Rob Biernacki is a BJJ black belt who has travelled extensively to compete and train with many of the top BJJ instructors active today. His ability to identify and teach the underlying principles of jiu-jitsu has made him a very popular seminar instructor. Together with Stephan Kesting, a BJJ black belt, Combat Submission Wrestling instructor and the founder of Grapplearts.com, he created BJJ Core Concept series in which they teach how to apply a principle-based approach to grappling.
In their words: “Jiu-jitsu isn’t some sort of magic and doesn’t require extreme strength, speed, or athleticism. Instead it’s a struggle between two people using positioning, leverage and momentum. The person who uses them best has a HUGE edge over his opponent.
No matter what position or situation you’re in on the ground, all techniques rely on concepts like base, posture, structure, leverage, framing, and control of momentum.”
In this 11-minutes long video, Rob explains the three most critical concepts of BJJ:
- Base,
- Posture, and
- Structure
Study these concepts, as explained in this video, and never again get overwhelmed by the ever-growing sea of different BJJ techniques. Rather, recognize immediately the biomechanical principles that lie behind them.
One Concept Is Worth 1000 Techniques
They further explain that: “BJJ can be complicated at first because there are thousands of different techniques including armlocks, chokes, sweeps, escapes, guard retention movements, guard passes, etc. It’s certainly possible to learn BJJ by memorising more and more techniques – many people have done exactly that – but it’s a slow and inefficient process that takes years.
You’ll get better much faster if you start with an understanding of the underlying concepts and principles of grappling. Once you know them you’ll start looking at BJJ techniques in a whole new way. No longer will the techniques be a long series of steps you need to memorise; instead they’ll become applications of the same few concepts again and again.”
