The Shintaro Higashi Show - Grip Fighting for BJJ - A Conversation With Brian Glick

Episode Date: June 28, 2022

Take-down-focused grappling arts like Judo and wrestling put a huge emphasis on grip fighting (or hand fighting), but BJJ tends to focus less on it. Why would that be the case, and should BJJ place more emphasis on grip fighting? In this special episode, Shintaro and Peter sit down with Brian Glick, a Danaher black belt, face-to-face in Shintaro's dojo in NYC to talk about it. Please support us on Patreon if you can: https://www.patreon.com/shintaro_higashi_show. Any amount helps!

Hey guys, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show with Peter Yu. In person. In person. And then we have a very special guest. This is Gleck. He's my jiu-jitsu teacher. We have a long relationship, right? Me and you.

Maybe 10 years almost. Probably even more. More. I think more. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good relationship. Like martial arts relation. Very important. Sometimes it's more important than, you know, boyfriend-girlfriend relations. They're constantly making each other better yeah yeah right yeah like in a boyfriend girlfriend relationship those little toxic things can like lead but like judo jujitsu like you can't let those things go out of hand because right yeah you have to keep your relationship yeah at the top so i kind of

wanted to talk today about grip fighting and positional fighting. And you can jump in any time with Sensei Glick. Because in Judo, we stress the importance of grip fighting. Right. Hand position, dominant position. What does winning position look like? And even wrestling, they call it hand fighting. Right. And it's a little bit fleeting because you have good inside position and the other person can just go here.

Right. In Judo, it's a little bit more permanent. You have good grips and you have strong hands. It's not going anywhere. Jiu-Jitsu, you have no gi and gi. But I feel, from what I've seen so far, they don't really emphasize. So what does dominant position look like when you're in open guard? You're starting to see a lot more of that awareness of hand fighting,

awareness of what gripping is supposed to be about now that people are becoming better at standup. And we're seeing a lot more crossover now, especially people who are doing no gi are becoming more competent and more interested in developing wrestling skills, standing up. Some of that is the prevalence of ADCC rules and people interested in going to ADCC and things like that.

You're seeing more and more people are wanting to be able to wrestle, so hand fighting is becoming much more important. And then more jiu-jitsu people who train in the gi are interested in doing judo, and so they're developing a sensitivity to what their grips are doing. And it's interesting, I think, because in jiu-jitsu, gripping is very important, but it's not taught often. It's not taught in isolation in the same way that it's taught um in judo where it's really you get people very focused in on what the hands are doing are you gripping the sleeve are you gripping the collar

where are your hands is it low on the collar is it so these gradations these finer gradations you don't hear about them too much in jiu-jitsu and i suspect that some of that is because although uh gripping is important on the ground it doesn't have your your when you're standing up you know your grips determine so much about how well you're able to off balance your partner pushing them pulling them and so if my grip is too low i can't pull or push you effectively i have to get it high whereas when you're down on the ground i think you have a little bit more leeway because you're not often the stakes are not quite as high the person is relatively balanced because they're

lower to the ground yes if you're passing the person's already on their back so you have a little bit of leeway if the person is uh if you're seated in your garden your partner is passing there's not as much of a risk or not as much variance in how far you can set them down you know they're standing up you're going to knock them down to their butt doesn't have the same um import as it does i think standing up but we're seeing now that people who are playing jujitsu uh with the gi are becoming increasingly sophisticated with grips and if you dig into gi positions that use a lot of different grips like uh delahiva variations or barambolo places where you need to adjust your control from the bottom of the pants to the middle to the hip to climbing then you hear people talking a little bit more about that and paying more attention to it. Um, and so I think that we're going to, we're going to continue to see

people paying more and more attention to gripping, not maybe as its own study, but certainly in the context of grappling on the ground, like Jiu Jitsu, people are going to be looking at Judo people to see how they're gripping. And I think that Jitsu people are going to be looking at judo people to see how they're gripping and i think the judo people are going to be adopting what they're doing standing down to the ground and starting to grip so when i started trying to like think about like integrating judo gripping into nirwaza into jiu-jitsu training right i was thinking to myself like okay if you're standing your hands versus hands right and you're fighting for hand position and then your feet are obviously not gonna right you're

using it to attack like footsies or stuff like that but most of the off balances happens up here two hands versus two hands and if you're really dominant you got two hands versus one hand right because you're completely controlling the hand and they don't have a purchase on your gate right so it's like kind of applying that principle and i was doing it in nirvana where i'm like in the top side position but it's like you can't just focus hands to hands because if I grab my collar and sleeve, then your legs are free to do whatever you want on mobility, right? So then we kind of had the discussion of like, okay, maybe having one hand on the upper body, one hand on the lower body, sort of in opposing corners, right?

That may sort of be – and then, you know, we explored some options from there, right? So if you're looking at the top position in open guard and then the bottom we explored some options from there right so if you're looking at the top position of an open guard and then the bottom position of an open guard you could quickly give an idea like what the goal should be in terms of hand placement well i think the overall good overall place to start when we're thinking about gripping is as in judo not to be overly committed to a single grip and i think when you watch beginners starting in jujitsu, you'll see that they understand, they may begin by understanding

what sorts of grips they're supposed to get. So for instance, like a Toriondo pass, people understand that you're supposed to get a grip on the pants. You could grip down by the cuffs, you could grip up by the knees, but you have to get that grip. And then you'll see that as people begin to pass, they stay committed to those grips because

they don't want to let go of what they have in order to be able to transition to a pin yeah and as a result you see people who are early on in their jujitsu white belt blue belt maintaining grips beyond the point of usefulness yes and i think in judo you sometimes see the same thing like someone will get a good grip and they just kind of hold on to it yeah and even though the situation has changed the partner has moved or the gi has shifted or the arm isn't you get this very stiff thing so i think when we're talking about like guard passing and getting grips it's good to understand where you're supposed to begin um double pant grips is good. Sometimes you'll see people control collar and pant,

as you know, you and I have been talking about. What's key is that I think getting, having a mindset where you're prepared to shift your grips as necessary. Because there's no one gripping setup that will answer every situation that you have to face. So let's use the coriander pass hey can you show me that coriander it's like we're like eugene gozay that's a spice all right so if you're on your back right if i have double grip on the pant leg i got two hands

on your two legs i control your legs that's great right right but then obviously because my hands are connected to your legs you can easily grab my hands my sleeves with your hands right right so like it would make sense as you're reaching for my hands to disengage right or you know quickly pass but there's got to be sort of a conceptual system right as with gripping and standing yeah right so like what let's use that as an example to like what's sort of the idea main ideas so uh i think that if we're if we're thinking about passing like from the top position of toriando we in in some ways i don't i want to answer the question but i'm going to answer it in this way um Um, gripping in jujitsu on the ground is

oftentimes it's like not incidental, but what's significant is like, there are a couple of things that are important, right? There's as in judo, there's gripping, there's the angle that you're creating on your partner. Um, there's movement that you're creating from the top or from the bottom and then it's you know those three things gripping movement and angle determine what your lower body is going to be doing right so when we're talking about like a toriando pass we may start with two hands controlling the legs but a lot of that remember that we're not really going to be able to use our arms to control our partner's legs for very long. The legs are much stronger. So even if I'm much stronger than the person who's guard and passing, eventually their legs are going to overpower me.

So I can't just stay here. What I can do is I can use those grips so that I can create an angle or some sort of movement that changes the dynamic and then once my once i've created an angle i can start to look to shift a grip off of the legs um so i like to think about it as we can start down on the legs but eventually our goal is not to stay on the legs eventually our goal is going to be to pass to the upper body so we'll often need to shift from two hands down to a hand on the collar and a hand on the pants so that we can separate. And then our lower body needs to be able to find a path to the hip line, passing the line up to the shoulder line. But again, as with the, in the standing position, you know, you have people who

are confident in a collar and a sleeve grip and they'll do most of their work from there but if the collar grip is broken they'll readjust and they'll find an alternate grip to use at the same time those grips are being used to move their partner into position or to defend you know you have tehuaza like throws but i think most of the time you're using your grips in order to bring your partner into a place where your legs can engage. And I think in guard passing, it's the same thing. You're using your arms, you're using your grips to be able to misdirect your partner's legs, to be able to control your partner long enough so that you can create an angle and then pass. And obviously from the bottom, it's like you want to go high and then you get off balance and then create.

Yes. Or, you know, it's very, it's useful if we're, it depends a little bit on what guard we're playing. But if we're in a seated position versus a standing position, we want to have our legs engaged also. So, you know, in addition to having grips with the hands, you also have grips with the feet in a manner of speaking. It's a little bit more complex. Yeah. Gripping. Because now, you know, standing gripping to gripping i'm thinking two hands versus

two hands i gave an advantage now it's like hands hands legs two legs one leg yeah there's more yeah you have one hand you know one hand on the collar one hand on the pants yeah and you're always trying to destabilize me from bottom so i think about keeping my balance while doing so yeah in that sense it's kind of like stand-up yeah right because if you're gripping and the guy's attacking the feet right you're thinking about not getting tipped over right yeah i mean i think that it doesn't have um like it's not always a direct correlation one-to-one you know gripping standing gripping on the ground but i think the concepts that are there are really useful for jiu-jitsu people to be thinking about and then for judo people to be thinking about so if you're a jjitsu person it would it would benefit you to pay more attention to the sorts of grips you're

getting when you're passing are you gripping for a specific purpose or are you gripping just any old place and then are you keeping your grips longer than you need to or is there a time when you could switch your grips so that they're more effective? Like going from double cuff grips as you're doing a toriondo to one hand on the cuff, one hand on the collar, or moving up to head control along with this pan grip. So some flexibility in that approach. And then I think on the other side, a good question for judo people to ask themselves when they're doing nirwaza or they doing Jujutsu, especially guard passing, is how

can I apply the skills that I have currently from stand up grip fighting to Nwaza down on the ground instead of just, okay, I'm going to go over under pass or I'm going to go body lock pass or I'm going to knee cut. We can become a little bit more specific in the same way that we're specific from the standing position. Like, well, maybe I'm going to have a cross grip. You know, that's going to allow me to pull my partner's shoulder up off of the mat. Maybe I'm going to have straight collar grip. That's going to allow me to push my partner's shoulder down on the mat.

And so I think for judo people, actually, instead of kind of feeling that, I think sometimes judo people feel like, you know, the gripping skills are more useful standing up than they are on the ground. And I think that that might be true, but it's still an unexplored area for people. You don't necessarily have to have a million different jiu-jitsu techniques, but if your grips are solid on the ground, it's hell for bottom person you know and it's difficult to keep grips you know with a good jiu-jitsu person love this type of niche conversation let's bring it back to some more generalized sure right so now we're gonna like do like a little bit more like clippable youtube i guess stuff all right so tensei glick in your experience can you just uh in your own words, what is Jiu-Jitsu? What is BJJ? Jiu-Jitsu is the science of control leading to submission.

Oh, that's so beautiful. So quick. I wish I said it. That's a John Dameron. I wish I said that. All right. Interesting. Any other ways to... What is your personal philosophy when it comes to Jiu-Jitsu?

Like your approach, your methodology? You know... when it comes to jiu-jitsu like your approach your methodology you know uh i don't know if i have a good answer for that i i do think of it as the science of controlling the submission but i i also think that um when you start to get deeply into it there is an art to it that so so the definition i would add like a little asterisk or like a little correlation a little uh little coda to it to say um you know there is an aesthetic element to good jiu-jitsu in other words when you watch it it looks efficient it looks clean it looks like it's smooth um because it is because it's moving it's moving from one place to another with a minimum amount of effort it's like great i would say the same thing about judo great judo isn't just controlling

and throwing somebody onto their back it's doing it in a way it's aesthetically pleasing because when you watch somebody who does it just you know mauling someone and knocking them down and they put them on their back and it's ipon and you take someone who's got an amazing uchimata and just launches someone beautifully clean on their back the point is you know ipon is the same in both but we would when we're watching as as observers when we're watching as people who appreciate it as an art we can tell which one is like we like a little more and so i think jujitsu it's the same it's a science of control leading to submission with the benefits you know with with an aesthetic component that makes it more yeah that makes it more of an art yeah interesting interesting do you have a methodology that you sort of for training like this is the way i mean i know because right now but like

if you want to explain like your method and approach to training i'm sure people would love to hear that because you have great longevity right relatively for someone who's been doing it for so long you're very healthy yeah like joint wise yeah i mean i think that some of some of good training has to do with being able to accept bad positions and accepting what accepting uh the places that you're weak you know uh often people are are strengthening their strengths you know things are already strong at they want to improve so that those things can become as sharp as they possibly can and my approach which you know just comes from the way i was taught

is to be able to strengthen not just your strengths but also strengthen your weaknesses and then if you start on the path of strengthening your weaknesses pretty early on, after a little while, those weaknesses are not as weak as they were. So you have a much broader, firmer foundation for your training. Now, I think that a lot of competitors might disagree with that because it is a very niche thing. If you're going to compete, you need to make sure the things that you're doing are super sharp and you're not going to have a hundred different things. You know, like depth is not always as important as, or actually I guess depth is important. Like having range is not as important.

You need to be able to like dive super deep into those things you do. Yes. Yes. And so I think that for people who are on a competitive track right now, you know, you might not want to have a time where you're strengthening your weaknesses at the moment. You want to strengthen your strengths because those are the things you need when the clock is ticking and your time's running out. Like forcing down that hole and then see how deep you can take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. One thing after another. Yeah.

Responding and you're attacking and all the main lines. You want to kind of put them in your game and run that game and keep them there. So what are you working on now? You know, right now, as we were talking about, I want to get back to doing a little bit more gi. I've been doing a lot of no-gi. I've been trying to improve stand-up and then transition from seated positions up to standing positions, always working on leg locks, always trying to improve my guard passing, which has never been a strength and trying to get that to be a little bit better.

And then, yeah, I mean, those things take up a lot of my time. And then, of course, I'm trying to get better at judo always. You know, I feel like for as much as get better at judo always you know i feel like um for as as much as i have trained judo in the past the gap between where i am and where i want to be is is pretty great so doing that in a safe way doing that with safe people good partners that's a super important one more simple question okay difference between gi and nogi but like in a way that's everyone knows gi and no gi like people always talk about this right it's like you know doing gi will help no gi and everyone knows the

sort of the isms behind it and yeah the difference is one sport you're wearing a gi all the sport you're not wearing a gi one's more like wrestling one's more this you have to have some interesting yeah i mean i think that like the trope about gi and no gi is in the old days people like oh you know you you have to do gi in order to be able to do no gi because it's so much more technical and you know we know now that that's not true that there are elements of no gi that are as technical or more technical than than with the gi we've seen that most clearly with leg locks you know you can have a situation where if you don't know your way around leg locks, you're not, you're not faking your way through it. You know, you have to have the technical understanding.

We've seen that. We've seen people develop that. So I think that, you know, the main difference is to me with the gi and no gi, obviously you have a lot of handles with the gi. And so you're dealing a lot more with grips like like indirect grips so grip on the cloth rather than grip on the legs so as we were talking about before grip fighting um changes the notion of um being able to to think in terms of inside position outside position and posts and frames and those things those are always important with the gi but they become more important no gi because you just don't have the handles to hold on to.

You don't have the ability to have a rope around your partner's neck where you can pull them up or a handle you can hold on, you know, like a noose to feed their head through. So you're much more reliant on direct contact rather than indirect contact. And then, of course, there's the element of friction. When you're training with the gi, there's so much more friction, especially when you're down on the ground and you know, when it comes to friction, things tend to move a little slower. Although that's, you know, you can have an explosive person,

obviously with the gi of like a Leandro low with the gi where it's just as fast as it can possibly be. And the friction of the gi doesn't matter. And then you have people who are working at super high levels with the gi where it's almost as if they're wearing no gi like there's, they don't, it seems almost like the friction isn't there, but it's still there.

I think for me as a practitioner, I feel it. And I mean, I find them, you know, I love them both. I, I used to not,

I think when I first began, I was not as big a fan of nogi because I feel like it was it tends to be faster there tend to be more scrambles because of the ability to strip grips easily and move people around and clear things and you know wrestling also folds into that so I used to like to get a lot more now I I feel like it's probably 60 40 no gi now um but yeah i mean i find them i love them both and i think that they both although they develop two separate skill sets in the sense that you're gripping with the gi uh determines a lot yeah i do think that they're i also think that there's the concepts unite. They are the same.

Thank you very much, Sensei Gleick. I know you have an appointment after this, so we'll continue this on. Nothing is more important. Thank you for being on our podcast. Hopefully, we'll have you back on. Peter's here. That's cool, right? Yeah, that's cool with me.

We rolled for the first time today. Yeah, we had a good time. Cool. Thanks for listening, guys. Stay tuned for the first time today. Yeah, we had a good time. We had a good time. Cool. Thanks for listening, guys, and stay tuned for the next episode.