space, but not grab and hold. It's such a hard balance to find.

Back Mount Escape

We worked an escape from when someone is choking you from the back. Not sure what the choke is called. One hand is over the shoulder, grabbing the opposite lapel. One choke is under the arm, grabbing the other lapel.

To defend, you first hook the choking arm with your elbow, behind their elbow, tuck your chin into the crook of their elbow and scoot down. Bridge back. Use your other hand to cup the same-side hook on your leg, then straighten your own leg, pushing the hook off. Immediately bring your hips up on the person's dislodged leg and hip out, turning into them. You're out of the choke by then, but, as you turn into them, you need to bring the arm that you were blocking their elbow with in to your hip so that, as you turn, it will be free. From there, you can establish side control.

Rolling was...vexing. Having trouble adapting to some of the guys I'm rolling with. I'm falling into my old habit of trying to combat strength with strength. A poor decision when you are smaller than 90% of the people you grapple. The main problem is when they are passing my guard. I am trying to keep them from passing by using strength. Doesn't work. When I relax and try to move, I feel like they pass faster.

Tomorrow, I am going to force myself to move more and not care about where I land. I am going to try things that I haven't tried yet because I was afraid of getting passed. I am getting passed anyway, so who cares?

I'll report in on how it goes.

Ye of Little Faith

I have been running into a frustration lately when guys hold onto my arms while I have them in my guard. Whether they are pinning my arms down to the mat, or simply grabbing and holding on wherever my arms happen to be, it's a really frustrating thing.

Ninety percent of the time, said guys are stronger than me. So just yanking my arms free is not an option. Sometimes moving them at all is not an option. I try to do the thing where you turn your wrist around in a circle to break their grips, but sometimes I can't even get my arms off the mat to turn my wrists.

I was talking to Fabio about it this afternoon and I told him I tried and it didn't work. He told me I was trying and giving up. I need to not only turn my wrist one way, but if they resist that way, turn them the other way.

I said, "But they're too strong."

And he shrugged and said, "Ok. Then Jiu-jitsu doesn't work."

That got me back peddling. He has explained to me before that, if someone has my arms pinned, fine. I can still move the rest of my body. If their weight is forward in my guard enough to pin my arms to the mat, I should be able to use my legs against them. I should be able to move my hips.

I can't move them. They are too strong. But I can move myself around them. That's what I have to try to remember.

Technique Today:

We worked on a sweep from butterfly guard. You have your opponent in butterfly guard and you hip out diagonally to one side, keeping your hooks in, but letting your bottom leg be flat against the mat. At the same time, on the same side that you hipped out, you swim the under hook and hold across the person's back. If they post out with their other hand, grab them at the wrist and pull their arm to your hip. This will make them fall on their shoulder. You drop onto your shoulder and onto the trapped arm. Hip into them, using your feet-hooks to bring them over.

Variation: If they sprawl when you hip out diagonally, take their back.

Purpose to the Pain

Warning: Dramatic Blog Ahead.

For the first time in a while, I voluntarily missed some classes. I had been feeling under the weather and needed to rest some injuries. I've been dealing with a bum shoulder for a while and haven't had a chance to get into the doctor. I plan to go in on Monday. My knees--both of them--are feeling twingy too. My right one worries me. It also has been hurting for a while. Never really been right since I hurt in that take-down about seven months ago.

I needed the rest. Not just physically. Life outside of BJJ has been pretty hectic. One of the days this week, I think Thursday, I was sick and took off from my duties at the church (we are doing a V.B.S. this week) and I slept literally all day. I also did a lot of this:



But now I am itching to get back on the mat. And I have two whole days before there will be another class. That's a good thing, I think. Two more days to ice and rest my shoulder and knee.

Been thinking a lot about the last few weeks and have been getting my head right. All of us grapple people we don't particularly want to. The reasons why we don't want to grapple them vary. I can list off a few of reasons I've complained about before: they muscle a lot, they do rude things, they crank submissions.

However, I think the real reason why I don't like grappling "certain people" is very simple: They beat me when I felt like they shouldn't have.

I don't like to think that I'm an overly competitive person. But I also don't like to think that I have to pay my bills every month. Unfortunately, me not wanting to think that doesn't make either of those things less true. I don't like losing. I don't like feeling like I didn't do as well as I should have. And that's my problem, not my opponent's problem.

What I think I lose sight of every now and then is that I am not in competition with my teammates. We are there to sharpen each other, challenge each other. If someone can pick apart my guard, that's actually a good thing, because it forces me to adapt, to grow.

But it still feels like crap.

As crappy as it feels, though, I refuse to avoid it. I see a challenge and I'm ready to attack it. I might get shut down for a while. But eventually, I will learn to deal with it. And then I'll be ready for the next challenge.

I realized also that my life in general is a lot like this. I don't have to deal with anything too horrible. But, like everyone else, I have to face situations I don't want to, deal with people I'd rather not, go through pain I wish I didn't have to. But, if I let it, these people and situations can be catalysts for times of growth in my character. They expose my weaknesses, my faults. I can either get mad at them, feel sorry for myself, or "be a man" and face it.

I want to face it. Why tap if you're not going to learn from it? Why go through all these difficulties and not take anything away from it? I want to learn from it, grow from it. Doesn't make it suck any less. But at least it brings purpose to the pain.

Garbage

That's pretty much what I felt like tonight.

I rolled with a guy I have never rolled with before. Whitebelt. Nice guy. Always been friendly with me. I'm thinking we're going to have a nice, relaxed grapple.

Wrong.

He sits down in front of me and says, "Go easy on me." But as soon as the grapple starts, he is after me. He stuffed my guard pretty easily, which was frustrating (lol), and then went on to a lot of smashing. Shortly into the grapple, he goes for a heel hook. I tapped. Didn't want to mess with it because I'm not the greatest at heel hook escapes. After that, I was on defense for most of the rest of the roll. I kept returning to my guard or half guard. He kept smashing and passing.

It sucked. I sucked.

I was already feeling pissy after that and then I rolled with another guy who is relatively new and notorious for spazzing and not tapping. I mentioned him a couple of weeks ago. Same kind of stuff. He kept trying to go for heel hooks from starting position. And he kept doing this thing where he waved his hands in front of my face to try to distract me or something. Didn't work. Just annoyed the garbage out of me. I got two heel hooks but had to let them go because he wouldn't tap. He kept spazzing out trying to pass my guard. Finally, after he kept trying to choke me from inside my guard, I arm-barred him. Twice. Nasty, tight ones too. I let go as soon as he tapped, of course, and I didn't pop his elbows or anything, but still. I don't normally go that hard on anyone, let alone some new guy who just doesn't know how to calm down. A few of my buddies in class told me they think the kid needs to be tapped out like that so that he calms down. But I just felt even crappier after that.

I guess the reason why I feel so crappy is that I know I lost my temper. I wasn't trying to hurt him. But I was like, "Alright. That's it." And then the barring ensued. Normally, I am able to tolerate spastic guys like him. Yeah, I get annoyed. But they don't send me into outer-space like this guy did tonight. If I'm honest, I know the reason why I got so mad was because I was frustrated about the grapple before. And I took it out on this other guy.

Yeah, let the hate comments roll in.

After that grapple, I was even more frustrated and angry, so when Fabio started to put me with another white belt guy, I just asked to sit out. I knew already I wouldn't be able to relax and grapple without being insane. After class, I apologized to the second guy for going a little too hard.

I talked to Fabio about it too and he told me a lot of the same stuff my other friends said. The guy needs to tap. Don't worry about it. But he also said he is going to keep putting me with the first guy who frustrated me until he doesn't frustrate me anymore. I know it will force me to grow. Fabio put me with him specifically because he likes to stuff inverted guard. I need to focus on developing other things and this will force me to do that. But I am not looking forward to it.

Anyway...I am going to stop with the angry blogging and go to bed.

Mixed Results

Last night was a night of extremes in grappling. I grappled a couple of pretty new people and some experienced blue belts. The results of each of those grapples were soooo different.

First, I went with a girl who has been going to our gym for a while. She is kind of timid and, for a long time, didn't really attack when she grappled. Now she is starting to get a little more confidence and she is transforming her game. She's attacking more, she's starting to really understand the concepts more. In our grapple, I could see the wheels turning. She tries to set up and apply the things we have recently been learning in class. It is great to see!! She's the type of person I really root for, you know? She's such a meek, sweet person, but I want to see her kick some butt!! lol

My second grapple went very differently. I went with Yeti, a blue belt who helps me out a lot. He helped me last night, alright. Helped me to see how much I have to learn!! lol. No, he didn't do anything rough or mean. He was just moving. Moving a LOT faster than I was. He is not only faster, but loads more technical than me. He can pick me apart SO EASY!! But I enjoy rolling with him because, even while he's kicking my butt, he's telling me how to defend the submissions he's putting on me. I usually come away from rolls with him with at least one little tid-bit of information to improve my game. That's a great rolling partner. Someone who can kick your butt, but make you feel like you accomplished something anyway in the end.

One of my other grapples of the night was with a younger guy who is relatively new to BJJ. He has a lot of heart and it's easy to see that he's motivated to learn. But he is still in that go-crazy, I'm-never-going-to-tap, have-to-smash mode. That was fine for most of the grapple. I favor chokes with newer people and I'm not as afraid of finishing chokes on people who don't tap. But then I caught a heel hook on him. I was applying it really slowly, but I had it. He just refused to tap. I said tap. Another blue belt sitting on the wall said tap. But he refused. I would have had to pop his ankle to get the tap. So I let go, got him in my guard and got a gi choke instead.

Afterwards, I told him he should be more careful with leg locks. Not everyone will let them go. He said, "Well, maybe I don't want them to." Sigh... I hope he doesn't end up with a popped ankle. I won't do it. But at a tournament, guys will pop ankles without hesitating. For his sake, I hope he learns to tap.

I'm leaving tomorrow to take our youth group to a Student Life camp in North Carolina. I'm REALLY excited, since this will not only be a great experience for myself and the kids, but also a mini-vacation for me and JJ! I won't get to grapple for the week. That is, unless some unruly kids refuse to go to sleep after we tell them to. I get kinda grumpy when I don't get my sleep. After about two in the morning "lights out" takes on a whole different meaning!! ;)

Feeling a Little Smothered.

I grappled a guy yesterday afternoon who was relatively new to BJJ (I think. I have no idea how long he's been training) and who just locked me up and tried to beat me up with his weight the whole time while were grappling. He wasn't getting any submissions because either he didn't know how or wasn't trying to. And the positions he was locking me up in weren't working towards submissions either. Whichever way I moved, he just latched onto me and slammed his body down on top of me. If we were being scored, he probably would have won because of the fact that he was in a dominant position most of the time. Though I was able to keep him from passing my guard until the last few minutes. I kept catching him in half guard, but for some reason I couldn't sweep him and eventually he busted through my half guard and got in side control, where he remained for the rest of the grapple.

The thing that frustrated me so much was that I lost control of my emotions while I was grappling. He was being rough, but I should have been able to handle it. At one point I almost started crying. I kept telling myself not to freak out, to relax and just think. He had me locked up, but apart from slamming his body weight into me, he wasn't actually hurting me. I felt like I couldn't move under that guy's weight. He was pinning me down and locking me up and I knew I needed to sweep him, but I felt like I couldn't move. I guess I was so worked up and frustrated that my game went down the crapper.

On the upside, I did well in my other grapples. Though, I was still on defense the vast majority of the time since I went against almost all higher belts. That doesn't bother me. I expect to be on defense against higher belts. What bothered me so much was that I lost my cool, you know?

Oh well. I'm sure I'll have another chance to grapple that guy and next time, I'm going to relax and let him tire himself out locking me up. I just need to stay cool and look for an opportunity to sweep or hip out.

It was really frustrating.

Defense

I think--note the "think" and not the "know"--that I'm slowly getting better at defense. Lately Steph and I have been grappling with two guys from our class, Phil and Josh. It's really been helping me improve in all areas, but especially in defense.

Phil and Josh easily outweigh me by 70-80 pounds, plus they've been taking Jiu-jitsu longer than me, so trying to move when they have their whole body weight crushing me is really difficult. I'm nowhere near close to getting submissions on either of them, but I am at least moving better and looking less like a rag doll getting pretzeled on the floor.

Baby steps, people.

Also, I almost jogged a whole mile without walking today. I did walk once, but only for about ten seconds and then I started jogging again. That's already an improvement from the last time I tried to jog a mile. It's crazy for me to think about people who run twenty or thirty miles. I think it would take me a looooooooooooooooooooooooooong time to be able to do that. Ok, let's be honest. I'll prolly never do it. lol

Anyway, my stats as far as weight goes are the same. I found out the actual weight classes for the NAGA tournament in November and I would have to get down to about 130(without my gi) to drop into the next weight class. That isn't going to happen. My body likes 140. It doesn't want to leave 140. And I've decided not to try to make it leave 140 because, from what I hear, they will probably combine weight classes and if I drop all that weight I'll just weigh that much less than everyone in the weight class I'm slotted for now. Garbage.So I'm going to stop worrying about weight and just focus on training.

Lastly, tonight Steph, Phil and I are going to see Fabio Novaes' school. Our instructors, Mario and Ben, train there and we want to go see them in action and get a feel for our "parent school". We fall under the blanket of Fabio Novaes Jiu-jitsu since we train under Fabio's students, so it'll be cool to see the school and meet the people there. I'm excited!

http://www.fabionovaesbjj.com/index.php