When you train BJJ where most of the focus is on the ground, you won’t always have time to train Judo or Wrestling as much as you’d like. It’s about making a choice: do you want to be a fantastic ground grappler with decent takedowns or do you want to have to have a good ground game and good takedowns?

There is only so much time in the day to learn and drill techniques. Our advice is to focus on learning 5-6 takedowns which you will constantly drill and include in your game. The rest of your time should be spent on bettering your ground game

Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is growing at an amazing rate worldwide. More people are training in all corners of the world. BJJ is evolving.

The direction that sport BJJ is going is worrying many. Nowadays modern Ju-Jitsu is guard centric and most competitors don’t even bother with takedowns. They just pull guard and aim to sweep from the guard or worse work for advantages. BJJ has become more of a game than a combat system.

John Danaher has recently talked about what he believes will be the next big evolution in BJJ: it’s very own unique approach to standing position and how his next mission is to develop and improve the stand up game for BJJ.

In this video, Danaher talks about his favored takedowns for BJJ. He prefers sacrifice throws as they are low risk. If you fail to throw, you end up in guard and ready to work on your guard game.

He also has banned the Judo throw Tani Otoshi in his classes:

The Reason John Danaher Banned Tani Otoshi And Why Judoka Think We’re Overreacting

Why is the sacrifice throw and variations of it underutilized in BJJ and guard pulling has become more universal?

Some would argue against this because there is greater risk in pulling a sacrifice throw, such as having it misdirected and having your guard passed immediately. Others argue that this would make guard pulling much more entertaining and can lead directly into submissions off the bat.

Learn how to wrestle in the gi from one of BJJ’s most successful champions ever, Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida.
Buchecha explains his concepts around how to read his opponents and choosing which takedown is best, how he breaks stubborn grips, and how even much smaller fighters can still find success by focusing on these fundamentals.