In the learning curve of grappling one of the most important aspects of your success is your standing posture. I feel that from now until the day can no longer be on the tatami, I can teach full seminars on just standing postures, base, and approaches to infighting for defensive or offensive ideas. If you are a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) student, your standing posture is greatly being overlooked in your training. We all know this because the majority of time practicing is spent on the ground and not in the stand-up context. It is only two months before the next local tournament that BJJ instructors add more standing techniques to the practice structure.
The top “Throws” that are endorsed in BJJ are some form of a single-leg takedown/pick; ideas of guard pulling/jumping; and, the simple approach to a turning throw ippon seoi nage, for example. I am expressing all these issues in training for BJJ academies in a certain tone because of the results and by-products where so many students continuing to have very little understanding of solid judo principles, wrestling principles, and bad standing posture. It is currently in vogue inside the Judo community to call bad standing posture = BJJ posture.
Hopefully, the day will come quickly where you step on the tatami and set aside the rules books of sports. It will be a time to have new eyes. You will look at learning with the new lense of what is in the best practice of your success. Remember you will be training to improve your standing posture, base and get away from that “Bad BJJ Posture,” for a little awhile. During this type of training sessions, look to the past to see what the generation of Judokas has taught for success: Maintaining Your Structure; Understanding Space; and, Timing. Each area will take time to study and practice. Without stressing on learning different throws because “Your Throw” will come to you, take the time to pick-up on all of the skills you will develop for defense, maintenance of your energy and overall improved self-confidence gain after being thrown only to stand up just a little bit wiser in your next approach forward.
The goal of this writing is to help make standing posture a topic that is in vogue. It is important on the tatami and in your life. When you begin with bad posture, please let it be what I call “Intelligent Broken-Posture,” this type of bad posture is a bending of the rules and you know that you are doing it to create an opportunity of success. Intelligent broken-posture comes after studying the ideal body structures while standing or on the ground. From the principles of Judo, if you destroy the foundation of someone’s structure, they become incredibly weak and a small person can throw a large person. So why begin with a weak structure?
