does your instructor set time out for you to grapple all out, places i have been usually let people work on moves, setups, escapes etc; but at some point they have time set aside for all the people attending to go hard. one of the guys who ran one of the places i went to said he did it, so people would get a real feel for how good they were in regards to tech, strategy and conditioning; saying alot of times when people roll easy a false sense of security is created in both the inferior and superior guy (rank/exp/etc). Basically stating how many people use the i got caught cus i was just training or whatnot or people feeling they are better or more functional w/submissions, takedowns, escapes, ground control than they really are because everyone is going easy. so he insists on having everyone spend time going hard when grappling to see how effective or ineffective they are in regards to various tech/etc they do this at your school
we do lots of drills that are fast and intense such as first point wins, or sweep, pass or submit. there's also first takedown wins. then again, every sparring session is an all out war.
kind of. we roll pretty mellow, but some of the junior instructors will tell us to go hard and if there are people that want to go hard, they can. They just don't push us to roll with everything we've got. They would rather us focus on technique at a slower pace.
I use my training partners for training purposes. Usually that entails improving technique, however I will step it up (to a certain degree) in preparation for competition(s) at the appropriate time(s).
at my school we do conditioning, learn some techniques and work on those the whole class at a slower pace, take turns rolling with classmates, and then at the end we all take turns going hard against our instructor.
I would say its the complete opposite at my gym - its all out war until we're told to focus on specific aspects of comp - ie gward passing, no subs, takedowns only.
in my gym we warm up for 10-20mins, then we train verious techniques for 40mins then we roll hard for 30mins. Sometimes we practice guard passing or escapes. I dont think id enjoy my BJJ that much if i didnt roll daily.
rolling light or medium is good; don't get me wrong, but i don't want to do it all the time. As one instructor told me u can't see if u ca n really apply or def something until ur in the heat of the situation; once you opp is going hard and pputting pressure or really resisting you might find your game to be ineffective
Your trainer hit the nail on the head. You can train technique and look great doing it, but its totally different when your opponent is resisting and trying to submit you at the same time. This is why i try and enter small tournys whenever i can because even rolling hard in the gym is totally different than competitive rolling with rules.
I find that its not so much down to the instructor as down to the people rolling. We do specific sparring (i.e., with a predetermined end point, like start in guard, then restarting if somebody passes, sweeps or submits), then at the end of class there is free sparring. At that point, some people like to go all out, some don't. Personally, I tend to be relatively passive: I treat rolling as a chance to improve my technique, not a competition. There are many others at my club who prefer a much more aggressive roll. Matter of personality. Having said that, I am a big fan of the 'aliveness' ethos made famous by Matt Thornton. Progressive resistance is an integral part of developing your abilities in BJJ, or indeed any combat sport. E.g., the way Indrek Reiland teaches his half-guard instructional.
Rolling is like recess. You go to school, learn and then get to play. Geez, what would training be without rolling at the end of class?
when I'm helping people get ready fro a competition I will go all out and use my strength speed and technique to get them used to the pace of competitions. I'll even roll my competition strength just to test it out, but I don't do it most the time or even real regularly. Its good to do, but I think rolling normally allows me to focus on hitting the techniques and not powering and slipping through things.
At my gym we train technique for an hour then 30 minutes of live rolling at the end. Split up into rounds somewhere between 6 and 10 minutes with 2 or 3 minutes in between. We almost always go 100% while live rolling at the end. Probably 1 day a month our instructor will have us just "flow" instead of full resistance rolling. I agree with bill_carson, how could anyone stand not rolling at the end of class after learning techniques. It;s like getting new toys then not being able to play with them. edit/something else: we go probably more about 80% while rolling at the end, its does get turned up a lot at tournaments, but not too much harder because we go so hard at practice
