Let me start off by saying I have been training at this gym for around 2 years for roughly 6 hours a week and it has improved my skills tremendously.

Typical class used to do about 1.5 hours of drilling and about .5 hours of sparring per session.

We have a few pro fighters in our gym, some who have had some success in small local shows and smaller promotions like KOTC.

Recently my instructor and several students have become supporters of what they call "flow grappling" which has supplanted just regular old no gi grappling sparring. (We still spar standing up as we always have).

I will describe "flow grappling" as sparring in which you let your opponent work a move against you and then counter it.

So say I am in someones guard and he goes for an arm bar during a "flow grappling" session, I am supposed to let him get the armbar and then work the escape. Likewise he will let me pass his guard and then I will let him work to get his guard back. As opposed to a regular sparring session where If smell a submission coming I will just pull my arm away or what not.

The problem I have with this is that we are only supposed to be going at 25% speed and letting our "flow grappling" partners get moves on us that we normally would not. So a new guy is getting armbars on me because I am letting him, as opposed to the normal chain of events of me passing his guard and tapping him out in about a minute or I am lettin newbs escape from my mount, when I would normaly control them for the mount or cross body for the entire 5 min round.

The problem I have with this "flow grappling" is that it is rehearsed, and not "alive", it doesnt in my opinion teach timing or set up for proper application of submission or escapes against resisting opponents. Which is one of the reason why grappling is so effective anyway is the ability to spar at 100% intensity against a resisting opponent the techniques safely.

If you stopped sparring in BJJ, it will eventually become just like japanese jui-jitsu, watered down with ineffective techniques that you cant apply against a resisting opponent because you have no timing or set up.

Recently alot of our fighters have been getting owned on the ground, and while our school has always been know for its striking, I dont think "flow grappling" is helping matters.

I have been thinking about talking this over with my instructor, but I wanted to get some opinons first.

Thoughts?

Sounds like a good supplement IMO, but not a replacement.

Oh I think it has its place, and is useful like 1 weeek right before a fight and a form of "light grappling" as a fighter peaks for his fight, injured fighters, and what not.

But I know the only way I ever got better was from sparring and drilling technique. I think it was many months before I actually armbarred someone from the guard and it was my sense of set up and timing from the previous months of sparring that allowed me to do it.

Sounds like a good supplement IMO, but not a replacement.
Ditto. First saw this on a Roy Harris DVD and thought what the heck, is this aikido?

But as a variation of regular drilling it sounds great, and wish we did it more.

What we do instead, is to start introducing resistance points into our drilling. As the recipient of a technique or move, you start to feel where a shift in posture or slightly repositionsing your limbs or hips might make it harder for the person initiating the drill to pull it off. So you start to "cheat" and make it tougher, but not impossible, for your partner to do the drill, you try to force your partner to be cleaner in the application or to figure out a work-around. This got me about 6" into the air on a practice sweep that otherwise would have been much less dramatic, just a tip over onto the mat. Sometimes if you resist and THEN it works...it works pretty well indeed.

Then of course the instructor says, "and if he posts his arm here" which completely changes the drill and and the move gets worked in an altogether different way. I assume this is the way most gyms (except maybe Roy Harris's) practice since my club is pretty middle of the road.

Actually I just wish we had a full hour of drilling every class, but then we'd have a lot longer class. Right now conditioning in the beginning and rolling at the end take up a lot of time.

I don't think you'd want to replace proper hard rolling, but this type of training definitely has its place. I'd ratchet up the intensity to 60-70% though.
This type of training can help to:
* Give you a chance to try new things without fear of a beatdown if you mess up
* Put together combinations
* Give you mileage on the ground i.e. you get to try and see lots of different positions rather than sticking to one position like you mentioned above
* See what's going on. This is extremely important. A lot of beginners will go hard in their grapple but because they are grappling so fast they don't see opportunities or mistakes

I will also disagree that your timing would have improved as quickly will full intensity grappling than if you start slowly and then increase the resistance and speed. Timing comes from having seen something happen before and recognising a pattern. You will recognise the pattern faster if you slow things down first.

We did this for newaza in judo last week, and I've done it as a BJJ warmup at 30% intensity. Is it replacing your regualar 100% sparring? Maybe then it's bullshido, but it's a valid training tool for reasons outlined by JonnyS. To get the most out of it (and any reduced intensity sparring) you need a partner that can really work with you. I've done this drill and had partners go 100% for the submission which ruins the drill.

We do this just to warm up some times.

I agree with everything that JohnnyS said and will add this:

- When you flow grapple, you will be placed into positions that you will usually not be able to get out of in a 100% match, it will really help you gain understanding for how to get out of the situation. Plus when you are in a position where you rely on one escape due to habbit, it will let you try other escapes that you know, but are less comfortable with.

Having said that, I think if your club is just doing flow grappling ALL the time, then you should get out and find a place that spars 100% as well. It definately has it's place though. Maybe talk to the instructor, maybe he has plans for it... something like flow grappling for a month to break everyone's bad habbits or something. Who knows.

Asking him is the best way to find out :)

So wait, are you saying your school has completely replaced free sparring with flow drills? Or is there just an increased emphasis?

We've been doing this type of exercise for as long as I've been at our gym. Possibly because we're under Roy Harris.
I like it.

But if it ever were to replace regular rolling, I'd quit.

usely this type of grappling happens when you grappling someone of a higher belt. They concide a small amount of mistakes and transition to other positions. sometimes its a good learning experience but it can give false since of security, thats when he snaps the sub on a brings you back to reality. not a replacement as siad before.

So wait, are you saying your school has completely replaced free sparring with flow drills? Or is there just an increased emphasis?

I am not sure yet but we havent actually sparred on the ground for a month or so.

I dont think this type of training is totally worthless for many of the reasons mentioned above, but I am defineatly going to say something to my instructor.

I dont understand it, the stand up sparring in the gym is great and our guys always seem to have the advantage in stand up, most of our fighters win with striking.

The problem is that there really isnt any other mma gyms in my area, there is a bjj school, who compete in grappling tournaments but no mma.

This sounds like the ground equivalent of "French Randori" where you let one guy get the throw, then he lets you, etc. I have a hard time understaning that - the sets ups seem so artificial.

However, this would seem to make more sense from the ground, where the rolling nature would allow smother transitions from one technique to the other. Its real hard to change positions from osoto gari or uchi mata - or any throw - into another throw, since your ass is on the ground.

A stated before, sounds like a good supplement, but not for breakfast lunch and dinner.

When I think of the concept of "flow" grappling and exercises around that, I think of where is the primary place that "flow" is most important? I would say in transitions first. Second would be in flowing through the steps of finalizing a submission. Third would be flowing through escapes.

I know tension does prevent speed in transition. So drills to help transition flow would be good. However, if you're noticing as you say that the exercises in class are more promoting sloppy technique than they are helping people's speed in transitions, this is something I definitely would talk over with your instructor. I guarantee you Roy Harris isn't sloppy in techniques when he's doing this, and I've seen this on videos too. He is meticulous and detailed. His people I've seen at NAGA aren't sloppy either. They have flow and move between positions well.

Maybe it's not a problem with the exercise itself, but with your lazy-ass monkey traning partners' implementation of it. If they're being sloppy, make their ass tap like the finale in "Drumline". Once they're tired of making up the new beat to a hip-hop song every 15 seconds, they'll sharpen up real quick.

We do this too, its called "transitional sparring" we use it to get an idea of lock flows and so on into our heads but it necver takes up more than say 15-20 minutes of a 2 hour session.

As Bizzaro said I think some of it happens incidentally when you roll with more experienced people, if it didn't you would never land anything or change position.

And I have worked throw for throw and ne waza the same way, it's good practice but nothing beats full resistance sparring.

At the skill level I am at I take all the practice I can get, I sure as hell need it.