rolling with a MUCH larger opponent

O

oxadiba

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Hi guys.
So i currently attend BJJ lessons which are going great, however during rolling time i often find it hard. There's this guy who is around 55 pounds heavier than me, and when it comes to rolling time he almost always wins. I know its not about winning, but it would be nice to win every now and then. We are both 2nd stripe white belts. I always get taken down pretty easily, and when he takes mount i find it difficult to get him off. When his in my guard he simply postures up and grabs my collar. I can't sweep him, if i go for triangle he just postures up, i can't go for armbars because his too postured up. I cant break the grip he has on my collar, i cant pull him down, and he simply wears out my legs and passes my guard. Its not that his strong, im just weak. Any advice or techniques that are good for my situation?

Thanks in advance,
 
Unfortunetly, there is no solution.

with the same level of techniques, the heavier/stronget person will win.

you just to learn more techniques but to be honest the heavier guy should play guard after tapping you once.
 
^^^
There is a fairly new guy to our little no gi jiu-jitsu club, and he is 6'9" and maybe 250 or so. He is strong as Frankenstein. Having learned basic posture and defense, I'm finding myself content just to avoid being put in bad situations and survive with him. If he really starts picking this stuff up, he will utterly annihilate every last one of us.

Life isn't fair
 
ya your pretty screwed. if your up against someone with a similar skill level who is also much stronger then its gonna be hard to catch him.

in my little grappling class we are brokejn up into "little" and "big " guys. little really only goes up to 160 lbs. then theres me at 175 and the rest of the pack at 200lbs. and bigger. im stuck with the big guys and it sucks.

just really really work on your technique i guess is all you can do. idk, big guys win. it sucks.
 
Watch Cobrinha fight open weight, seems like good advice. You gota move your whole body around the elbows to take the back. The back is the only position your lesser size is an advantage.

 
Yeah, that's inconvenient. If it helps at all, although I'm sure it won't, you're not really expected to beat someone that much larger than you if you have similar skill levels. Is there a reason you roll with him? Is it because you want to push yourself? Does he single you out? Is there a shortage of bodies at your gym?

In all my experience the only time we roll with size mismatches is if the smaller guy is less experienced. It sounds like you're pretty stuck against him if he just muscles you around and you aren't learning anything. I would try to roll with smaller people if possible.
 




All those videos are not 145 vs 250 ofc. Like every one said, you have to have better technique if your opponent is bigger.
 
This topic comes up at least twice a month. It is true, if your skills is roughly equal the bigger stronger guy will win. It is hard to submit someone bigger and stronger from the bottom. Learn some arm drags so that you can take the bag. Use submissions more to set up sweeps than to actually submit the guy and get on top. When on top, play a smart top game. I am a big guy and people who try to use only their weight on top of me don't do nearly as well as people who shift their position around as I move (check out SGBI top control series if you need to see what I mean). People always talk about how strong I am and heavy I am but those people that complain are the same people who are using their power and strength and not technique to try to defeat me (I don't think I get triangle/armbars from bottom all the time because I am strong although my weight does help my sweep game quite a bit as well as top control and occasionally sub and sweep defense).Learn to take the back whenever possible as that negates almost all of the size difference. User your speed advantage because anyone 55lbs bigger than you will likely be slower than you. I am slower than most of the people I roll with slow I try to play a game of counters. If you are faster than your opponent you will have an advantage in this game but only if you spend time learning how to read your opponent and commit to changing your game in response to what they give you.
Be strategic dude. It may take time, but being smaller than your opponent forces you to be dynamic and have good technique. Being big like me means that I don't get the adversity I need to improve.
 
What an inspiration Marcelo is for us little guys. God, Ricco was acting like a jerk.
 
I've been really struggling with this myself. I've found that against people my size I like to pull guard and work from there, but with the bigger dudes I try and stay off my back because its so hard to move them if they have good posture.
 
I often roll with a guy about 80-90 pounds heavier , i cant sweep him or get an armbar / guillotine .
What usually works is armdrag and go to the back , because im way faster.

And shrimping backwards creating space, foot on his hips or pushing off on his knee.

Just sharing my white belt experience against monsters.
 
55lbs sadly is about par of the course for me. From guard I work a lot of collar control, bump sweeps into a guillotine then into a kimura then back to the bump sweep. The trick is making sure they can't settle down and really push that weight. From starting I love armdrags. If it all possible try to take the top position because it atleast marginally minimizes the size advantage since they can't quite use their size advantage as much. Frankly, it's a bitch though if you are similarly matched on skills and he just has a good portion of weight on you. There is a guy at my gym that weighs nearly double me and it is a pain in the ass even though I am quite a bit better just because I can't even close my damn guard on him and he despises tapping to me so will always try to muscle out of shit.
 
i'm 150 & i often roll with guys 60-80 lbs heavier than me. getting pinned is a bitch but when their sweat gets in your mouth when you gasp for breathe, that's a motherfucker, LOL!

no time limit sessions can be good for you since they'll most likely gas first as long as your sub defense is tight.
 
Just look at it as an opportunity to get better.

You'll be forced to work on your technique and weaknesses in your current game like guard retention, sweeps, escapes from side control, escapes from mount, etc. You will have to work on these to find any success both in the short term against this heavier guy and in the long term in BJJ.

While you're working on your weaknesses your bigger training partner will most likely default to his strengths which in the long run will make his game much less well rounded than yours. This is the reason so many big guys struggle long term w/ BJJ. Right now he's a two stripe white belt that's only practicing things that work on you as a smaller opponent. In BJJ terms what he's doing is irrelevant because you don't need technique if you're a bigger person in order to beat up a smaller person given equal skill levels.

So just keep learning and keep training. You'll be better off for it.
 
As a small guy myself I am trying the deep half guard, we'll see whether it works for me.
 
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