Drills!!!

Last night, during a light end-of-class rolling session, one of my new students tapped another student. Big deal, who cares, I know. But this specific incident illustrates something I've been trying to impress upon my students for a long time now.

Just under three minutes into the round, the student pulled off a perfectly executed triangle choke. It came fast and unexpected. The submitted student admitted that he never saw it coming. The student who did it said he didn't think he had the skill to do it, and was amazed he pulled it off so smoothly. The only one who wasn't surprised, I guess, was me.

The student who pulled off the submission has trained the triangle for two days. That's it. So he didn't know he had it in him. But I didn't understand why he didn't understand. We had been working that technique for two days straight. And I consistently tell my students that "drills breed skills." Everyone wants to spar. There's too much sparring in a lot of the MMA gyms. You need to spar, don't get me wrong. But if you're sparring without first having skills, then you're practicing bad habits. It's that simple. (A lot of gyms use sparring as a filler. They don't want to lose students so they keep them active. Or even worse, the instructor doesn't know the fundamentals himself).

If you take the triangle and drill it for two whole classes, you'll have a fairly decent triangle. You really will. I know it's boring, but "it's through the corridor of boredom that we reach the room of skill." (Corny, I know). I've visited a lot of gyms where students don't grasp the fundamentals. (And the triangle is THE fundamental). That's because they've been spoiled with the more exciting aspects, such as sparring and learning technique upon technique. That's too bad. They should really drill, drill, drill.

If I haven't got my point across yet, I never will. I've harped on this for years. But let me say this: Drill the triangle from the guard for two or three days. Then drill the armbar from the guard for two or three days. Then drill the omoplata for two or three days. After that, drill them together for about a week. Then, and ONLY then, spar. You will be amazed at your submission abilities. Then, go back and do it again. Two or three days on the triangle, etc. Then mix them back up. And I don't mean work a thousand setups for each, I'm talking about just sticking to the basic triangle, armbar, and omoplata, with the basic setups. Nothing fancy. If you do this, despite the boredom, your game will jump exponentially. And then sparring will be much more enjoyable when you get to it.