“Conan! What is best in life?”

“To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.”

I subscribe to Stephen Kesting’s, Beginning BJJ, and regularly receive his emails with grappling tips for beginners. Imagine my surprise when I read his last email with this quote, “…as Conan might say, use those refined attributes and ‘crush your enemies, see them driven before you...’” Oops, different Conan, but a classic quote nonetheless.

I especially enjoyed Mr. Kesting’s email this week about reading your opponent. This is something I do all the time, and I have one training partner in particular to thank for this. After getting tapped out by Zac on any number of occasions, he would comment about how he was listening to my breathing. While I would be gasping for air, he would wait until I exhaled and then sink in the finishing move. Another annoying thing Zac would do is to pay attention to the way I was preparing to bridge. He could feel me starting to load up, and then was able to shift his weight or counter me before I could effectively bridge. It was like he knew what I was going to do even before I knew what I was going to do.

At first, it wasn’t enough just to know what Zac was doing to defeat me. It was frustrating because I didn’t yet have the skill to not telegraph my movements. I didn’t have the skill to keep from being crushed on the bottom while I struggled to breath.

As my skill level increased, I learned how to do to others what Zac had been doing to me for years. I learned how to better read my opponents. Stephen puts it like this, “Much as a 'tell' in poker gives other experienced players at the table an advantage, picking up on subtle clues like this can help you dominate larger and stronger opponents on the mat.”

Often times I’ll tell my students after a match that they shouldn’t have hesitated with a particular movement or technique. That one moment of hesitation was all their opponent needed to pick up on what he or she was going for, and then defend or counter.

The great part about all of this is that as you learn how to be more stealthy with your movements, you naturally become more in-tune with your opponent’s movements.