What to Expect On Your First Day

[Memnoch1207]

"Spazzed out."

So wrong, and yet so funny.

Might want to add something in there to encourage wing chun people to struggle as hard as they can during sparring and / or foam at the mouth while raving about chi not working on smelly yoga mats and also my arms are twisted and how the hell am I supposed to do chi sau when you're sitting on my face goddam it gays.

That's just too fuckin' funny!

[Teh El Macho]

BJJ doesn't drill breakfalling nearly as much as judo since throws are not the emphasis. It varies of school to school, but most seem to just do breakfalls down the length of the mat a couple times at the start of class.

Ah, I see. Thanks for the explanation. Well, I have another question, and I don't know if that fits in this particular thread. Since I started BJJ (and reading a bit about wrestling), I've seen the term takedown a lot. What exactly is a takedown? What's differenciates it from a throw? I sort of assume that a takedown is a throw with a transition to ground control and sumbmission. Would that be a correct assumption?

[Aesopian]

Takedown is just the general term for something that brings them to the ground (other than pulling guard). A throw is a takedown. Double and single legs are takedowns. I don't think anyone is really making a conscious effort to differentiate between throws and takedowns -- that's just what people in BJJ tend to call them.

[Yrkoon9]

I need to find the Gracie article published in the newspaper: "If you want your face smashed, your arms broken......"

[Teh El Macho]

Takedown is just the general term for something that brings them to the ground (other than pulling guard). A throw is a takedown. Double and single legs are takedowns. I don't think anyone is really making a conscious effort to differentiate between throws and takedowns -- that's just what people in BJJ tend to call them.

Thanks for the explanation :)

[Bang!]

At what point do you introduce positional hierarchy? I ask because I've been rolling a bit more recently and have met a number of people less experienced than myself. Based on the advice that I've been given -- on this site and elsewhere -- it's positional control that a newbie should really be after; consequently, I believe that giving them context ("It's better to move into this position, worse to move into this one") helps them orient themselves quite a bit.

[Grashnak]

I need to find the Gracie article published in the newspaper: "If you want your face smashed, your arms broken......"

Don't forget the big-ass ugly ears you end up with.... eeeewwwwwww.

[Aesopian]

I haven't seen the positional hierachy formally taught at my school. I'm one of the guys who will grab white belts and explain it to them, or show them when they are doing their first lesson.

[Phrost]

A lot of times we'll just throw noobs into the fire and hope they pick things up along the way because we've got people training for fights constantly. But normally we use a basic position-flow drill to illustrate the heirarchy/flow of positions, which goes: top guard, top half guard, mount, side control, knee on belly, kesa, north south (with arm trapped), referee's position top turtle, and then top turtle with hooks in. At which point, the bottom guy rolls into top guard (compliantly, for the purposes of the drill), and then it goes from there with the roles reversed.

Obviously you don't want to give up certian positions (like side control) once you've achieved them (unless you just can't do anything with it), but it helps our noobs get used to the fundamental positions and get it in there heads where they should be trying to get to from a bad position while avoiding submissions.

Once they get it down, we'll drill either escaping from each inferior position to a superior one (back to guard at least), while the other guy works to improve or maintain a the superior position.

[UltimateGaijin]

"At most schools the class concludes with live sparring."

wot is this LIVE SPARRING that bjjers talk about? is it ifferent to SPARRING in judo, MT, KK, etc?