Tl;dr how has your game evolved or what are you working on?

1. Try to win from closed guard. 2. Try to win from open guard. 3. Try to win from top. 4. Try to win by pressure, everywhere. 5. Try to win by twisting legs the wrong way. 6. Try to win by all means necessary. (failing more then winning)

As a n00b white belt: suck at jiu-jitsu. As a white belt with a bit more white belt experience, training finally on thin mats and not on the parquet: suck at jiu-jitsu but try omoplatas from everywhere. This until my old teacher told me, next time you try an omoplata I'll break your leg, try something else sometimes ffs. No omoplatas anymore, going back to simply suck at jiu-jitsu while trying to figure out what to do with the collar of other people's gi. Lose some match, win some match somehow. How? I don't know. As a blue belt suck more than necessary at jiu-jitsu, and more than I care to admit. Fail to be good from closed guard, understand nothing of passing, still keep trying to fake it till I make it (I didn't make it). Lost so many matches to triangles. I think I won only one tournament at blue belt. Those were dark years, we will not go there. As a purple belt suck so much at jiu-jitsu (particularly at deep half guard which was the craze back then) that started training striking and mma. Keeping losing something and winning something. Suck at guard pulling. because of the suck at guard pulling and the suck at deep half, I ended up so often under the mount that I sucked less at escaping the mount. For the time I was a brown belt, my game was still 'suck at jiu-jitsu' but people started to ask me to help them out. I guess, because I made all possible mistakes and suck at jiu-jitsu at every possible level, so it was easy to me to get what was their mistake. Most noticeably as a brown belt, suck at giving up learning techniques and trying to understand concepts and patterns. Figure out some, than thought i didn't really figured them out after all, started again. Also as a brown belt, suck at takedowns. I think my game is still stuck at this point now that I'm a black belt who suck at jiu-jitsu, but I added in the mix 'suck at leg locks'. I have plenty of heuristic and concepts though.

Mainly my waist line has evolved, but in terms of drilling during lockdown (in England, it's been mostly lockdown since March 2020), I've been working a lot on Priit's stuff. So, his open guard approach, along with his tweaks to the running escape (which has been my go-to position for a long time now, ever since I learned it off Saulo Ribeiro's old DVDs). Meaning lots of this: https://www.instagram.com[...]QskjTJQ7r/ In terms of how my game has changed over the last 15 years, not much. Defend defend defend, hide, mostly. While really hating being in open guard.

I started being about escapes because I was the smallest in the group for a few years. Then pressure, top and from bottom closed guard. Then started to add wrestling to everywhere. Open guard has always sucked due to certain physical limitations I didn't work on early enough. The defining positions of BJJ - open guard and taking the back (and submitting from back)have always been the weakest parts of my own game. My own game has always been somewhat unsystematic and scattered. I've always been a far better coach to others than myself :) But I plan to take a real beginner / basics mindset if I get back to training now. Really develop suitable open guard for me and attack the back way more.

Out of curiosity, have all the gyms In England been uniformly shut down since the pandemic ?

The defining positions of BJJ - open guard and taking the back (and submitting from back)have always been the weakest parts of my own game.

Did we just become best friends?

When I was a purple belt I was nearly a 100% guard player. Which I was a bit embarrassed by considering my lineage. So I decided that I could only do submissions from top. That forced me to only use sweeps from bottom and work to pass on top. That dramatically changed my game. At brown belt I asked my coach Francisco Neto to start teaching me Judo and wrestling (he's a 3rd degree Judo black belt and Brazilian National wrestling team member) because again, my lineage didn't match my game. That gave my confidence in an area I previously did not have. By Black Belt I had my own gym and threw myself into Muay Thai and Judo with our coach Maurice Allan (8th degree Black Belt). This also changed my BJJ game pretty dramatically. Especially the Muay Thai. Some of the concepts gave me different perspective on things happening on the ground. As the head BJJ coach, it's difficult to train the way I did when I was a student in the BJJ class. My focus now has to be on ensuring that things I am going to want to teach I have worked through for a while because I need to have answers for the 'what if they do this?' So now I'm down in the weeds in figuring out WHY something works and what possible counters can arise. Problem is with COVID I am not actually rolling so I am not getting much chance to do that.

I always had a general aversion to/disinterest in playing guard, which, similar to what Jorgen mentioned above, was surely aided by some physical limitations like short, stocky legs.

I think mine has always followed a fairly constant pattern of Chris Haueter-style 'get on top, stay on top'. I started grappling in the context of (very amateur) MMA, so that mindset probably just took root early on and never went away. I always had a general aversion to/disinterest in playing guard, which, similar to what Jorgen mentioned above, was surely aided by some physical limitations like short, stocky legs. I think I was a purple belt before I was able to hit triangles with any kind of consistency at all. I've always loved the standup side of grappling, which initially meant just nogi/wrestling, but recently took a swerve off towards the jacketed side of things too. I think I've watched nothing but Judo, Sambo, and Inner Mongolian Bökh videos for the past year of lockdown, for instance, and I'm probably gonna emerge back into civilisation with one lopsided Resident Evil-esque arm from all the balcony uchikomis I've been doing. Apart from that... Guard game: Basically 'make space and stand up', combined with a random mix of Williams Guard and knee shield. Side control: The Roy Marsh - https://youtu.be/ws4sk2y0wHA Mount: Switch back to side control -> Roy Marsh Back: Switch back to mount -> side control -> Roy Marsh Taking bookings for seminars now!

.......Side control: The Roy Marsh - https://youtu.be/ws4sk2y0wHA Mount: Switch back to side control -> Roy Marsh Back: Switch back to mount -> side control -> Roy Marsh Taking bookings for seminars now!

I've found that the evolution of my game has been heavily influenced by my chronic injuries and other physical limitations. It's hard to evolve many times unless you're forced to do so. My main issues ATM involve two arthritic hips and a frozen shoulder. This means no more knee cut passes or underhooking in bottom half guard: two major stalwarts from my former repertoire. I'm very grateful to be practicing a sport/art that allows its practitioners so much freedom to innovate.

I think mine has always followed a fairly constant pattern of Chris Haueter-style 'get on top, stay on top'. I started grappling in the context of (very amateur) MMA, so that mindset probably just took root early on and never went away. I always had a general aversion to/disinterest in playing guard, which, similar to what Jorgen mentioned above, was surely aided by some physical limitations like short, stocky legs. I think I was a purple belt before I was able to hit triangles with any kind of consistency at all. I've always loved the standup side of grappling, which initially meant just nogi/wrestling, but recently took a swerve off towards the jacketed side of things too. I think I've watched nothing but Judo, Sambo, and Inner Mongolian Bökh videos for the past year of lockdown, for instance, and I'm probably gonna emerge back into civilisation with one lopsided Resident Evil-esque arm from all the balcony uchikomis I've been doing. Apart from that... Guard game: Basically 'make space and stand up', combined with a random mix of Williams Guard and knee shield. Side control: The Roy Marsh - https://youtu.be/ws4sk2y0wHA Mount: Switch back to side control -> Roy Marsh Back: Switch back to mount -> side control -> Roy Marsh Taking bookings for seminars now!

Man, i love Roy‘s heavy, smothering top game.... We improved our games so much since training with him and his style fits me perfectly, as I am not the super flexible guard player...

I have a torn labrum on my left side. I get cortisone shots twice a year and it helps a ton. When my shoulder is bad my half-guard game is so bad that it's just no fun to roll. That brings me to the question of the thread. I figure I'd strip my game down and build it back up once (assuming) I get my black belt. I want to develop a strong closed guard game where you know what is coming but there is nothing you can do to stop it.

For the longest time I had no idea he was based in Germany. I just watched his videos and assumed he was in some random place in the US. Then I saw him wandering around at Submissao in Karlsruhe and thought I'd eaten too much cheap acai.

Closed guard is essentially a four point pin and if there is no explicit stalling rule for top person to take unnecessary risks, he can at least stall and neutralise and likely move slowly towards more advantageous position unless there is a noticeable discrepancy in skill and/or physical attributes in favour of bottom guard. This is especially true for no-gi but I think it might be for gi as well. If there are rules/agreements to enforce activity then it's a different matter of course. (actually we in our club sometimes prohibit closed guard in sparring for more than 10 seconds specifically and in MOST cases say if there has been 1-2 minutes in closed guard without either side getting anything going - open up and play open)

My game has changed dramatically over the years and it was always dictated by injuries I've had to work around. Overall, though, I would say my focus has moved through self defense -> MMA -> BJJ for competition -> BJJ for social/fitness. Enjoyed every stage of it and very happy with being a hobbyist BJJ dad at this point :)

Christian when you say you started at self defense, what did that look like for you? Was this the old school Gracie self defense curriculum (escaping head locks, bear hugs, etc)?