Ben Askren, a former UFC welterweight and Olympic wrestler, has never been shy about expressing his strong opinions…
Including his stance on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
So, in a recent interview, Askren decided to explain what the worst things are that BJJ coaches do – from the perspective of their students’ improvement.
The most critical part, in his opinion, is the lack of positional sparring:
The worst thing I think a lot of Jiu-Jitsu coaches do is they don’t do any position-specific grappling or minimal.
There’s a lot of gyms that’ll say, okay, here’s three or four techniques, and then, all right, we’re doing five-minute rounds. Go.
And just do whatever you want for five minutes.
He emphasized that this method doesn’t effectively enhance students’ skills in specific positions, especially not those ones that they should actually be working on:
But if you want to make something good at something, you should be putting them in like position-specific application so you can get better positions.
Because if you just let two people go, they’re likely going to do the things that they’re already good at or the things they’re already comfortable with, which doesn’t actually make them better at the thing.
Do you agree with Askren? Watch the entire interview on the video below and let us know what you think!
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