How you can train smarter, safer, and for longer.
The Juyukai is about friends getting together to grapple and have fun. It’s about learning and growing together in a safe environment. It’s about being efficient and not getting hurt.
In order to achieve these objectives, and to help you improve your grappling, I’ve come up with 8 principles.
These 8 key principles of training ensure you can train in a safe place and they guarantee you’ll learn something. But they’re flexible enough to allow you to explore different styles and allow you to do the kind of training that is suitable for you.
1. Longevity
Here at the Juyukai we understand martial arts are a long journey. It takes years to master striking, throwing, and grappling.
Therefore, you shouldn’t be trying to ‘win’ in training.
Now, if we’re talking self-defense or a competition, you need to do everything in your power to win. But in training, the focus is on longevity.
When people are competitive in training, they’re not seeing the bigger picture.
Remember, it’s a years-long journey. And simply trying to win in that moment is insignificant to this journey.
The way to master grappling is to be in it for the long haul.
2. Alignment
The only way to commit and continue on the long journey is by staying injury-free. This is where posture (alignment) is important.
There are 3 parts to alignment: Posture. Structure. Base.
Not only are they important for your efficiency but they also keep you safe.
Let’s say, for example, you’re in a compromised position. And let’s say your back isn’t straight (in other words your posture is bad).
By trying to force your way out of this position with improper alignment, there’s an injury risk. You could hurt yourself. Or you could hurt your partner.
By understanding alignment your game will be more efficient. And you’ll be safer from injury.
So you’ll have all-important longevity.
3. Protect yourself and your training partner
Have you noticed a pattern yet? We love longevity at the Juyukai.
We want to train together for as long as possible. And to do that we need to stay injury-free.
So protect yourself. And protect your partner.
4. Move better
You can protect yourself by moving better. By being in control.
Control will keep you and your partner safe. It means you can stop or let go of a submission at any time. It means you’re not rushing to finish the armbar. You’re not cranking on any joints.
It is also the way to improve your skills.
Slow things way down to get better at moving well. When you go slow you can see the finer details of movements. And when you move well you’ll have the control pause mid-movement to make adjustments. That way you can explore the possibilities and variations.
But if you’re going full speed and focussing only on completing the move, you’ll miss these subtleties. And you might hurt your partner.
5. Focus on concepts
Remember how I said it takes years to master all this stuff? Well, that’s because there are thousands of techniques. And new ones are popping up all the time.
It’s impossible to learn them all. But it is possible to learn the building blocks of these techniques – the concepts.
When you understand the core concepts of grappling you’ll see how the techniques work. So you’ll be able to break them down.
Even the new ones.
6. Don’t revert to strength or flexibility
Until it’s time to. 🙂
We’ve all done this at some time. Let’s say you were trying a throw, a take-down, or a guard sweep. You hadn’t quite figured out the finer details of the technique yet. But you completed it because of your strength.
You could force it through to the end by pure brute force alone.
But, the thing is, if you fall back to your strength or flexibility when practicing skills, you are robbing yourself of getting better at grappling. That time you forced the guard sweep didn’t help you get better at guard sweeps.
The way to get better is to practice the concepts and fine-tune the techniques.
Later (after you’ve got the movement) you can add in strength and flexibility.
7. Less free-rolling, more focussed-rolling
Rolling and sparring is fun. And if you’ve ever trained at a large gym, chances are you’ve done a lot of it. And chances are high it was free-rolling.
But focussed-rolling will help you get the most out of your game.
Rather than free-rolling, I like to focus more on a gamified methodology. The focus is on position and situational practice with limitations set to handicap you.
But don’t worry, these limitations will boost your game.
8. Everyone is different every day
Finally, we all have different body types with different backgrounds. And we all came to grappling for different reasons.
So you don’t need to train the same way as everyone else. You can find the style that suits you. And you can train at the intensity you’re comfortable with.
Let’s be honest. Chances are that this is a hobby for you.
You have other commitments and responsibilities. So when you wake up the day after training, you need to be able to get on with those things. This is more difficult if you get hurt at practice.
So you might want to go easy during practice. Or you might want to avoid certain positions. And that’s perfectly OK.
Listen to your body and remember the key point is to train for longevity.