Technique from all Angles

In Sunday’s class, we were reflecting on how there is a tendency in the BJJ community to teach guard and moves from the guard with attention to technical details. It’s awesome. As a result, the community, as a whole, are solid guard players.

That same tendency seems to paint everything else in BJJ with a much broader brush. Perhaps this is because, anytime you look across the mats in a grappling class, you’re bound to see about 50% of the matches engaged in guard or some related position. Guard is super important. It’s a real strength of the BJJ community generally and BJJ players specifically.

But, we wondered, why not treat all positions with the same lavish attention to detail? Mount position only gets better if you know and pay attention to details. Takedowns only improve with technique. So on Sunday we spent our final class of “rear mount December” discussing the small details of the armbar from the back. We figured it would be a fantastic transition to “Armbar January.”