BJJ Training Tips: How To Choose A Swing Partner In BJJ

Time to roll, mat full of people. Use these BJJ training tips to improve your arsenal!

Yeah, there’s a fun list of like 100 different swing partners you could pair up with in BJJ class. This is not that list. The post below will provide you with some BJJ training tips that you can implement quickly. It will also help you explain the different types of people you will encounter and which ones to choose based on your goals.

Iron Sharpen Iron

I think before we get into the types of people, we first need to talk about determining and achieving your goals. We’ve all heard the phrase “iron sharpens iron.” Good? What does that mean? I used to cheat. All the time, in wrestling. Mainly because I didn’t know any better. I thought I was working on the system. But it turned out that I was just working myself. This is the main difference between being a champion or not. Or reaching your goals. But not.

To determine if you’re made of championship stuff, ask yourself this question: how do you work out when no one is watching?

Now back to how I cheated. I didn’t cheat to gain an advantage and I didn’t cheat to win. I deluded myself into thinking that I was “winning” by taking it easy in practice. When it came time to choose a partner, I usually chose someone who wasn’t too much of a challenge. I didn’t want to work too hard.

In the end, who does that hurt? Yo, iron sharpens iron, right? Well, I was choosing soft aluminum to sharpen my “iron” which would have no positive effect.

I wasn’t going to hone any skills using a material that was less sharp than me.

And it’s funny because I was very hypocritical about this topic. A situation I’m sure you’ve seen goes like this. You are doing an extra strength training or conditioning session at your gym. Sometimes, unfortunately, in my gym, they make us perform suicides or shuttles across the mat. If you don’t win your set, you’ll get extra push-ups and another run. How many times out of the corner of your eye have you seen someone not doing all of their assigned push-ups? And does it bother you? Because?

It shouldn’t bother us, but it does and it used to bother me a lot more. I would think to myself how they are cheating. Here I am doing as many reps as I can and this prankster is taking it easy. Two things: First, who are they kidding? Just themselves. If they don’t want to get stronger, that’s up to them. And second, I would turn around and pick an easy partner. This is what I meant when I called myself a hypocrite. So iron sharpens iron. You won’t get a better workout from people who are much worse than you. You just won’t.

BJJ Training Tips – Set Your BJJ Goals

Before choosing a rolling partner (note that I wrote rolling, not drilling), it’s important to determine what your goals are.

In choosing a BJJ swing partner, I think it would be beneficial to maybe set a weekly goal in addition to a monthly goal. This way, you can track your progress after a week instead of just trying for a day, seeing no results, and giving up.

So set a goal. Let’s say you’re a blue belt, one of your goals might be that when you roll into your black belt instructor, you want to keep him from getting past his guard and if he does, you want to get him back together as quickly as possible. possible. Keep in mind that your goals can, will, and should change depending on the type of partner you choose. And that’s how they break down.

BJJ Rolling Buddies

These are the 3 real types of people you can look to ride or train with, all with advantages and disadvantages depending on your goals.

1) The much better guy than you – these are people well above your skill level, like your instructor and the like. They own you almost the entire time you’re shooting.

Disadvantages – you can get discouraged by feeling that you are not getting better, nothing works!

Advantages – You’re getting better! Your survival game will improve. His guard retention and recomposition should improve, as should his submission defense and basic positioning.

Remember: iron sharpens iron!

2) The guy less skilled than you – these are people below your skill level, like maybe a new blue or white belt. You own them almost all the time rolling.

Disadvantages – You can develop bad habits as most things go against people of this skill level. You are not being tested during the roll.

Advantages – You can experiment, tweak and modify your game because you basically have a guinea pig on your guard to play with. These are the best training partners when you really want to work on or perfect a technique without getting torn apart. Once you get it working at this level, take it to a higher level.

3) The guy you’re with – these are maybe the 3-5 people in your school that give you a run for your money and vice versa. You trade positions or introductions and whoever “wins” tonight may not win tomorrow. More or less a launch.

Disadvantages – None that I can think of.

Advantages – Rolling with this jack lets you know where your game is. This will let you know if the things you’ve been experimenting with on the lower level type work on this level. If not, you have to practice more and adjust before trying the moves at the higher belts.

Now that we’ve looked at the 3 partner classes, can you see how your goals can change depending on who you’re up against?

BJJ Training Tips – Examples of BJJ Goals

I’ll start by making some assumptions so that my examples are standard.

1) You are still a blue belt.

2) You have 2 black, 3 brown, 5 purple, 15 blue, and 25 white belts.

3) You know their approximate skill levels.

One of your goals may be to get better at sweeping flowers. You’ve never been able to hit this sweep.

If we look at the 3 options for BJJ rolling partners, let’s make a selection. Since we haven’t been able to hit the floral sweep, we probably won’t do much better than us black belts. We probably don’t hit it regularly with guys at our skill level. So that leaves us with the people below us.

Pick a person below your skill level and only work on that for 2 rolls a night for a week. Choose two new white or blue belts and focus on putting yourself on guard and setting up the flower sweep. Perfect your technique. When you hit it, let them bar you somehow so you can rework it during the roll.

After a week, take your technique to the next level. See if it works against guys at or near your skill level.

No? Back to the drawing board. Yeah? Excellent! Try it at higher skill levels.

I used this method to seriously increase my success rate with triangles. I used to think that triangles just wouldn’t work for me. But I kept playing them on people I could flirt with relatively easily. I mean, if you don’t even secure it on a black belt, how will you know what adjustments to make? So I kept working on them against whites and blues and saw what mistakes I was making, and what worked and what didn’t.

If your technique isn’t working on a new white belt, you should probably come up with a new technique, right?

Another example of setting a goal and using this method could be improving your submission defense. Who better to prove that than someone who already owns you?

Make it your goal to survive a round against someone much better than you, every night for a week. Once you’ve mastered that, stick with that goal and add, say, no guard pass. So now you’re trying to master the submission defense and keep your guard up against someone who is much more advanced than you.

Do you now see how iron sharpens iron?

I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Do you have any BJJ training tips you’d like to share? Let me know.