Developing Your Jiu-Jitsu Top Game

What separates a champion from the rest is the attention to detail.

After Monday night's class, a few of us got together to go over some finer points of developing a top game. Specifically, I wanted to focus on the importance of controlling and locking down an opponent. Movement and technique is not always about speed, but rather about a slow, methodical process. That's not to say that speed, agility and explosive movements don't have their function in the dynamic grappling match. However, economy of effort should always be at the forefront of your strategy.

The goal should be to eliminate your opponent's options as quickly and as effectively as possible, or capitalize on your opponent's mistakes by way of a eliminating space and applying pressure.

I often talk about the importance of attention to detail. A student might see where they're at, and see where they want to go. They then make an attempt to get there in one big movement. All too often the end result is that they get caught somewhere in the middle. They either forgot, didn't know, or simply didn't address some of the smaller steps in between.

So the message here is that you can't always go from Point A to Point Z all at once. You have to ensure you're hitting all the points in between. Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.