The owner of another BJJ blog, Guillaume Huni, made a Facebook post recently regarding people who take rounds off during live training. It got me thinking about whether or not this sort of behavior is acceptable…
Here’s Guillaume’s post:
During training, if you sit out a round because you’re tired, it’s a waste of precious training time. When you roll/spar tired, that’s where the magic happens. That’s when you use the real Jiu-Jitsu without all your physical attributes. When I’m really tired I just defend and work on my escapes. It’s always better than sitting on the side. Ps: Nobody cares if you tap. Every single one of my students including all my white belts have tapped me out.
For starters, let’s look at some instances in which taking rounds off is perfectly fine:
- If you have a health condition. Different people come to jiu jitsu in different levels of physical fitness. Maybe you just had surgery. Maybe you have heart issues and are feeling wheezy or light headed. I’ve taken rounds off because I thought I may be injured and was testing the range of motion of the joint I thought was injured just to play it safe. It’s better to take a round off today and train tomorrow than have to take a month off because you exacerbate a minor injury.
- You ONLY do jiu-jitsu for fun. Not everyone who trains jiu-jitsu does so to compete or to become “street ready.” Some people purely train as a fun, social activity. If you only do jiu-jitsu for fun and training that extra round would ruin your session or make you miserable, why do it? Who do you have to prove anything to?
If you fancy yourself a competitor, and you take rounds off to rest, you’re doing yourself a disservice.
The truth is you don’t have to go full bore every single round. When I am tired in training I may work on my defense, if I’m too tired to do that I’ll have my training partner make me as uncomfortable as possible in order to allow me to start feeling comfortable in bad positions.
It also prepares you for deep brackets in competition.
In competition, when you step out on that mat the first time, you feel fresh and ready. If you have a battle over the course of your first round, however, the second round will be rough; and if you are in a deep bracket, you may wind up being exhausted before the finals. Spending time rolling when you’re already spent and ready to take a break is the best way to prepare for deep brackets and later rounds.
Also mentally seeing an opponent who has gone through a bracket and is not tired is mentally damaging to opponents. Nothing’s worse than feeling exhausted, wanting your opponent to also feel exhausted, but seeing them visibly ready to take you on.
Another key point is that if you train jiu-jitsu for self-defense, training when you’re already exhausted instead of taking a round off will prepare you to fight off an assailant even after a long day. The truth is that self-defense is never pretty, and situations in which it’s needed seem to never be opportune moments. Pushing through exhaustion at the gym is a great way to prepare yourself for a real fight.
Do you take rounds off in training? If you do, do you have a good reason for it? Have you thought about it in depth?
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