3 Things To Do In Winter To Keep Your BJJ Progressing

Its winter, cold, slick, and miserable outside.  The inversion has made the air quality poor.  You miss your activities you did outside last summer that helped you keep in shape and aided you in your Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.  You do not want to fall behind or lose what you have worked so hard for but what can you do in the winter beside going to the gym?  Here are some ideas that I hope will help.

  1. Get or make a grappling dummy.
    • As you know I love my grappling dummy.  It never complains.  It is always willing to train.  Its gives me a good work out just rolling with it.
    • So what if you do not have the cash to buy one?  DIY and make one from scratch.  Here is one example: How To build a grappling dummy.  It is a 4 part post by a friend of mine, Ben Olas.
  2. Work on increasing your lung capacity.
  3. Create drills that can be practiced at home. 

Jiu-Jitsu is Life and Life is Jiu-Jitsu

Double Leg Takedown Bruce Lee Style

The other day I can across a book I had bought when I was a young lad called “Enter to Trapping to Grappling (Jeet Kune Do)”.   Before I even had heard of BJJ, I was thinking of following in Bruce Lee’s foot steps.  Now years later my one love is Jiu-Jitsu.  I immediately noticed the grappling in the title and wondered what Bruce considered grappling or what aspects of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu might overlap with the Jeet Kune Dosystem.

As I searched the book I came across my old friend the Double Leg Takedown.  It isn’t an easy thing to do.  In fact the best instruction I ever got was from Clint at the seminar held at West Side.  I blogged about it in 6 Steps of the Shot or Takedown.  I still do not feel I have the double leg takedown close to armature level.  So I broke into laughter when I saw the two pictures and accompanying text that teach it in this book.  The text reads:

“Bend forward and throw your opponent by picking up his legs as you shove forward with your right shoulder”

Followed by two pictures:


Now I am not trying to knock Bruce or Jeet Kune Do.  As anyone knows who spends time looking at grappling books, they are not all created equal.  For this technique this book falls woefully short.  But it gave me a great laugh.  If only it was that simple that one sentence and two pictures could teach it.

I went on to find other interesting throws and locks in the book but none that were a direct one-to-one with BJJ or Judo.  But some came close.  Who knows maybe after some careful study and a lot more pictures I might be able to adapt a few.

Jiu-Jitsu is Life and Life is Jiu-Jitsu