Written by Belgian BJJ black belt Wim Deputter, head instructor at Brasa Team Belgium.
Over the course of years many grapplers, including myself, develop back problems.
One of the main reasons I believe for these back pains, is an imbalance between the frontal (chest, abs,…) and dorsal muscles (lats, lower back,…).
Without thinking about it, we naturally use our flexors to bring something close and our extensors to push something away.
Think about an armbar, rear naked choke or straight foot lock for a second.
Very often, grapplers will use their arms and chest to keep the body part they attack close to their body and afterwards will use their legs and hips (extensors) to push that body part away in a straight line.
To make it simple: “if your arms pull and your legs push, they are not working together. They are fighting each other. The arms being the weaker muscle, they will get tired faster.”
If you recognize yourself in this, you are basically fighting against your own body.
There is a better way. Think for a second about a basic strict pull up or chin up. With pull ups or chin ups, do we pull the bar to us or ourselves to the bar?
You can probably make a case for both 🙂 But I like to believe we are pulling ourselves to the bar. The main muscle we have to use to achieve this effectively, is the latissimus dorsi. The Lats. In other words, we have to “engage our backs”.
Next time when you roll and you want to bring your opponent close, think about it like this. Don’t pull your opponent close to you, but pull yourself close to your opponent. Use a round back to get the initially grip. Once connected, use lat engagement to make everything tight.
If you want a more detailed explanation and more examples of how to apply it to different submissions, I highly recommend you check out my instructional “The Mirroring Principle: Endgame Finishers” on BJJ Fanatics.
Look at SUBMISSIONS with brand new eyes with the help of Wim Deputter.
This Belgium-based, Brasa black belt has UNIQUE and NEW finishing DETAILS you’ve never seen before.
