Last night during the Fundamentals class at Crossroads Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu we started off drilling how to break your opponents posture from the closed guard. By breaking their posture you put them in a position where they can’t hit you, or begin to try and pass your guard, which they will need to do in order to have any significant chance of submitting you. By breaking our opponents posture we have put our safety as our first priority. This is the perfect example of position before submission.
Once we have broken our opponents posture we covered 3 techniques that become available depending on how the Jiu-Jitsu player in the top position reacts. In this bjj class we covered a Kimora and two armbars. These arm and shoulder locks become available because the Jiu-Jitsu player on top must use his arms to push if he wants to regain his posture. By getting to a position where we know how our opponent will react we can plan for that reaction and lead them into positions which are even better for us. The more reactions we are prepared for the harder it will be for somebody to be successful in their own Jiu-Jitsu techniques.
At the end of bjj class we worked these techniques with specific resistance to help bridge the gap between theoretical knowledge and the ability to apply it under pressure.It is this specific training that that separates brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from other martial arts in terms of real world applicability. Timing, balance, and fluidity are all attributes that can only come from working with resistance. Resistance shows you things that you are not doing correctly and need to fix, without with work in the gym there is no chance to be able t apply any of what you have learned in a tournament or in a self defense situation.