Like a Dummy

Had a fun encounter on the mat the other day. It was during a free roll.

My opponent is about 50 pounds bigger, and a lot stronger than me. Around here I count as one of the larger people, but nothing like him.

Like a lot of big guys, he tends to force things through with raw power, and to prevent escapes or reversals with little effort.

His ingrained reliance on strength worked against him.

He got me into a lot of inferior positions, but I kept twisting out. The stuff I was able to use involved a lot of rolling out of things. When I try stuff like this on our instructor, or people like Tobias or Rob it very rarely works.

This time I got away with it over and over, as my partner was used to controlling people with strength and mass instead of technique.

Granted, he submitted me several times, but it should have happened twice as much.

All it would have taken to stop my tricky escapes would have been slightly different leg and hand placement.

He usually doesn't have to worry about this kind of thing. He's literally twice as big as our smaller people, and our other big folks are fairly inexperienced. My skill level is a tad higher, and my size is at least in the ballpark. He couldn't merely "hold me down".

There are two ways this could go.

If he tries harder to hold onto me, I'll keep getting out. If he tries to figure out how to hold onto me, he'll trap me consistently.

Going more towards technique will also serve him well should he end up rolling with people who dwarf him in size or power. Just trying harder to hang onto me will not help prepare him for the really big boys.

The biggest Jiu-Jitsu person I've ever worked with was a young guy who played college football, and had been on-track for the NFL before injury ended his chances. He was about six-and-a-half feet tall, and easily 300 pounds, mostly muscle. Although he could have fought as a giant, he didn't.

He wanted to work on improving the precision of his technique, and allowed his partners to do the same. He had nothing to prove, and therefore displayed no ego issues at all.

It's a bit like me working with a grappling dummy. They have no strength at all, literally. When working with them I use it as an opportunity to achieve perfect placement and movement. The football guy used me in the same way. I could even move a bit to make me seem even more realistic.

How stupid and useless would it be to out-muscle a grappling dummy?

And what if you failed?