Popular NBA team The Denver Nuggets have just taken a short break from their rigorous training schedule in order to take part in a BJJ training session together. After warming up together, the basketball players started to learn some of the basic movements involved in grappling like shrimping and standing up correctly. They also learned how to breakfall correctly, something that is incredibly valuable but often not taught to beginners in the sport. After they got warm and had some of the basics down, they moved on to actually sparring with one another.
It appears as though they were playing a simple positional sparring game where the top player attempts to pass guard from standing while the bottom player offers resistance. The final part of their hour-long training session involved being shown a basic bodylock takedown from standing, and drilling it on one another in order to get used to performing the movement. The format of their first BJJ session was actually pretty similar to what most people experience in their first few classes and would serve as a solid introduction to the sport. It’s great to see more popular figures getting involved in the sport as well, as it often helps spread BJJ to even more people and develop the sport even further.
The Denver Nuggets team are far from the first NBA players to train BJJ too, as Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert has been spotted learning some grappling in the past too. Although they have all only just started training, it’s possible that some of these players actually decide to take up the sport long-term as well. It wouldn’t be completely unheard of, as Igor Rakocevic actually dedicated years to BJJ and was eventually promoted to black belt.
The Denver Nuggets shared the footage of their team members training BJJ together in a recent post to their official Instagram account:
