Have you ever had the experience where your opponent puts you in a weird position and you have no idea what to do?

Here’s a good example of that:

When that happens in sparring you have three options.

Do the right thing, do the wrong thing, or do nothing.

By far the worst choice is doing nothing. That’s right, doing nothing is far worse than doing the wrong thing.

If you do the wrong thing, at least, you’ve experienced what not to do and can avoid it in the future.

You just improved your Jiu Jitsu.

You may be thinking, “If I do the wrong thing, won’t that give my opponent an opportunity to attack?”

The simple answer is, yes it will. But if you do nothing, your opponent will still be able to attack and you won’t have learnt anything.

So what can you do if you find yourself doing nothing?

Honestly, just do something. It’ll either be right or wrong but you’ve given yourself the opportunity to learn.

And if you end up in a bad position you get to work on your defences and escapes.

It’s a win-win.

This is a great attitude to have in training, but if keep doing the wrong thing in a competition you’re going to lose.

If you’re competing and you find yourself in an unfamiliar position or you’re waiting, reset to a different position.

This could be resetting to closed guard or stripping the grips and disengaging entirely AKA running away.

Whatever you do, put yourself into a position where you feel confident and know what to do.

Then you can start attacking.

I hope that makes sense. Try it the next time you’re training and see what happens.

Until next time,

– Tom