Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - Drill for Skill!

I love Jiu Jitsu! Walking into the Peoria Athletic Club all the day’s troubles fade away. The raspy voice of Sensei Peplow greeting us lets you know you’re home and your therapy session has begun. Putting on the gi completes your transformation from a mere human into a BJJ demigod and as you warm up your mind begins to salivate for the most effective martial art techniques on the planet. Professor Peplow does not disappoint and demonstrates how to disable your opponent and walk away victorious. “Awesome, I have to try this the next time we roll!”

(Fast forward an hour) The purple, brown and black belts are looking for an opponent to roll with. Having just learned an unstoppable guard pass, the confident BJJ demigod white belt accepts a match against the poor unsuspecting brown belt. The white belt initiates the unstoppable guard pass and rather than celebrating the defeat of all brown belt defenses, he or she wonders how it’s possible that they had their back taken?!

Answer: Habits. Over the years, thousands of attempts have been made to pass the brown belt’s guard this way. In response, he/she developed a habit that requires little or no thought to perform an immediate counter and end up in an advantageous position. It doesn't mean the new guard pass is technically flawed; the effectiveness of the technique is directly proportional to the number of times the guard passer has performed it. That’s why the same guard pass done by the brown belt will be unstoppable by the white belt.

Habits in BJJ are formed by repeating a technique over and over again until you have developed muscle memory. A habit is an instantaneous reaction, you don’t have to think about it. This not only makes it likely that you’ll initiate your techniques ahead of your opponent’s but you can also think ahead to the next move or respond to counter techniques much faster. Author Charles Duhigg in his book The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do states: "The Limbic Brain reacts to our surroundings instantaneously and without thought. The Neocortex is our "thinking" brain capable of analyzing and creating complex solutions. Habits free up our mental energy to focus on new experiences and solving new or unfamiliar situations. Once a habit forms the brain stops working so hard and can divert focus somewhere else."

               
The most medaled Olympic athlete of all time, Michael Phelps, has achieved the unthinkable through the power of habit. He is in the habit of listening to the same songs, doing the same stretches, and performing the exact warm up laps in practice that he will perform on a race day. Militaries around the world drill habits into their soldiers so they can react quickly on the battle field potentially saving lives and winning fights. Teenagers learning to drive have to put an enormous amount of attention into what they’re doing when backing out of the driveway, thinking about each safety check before putting the car in gear, something experienced drivers do unconsciously.

              
The basic techniques of BJJ need to be habits! Drilling the basics will allow you to develop these habits. Your BJJ game will become much faster, more fluid, and more technical. When the basic techniques become habits, you can begin to add more techniques to your Jiu Jitsu repertoire and then drill those until they become habits also. With this method of learning, in conjunction with live sparring and visualization, your skills will advance so much faster than any of these methods alone. It is essential during habit formation that the techniques are done with accuracy. If done improperly, often from trying to rush through the technique or from mental/physical fatigue, then bad habits will form and it will take longer for the proper technique to replace the bad habit as the instinctual response.

              
Hopefully, by now you realize how important it is to drill if you want to get better at BJJ and in a shorter period of time. The question is how much should you drill? In an effort to answer this question Peoria Athletic Club’s Chris Malone contacted some of the best BJJ competitors in the world to get an idea. In a testament either to Malone’s popularity or the camaraderie of the BJJ community, most of these champions replied the same day!

Caio Terra: “Do the most you can on both. It’s not just about drilling but studying…if you drill something wrong you are actually teaching your body wrong.”

Mackenzie Dern: “We drill 3-4 times a week, normally for 1 hour and spar every day for 2 hours. If I’m not feeling good or something I try to drill just to at least keep my movement and the timing.”

Felipe Costa: “I only drill until I fully understand the technique and later I like to try while sparring.”

Ryan Hall: “For a beginning athlete, I recommend a lot of drilling. Sparring won’t be productive until an athlete has a certain level of experience. If I had to generalize, I’d usually put it about 50/50 (no pun intended, I’m sure) drilling to sparring.”

Romulo Barral: “You should drill 20%, 20% specific training like a situation you might be in during a fight, and 60% sparring.”

The truth is, there is no universal answer that will work for everyone. Each person will learn at a different pace and have already formed some habits, both good and bad, that will determine how much they will need to drill. Since few, if any, of us have the luxury to train full-time I suspect time will be the deciding factor for most people. However, if the best black belts in the world devote time to drill in order to create and maintain their BJJ habits, then I am definitely going to devote time to drilling as well! And with that, I’ll leave you with the infamous words of Sarah Palin: “Drill baby, drill!”