To drill or not to drill? Many BJJ players are asking themselves this question nowadays. And they have a good reason to want to do away with drilling altogether. They see it as a boring part of their practice that involves doing the same thing over and over again. Where’s the fun in that?
Rolling is more exciting and it helps you become a stronger player and hone your skills and techniques. But how would you acquire those skills and techniques in the first place? Drilling, that’s how. So if you want to progress at a fast pace in BJJ, you’re going to need both drilling and rolling. They are the two wheels of the bicycle. Take one wheel off and you’re left with a funny but unfunctional bike.
But are they both of equal importance to your skill progression in BJJ? Or does one outweigh the other? Which one is that? Let’s explore the role that both rolling and drilling play in your journey and how to get the most out of both of them.
Should you Drill?
Absolutely. You know all those skills that you use on the mat while sparring? All those moves that get you out of a tight spot and all the techniques that you know so well? Drilling is how you got them to begin with. Just think of the first day at the academy. The very first class when you sat in a circle or a rectangle, butterflies in your stomach and awe in your heart.
Back then you didn’t know anything about BJJ. Maybe you have watched a few videos, but you had no skills to help you and you didn’t know the first thing about defense and offense techniques and positions. And look at you now, sparring against the best of them and your movement is fluid and your mastery of the basic techniques is decent. How did that happen?
This knowledge didn’t just descend on you in your sleep. You didn’t acquire it through magical powers. You spent hours learning and mastering them. That’s what drilling did to you. It’s tedious and not as fun as sparring. But it’s an essential part of your progress. That’s how you learn the concepts, techniques, and positions. And then you can put them into practice on the mat against your colleagues and classmates.
In other words, we remain students in BJJ no matter what color the belt we wear around our waist nor how many stripes we have. Ask any black belt and they’ll tell you how they learn something new every day. BJJ is a large discipline and wrapping one’s head around every aspect of it takes long years of learning and studying.
So while it’s boring to keep repeating the same technique over and over, it’s the only way to get better and learn the ins and outs of it. Some people learn with repetition, others pick it up and run with it. But both types can’t do without drilling. It’s just part of your BJJ life.
When to Call it a Day for Drilling?
With all these advantages that drilling has, there comes a time when you say enough is enough. Drilling can’t give me any more or I can’t get much more out of it. The repetition gets to you and you yearn to the excitement of sparring and mix it up with other players on a more realistic level.
And that’s the operative word. Drilling just isn’t realistic. You know that your training partner or your teacher isn’t giving it their all. The goal is not to get you to submit, but to teach you a certain technique. And for the sake of learning, competitiveness gets thrown out the window. And that’s one of the biggest drawbacks of drilling.
You just lose your motivation and get stuck in a rut. You’re learning new techniques, but you’re not really using them. You know how to execute, but your creativity is taking a back seat while you learn the next new position. And let’s face it, that’s not going to help you in the long run.
BJJ is a perfect balance between learning and acting. It’s more like performing arts. You need to feel it inside in order to express the emotion. And if you’re more focussed on drilling and putting tournaments and competitions on the back burner, you’re not doing yourself any favors there. You need both. So when do you know that you need to up the rolling dose and cut down on drilling?
You’ll feel it inside of you. That urge to do something different. Like a revving engine that urges you to release the brakes so that it roars forward, you’ll feel that energy surging. If your teacher doesn’t nudge you toward taking part in a tournament, your teammates will. And once you get a taste of what sparring is in an official capacity and what it feels like, there’s no turning back.
Why Rolling Matters?
To answer this question we need to get down to the brass tacks. What is BJJ all about? It’s a self-defense system, right? What that implies is, you’re being under assault. Your enemy looks for your soft spot and hits you hard. You need to get in the same fighting spirit if you want to come out victorious. You’re not trying to hurt the opponent, mind you, you’re just trying to control their movement and get them to submit.
The underlying tone here is the competitive spirit. You won’t get that from drilling no matter how many hours, days, months, or years you practice. Competitiveness comes from competitions. It’s right there in the name. And sparring is what instills that spirit or rather wakes it up in you. Whether you’re facing a mugger in the street or an opponent on the mat, your fighting spirit is what will see you through the ordeal.
It’s not a given. It doesn’t come nicely packaged and delivered right to your door. It’s something you need to work on, cultivate, and nourish. And live sparring is the best way to get there. This is why there are BJJ tournaments in the first place. Unlike other martial arts such as Karate, BJJ tournaments are all about sparring. You don’t see a single player executing techniques solo and getting awards for it. To defend yourself against danger, you have to put yourself in the way of danger many times. And a competition is the right way.
So how do you get prepared for a live tournament? Rolling is the answer. You might get good mileage out of drilling, but rolling is the rehearsal before the grand opening. Sometimes rolling can be the soft opening as well. When adrenaline starts pumping and you feel every fiber in your body rising to the occasion. This is your mind calling on your body to give it all it got. That’s the fighting spirit rising and taking over.
Striking a Good Balance between Drilling and Rolling
We already established that you need both drilling and sparring to become a better BJJ player. But sometimes it’s hard to draw a line or strike a balance between them. So when is it a good time to give drilling a break and engage in more sparring?
While sparring is a wonderful thing, it comes at a price. The risk of injury is higher during rolling than during drilling. Your teacher will not harm you and keeps a watchful eye on your movement to ensure you get the position right without injuring yourself or your mates. But when you’re sparring it’s a different ball game. All caution is thrown to the winds and what matters to you is to force your opponent to submit or pass the guard.
It’s common knowledge that tempers heat up during sparring and cascading testosterone might escalate and turn a friendly rolling session into a fight. That’s not what you’re there for and nobody wants that. But it happens. If that happens to you, maybe it’s time to go back to drilling more.
In general, your first few years in BJJ will be marked by more drilling than rolling. That’s the normal order of things. You need to learn the technique from your teacher before you can use it against an opponent. As you climb your way past the blue belt, that’s when rolling starts to occupy more of your time and attention.
By the time you’ve earned your purple belt, you’ll realize that rolling has a lot to thank for. Your progress becomes faster as you spend more time sparring than drilling. Mind you, the lines blur sometimes between the two. You might step onto the mat for a sparring session only to realize that you actually needed to try out a variation for a certain technique. It’s all good in the world of BJJ.