If there is one thing that is the difference maker when it comes to judo and brazilian jiujitsu, its your ability to grip fight.

Now inside of that, your ability TO ACTUALLY grip fight AND grip fight well depends on 3 things.

These three things are:

(1) Your gripfighting knowledge
(2) Your gripfighting strength, and;
(3) Your gripfighting endurance

Let’s discuss…..

GRIP FIGHTING KNOWLEDGE

Your knowledge on the subject of grip fighting depends on several things. But mainly it will depend on you understanding the reasons of and for gripfighting and then adopting a grip fighting philosophy which will guide your style, iterations, sequences and gameplanning process.

Now most people that I meet and most judo school that I go to wo have good instructors that teach gripping have some great sequences. Some even have good drills, but they do NOT have a system which is guided by a philosophical approach.

I am not talking about catch phrases like “kill the sleeve or “control the power side.” More often than not the folks who learned those phrases do NOT understand where those instructions fit inside of their whole philosophy and WORSE don’t have a guiding philosophy (but really do because whether you design one or not you have and this is what’s dangerous)….. and many of them have produced some good players because their modicum of knowledge, quite honestly, supersedes what the rest of the population have in terms of gripfighting knowledge.

I have literally watched coaches allow students to grip both sided and switch back and forth and while that may seem fine to you is is 100% incorrect.

BEING ABLE TO THROW RIGHT AND LEFT IS HIGHLY ENCOURAGED!!

Gripping right and left is discouraged, especially at the beginning stages.

Why?

Well, because every time you get outgripped you will “switch sides” instead of learning the depths of the gripping game which will allow you to recover in such situations. You will develop a “bail out mentality instead of being comfortable and not panicking. You will also EXPOSE yourself to be thrown for ippon in a MAJOR way. When you switch in the middle of a gripping sequence you place yourself at a huge risk.

There are some of you reading this that believe me and some of you that don’t.

If you don’t believe me, that’s okay. Just give me an opportunity to help and improve your judo.

And if for some reason you have some bias against me….. well then listen to 1999 World Judo Championand 2x Olympic Bronze Medallist Jimmy Pedro.

Whatever the case…. go here today –> http://www.GripFighting.com

Tomorrow we will discuss seconds thing that affects your ability to grip fight and grip fight well.

Dedicated to Your Improving,

Rhadi Ferguson, PhD
2004 Olympian

P.S. Please make sure you visit http://www.GripFighting.com

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.