This idea was first brought up to me by my friend Morgan (https://www.instagram.com/razorfrazerjj/), and was something I wanted to test for a while but could not find an appropriate place to put it.
Talking about Intensity
Scaling intensity is sort of a running joke in the broader BJJ community, everyone has a story about the “Let’s Roll Light” person who immediately tries to pull your head off. Everyone has heard some tired line from a coach about how “This isn’t ADCC Worlds everyone, tone it down”. But very rarely is this topic discussed with any sort of practical takeaway.
The first thing to note is that the accepted intensity of training, and how that gets communicated to the group, is going to be a cultural thing. Whether you peg that intensity to some sort of metric like heart rate, or you all develop an understanding of what an abstract value like “Go 30%” means, these sorts of things are what an athlete and gym culture develop a feel towards over time. It is through shared experience and communication that the room understands what those terms mean and how they translate to the training. A lot of this happens naturally over time or can be directed by setting longer times for training rounds (less time pressure can mean less intensity). Riding that line on how hard to train is typically a moving target.
However, depending on context, a coach may want a more deliberate way to control intensity, especially with newer people who have not had the time to acclimate to the specific gym culture. Many people have had the experience of working with a brand-new person who is tense, stressed, and holding their breath. While reminding them to relax can sometimes help, that can be extremely vague. It also only works for one person at a time, how else can we set intensity globally for the room?
Safety AND Learning
Intensity has implications for performance and learning. I’ve seen this idea pop up a few times in Skill Acquisition literature. Directly for performance as the Yerkes-Dodson law, which states that there is an optimal level of mental arousal for performance. On the other hand, a little more loosely through ideas like Challenge Point hypothesis, in that a highly arousing or anxiety inducing situation may create a level of challenge that is inappropriate for a specific individual, which can affect performance and learning depending on the intention of the training.
So, if intensity and challenge can influence learning, and as a coach you are trying to promote learning, it can be helpful to have a deeper toolbox for gauging and scaling intensity in the training room. Lets look at how this played out for me in a recent training session…
THE SITUATION:
You are a coach running a class. You have decided to begin exposing your room to leg entanglements to begin building skills for lower body clinching, pinning, and leg attacks. You want to start them somewhere relatively simple so they can have an initial experience but are concerned about safety from twisting/stretching and knee reaping. You set up an activity where one player starts in a mixed entanglement (SLX / Ashi Garami / whatever you want to call it) and give them some task focuses of keeping their ankle and knee together, keeping their outside foot on the hips, and controlling both of their partner’s feet with their hands. The defending player needs to separate their partners knees and ankles, keep their partner’s feet off their hips, and pull their leg free. You want to make sure the entangling player doesn’t cross their foot to the inside for a knee reap for this class, so you point out the safety concern and constrain away standing up and rotating to limit the chances of knees twisting. This limits the chance of the defending player trying to spin out, twisting their own knee, and limits a knee twist happening because the defending player stood up and fell down with their falling body weight creating the knee twist, two large areas where knee injuries can occur.
For Adults: Typically leg entanglements are such a novel experience they do not move very quickly when first being exposed. Additionally, adults will mostly be a bit more perceptive when you call out safety concerns and will be able to pay attention to them or recognize them sooner. You maybe just need to cue the room or a few groups a couple times to keep their toes pointed out, hips on the mat, and belly pointed up.
For Kids: The game feels silly and fun, the intensity quickly ramps up, and suddenly to achieve their tasks kids lose focus on everything but staying attached or escaping. Kids start reaping, standing, and spinning and safety starts to become a primary concern.
As coaches, we really have only 3 things we can do for our athletes (Shout out to Scott, https://primalmmascott.substack.com/p/doing-the-thing-vs-doing-the-other), We can show them something, tell them something, or have them do something. Good coaching will move between those three items fluidly based on the experience and preferences of the coach and their relationship with the athletes in front of them. I believe typically in BJJ, we communicate appropriate or expected intensity predominantly by TELLING. The issue is that we are assuming that we all know what we mean when things like “Go 30%” or “Only give a little resistance”, not everyone is the same and painting everyone with the same brush with that language generally doesn’t work in my experience. Where we are leaving a useful tool on the table is communicating that expected intensity in the SHOWING stage.
Now on to how I implemented this for my kids’ class from the situation above:
On top of keeping a close eye on the room, giving a short safety talk on keeping their toes pointed out while they work, what else can we do to ensure safety? We can demonstrate the level of intensity we are expecting. Instead of asking my room of kids to “Go Light” or “Be Careful” I had them sit for 20-30 seconds and watch me play an exchange with another kid in the class. The kids can pick up on the focus and intensity and use that to understand what the expectation is for the training.
I have noticed previously with adults, when I did not demonstrate in this manner, I had to get groups back on task more often when they started crossing the foot over. With the kids, after the live demo, we can get a good set of exchanges where the intensity and resistance is present, but not so high that the challenge becomes overwhelming and they lose focus on their tasks. The kids understand the expectations for behavior and feel comfortable, and deviations/problems are easier to identify and correct as is appropriate.
Try doing this next time you are concerned about the level of intensity in the room for a specific training activity. Getting ahead of intensity issues can help you manage safety, especially when you are working with a larger room or a room you don’t have history with. It can also help build expectations and comfort with newer athletes. Remember that a training room needs to feel appropriately safe to help our athletes learn and perform their best. Good coaches don’t just demonstrate techniques; they build positive learning environments with purpose!