"Driller's are Killer's"

[yetanother]

As a whitebelt I didn't know a sweep from closed guard. My friend was also a whitebelt, for literally 15 minutes before class he forced me to do sit up sweeps until I was exhausted. 15 minutes of pure drilling is actually harder than it sounds. To this day as purple it's probably my favorite sweep from closed guard.

Here's the thing. I find drilling like that really, really boring. I'm the kind of guy that likes to talk with my partner about random stuff when drilling and mostly enjoy sparring. I remember once pairing up with one of the best guys in the gym, he was a bit of a prodigy. This guy just drilled non-stop without talking, it was quite intense but made me understand why he was so good. It's great but I just can't be bothered to drill like that as it takes the fun out for me.

What I would also add though is some guys hide behind 'drillers make killers' to avoid sparring. It's rare but sometimes you get guys who barely ever spar and suck because of it. If you can do both I suppose.

I don't really like drilling random shit in class. Drilling my own stuff and getting slick at moves is fun for me.

 

[Whitebeltatlife]

I don't really like drilling random shit in class. Drilling my own stuff and getting slick at moves is fun for me.

Completely agree. I've NEVER liked spider guard. It's a great guard, just not for me. My gym has an affinity for it though that doesn't help. I've literally never been taught guillotines or much butterfly so I try and figure that stuff out myself. There's no point drilling stuff you dislike which means I've wasted hours doing spider stuff I will never use.

 

[NSchoke]

High level wrestlers drill a ton, high level Judo players too. These are both older, more established sports that have more established and better funded training models.

For me, I continue to drill my "A" game because I want there to be no delay on pulling the trigger when the opportunity presents itself. It needs to be razor sharp if/when I'm rolling with good blackbelts.

 

[CFGroup]

Spending my COVID year drilling at least a couple of hours a day, Ukemi out on a strip of grass, plus a lot of other training shit six days a week.

The resistance tube Uchikomi hour and a half is building all these weird muscle groups I've never seen. The inside bicep is this huge band inside my upper arm now, and there's a second layer of lat band I've never seen...

Now that Nov 3rd flushed the toilet, we can start to get this virus under control I'm thinking another six months of drilling and grip fighting and snapping Kazushi are going to be a whole different universe back at the club.

I'd never dedicated a whole system to resistance tube's before, just messed around 15 minutes or so a workout.

 

[yetanother]

There's no point drilling stuff you dislike which means I've wasted hours doing spider stuff I will never use.

I'll use stuff that's not super fun if I have too.

 

[backlight]

Going to be contrary here, but I'm not a fan of resistance bands.

The issue being that in judo, the kuzushi-tsukuri-kake chain (tsukuri-kuzushi-kake also) goes from high resistance to low, whereas with bands you're going from low resistance to high.

So if at all possible I'd advise using pulleys.

 

[jack36767]

You do understand that you can drill hard for cardio. Learning how to execute whilst not at your physical peak minutes into a match.

Your partner can and should provide appropriate “feel”. So it’s not just going through motions

if you want your timing on setups to be on point you’d better drill. And actually drill hard.

there is a place for play wrestling/flow rolling, live rolling, light drilling, hard drilling, positional drilling, bjj with a few notable exceptions sucks at doing this well.

Go into any halfway competent Judo, wrestling, boxing or Mai Tai gym.. there are drills and ways of practicing. That have specific development purposes and vary in intensity. And drilling is the fastest way to get someone who sucks into someone actually competent.

They have established systems that develop talent and swim in far bigger ponds where you find our real quick what doesn’t work

 

[CFGroup]

Going to be contrary here, but I'm not a fan of resistance bands.

The issue being that in judo, the kuzushi-tsukuri-kake chain (tsukuri-kuzushi-kake also) goes from high resistance to low, whereas with bands you're going from low resistance to high.

So if at all possible I'd advise using pulleys.

True, but a hour and a half allows me to work the Uchikomi in both directions light resistance to heavy and then heavy to light.

So some sets are facing the tubes, some sets facing away.

It's a weird thing I've developed...but fuck all I've had tons of time to do it.

Plus it's not a replacement for mat time at the club, it's a crutch to get me through till I can train with responding countering resistance again. I'm just not in a place where I can risk the health of the people around me going back.

Ultimatly in the perfect world that I had a pulley system...in my home gym...welp...it would be superior.

 

[dimmyfinster]

IMO ten years ago in BJJ drilling was super underrated and so was positional sparring.

Now I think drilling gets more of the recognition of deserves, but positional sparring is still super underrated.

 

[Chandler sama]

I'm going to disagree slightly here and say its usually overrated. For things like wrestling, boxing, Judo, etc its really important. Those sports require quick reactions and responses, so you don't have time to think. BJJ also has this, but to a much lesser extent and there is no need to be super fast in Bjj. I can't think of any boxers wrestlers or judoka with slow reactions, but there are bjj players who I would say aren't particularly fast. I'd say 75% of what Roger Gracie or Gordon Ryan do has nothing to do with speed and they could easily go through a check list in their head of what to do next when performing a technique. Drilling can be important in the beginning when you don't know how to do a move, but after a certain point, which for some moves will come quickly, there will be diminishing returns.

Another thing to keep in mind is that everyone is limited by their knowledge of technique. If you don't know how to do an anklelock well, practicing it 1000 times won't help much. You'd be much better off learning more about the technique and then practicing it 10 times. For most bjj moves the feel and reactions of others is more important than the speed that muscle memory can give you.

There are of course moves in Bjj that could benefit from drilling, but they aren't often the ones that get drilled. Things like technical standups, bridges, inversions, etc IMO could benifit from being drilled more, but I think the gains from drilling armbars will run out fairly soon.

 

[NSchoke]

Danaher/Gordon drill technique fairly heavily. You can tell Gordon isn't a "Flow with the Go" guy in the way he moves and the way he breaks down technique. He knows the curriculum/system very well.

"Danaher class structure-
A few notes about the structure of the class :
There is no warm up. You are expected to warm up yourself. John starts right with teaching technique. John speaks softly and only shows each move twice. So pay careful attention. He shows 2-4 conceptually linked techniques and drills after each one. After the technique we go to rolling. 4 rounds of rolling starting from the feet. So we have full takedowns on each roll.

After class, John will either work with additional drills with the pro guys, give a lecture, promote someone, conduct additional takedown work or end class. Then we'll just continue training on our own or cool down."

I know they have added positional training in since EBI also.

This seems very similar to a D1 wrestling practice without conditioning from what I've seen.

 

[nefti]

Imho strice positional sparring is mkre important than drilling.

 

[Coconutwater]

Bjj most definitely is not the most conscious about drilling of the combat sports

Tide is definitely changing though, not to generalize, but old-school BJJ academies emphasize rolling a lot.

But modern schools apply more drilling rather than technique 1, 2, 3 then ROLL!

 

[shunyata]

Danaher/Gordon drill technique fairly heavily. You can tell Gordon isn't a "Flow with the Go" guy in the way he moves and the way he breaks down technique. He knows the curriculum/system very well.

"Danaher class structure-
A few notes about the structure of the class :
There is no warm up. You are expected to warm up yourself. John starts right with teaching technique. John speaks softly and only shows each move twice. So pay careful attention. He shows 2-4 conceptually linked techniques and drills after each one. After the technique we go to rolling. 4 rounds of rolling starting from the feet. So we have full takedowns on each roll.

After class, John will either work with additional drills with the pro guys, give a lecture, promote someone, conduct additional takedown work or end class. Then we'll just continue training on our own or cool down."

I know they have added positional training in since EBI also.

This seems very similar to a D1 wrestling practice without conditioning from what I've seen.

This is the Way.

 

[jack36767]

Tide is definitely changing though, not to generalize, but old-school BJJ academies emphasize rolling a lot.

But modern schools apply more drilling rather than technique 1, 2, 3 then ROLL!

I’m sure they have started doing it more. But it’s still nowhere on the level of and as systemized as the other major combat sports.