You roll too much!

Traditional combat sports like boxing, wrestling, and judo as well as more recent evolutions such as Brazilian Jiujitsu, are far more successful in real fights than "martial arts" like karate and taekwondo. There is a reason for this...

It's not really the techniques of these arts, since there is only a finite number of ways to move four limbs through space in relation to another body that allow you to cause damage. On an important level, the punches of taekwondo really aren't that different from the punches of western boxing. They both strike with the knuckles and they both travel along similar paths through space. Nevertheless, there is a statistically significant difference between the success levels of, let's say, Brazilian Jiujitsu and...Wally Jay's Small-Circle Jiujitsu. Both rely on submission holds and are grappling. Hell, both are Jiujitsu! Yet, they are drastically different.

Of course, most people interested in the subject are aware that the real difference is in the training method. That difference is that modern martial arts and combat sports allow practitioners the ability to practice the techniques at full-speed, full-force, against a resisting opponent.

The "jumping-spinning-reverse-outside-crescent-butterfly-kick" of "Who-Flung-Poo-Kung-Fu" falls apart as a viable fighting technique as soon as the opponent resists. It looks pretty, but it just doesn't work! It requires too much cooperation of the opponent. As soon as a bigger, faster, or stronger opponent jams the kick, the kicker ends up going ass-over-teakettle and being on the recieving end of a "Berkeley Stomp." (Think the beginning of American History X, when Edward Norton's character makes the black gangbanger place his open mouth against the curb before stomping on the back of his head!)

I have a student that we'll call "Suzie." Suzie is an 18 year old college freshman. She's 5'2" tall and weighs about 110 pounds....in jeans, shoes, and a heavy hoodie sweatshirt. She has no athletic background.

I have another student that we'll call "Collin." He is also an 18 year old college freshman (they went to HS together actually....). Collin though, is 6'2" and 240+ pounds. He played HS football, on the offensive line, and wrestled his sophomore year.

"Traditional martial arts" like taekwondo will tell you that, using their patented, secret techniques, Suzie can defeat Collin. They tell her that using a reverse punch, if she focuses her "chi" will allow her to punch or kick hard enough to injure Collin. They never allow the two of them to spar full-contact though, because they know, down deep, that it just doesn't work. It's bullshit!

I've watched Suzie use the hip heist sweep and the elevator sweep from the guard to reverse the bottom position consistently, while rolling against Collin, going full-speed. She KNOWS that this shit works, because she uses it successfully every time she trains. She can pull off a kimura lock against someone as big as Collin, and she knows it...because she's done it.


2) The second benefit of rolling as a training tool is that it develops genuine confidence in the fighter's ability. Suzie KNOWS that she can fight someone who weighs twice her bodyweight. She does it regularly. If she was studying taekwondo, she'd go years without sparring full-force, if she ever got the opportunity to do so...

This confidence allows her to use her training successfully in self-defense. She can stay calm and think her way through a situation, because she knows her skill level, and she knows that it really works. She's not forced to overcompensate by being "too" brutal or going ballistic before there is a genuine threat.

These are just two of the most important benefits that I've noticed after 20 years in this game. From judo and boxing to the last fifteen years of BJJ training, I've seen the value of rolling, or sparring, as a training tool.

There is a drawback to it though...too many coaches use it too much.

HOLY SHIT! DID I JUST SAY THAT COACHES HAVE THEIR FIGHTERS ROLL TOO MUCH?

You're goddamned right I did.

I don't know if it's laziness, or ignorance of better coaching methods, or just a desire to "train the way the teacher did." I don't really care either. It's a shitty method. Throwing brand-new beginners into the mix, rolling, is fucking stupid.

Contemporary sports science tells us that it takes several thousand repetitions of a specific skill in order to program it into the neural pathways for proprioceptive comprehension. Yet, coaches have their students, who might have drilled any given technique less than 50 times, jump in and try to use it while rolling. Then they expect them to succeed.

It doesn't work that way. What happens is they get pummeled by more advanced, or just bigger students, and what techniques they do try to apply fall apart completely. It's even harder to reprogram poorly programmed techniques than it is to program new techniques, but that's essentially what happens in gyms throughout the world daily. No fucking wonder it takes people ten years to earn a black belt. They use piss-poor teaching methods.

At Triumph Martial Arts, even though I've been taught BJJ the same way, we use a more modern training method. New students don't roll. They drill the fundamental techniques over and over. For the first month or two..sometimes three, they don't do anything but drill specific techniques, with little resistance from their partner.

Then, they'll slowly start being introduced to resistance through positional sparring drills. The "Guard Game" is one example. It is a pretty basic Jits drill, yet one I don't see used often enough. The guy on the bottom has to try and sweep or submit the fighter on top. The fighter on top, at the same time, has to try and pass guard. As soon as one or the other succeeds, they switch positions and start again. Basic positional sparring drills like this might make up the remainder of the first six months of training in some cases. (Usually it only takes about a month of this though.)

Once the student has demonstrated the ability to consistently use proper technique against a resisting opponent, under these controlled circumstances, then they will graduate to free-sparring, or what most people think of when they think of "rolling."

Even with advanced students though, only 5-10 minutes, at the end of a class period, will be spent free-sparring. Instead, most of a given class will be spent drilling basic techniques, with maybe one new technique introduced each week. Complete and total mastery of a few techniques is far more important than a passing familiarity with a whole slew of techniques.

I've found it to be a pretty efficient teaching and learning model. Let me know what YOU think though!