Ben Askren was at one point in time one of the best MMA fighters on the planet and he reached that level by relying almost exclusively on his elite wrestling, but now he’s decided to share his thoughts on some of the worst things that BJJ coaches do. Although Askren wasn’t known as a prolific submission specialist, he did rack up 6 submission wins over the course of his career and spent a long time training in Jiu-Jitsu to achieve that. He does recognise the benefits of the art itself of course, as he has even said before that he wishes he trained more BJJ during his time as an MMA fighter.
He did pretty well as it is of course, as he won welterweight world titles at both Bellator and ONE Championship. Askren put together an incredible start to his career, going 19-0 (1) from his professional debut in 2009 all the way up to his UFC debut in 2019. He retired after suffering his first two losses in a row, including the final fight of his career against BJJ legend Demian Maia that he lost by submission. Although Ben Askren clearly has a lot of respect for the art itself, he was honest about what he saw as the worst thing that coaches do in BJJ classes:
“The worst thing I think a lot of Jiu-Jitsu coaches do is they don’t do any position-specific grappling, or minimal. There’s a lot of gyms that’ll say: okay, here’s three or four techniques, and then, all right, we’re doing five-minute rounds. Go. And just do whatever the h*llyou want for five minutes.”
His assessment comes from the fact that he spent decades training in wrestling, where the majority of their training is done in the form of drills and positional sparring. Wrestlers will often spend weeks working on a single position and with a good coach guiding the training room, it can lead to huge improvements in a short space of time. Askren explained exactly why this happens himself:
“But if you want to make someone good at something, you should be putting them in like position-specific application so you can get better at positions. Because if you just let two people go, they’re likely going to do the things that they’re already good at or the things they’re already comfortable with, which doesn’t actually make them better at the thing.”
The full interview with Ben Askren where he explains what he sees as the worst thing that BJJ coaches do was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of Tommy G: