If you’re a brown belt and you’re in a room full of white belts, there is a lot you can do to help them. After all, you probably have close to six to eight years more experience than they do.
But is there anything you can do to improve your own skills while helping them with theirs?
Yes!
In the video below, 2nd degree BJJ black belt Nick “Chewy” Albin goes over what you can do as an upper belt to not only help your lower belt counterparts, but make your own jiu-jitsu game twice as lethal.
Treat it like active drilling.
Active drilling is where you roll with a specific purpose. In other words, you’re not just rolling to tap the person; you’re rolling in order to improve specific submissions or positions in your game.
This is in contrast to passive drilling, where you simply lie there and let the person perform whatever move on you she wants.
Active drilling is a great way for you, as an upper belt, to improve your game and your lower belt opponent’s game. You’re practicing moves that you are weak at on a non-cooperative opponent, but you’re also helping the lower belt fight off an attacking opponent.
You don’t have to work on new moves, either. You may be strong when doing a move on one side but weak on the other side. If that is the case, practice doing your moves on your weak side.
Submit and loosen up.
Get to a point where you know you can finish a submission, but allow your opponent to wriggle out of it. Once your opponent gets out, go into another submission. This will help hone your ability to chain submissions together.
Don’t stop moving.
Create artificial scrambles. This will allow you to hit sweeps and submissions at weird angles you never thought you were able to hit sweeps and submissions off of.
Put yourself in bad spots.
If you’re rolling with a lower belt, but he’s got a great half guard or armbar, get into his half guard or let him sink an armbar on you. Learn to work your way out of bad positions.
Check out Professor Albin’s entire video below:
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