Guest post by James Duscio, a BJJ black belt under Walter Cascao Vital. He runs Cascao Evolution BJJ out of Las Vegas nv.
What do all the top BJJ competitors have in common? They are all aggressive beasts who always go for the finish with no hesitation. It does not matter who the opponent is, what their belt rank is or even the size difference. When its time to go, they go for the kill. Are there ways for the naturally less aggressive practionor to become less passive and be able to use what they know more effectively? The answer is yes.
One reason some hesitate is that they are waiting for that perfect moment to attack.
Lets be honest, a good fighter waits for the opening, a great fighter creates them. A good drill to do is set the round timer for 5 min. with the interval timer going off every minute. So when player A and player B square off, designate one to be the attacker. Lets say you choose A. That means only A can attack and every time that interval timer sounds off, he has to attack from wherever he is at, even if its bottom mount. This will force him to attack from all positions and not always wait for the perfect moment that sometimes never comes. At the same time it gives player B good defensive work.
People also tend to hesitate when they have a fear of losing a dominate position when going for a submission.
There are two solutions for this one. The first, choose an arsinal of submissions that don’t require you to surrender the strong position. An example would be an Americana instead of an arm bar from the mount. The second solution is to create a combination that has a follow up submission if the first one fails. So if you go for a mounted triangle and you roll over to finish, but they start staking up, switching up to a Omoplata combination might give you the confidence to go for that mounted triangle because you have a solid practiced game plan.
Often times the fear of being stuck in bottom position is also a reason for some to hesitate on the attack. If your in side control and while going for a submission you end up getting reversed, well if your not comfortable recovering from that bad position, you are most likely going to avoid putting yourself at risk again, and we all know any attack presents some risk. The answer to this problem is simple, start your rolls in those bad positions until you get comfortable there.
The bottom line is fear and lack of confidence are the main reasons for hesitations in your offensive game. Add these drills into your training and watch your attacking level go through the roof. Everybody gets caught and ends up tapping now and again, there is no reason you can’t be the one making them tap.
