I’ve been doing BJJ for about a year in Russia, and I worked out in different BJJ schools with 8 different coaches (blue, purple, brown and black belt). When you go to a gym to train BJJ, you will usually find a group of athletes that are already more experienced than you, of course, and the coach teaches them more advanced techniques without giving you the time to learn the basic techniques as more experienced athletes have already grasped them.
When I first started my group already knew the most studied techniques, such as De La Riva, Spider Guard, Berimbolo, and others. This didn’t help me because the more experienced students didn’t let me perform these techniques during the sparring sessions (because they knew how to escape them) so I was the subject of chokes and submissions. I believe that at the beginning one has to learn only basic techniques, basic movements, protection, and control.
The workshops offered by Hans Hutton are of great use to beginners in the training process as they teach very important basics, without which it makes no sense to study BJJ:
• Basic defence position
• The basic positions of human control (and more importantly – the position of the opponent)
• Basic directions of movement from each position
• Errors, which lead to painful or suffocating techniques
Although I had some experience before, after this seminar I developed a conscious understanding of my actions, right or wrong movements from one position to another, as well as the actions of my opponent.
I understand the fundamental principle of action (first position, next submission), and I can even say that I began to understand the concept of “battle strategy.”
This workshop makes you feel that you have studied the human skeleton structure, the muscles and ligaments (meaning more complex techniques), things that usually take years and years of training to know.
I especially want to say thank you for one technique — shoulder escape. Surprisingly, I had never seen it before. This technique is particularly important for training in Russia, and I’ll tell you why: Many athletes who have extensive fighting and SAMBO JUDO experience come to train BJJ in Russian training halls. Because of their background they have a very good technique of “holding the side of the neck” and the shoulder escape technique is very good at helping to protect against this.
Of course, the coach showed us more techniques like the well-known side control, guard, mount, half-guard, triangle, kimura and so on. But as you know, the devil is in the details.
Thank you Hans Hutton for these details, and most importantly for the sequence and structured approach to the explanation of the techniques.
Alexander
