There is so much value in training with different people. At Burton Grindhouse we have a ‘core’ of guys who turn up consistently and this is very valuable and important. It is however also very easy in this situation to adapt and refine your techniques to suit each person. When you train with a wider range of people this is much, much harder to do and your skill set, subsequently needs to be bigger, or at least more solid.
When rolling there are some people I can tap with the same subs over and over. With others I can’t get close to pulling off the same techniques, so invariably I end up tailoring my strategies to suit the opponent. This is understandable, but not necessarily best practice. I would imagine this is a common scenario all over the UK, if not the world, particularly at small clubs like ours.
Yesterday the learning curve continued at Leicester Shootfighters. This time there was no Dan or Jimmy but Dean Amasinger turned up as did Brent Crawley, both of whom are Rough House fighters. There were also a couple of the Leicester Shoot locals. The session was ground based and we looked at some basic ground work drills from guard and did some light rolling as well. This is where the experience of rolling with someone different plays a part. I spent most of the session working with Brent, but also had a light roll with Andre and Dean. The difference between these three was marked. Dean and Brent do a lot of work with Lee Livingstone at Bushido Academy in Nottingham and Dre is a Leicester shoot local. Dean and Brent were able to make themselves ‘heavy’ (I know Brent does a lot of wrestling) and particularly with Dean I found myself being quite passive. With Dre there was much more of a flow and rhythm (this appears to be a trait many of the Leicester guys demonstrate as it seems this is one of Nathan Leverton’s key coaching points in Jiu Jitsu). I should’ve really asked them how I felt in comparison to everyone else as my style is much more grappling/scrambling oriented as opposed to Jiu Jitsu.
The learning curve came in a rather unsurprising way however. My usual ‘tricks’ didn’t work and while I normally dominate position when grappling at Grindhouse, yesterday I found this much harder. I don’t think this is necessarily a gap in ability but more in familiarity. David and Matt are certainly as able skill wise as these guys, maybe even more so. But application is 99% of success. One notable learning point was when Nathan mentioned about ‘sprawling’ the hip if someone puts their foot on your hip to work position from bottom. A simple but effective technique, to which I sagely nodded my head and applied immediately. However, once I was underneath with Brent in my guard I realised how often I place the foot on the hip! Foot on, sprawl… move hips, Brent follows… foot on hip, sprawl…. Ad nauseum. Clearly this is an example of another of those techniques that I ‘get away’ with normally and had no back up when it was negated.
What did I learn then? I didn’t so much learn anything new, but I did have one point underlined, bold typed, highlighted, italicised and capitalised. I rely far too heavily on tried and tested techniques and strategies, but have no plan b for when they don’t work. So for now I have my hands full. Improve my footwork, guard and head movement stood up and also develop a plan b ground game for when the tool box is empty.
It’ll be interesting to see how these things apply in training with the Grindhouse lads this week, I’ll keep you posted!