Sorry in advance for this long post. It's something I have been musing over in my head for a while, and I think some people may have interesting thoughts.
I've been thinking recently about training BJJ with the same people every day, versus training at different places with different approaches. If you have seen the recent finals matches between the 2 Mendes brothers or between Jeff Glover and Bill Cooper, they look completely different from most competition BJJ. Obviously they are fighting at about 30%, but it is more than that. These guys have been training together for years, and they know the ins and outs of each others games.
When I train a my gym, everyone knows what I am best at and how I move. I have to constantly adapt, learn new things, and adjust, or I will be left behind by more innovative fighters. This is awesome, because my game develops, and I am not allowed to just rely on my go-to moves. On the other hand, I work a great, useful move into the ground, and then once everyone knows it, I often leave it behind because it does not work anymore in the gym. My main concern is, in the hopes of evolving my game, am I literally picking out all of my best moves and eliminating them? If I have an awesome omaplata, I should be practicing the details and nuances to hit them even more against tougher guys (think Ryan Hall drilling the triangle for years). But at this point, everyone sees it coming, so I only go for it with complicated, tricky setups. My guess is that I haven't thrown any of the basic setups for it in months.
Because of my job, I get to travel to the east coast every month for a week. When I do, I train at the best gyms in the area (so far this year, I have gotten to train with Ryan Hall, Marcelo Garcia, Paul Schriener, Demian Maia, Zak Maxwell, and many others). What is interesting is that, when I go somewhere else, I start to slowly go back to my old moves. Nobody knows my setups, so I can snap up an attack that my teammates would laugh at as they pass my guard. I obviously don't want to be a one trick pony, but it is also kind of nice to be able to go back to my favorites like that. Even more, that is probably a more accurate simulation of what I will face in tournaments, rather than somebody that I drill with every day.
So, what do you all think? For now, I try to mix it up, training 3 weeks at home, and then 1 on the road. But that is not feasible for most people, and probably won't be for me forever either. So what is more important? What is more productive? What do you enjoy more?
I've been thinking recently about training BJJ with the same people every day, versus training at different places with different approaches. If you have seen the recent finals matches between the 2 Mendes brothers or between Jeff Glover and Bill Cooper, they look completely different from most competition BJJ. Obviously they are fighting at about 30%, but it is more than that. These guys have been training together for years, and they know the ins and outs of each others games.
When I train a my gym, everyone knows what I am best at and how I move. I have to constantly adapt, learn new things, and adjust, or I will be left behind by more innovative fighters. This is awesome, because my game develops, and I am not allowed to just rely on my go-to moves. On the other hand, I work a great, useful move into the ground, and then once everyone knows it, I often leave it behind because it does not work anymore in the gym. My main concern is, in the hopes of evolving my game, am I literally picking out all of my best moves and eliminating them? If I have an awesome omaplata, I should be practicing the details and nuances to hit them even more against tougher guys (think Ryan Hall drilling the triangle for years). But at this point, everyone sees it coming, so I only go for it with complicated, tricky setups. My guess is that I haven't thrown any of the basic setups for it in months.
Because of my job, I get to travel to the east coast every month for a week. When I do, I train at the best gyms in the area (so far this year, I have gotten to train with Ryan Hall, Marcelo Garcia, Paul Schriener, Demian Maia, Zak Maxwell, and many others). What is interesting is that, when I go somewhere else, I start to slowly go back to my old moves. Nobody knows my setups, so I can snap up an attack that my teammates would laugh at as they pass my guard. I obviously don't want to be a one trick pony, but it is also kind of nice to be able to go back to my favorites like that. Even more, that is probably a more accurate simulation of what I will face in tournaments, rather than somebody that I drill with every day.
So, what do you all think? For now, I try to mix it up, training 3 weeks at home, and then 1 on the road. But that is not feasible for most people, and probably won't be for me forever either. So what is more important? What is more productive? What do you enjoy more?
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