Injuries - take it positively :)

A few weeks ago, I sprained the muscle under my floating ribs during a morning sparring session with a heavyweight. Many would advice to take some time off until it’s completely healed, and while that happens your game deteriorates. I tend to take this rather differently and start training light when they are healed sufficiently, not necessarily a complete recovery, for a number of reasons.

First of all is that I find that injuries tend to heal longer when you put it into a complete rest. However, putting excessive pressure on the injured area may prove to hinder your healing process, so you have to be really sensible when doing this.

Secondly, being sensible meaning that you have to avoid certain positions while injured, I simply train early and avoid the injured area, which most of the time are the areas which I have not been worked on for awhile. Take for example, when I injured my foot right before Java Submission 07, I was working my top game. After fiddling on different gameplans, I find that the most effective way to play with an injured foot was to pull guard, which then later further improved my bottom game. Now, the opposite happened when I injured my torso. Any pressure from being on the bottom would force me to tap out, therefore, I was forced to work on my top game and avoid getting to bottom position at all costs.

Of course, I need to underline the importance of being “sensible”, which includes:
Telling your training partners to be considerate on your injuries if you decide to do so;
Be extra careful with spinal injuries. I personally avoid training hard with those injuries;
And again, TAP EARLY! You’re injured already, if it gets re-injured, it will put you out of commission for even longer.

So, as a closing note, remember what Niko Han told me: “BJJ is like surfing - you take whatever mother nature (ie: situation) given to you and use them.” The situation can also be interpreted as the injuries and any limitation that your body has, but as a BJJ practitioner, most of the time, there are ways to play around them and help you improve.

The Gracie Way - by Niko han

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu imitates nature, by imitating animal’s movements when they fight, rather than imitating how they act, which many of the traditional eastern martial arts tend to do. BJJ always tries to find the most effective and efficient way to defeat the larger and more powerful attack, always using the path of least resistance.

What typically happens with most of the bigger and stronger guys, because they are stronger than all the other students, they end up out powering their training partners and therefore never learn how to utilize correct technique. This is the reason why these students have to be forced and force themselves to use technique over power in order to learn the Gentle Art.

The most effective way to make sure a student utilizes correct technique is to wear the gi. The reason for this is because the gi does not allow you to power out of positions and submissions, therefore the student is forced to use technique over power. It’s the only way to learn BJJ the correct way.

When it comes to making space, you need to bridge into the area that you are trying to create the space before you shrimp, whether its escaping or defending a position or submission, then immediately push off your opponent in order to shrimp and escape your hips out, while you are defending submissions and maintaining position. By bridging and shrimping your hips, bouncing them back and forth, you will be able to create enough space to escape to a neutral position, such as the closed guard or back up to your feet, or sweep, submit or stand back up, always trying to utilize the opponent's energy to your advantage.

Bram's note: Special thanks to Niko Han for allowing me to post this on my blog.