BJJ Flow Training

[JohnC]

One of the issues in BJJ is to not get mentally locked into getting / retaining a particular position / hold and to flow with the fight dynamic. This idea results in 'flow' drills that focus on how to move from one position to another and how to control the opponent during movement from one position to another. I'd like to share one such drill just for discussion's sake. Unfortunately, for brevity, you'll need a basic understanding of BJJ to fill in between the lines and get the moves. If you have specific questions, please post and I'll try to give a more detailed answer.

Question is: do you do flow drills and, if so, do you have any you'd care to share?

Start in guard.

Knee drop pass to 1/2 guard (if you go directly to side control with this pass, you'll miss the 1/2 guard transition).

Pass to side control (if you go directly to mount with this pass, you'll miss the side control transition).

Hip switch to mount.

Move off mount to Kesa Gatame (headlock).

Switch to Kata Gatame (front shoulder choke).

Move around to North / South.

Pass to Rear Back.

Sweep to Rear Top.

Step off and roll opponent over (face up) to Knee on Belly.

[Wa-No-Michi]

It's what us trad guys would refer to as renraku-waza or "relayed" technique.

Your work should always incorporate such flows, as without it your training would cease to be "live".

As for the particular techniques you mention John, I cant say that as a karate-ka I am very well practiced in them (although I do train them in sorts with my Daito group).

[ps1]

When we do this we tend to call it "rolling for technique only."

Generally, your uki (opponent) will give only enough resistance to offer a realistic motion.

The numbers you can do are limited only by the capacity of human movement.

Some basic ones are:

From the Guard:

Armbar (opponent pulls out arm) to

Triangle (opponent postures up) to

Omoplata (opponent rolls forward) to

Maintain side control as opponent rolls and end in side control with a biceps slicer.

The opponent defends the sliced arm.

From Side Control with underhook.

Bring knee onto the belly to get the opponent to push it. Draw their arm in and transition around for the N/S Kimura. Transition from the N/S kimura to armbar (opponent defends and comes up, placing you in your guard) transition to triangle choke. When the opponent postures up, transition back into armbar.

These are just two very basic training sets. In the end, the sky is the limit however.

[tallgeese]

I agree, you can, and should do all kinds of this stuff for exactly the reasons you stated. A couple I use regularly are:

From guard (being countered each time)-

Sweep 4 (it's the one where you set up, I dont do many names) to

Guittone to

Single side weave to

Kimura to

Sweep 1 (succcessful)

then either continue with a series from mount or switch

Also from guard (again w counters)-

Double Sweep 1 (scissors) to

Serpintine arm bar to

Arm bar to

Triangle

he counters and stacks tries to take side

move to counter with new guard posture, Sweep 3

We also try to do them so that each individual switches so each have a training focus and an "uke" roll

So,

Start in guard and do the first series I talked about. This will put you in mount. Now, the indivudual on the bottom will effect a passing escape to half guard, transition to full guard and begin the sequence himself. We'll do this for a round or two.

I think you should also do this sort of th ing from a standing small joint perspective as well just to get the idea of moving from position to position. For instance:

From wrist grab, same side-

Twisting lock from underneath (told you I didn't know Japaneese, I ceratinly cant spell it) to

strike to

fold into bent armbar, back to

hand transfer and strike to

standing kimura to roll to underhooking posture

knee strike

takedown via underhook

You geet the idea. The think I try to do, espically standing but working from the ground as well is to incorporate strikes as the positions are moved thru just to engrane the "stunning" aspect of any confrontation. That being said, it's more prevelant in my stand up joint work than my ground drills.

[bushido_man96]

I don't have a lot of experience in this area, but in the Ground Defense class that I did put on by the KLETC, this idea was part of the training. We would work on a sweep from the guard, and then work into transitioning to the mount, or something. After we had a few different things down, one guy would start on the bottom, work his way out, and the other would then work to something. He called it a "series," but it pretty much the same idea. I'd love to get more of it in.

[Daisho]

interesting thread, as I have a thread above about an arm bar, where I decided it would be of help to find a BJJ guy to help me work through some difficulty applying it from the ground.

I sent a message to a BJJ guy from LiveJournal, and he mentioned flow training, and laid it out in a similar manner. In our JJJ we don't usually go from what move to the next over and again, we typically just fight one another, and during the fight we are graded on whether we applied any techniques and how smooth we did them.

But I am interested to see flow training in action. I have a picture of what it would be in my mind, but has anyone come across any particularly good videos on youtube? The ones I've found are mostly just like our randori, or some role-playing slow-motion nonsense training.