Another common sight is the student who has a few moves that he likes and avoids the other parts of the game, concentrating on further improving what he does and likes best. Sometimes such students are able to channel the sparring to their favorite positions, but you can’t count on that. If you want to see great improvement in your game in a short period of time, you must concentrate on improving the weakest part of it. Of course, it is more fun to concentrate on what you do best. If you like passing the guard and being on top, it is easy and even rewarding to continue to perfect that while avoiding being on the bottom that you hate so much. The same thing goes for the guard players; it is much more fun to refine that spider guard sweep combination than to try to be on top and learn to pass. But you will never develop an effective and complete game that way.
When I teach my students, I have a system to help them work on their weaknesses. In the beginning, I let them develop what they like to do and concentrate on that. If a student likes to fight from the bottom, I let him get comfortable with that and enjoy the feel of training, but after a while I start to practice the stuff that he doesn’t like. If the likes to play the guard, he will naturally pull guard and play guard. I don’t have to force him to do that. What I try to do is reverse the game and force him to play from the top. That has two functions. Playing on the top, he becomes comfortable with other aspects of the game, such as passing the guard, maintaining good posture, avoiding submissions, developing good base to avoid sweeps, and so on. Additionally, since he is now trying to play the top, he will see the game from the opposite perspective. When he tries to pass, he learns what he needs to do to pass and what the opponent does to counter his moves, so when he reverts back to the bottom, he will know what the top guy is looking for and how he thinks, which will improve both sides of his game.
In terms of improvement, working on the weaker parts of your game will pay off much more than continuing to work on what you already do well. It is far more difficult to improve what you are already great at another 10 percent than to improve something you are not so good at. And even if you do, it probably won’t make that much difference in competition–you already do it well! But when you practice the worst part of your game, it’s easy to improve 30 percent, and that 30 percent will be a huge difference in your training and competing. You will have entirely eliminated a weakness.
Think of a triathlete who is very strong at swimming. He may dedicate a great amount of time to practicing his swimming, but this will only cut 5 percent off his time and that will shave maybe fifteen seconds off his total time. But if he is weak at running and he concentrates on improving running, he may be able to easily cut his time by fifteen percent, and that fifteen percent might mean cutting several minutes off his total time. By working on his weakness, he gets a much greater overall improvement with the same effort.
For more tips and information on a MMA gym in your area, please check out this website: Pure MMA Fighting
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