subject: Find your Weaknesses: The Way of the Master [print this page] Find your Weaknesses: The Way of the Master
Want a logical, no-nonsense method to improve your grappling skills fast? Stop looking for more "great techniques" that are finally going to make you unbeatable. More techniques don't guarantee you'll be less defeatable... just that you'll have more techniques. If you want to be less "defeatable," focus exactly on that. What does that mean?
I want you to stop right here for a second and think about this. You can literally add 500 new grappling moves and submissions to your arsenal, but if you keep getting caught in the same old triangle choke or guillotine choke, those 500 tactics did nothing for you.
This means that, rather than looking for new tactics, look for your weaknesses. Your weakness is what makes you defeatable. Look for the handful of areas that your opponents are consistently capitalizing on. Most likely, there are only a few major ones.
Then, focus on getting rid of those weaknesses. For example, if you're always getting caught in a triangle choke, focus on triangle choke defenses. Study defensive moves for triangle chokes, work it endlessly on your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Dummy, do what you have to until you have eliminated it as a weakness. You get the idea.
Once you have no weaknesses... you have nothing to capitalize on. You'll be so much less "defeatable" than if you had added 100 new techniques to your repertoire.
One caveat here... in the case that your weakness is that you have absolutely NO techniques, then yes, you have to focus on adding techniques for a while. Get your grappling basics down cold. But if you've been training for a while...
.. then use this approach. You'll have a much stronger foundation. Once you've gotten rid of your weaknesses and it's become very hard for your opponents to submit you, you can now focus on attacks, putting your opponents more and more on the defensive. Those 500 new tactics will have much more impact on your overall fighting ability, because you'll finally have the chance to use them.
