Ground game when you have poor flexibility

Hi

I have poor flexibility, I am working on it but I am under no illusion it will never be great.
From what I understand flexibility is key for BJJ/grappling.
What works well for people with poor flexibility ?
How do they make up for it ?
What type of game should I develop ?
Thanks in advance for your answers

 

Marcelo Garcia.

 

So you're saying all TS needs to do is become Marcelo Garcia, and his Jiu Jitsu will improve?

:icon_chee

 

Strength is a flexibility replacement.

 

Makes sense to me. Aside from minor logistical issues, it's the perfect solution.

 

What's your frame, athleticism level, etc. A stocky person would likely have a more forgiving frame to being inflexible vs a lanky person.

 

Training is the key. Flexibility helps retaining bottom guard. If you are not flexible you have to break away sooner.

 

Joint flexibility is a bonus but hardly a prerequisite for BJJ. An inflexible guy who understands how to move his hips, how to create frames, how to bridge etc, is going to look and feel a lot more flexible and mobile than a flexible guy who doesn't know how to move and simply compensates by going to extremes in the range of motion, which is also something you want to avoid anyways because you are always weak at the extreme end of your ROM.

 

IMO if you need to use extreme flexibility you already screwed up somewhere beforehand.

 

I also came here to say Marcelo Garcia.

Though Bernardo Faria is another person you could emulate.

In general, lack of flexibility is only a problem for playing a specific inversion heavy type of open guard. It's very popular but by no means necessary to be good at BJJ. Lucas Lepri, Otavio Sousa, Rodolfo Viera, none of these champs rely on a ton of flexibility. Just don't make spider and DLR/RDLR core parts of your open guard game and you should be okay. Focus on sitting guards and 'getting under' guards like X and deep half, not much flexibility needed at all.

 

Well, you won't be like Aoki but you can get surprising results if you really work on it. I've always been one of the stiffest guys at the dojo (and everywhere else to be true) and could barely grab my own ankles while standing-up, even after more than two years of BJJ and getting my blue belt. I decided to fix that by really focusing on stretching after my daily work-outs (and not just do the stretching included in the BJJ class or something half-assed at the end of the session) and I reached my toes after only five days.

I thought it would be very slow and take months to do that. My flexibility ceiling is probably not very high, but I still surpassed my expectations very fast once I decided to focus on it. I ended up being a bit mad at myself because I should have done it sooner, and I would if I knew I'd already have some progress.

 

Keep training flexibility, it'll take a few months but eventually you'll get there. You might not ever be able to scratch your ears with your toes like BJ, but a tight rubber guard is in your future.

 

Thank you for your answers. Every post has been very useful.
I am not lanky, I am not stocky either. I am a 34 yo average guy who has just taken up luta livre for fun. I suppose I could use strength to make up for my poor flexibility but that would go against the very logic of BJJ/grappling.
I guess watching Shinya Aoki and Eddy Bravo's videos got me to think that BJJ was all about hyperflexibility I was wrong obviously.

 

Go to wrestling class, learn to pin and pressure.

 

Maybe I'm underestimating my own level of flexibility but I view myself as having below average flexibility and found that it wasn't a huge problem to play any of these guards

 

Hey elturco. You can defiantly increase flexibility with stretching but you can also adopt certain aspects to your game that will allow you to achieve the same results.... for example a low flexibility but effective move from guard would be https://youtu.be/T6v2iXiqNso . You always have to adopt your game to your opponent but remember everything in life.... including jiu jitsu includes time and effort... I have participated in Yoga and chiropractic service and increased my flexibility. All the best OSSS

 

Flexibility is like A-1 sauce.

It's nice to have but your steak doesn't need it. Just learn how to cook better steak and stop using the sauce to cover your lack of skills.

 

That's the most delicious way of putting it I've ever heard.

Also, correct.

 

And now I want steak. Goddamnit.

 

What's the equivalent of just making the steak sous-vide in this analogy? Hmm