2. Introduction to BJJ and Conceptual Thinking

BJJ or Brazilian jiu jitsu is a complicated thing.

Whether training for sport, competition or just for fun the sheer immensity of what encapsulates BJJ is scary.

1. You start off by learning the different positions, ‘simple’ linear formulations of where your body is in relation to your training partner.
2. You then figure out where each of these positions fits in relation to all the other positions….
3. …Which you do by learning a catalogue of techniques which help you move, escape, maintain and even finish your training partner.
4. Then comes the conceptual understanding of how the positions, techniques and most importantly chaos fits in with your game.

Then you’ve mastered BJJ and can retire happy in your self actulisation, well it’s not that simple.

Whether you’ve been training 10 weeks or 10 years you’ll have a different understanding of how things work. Now, that isn’t necessarily a timed served idea its meritocratic, there isn’t fundamentally a correlation between time served and conceptual understanding- you will just understand different things at different times.

Even the broad list of progression above is in no real order, some people may find things out after a few months that some may never figure out. Regardless you keep adding to your game throughout your training career and although it makes sense to say – learn a positional then a submission game, there are no set rules.

What Conceptual Thinking allows you to do is analyse and develop the glue that sticks everything together and it’s this glue which make the difference.

Whether you know 2 techniques or 200 you have to be able to perform them under chaotic situations. Different levels of experience, the size of the person, the positioning of your body to theirs, different reaction times, whether the planets are aligned etc all have a major impact on whether you can execute a certain technique or strategy.

What I hope to do in this Blog is document my conceptual understanding of BJJ and hopefully you’ll help me improve it along the way.

Adam Adshead

www.ConceptualBJJ.wordpress.com