Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Basics - Closed Guard Defense

A few weeks ago was the Bluegrass Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Tournament again and was the first time I competed as a blue belt. I went into the tournament feeling very confident - like I was going to walk out of the with a gold medal around my neck and I was going to make my school proud. Wrong!! Didn't happen. I got my but kicked. I thought I had made all of the necessary preparations (cut weight naturally, improved my cardio, improved my explosiveness, had new sweeps in my arsenal, etc., etc.) but non of that mattered because I didn't have my BASICS down like I should have.

In two out of the four matches I was submitted by an armbar and a triangle after my opponents broke down my posture from within their guard. There is no way I should be a blue belt if they can break my posture down that easily. Not only were they able to break me down but they were very quick & decisive, they new exactly what the wanted to do and flowed from move to move without hesitation. Are these guys that good or do I have a lot of work to do? Pretty sure it is a combination of both.

Before my next Jui-Jitsu class after the tournament the instructor asked what I had the most difficulty with; so, I explained that they kept breaking me down from within their guard. As a result he decided to cover that in class that day - not only did I learn that I had been making subtle mistakes that compounded each other which added to the ease of my opponents ability to break me down, but also noticed that the higher ranking belts had the same problems. This reconfirms that no matter what level you are at everyone needs to continue working on the basics!

After re-evaluating my technique and making adjustments were needed I noticed a HUGE difference. Since then I've rolled with 2 different black belts and several other upper belts under black and they had a hard time breaking me down while I was in their guard. Most of the time they resorted to opening their guard and trying a sweep instead. This was a huge wake up call for me. It doesn't matter how many moves you know - if you don't have the basics down you'll never get to use them!

Living up to Blue Belt

Since my last post I went from being a 3 stripe white belt to a blue belt in a rather short period of time. The transition from day one to day blue was about 15 months - much quicker than I had anticipated (I was expecting closer to the two year mark). The feeling of having to hurry up and learn more in order to actually feel like a blue belt set in very quickly and still remains.

The Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt that promoted me must have seen something he liked - however, I don't feel like I have the mental aspect down nor do I have the physical muscle memory required to represent this level in Jiu-Jitsu. The more I think about this the more I realize that being promoted a little ahead of the curve can be a good thing. If you are serious about Jiu Jitsu and feel like you aren't at the level in which you represent then it makes you work that much harder to get there - playing catch up. This is exactly what I am going through and still feel like I have a long way to go!