Whether it’s sparring, rolling or fighting games, we all have our own personal favorites, whether it’s the techniques we use, or the game-plan we adopt. There are those people, who prefer to come crashing out of the gate at 100 mph, and those who’d rather sit back, observe, and work off the counter etc. Neither approach, is better than the other – they are just different. The problem is, that if we only ever practice the one approach, however well suited it is for us and how effective we are at making it work, we are limiting our own development, and progression.

This is something that animals understand well. If you observe a litter of puppies wrestle and play, the alpha pup, doesn’t just assume the dominant role in a play fight, but will also act submissively, and allow the rest of the litter to dominate him/her. Dogs understand that even if they are the alpha, in their pack, they may at some point come across another dog, who is bigger, stronger and more aggressive than them, and it would be good to have had some practice and experience of how to act and behave, when this is the case. If they’d only ever practiced play fighting from the one perspective i.e. being the dominant dog, then they may find, that they are unprepared and inexperienced to deal with this “new” situation, where they are the weaker party. When pups play fight, their games, equip them for survival, and so they forget their place in the pecking order and “fight” from all roles/positions. This is a good example/training method for us to follow.

There are times even an alpha dog knows that it has to employ a different approach to its normal, default one, and we should be able to do the same. However big or fast we are, there will be someone out there who is bigger and faster, and who can match and exceed our natural skills and attributes. Whilst it is good to play to your strengths, if somebody can nullify them because they are their strengths also, it may be wiser and more appropriate to adopt a different game-plan. If you’ve never done this in training before, you are going to find yourself on unfamiliar territory, and trying out ideas that you’ve never tested before – this is not a good survival strategy. If you’d adopted the “training” approach that young dogs and puppies take, you’d be better prepared to deal with the situation you now face.

When you train you need to play different roles, and put yourself in positions, you wouldn’t normally allow yourself to be found in e.g. if you always avoid training at close range, and prefer to keep your opponent at distance, then sometimes you need to come in, and practice working from this range etc. This way of training means you need to put your ego aside, and recognize that not everything you are going to do will immediately work for you. However the long-term gains/effects are definitely worth it.

As a Judoka, I had very strong pins and hold downs (Osae-Komi), and my default strategy when going to ground would be to work to get a scarf-hold, and pin my opponent down for 30 seconds. It was a very effective strategy for me. The problem was, that I was so focused on this approach, that I missed submission opportunities (Kansetsu/Shime-Waza), that would have finished the fight sooner (and required less exertion), and other pins/holds that I could have established much earlier on. For a period, in my training, I deliberately gave up on using Kesagatamae (Scarf Hold), and tried everything else instead. The result was that I started to see opportunities that before I’d have passed up on, in order to get to my favored hold. Until you start training from a different perspective, all that you will see, is what you’ve seen before. In retrospect I would have benefited from a more balanced approach, that saw me still practice what obviously worked for me, but then that is the ignorance/stupidity of youth.

If you always practice your ground fighting from your back, start practicing a top game and vice versa. If in sparring you’re the guy who only ever goes forward, try putting some lateral movement in there. Broadening your approach, will get you ahead much quicker, and increase your skills and attributes, much more effectively that simply doggedly pushing your existing approach forward. This is not to say, you should give up on that which works, but rather expand your approach, so that you can become more versatile and adaptable, whilst developing a new appreciation and perspective on your existing game-plan and methodology.