Be Like The Willow Tree, Not The Oak - Strategies To Survive In BJJ Training For White Belts

Be Like The Willow Tree, Not The Oak - Strategies To Survive In BJJ Training For White Belts

There’s a potential for the rolling of eyes with this one, because it’s a well-known martial arts cliché. Reportedly an old school Japanese martial arts practitioner was watching a variety of trees in a very windy storm. He noticed how the stiffer and less flexible the trees were, the more likely they would be to blow over in the storm. Conversely, the willow tree he watched just went with the flow, when the wind blew, the branches went with the gust and then returned to where they started. In other words, the tree did not get blown over because it yielded to the force applied to it.

Now it’s very hard to execute this in a martial arts reality if the force acting against you in a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class is some giant guy on steroids with tattoos and missing some teeth who attempts to steamroller through you with some destructive wrestling move like a double leg takedown. However, there is some real wisdom in this old fable. If you can find a way to meet strength with weakness, you can often force your opponent to over commit and unbalance themselves.

Let’s use the double leg takedown as an example. If you don’t know what this is, then just search on YouTube, you’ll find a million examples. For those in Europe, you may know this technique better as ‘rugby tackle’. In effect the opponent drops low, grabs both your legs from behind and tries to accelerate through you. If you resist from a standing start, and if you meet force with force, it’s quite likely that you will not be able to deliver sufficient force to avoid being smashed backwards and down, leaving you on the ground, probably winded and with your opponent in a good position to assume a dominant ground position on top of you.

The classic defence against this double leg takedown technique is to grab your opponent’s head, push it down and then to sprawl your legs out behind you. While this may not feel like a truly passive movement, and may take some explosive movements from your side, you are in effect dissipating your opponent’s strength while making them assume a less advantageous position.

You can apply this principle of yielding to and dissipating your opponent’s strength in many instances across BJJ. If you find you get exhausted and gassed out quickly when you start BJJ, you might be meeting strength with strength. The entire focus on the art is to use technique so you don’t have to use strength. Now clearly you don’t have technique to begin with, but my view is that you are better to be defeated in the gym by better technique than resist successfully with strength – you will always find someone stronger and fitter, no matter who you are, so the journey ahead of you is all about embracing accumulation of good techniques in multiple fluid situation. In a life-or-death situation, you will most likely find that you will instinctively use as much strength as you can as the intensity of the struggle will be greater and less routine than sparring rounds in the gym, but using strength takes oxygen and energy. The basis of the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is to let your opponent exhaust themselves while you preserve energy.

Stay flexible and soft, and reap the benefits in your BJJ training!

Jimmy Rose, lifelong martial artist enthusiast