Drills: Tennis Ball Jiu-Jitsu
Building Your Guard Retention
Guard retention is something that’s difficult to master or even remotely get comfortable with early on. There’s a ton of moving parts, everything from where your feet should go and when. The bend of your knees, the angles you use, and the framing you impose on the guard passer.
One of the attributes that is often misused or more accurately; the over use of grips.
White Belts have a tenancy to get death grips on the Gi or a body part. Often overlooking what other parts of their body should be doing. This tennis ball drill is pretty effective at forcing students to address other aspects of their guard retention.
I would like to note, you don’t actually need the tennis balls. I can instruct the bottom player to ball up their hands and never open them. If a student or students can’t keep their hands balled up, I have them grab their Gi top.
When I initiate this drill, I issue the restraint to the bottom player. In reality, you could have the top player do it for different reasons. For the guard retention drill, the bottom player will work on keeping the guard passer in front of them.
It’s important to build up leg dexterity, framing, and Hip Escaping. Along with the timing that goes along with the various independent movements.
Benefits Of The Drill:
Reduced over dependence on grips.
Increased focus on leg dexterity.
Improvement in creating angles/movement.
Understanding the nuance of framing.
Drills: Jiu-Jitsu Chess
When I was awarded my own Jiu-Jitsu program, one of the first things that I altered was our warm-ups. I absolutely hated the silly warm-ups that I was brought up on. It drove me nuts to have to run around in circles, do jumping jacks, crunches, and push-ups. Ultimately, what I wanted in it’s place was to have the warm-ups be more functional to a student…
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