09/08/2025
Exactly......
Coaching martial arts has been my job for a long time now, but I also love being a student. Whenever possible I’ll attend a seminar, or a lesson.
Over this last year I’ve had the opportunity to take classes with some world class competitors. They’ll show what they’re using at the highest levels of competition. Much of the material will be “new,” in the sense that it’s not something I normally teach, or do—and—at the end of it, I’m lucky if I walk away from it one thing—one sentence in a notebook, one technical detail I “might” use.
This isn’t a slam on those instructors. There is no doubt they’re phenomenal at what they do. And there is no doubt that what they’re teaching they can make work. It’s just that what they’re showing isn’t something I, as a 55-year-old grappler am ever going to use, and it’s not something I think most students will find efficient, useful on a regular basis, or even necessary. In short, it isn’t fundamental, and fundamental Jiu-Jitsu is the only kind of Jiu-Jitsu I teach, or find interesting.
By way of contrast, we just had coach Henry Akins here at SBG headquarters, in Portland, for a weekend seminar. He taught three hours yesterday, and three hours today. The subject was mount maintenance—how to hold the position. The structure (base and posture/the shape of your skeleton), and connections (where your base and posture/skeleton meets their base and posture/skeleton).
The majority of the “techniques” involved not 5 or 6 steps, not 3 or 4 steps, not even 2 steps, but often just 1, or in some cases 0 steps, because it was simply a shifting of weight.
Simple would be an understatement.
As is always the case with all efficient, smart, and powerful Jiu-Jitsu, it was all simple but not easy, and common sense, but only in hindsight.
We worked no submissions, no flashy sweeps, just staying on top, and just in one position, mount. There were no water breaks. Everyone stayed attentive. There were lots of good questions. And time flew by.
When it was over I had 5 pages of notes.
My notes covered small details I hadn’t noticed before, subtle shifts in weight, and aspects to connection and timing that were phrased in a way I found useful, or in a manner that I think will help others understand. At the end of it, our head wrestling coach, who has more than 40-years on the mat, looked at me and said “this was the best seminar I’ve ever been to.”
When I got home I started thinking about the contrast.
At one seminar there was this great BJJ player, teaching a very detailed chain of movements and submissions that I was unfamiliar with, and I walked away with zero notes. There was literally nothing I pulled from it. At this seminar, there was another great BJJ player and coach, who taught just one position, and more to the point, just the structural details of holding one position, no submissions at all, in a position I’m very familiar with and have been playing for well over 35-years (I began spending a lot of time in mount early in my career because I found it easier to hold down higher level wrestlers from there than it was from crossides. I also spent an entire year teaching a seminar just on low mount top, which was well received.) and I walked away with 5 pages of notes. I will use, and more importantly, I think all my students will find useful, literally everything taught.
That’s quite a contrast.
To give one example, there was a detail Henry showed on foot position that 1) I’ve never seen before, 2) immediately improved my ability to hold mount, and 3) I will now pass along to all my students starting at day one, giving them an advantage over all those who came before them.
The passing along of this kind of information/technology is one the primary reasons each generation of SBG students becomes, on average, a little better than the one that came before. It helps fuel the advancement and evolution of our art.
So for all those instructors out there who think fundamentals are “boring,” or that students “want the flashy stuff.” If you’re teaching a class focused on solid fundamentals, and people find it boring, the problem isn’t the material.
And while true, people who don’t have a deeper understanding of grappling and Jiu-Jitsu may think they want the flashy stuff, in the same way my 8-year-old thinks he wants to eat KitKats for dinner every night—part of your responsibility as a parent or a coach is to pass along an appreciation for actual nutrition.
When it comes to BJJ, junk food is literally everywhere. Nutrition, on the other hand, is quite rare. Traffic in nutrition. It is light-years more valuable, people really appreciate it, and it makes everyone stronger. 🦍🙏🏻
