Ever see that one person who never plays positions they are not good at? The person who refers to submissions in the training room as “winning” or “losing”? The individual who treats every single roll as though it is the finals of the Mundials? Don’t be that person. Don’t spend your time on the mat trying to become the practice champ.
I want to preface this by saying: there is a time to roll hard, there is a time to roll to your strengths, but that time is not all the time. Trying to become practice champ can be harmful, and there are several benefits to rolling at a lower intensity.
For starters, high intensity rolling will cause lower level practitioners to miss a lot of the details of what they’re doing. When I roll with newer teammates, I like to move slowly and smoothly. I like to let them experience every minute detail, and let them see what it is I’m doing to seemingly effortlessly overwhelm and overcome their defenses. If I were out there trying to become practice champ, this information would not be transferred.
Low intensity training allows us to have a conversation with our training partner. This conversation doesn’t have to be verbal; it can be simply through our movements. You and your training partners’ actions and reactions are the content of that conversation. But if all you are trying to do is “beat” them and “win” to become practice champ, you’ll miss half of the conversation because you’re so wrapped up in your own thoughts and actions.
Trying to be a practice champ is a surefire way to get hurt. There’s always someone bigger, badder, and stronger. If all you’re trying to do is muscle your way through every round, you’ll find that eventually you’ll come up against someone who you simply cannot bully. Unless you’ve developed timing and finesse to deal with that kind of person, they will crush you and it will hurt both mentally and physically.
If every roll is to the death, you won’t be able to roll as effectively in the later rounds as you did in the early ones. This translates to losing in later rounds at competition. Learn to pace yourself when you roll. If you ever do one of the larger tournaments, you may have to deal with 10 matches If you are trying to bulldoze every single opponent instead of using good technique and jiu jitsu, you may win that first match, but later in the day you won’t be looking so hot.
I can’t speak for everyone on the mat, but I plan on training for the rest of my life. I’m young and strong now, but in another 5, 10, 15 or 20 years, I may not be as strong. If I never learn to use good technique, my jiu-jitsu will suck down the line. I’m better off investing time, thought, and energy into developing fantastic technique so that down the line the techniques I learn today still work for me. This is better than being insistent upon winning by using brute strength and relying entirely upon positions and scenarios with which I’m comfortable. I need to have the knowledge to handle the situations and scenarios where I’m not comfortable and make those situations and scenarios ones in which I am comfortable.
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