Weak side vs strong side

[Pete Daly]

In basketball and boxing and soccer and all kinds of sports, ambidextrousness is unanimously regarded as beneficial. I've played sports for most of my life, and I always found this to be true. Naturally, when I started doing jiu jitsu, I took the same approach as I did with any other sport I had ever played; for every rep I did with my strong side, I did two with my weak side. It serves me well personally, and I'd never questioned this logic until I started to see really good 10pjj players use only one side predominantly and do very well. I am aware of tactics like rescue dog that require you to use the other side, but it seems to me that; if one has a nasty strong side, then one's game can, perhaps, be fully complete.

So my question is, how much emphasis do you guys place on being able to do the same thing from one side as well as the other? It had occurred to me that perhaps not enough of such emphasis has been placed in 10p teachings thus far. My contention is that; with no weak side, you eliminate many of your opponents' defensive options, because they have to be good at defending both sides or I will just attack their weak side. I compare it to basketball where someone who can only dribble drive with their right hand, so the defender simply plays the strong side and makes him go to the left. If I know your rubber guard is very good on your left side, I might place my left hand on the mat and make you beat me from your weak side, where I can just break out and pass your guard because your right side sucks.

Thoughts?

[Brent Smith]

Its very beneficial to make your "weak side" as close to your strong side as possible. I mean like you said if someone knows you're only really good with one side they could possibly shut down your game. I started really noticing the effectiveness of this with guard passes. A lot of people pass to the left side so therefore people get good at defending the pass to that side. So if you pass to the right boom you shutdown their defense.
I def have a strong side but I'm working to close the gap between the two so as to be a more complete jiu jitsu practitioner

[Ubereem1]

Everytime i work a move i rep both sides the same amount of times i dont like workin my weakside just cuz i have never used it so far but it never hurts

[Jason Hyatt]

I had the same idea until one of Eddie's seminars. He was talking about strong side vs. Weak side and putting in reps. Basically, he said if you can put in two reps on your strong side and two on your weak side, you're better off doing four reps on your strong side. The idea being that you only have so much time to devote to training and the only way to improve is reps. It's better to have one really devastating side and one weak side than two kind of OK sides. He said something like it's better to have a black belt side and a blue belt side than two OK blue belt sides. He said it better but you get the idea. I took that to heart and my plan since then has been if I find my self on my weak side, finding routes to my strong side.

[NelsonLucca]

Its actually easier for me to hit different moves from my weak side. It's kind of weird. So my weak side gets more reps on Jiu Claw and Double Bagger.

[Aab]

Train both. When I'm sitting there and a big ole fat guy is in my guard I'll just be waiting with my hands on his elbows just waiting........waiting for him to move before i jerk his elbows and pull my legs up to break his posture. And hey guess what? If its his left arm instead of his right arm that goes down to the mat then you better know how to play rubber guard off your right leg too. The tougher jiu jitsu guys are just to tough to waste an opportunity like that just because you can't play on your weak side. Get good at both, damn i love Rubber Guard.

[Jon Watkins]

I use different attacks on different sides so it's not that I have a weak side, it's my attacks that are weak when they change sides.

[Ryan Cook]

Yeah, I've been noticing that the weak side is becoming very important. I can't pass some guys' guards on the left anymore. Going to the right has become the only option for a few people. I'm ambidextrous with catching armbars on the fly. I can hit kimuras to the right in half guard and left in full guard... which makes sense since I am on my right hip mostly for half guard. Half guard gets waaaaaaay more reps on the right hip but when I get on my left hip its much more effective because nobody is used to it; they always pass to the other side so they're confused passing that way.

I think Eddie's way is good though, because he knows which moves go with which side (in his game) and drives towards his dominant positions. He explained it quite well at the NJ seminar that I went to in the summer. Maybe someone can explain it better than that.

[Eddie Bravo]

I had the same idea until one of Eddie's seminars. He was talking about strong side vs. Weak side and putting in reps. Basically, he said if you can put in two reps on your strong side and two on your weak side, you're better off doing four reps on your strong side. The idea being that you only have so much time to devote to training and the only way to improve is reps. It's better to have one really devastating side and one weak side than two kind of OK sides. He said something like it's better to have a black belt side and a blue belt side than two OK blue belt sides. He said it better but you get the idea. I took that to heart and my plan since then has been if I find my self on my weak side, finding routes to my strong side.

This

[Brent Smith]

I had the same idea until one of Eddie's seminars. He was talking about strong side vs. Weak side and putting in reps. Basically, he said if you can put in two reps on your strong side and two on your weak side, you're better off doing four reps on your strong side. The idea being that you only have so much time to devote to training and the only way to improve is reps. It's better to have one really devastating side and one weak side than two kind of OK sides. He said something like it's better to have a black belt side and a blue belt side than two OK blue belt sides. He said it better but you get the idea. I took that to heart and my plan since then has been if I find my self on my weak side, finding routes to my strong side.

That's an interesting theory. In judo we learn all our throws right handed even if you're a lefty. And not until you're at a brown belt level (sankyu) do you start to play with left handed throws. At that point you really have the concepts down and its not as difficult to adapt to. I think that could work to a certain extent but I guess I prefer my ground game to be pretty well rounded. Using Eddie's example, if both my sides are gonna be a blue belt level it'll just take time to bring them both up the ranks.