So you’ve just watched a match featuring either Keenan Cornelius or the Miyao Brothers. Those De la Riva and Reverse de la Riva sweeps look so fancy and fantastic and you’re thinking to yourself: How come I’m not doing all these awesome moves?

Sport Jiu Jitsu techniques can look quite attractive and turn quite a few heads but it’s not an easy road that leads to learning them or getting to use them during a roll.

What are some important points to consider when training sport jiu jitsu?

1. Basics work. Focus on fundamentals first. The reason why Jiu Jitsu became so popular is not because of berimbolos, de la rivas and worm guards. The reason Jiu Jitsu is popular is because it works in a real fight with great efficiency. Focus on studying the fundamentals like closed guard, triangles, armbars, etc at first. There are reasons for this. First of all it will teach you how to defend yourself should you need to. Second of all, even if for some reason you are completely uninterested in the self-defense aspect, these basic moves will teach you about leverage, about the angles needed to pull off attacks and how to maneuver your body in a basic way. Think you will manage to go inverted and pull off a berimbolo if you can’t move your hips to perform the armbar from closed guard? Think again.

Figure 1. Armbar from Closed Guard position. Focus on the basics. They will teach you how to use your body and will prepare you for more advanced moves.

2. Make sure the advanced techniques you choose to work fit your physical attributes. Let’s say you’re past the fundamentals phase and you want to focus on Sport Jiu Jitsu. That is a perfectly fine decision, however make sure the techniques you choose to train in fit your body type and the physical attributes you have. If you are an ultra heavy, pulling off berimbolos will certainly be a really hard task. By the same token, if you are a featherweight, pressure passing might not work that well for you. Take into consideration the requirements for these techniques. Some require very good flexibility, some require speed and agility, some require a combination of these.

Figure 2. While berimbolos sure look fancy, they require a degree of flexibility and agility to pull it off in sparring/competition.

3. Advanced techniques will expand your understanding of Jiu Jitsu. A good reason to work these advanced techniques is that they will expand your knowledge of Jiu Jitsu and they will make you more creative. These moves will teach you advanced concepts about body positioning, grips, body control and leverage, concepts which you will be able to use in your whole jiu jitsu game, thus making you a much better player. Not to mention that knowing how to perform these, will give you an insight into how you should be defending them.

Figure 3. Conor McGregor about to hit a Single Leg X Guard sweep in his first match versus Nate Diaz.

4. Your control of the body will improve. Another good advantage to work these moves is that they will teach you how to control your body even better than the fundamental moves. You will learn how to invert really fast, how to deal with pressure in that position, how to use your legs, your hips, etc. The flashy moves usually require a great deal of coordination and agility from your body and you will notice an improvement really fast with them, even though they may require considerable amounts of drilling.

Figure 4. The hip escape is a very basic move that will help you master hip control and will alow you to move on to more advanced techniques. Make sure you master this!

5. It feels great to do them against people. No one can deny this, it feels great to take peoples backs with berimbolos, sweep them with Worm Guard, etc. It’s fun and you will be looked upon as the super technical guy. It’s even better if you pull it off in competitions. Building a game based on flashy stuff may give you an advantage in competitions against guys who are not used to these, however the basics work, so make sure you train your moves properly and have a counter for every reaction they may have.

Figure 5. Worm Guard sure is a fun way to tangle people up.

6. Don’t use them in self defense. As stated in the first point, the chances these moves will work in a self defense scenario are slim. Slim doesn’t mean none. Even these moves can work if your timing is perfect and the speed of execution is really good but why take chances when the fundamentals will stop you from getting hit and give you a really good control over your opponent as well. If you want further proof of this, take a look into MMA. MMA is the place where you can see which techniques work in a real fight situation. Do we see flashy techniques in UFC? We may see them every once in a while in a match. Do we see the basics getting used successfully in every fight card? Yes.