This article written by Thomas Johannessen for BJJ Scandinavia. Thomas is a Norwegian physiotherapist, personal trainer and BJJ Black belt competitor from Frontline Academy in Oslo (Norway). Some of his latest BJJ achievements include gold at Nice Open 2015, gold at Rome Open 2015 and gold at Nordic Open 2014 and 2015. As a brown belt, Thomas won silver at the Pan Ams 2013, gold at the Abu Dhabi Pro trials in Warzaw in 2013 and gold at the Swedish Open in 2012 and 2013. You can follow him on Instagram @thojohan

Drilling is one of the most popular, but sadly one of the least understood concepts of BJJ today. As a training principle, it has two major advantages over sparring – it gives an opportunity to take techniques and positions out of the context of a fight to perfect moves and short sequences, and it gives an opportunity to train more hours with less stress on the body.

10,000 hours

A study conducted by Anders Ericsson and made famous in the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, suggest that to become absolute elite in a cognitively demanding field, you must spend at least 10,000 hours of “delibrate practice” in that field. While this is more of a guideline than a rule (there will always be the BJ Penn’s who reach top level in shorter time), it does give two important principles. 1) There must be a large amount of practice time. 2) The practice must be deliberate and done with awareness. To put 10,000 hours in perspective, it’s 20 hours a week for 10 years. If you train 6 days a week, this translates to over 30 sparring rounds of 6 minutes pr day to reach 10,000 hours of effective training.

HR intensity zones

In cardio heavy activites, like cross country skiing and biathlon, the typical elite athlete will train about 1000 hours a year, the same as our Outliers-example, but 80% of the training will be done with a heart rate under 82%. This is to increase technique and the aerobic base and take less toll on the body to allow more hours of training without overtraining. A typical BJJ sparring round with high intensity will have most people average between 85-95% of max HR, and peak well over 90%. With drilling you can easily keep your average HR well under 82%, giving you more hours with less risk of overtraining and injuries. I’m not suggesting necessarily 80% of the training to be drilling, but the percentage should be higher the more you train. There are other factors to consider too – for example I’ve met many athletes aged 35+ who complain that their body can’t handle more than 2-3 sessions a week, adding a drilling session or two is great way to recover and get better at BJJ at the same time!

Drilling is not drilling

The time you put in is one factor, but as I said above the “awareness” is just as important. In sparring you generally see gamefaces on – people are 100% committed to their training. Drilling sessions can some times be sad to watch, people just doing the motions without being present in their mind, and a few look like they’d rather jump of a cliff. For me, the time I put in the training is time I can’t spend doing anything else, so I’d rather spend it well. Every rep should be done with purpose and intensity, what you do by repeating the motion over and over is strengthening the motor pattern in your brain, so next time your more likely to repeat what you just did – reducing variability. The downside to this is that if you practice it wrong or without intensity, chances are you will become better at doing it that way. Practice doesn’t make perfect in itself , but perfect practice makes perfect! Remember that when you are in a stressed situation like a competition, your techniques will deteriorate, so I make it a point to keep drilling the technique beyond the point where I can get it consistently in sparring at the academy. Also: try to get feedback from you professor as often as possible when you’re drilling to make sure you’re not picking up bad habits or doing the technique sloppy.

Mind the timing and the set up

I said above that drilling can take techniques out of the fight context to practice isolated moves. This can be a blessing and a curse. A blessing because you can get a lot of reps on critical phases of the fight, but a curse because you might miss important nuances on the actual situation. For example a lot of people will drill side control escapes from an established side control. How many times do you see top level black belts successfully do escapes from a well established side control in comparison to the times they pull of the escape a few moments before, or better still – defend the guard successfully? But still, the most common way to drill escapes are from well established positions. Also, if you practice an isolated sweep, but never get to the position to start the sweep in sparring, how big is the chance that you’ll ever get that sweep in a competition? Ideally you want to include set ups, and the move should start from a position you already have the skill to get to consistently in sparring. If you don’t have that skill, you should drill that first!

…..and the transitions

When you see world class BJJ-fights you will pay attention to the fancy techniques, or even simple techniques done flawlessly. However, what I see most consistently defining the high level athletes is the ability to go from one technique to the next smoothly without giving away space and time. The ability to string techniques together is a skill you must drill like every single technique itself. If I’m drilling a guard pass, I can combine it with a top-spin and a back take. The added bonus is that my drilling partner will also get to practice his side control escape a bit. To train problem solving and reaction time, you can even make your partner chose between two or three different reactions to your initial technique so you have to act on his reaction.

Beware of sparring and lazyness

Talking about the drilling partner, a couple of points must be made on resistance. Some people inevitably end up doing full blast sparring while drilling, claiming it’s not realistic to do the move without resistance. While that is a valid point, neither is it realistic that your opponent will predict your every move like some sort of jedi mind tricks. My preferred drilling is working on reaction and timing rather than brute force, so you’ll be allowed to complete the technique if you do it correctly and with good timing. It’s also important to identify what is your challenge with that specific technique. If you can’t do a cross choke from mount in sparring because your mount balance suck, it won’t help if you can do it 100% of the time on an immobile opponent. Also, find a training partner who is willing to do his part on your rounds, not only when he/she is drilling.

Some simple tips on how to get started on drilling

– Ask your professor what do drill. He/she might have some tips on what you should work on, you can also use the techniques shown in training.

– Start the drill from a position you’re already getting in sparring.

– Identify the most common reaction(s) and make your training partner react like that, but preferably more on timing than on force.

– Try to get in at least a couple of drilling sessions a week, the sooner you repeat the drills, the more likely you are to remember them.

– Be committed to be 100% aware when you drill.

– Always strive to do your techniques better, if possible get feedback every session.