Skills – the techniques you’re able to use properly and with precision – are vital to your success as a BJJ athlete. After all, you won’t be able to do anything in Jiu-Jitsu sparring or competition if you don’t know the moves.
However, just having the skills won’t cut it either. Instead, you’ve got to be able to see the opportunities that are presented in front of you as well.
John Danaher explains:
A move is a physical skill, but physical skills don’t tell the whole story of who gets to use the move successfully in a live situation.
You can have all the skills in the world, but if you can’t see the opportunity for their application they are of little value.
You’ve got to become proficient not just at identifying opportunities, but also at forcing them:
Fortunately, the task of identifying opportunities is pretty easy in most cases. For example it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the opportunity to use a mount escape move is when you’re mounted.
Things get more interesting however, when you start looking at the notion of single move being used in many different areas. Then you have to start FORCING opportunities and seeing possibilities where most people don’t see them at all.
And the best opportunity to force? It’s taking the opponent’s back. Professor Danaher elaborates more on an Instagram post below:
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