How good are your basics? Hmmm… Probably not as good as they could be, right?
Working on your fundamentals in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a must for the sake of your improvement.
And if you’re a coach, then making sure that your students are learning the basics will open a lot of doors to their progress in the future.
Vinicius “Draculino” Magalhães spoke about the need for basics in an interview with BJJEE:
I am really big on getting down and mastering the fundamentals of BJJ. A lot of people think that they know the basics, but they really don’t.
If you have a really solid and complete foundation in Jiu Jitsu yourself, I think that you will be able to expose your students to everything.
If you give them the foundations first, then – depending on their body type and physical abilities, as well as on their individual preferences – from there they can start developing their own specialties and a type of the game that they want to have.
Draculino exposes his students to as many aspects of the game as possible:
I try to expose my students to everything, so that they can then branch out towards that which they prefer.
Samuel Braga is a good example. He is a multiple time world champion, plus he’s the creator of the Berimbolo – since he has always been very flexible, he was able to develop this position from the De la Riva guard and it turned out to be very handy for him.
Then, Romulo Barral and his killer spider guard. Erik Wanderley, one of my first World Champions, he has a killer half guard and really, really good pressure…
I taught them everything they needed to know in order to have a solid foundation, from which they could, as I said, branch out and do their own thing.
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