Roger Gracie is one of the single-most successful BJJ competitors in the history of the sport and he’s stated on several occasions that he doesn’t actually drill when training. Is this the right thing to do though? After all, despite having only competed in three superfights in the last decade, he’s still frequently referred to as the GOAT and for good reason. Roger Gracie uploaded a video to RogerGracieTV in order to explain why he doesn’t actually drill, and what he does instead:
“I think it’s very important to drill a movement to learn the mechanics of it – of course it is. I drill to learn the mechanics, but I do not then drill that movement over and over again thousands of times. Jiu jitsu is different from something like judo where you can practice one throw thousands of times because there’s more physicality required to go with the mechanics.”
It’s hard to argue with Roger’s assessment here and realistically, he’s right that despite the similarities between Judo and BJJ, they are two clearly distinct sports. Interestingly, the man responsible for three out of seven of Roger’s professional losses, Xande Ribeiro, does advocate drilling as part of your training regimen. But as Roger elaborates, he sees positional or specific sparring as the most beneficial form of training you can do:
“With jiu jitsu we must learn a movement against resistance. So, again, you drill the movement to learn the mechanics and then practice against resistance to make it work. That’s why I say I learn a lot in specific sparring because that’s where I get to test my movements in a live situation over and over again. A simple example would be a triangle escape; you learn the movement with some drilling to learn the mechanics, but if you want to learn how to really use the escape, you do specific sparring, with resistance, to escape the position. Until you practice a movement with resistance, you don’t know the movement.”
