Episode 325: Do you have long legs, love closed guard and triangle chokes? Maybe you have shorter limbs and play using more Half Guard or X-Guard? Body type and limb length was never discussed in the earlier days of BJJ but it does have a big impact on the way you play the Jiu-Jitsu game. In MMA the tale of the Tape, height, weight and reach - Arm span are all factors that can give you an advantage. This holds true for BJJ but no one is talking about it. You might be playing a type of BJJ game that may not suit your body's proportions which may lead to unnecessary injury. The dynamic nature of Jiu-Jitsu means we can all play the game no matter what shape or size we are but could you be more effective using a better tool for the job. This discussion questions whether or not just following your coaches advice because it worked for them is the right way to go. You need to take a closer look at your own body and find what works best for you.
Episode 325: Do you have long legs, love closed guard and triangle chokes? Maybe you have shorter limbs and play using more Half Guard or X-Guard? Body type and limb length was never discussed in the earlier days of BJJ but it does have a big impact on the way you play the Jiu-Jitsu game. In MMA the tale of the Tape, height, weight and reach - Arm span are all factors that can give you an advantage. This holds true for BJJ but no one is talking about it. You might be playing a type of BJJ game that may not suit your body's proportions which may lead to unnecessary injury. The dynamic nature of Jiu-Jitsu means we can all play the game no matter what shape or size we are but could you be more effective using a better tool for the job. This discussion questions whether or not just following your coaches advice because it worked for them is the right way to go. You need to take a closer look at your own body and find what works best for you.
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Speaker 1:
Does your body type determine your jujitsu? Hear me out. Are you a long torso, short leg kind of human? Well, standing up in wrestling is going to suit you. But are you a long leg, short torso human? Playing close guard is going to suit you. Now, your coach may have a very different body type to you, which was my experience when I started jujitsu, so their game suited them. It didn't suit me. But no one ever said to me hey, man, you've got short, stubby legs, you shouldn't play close guard. They were like no, just squeeze, just cross your big toes. So you might have found this that, hey, I'm just playing a certain kind of jujitsu because it feels better. Yeah, but actually maybe there's something more to this. It's kind of why big joey doesn't fuck with delahiva. Yeah, it is harder when you don't have the shins, you know, when they're like, you know, you put your delahiva hook in and then you put your foot up here and you twit and I'm like how do you keep foot up there, bro? Yeah, true, uh.
Speaker 1:
So my old coach, dan cherubin, has very long shin bones, right, very and also huge feet, paddle feet like. I think he's like a size 14, size 15. Yeah, what kind of dude. So he just whacks that shin bone in there and his foot just goes. It's wrapping around you. It's like another little shin bone. Yeah, it's like a three-section staff, very much so. So for him to play de la heave is perfect and also butterfly, because he's got these massive shin bones. Yeah, it's like. It's like the, it's like the great wall of china. There's no way I'm getting in there like a mongol stuck on the other side. I'm gonna have to go around the backside, sail through the sea and journey through the desert to take that back. But, uh, anyway, I've been listening to podcasts on genghis khan. Don't worry about that. Um, here's the deal For me.
Speaker 1:
I did Taekwondo for 15 years. I probably have no permission physically to do Taekwondo. I have the shortest legs. Nothing kind of brought this home harder than in 2007,.
Speaker 1:
I actually fought the world champion, who is a guy called Resendo Alonso. At that time he was six foot five and fighting 77 kilos, jesus, and he was all legs. Yeah, he had the shortest torso, so that meant when he lifted his leg to waist height, it was a head kick on me, right, right. So it was absolutely nothing for him to. Just, he wasn't even trying to stretch, was just he just kicked my head off very easily, and also he had all kinds of range.
Speaker 1:
Now, obviously you've got to find a way to make your body type work for you, but when I came to jujitsu having shorter legs and a long torso was actually quite an advantage as a grappler for taking down. Like, if you have a lower center of gravity, it's actually easier to shoot and get low, yeah, and it's harder to control your center of mass. That's right. And so also when I lifted my hips, I could put my head in for passing and pressuring, but my hips were further away because I had a long torso. So that was helpful, yeah, but it was not helpful for close guard. It was so hard. I got pretty strong adductors, but trying to get my feet around someone who was of a decent size and like, cross my feet, up my ankles, my knees, that was so sore. Yeah, all the freaking time. Yeah, sorry, no, go on, no, no.
Speaker 1:
And then I was like and then I started to learn about a guy called marcelo garcia, who, who is a long torso, shorter leg human, yeah, he played butterfly guard, he played x guard. I was like, wow, what is this? What is this special stuff? Don't talk about it, it's the dark arts. I was like, but he's, he's winning, he's very good. We have similar bodies. Shouldn't I copy that? No, you must do what the master does. Anyway, I got pretty good at close guard.
Speaker 1:
But, needless to say, once I started to learn about you know kind of legs inside and different kinds of jujitsu, I was like, well, this suits me. I've got strong quads, why wouldn't I elevate people, why wouldn't I use this tool? And it's because I just didn't understand that the jujitsu I was trying to play didn't suit my body. You know what I mean, and I think almost no one ever says this to you, like I mean, probably if you have long legs, they're like oh, you should do triangles. Yeah, that was a classic thing. Yeah, have you seen that joke? Yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:
It is interesting that no one really, no one really acknowledges it very much. It just kind of, you naturally start to bias towards the things that suit you, I think, but it takes some time to get there. And I don't know, I mean definitely with the old school coaches. I don't think there was any acknowledgement of that. But say with coaches now, like, say with Adam, I was coaching at Vantage the other night and everyone's got their own unique games. Because Adam's like hey, man, I think you should do this. So I do think it's something you see more of now. Um, I, I guess you know.
Speaker 1:
One thing to mention is that this is not an excuse to cop out, right like. It's not the case that you got short limbs. I'll never play close guard and never get to understand that like I can go there, absolutely, yeah, and I can say for myself also long torso and short legs. Closed guard was very good to me in the initial few years, right, but these days, like when I I still default to it, right, right, you get swept or something and you're like just looking for some kind of control and you like close your guard around someone. I do that to someone that's like half decent. It's very rare that I'm catching any control or any submission from there. Yeah, and I'm like, why did I do this? And then they're standing up and then you're like, oh fuck, now I've got to bail to something else anyway. Yeah, it's hard, um, but yeah, so it's, it's. It is fascinating.
Speaker 1:
I guess the other, the other maybe, um, point to that to your. No, I think there was more than that, but it was just more that this is our gym, this is our style, yeah, and that's cool. Like this, this definitely the program. There's something to that, because you're like, well, if you follow our formula or our, our model, you're gonna get so good at this and that's like unbeatable. Yeah, and at that time hodja gracie was the man and he played close guard, yeah, and you know it was like that. So there's, I was going to say when I butted in before with long-legged folks like Hodger, like Adam Childs, when you see someone with really long legs and you see them playing close guard, they're so relaxed, yeah, like they're doing work with their upper body, but their legs are just like casually around and closed and it's like this nice, there's no work there.
Speaker 1:
Casually around and close, and it's like this nice, there's no work there. Strong connection, yeah, and I'm like man, close guard very rarely feels like that for me. Like their heels are like sitting on the ground, yeah, you know, yeah, they've got their knees around your hips and their feet are so far past you. The reason why I bring this up when you go to MMA, let's look at our tougher, more athletic cousins. They talk about the tail. What do they weigh? They talk about their backgrounds. They talk about so many factors, right, and just like a couple of inches in reach makes all the difference on a punch, right, yeah, so for example, I think it's John Jones has the longest reach, like for height.
Speaker 1:
I mean he's a tall guy. I don't know, maybe six, four, six, five. I could be wrong in saying that, but his reach is seven foot one or something crazy, like people always know. I mean he puts his fingers out, yeah, kind of fake eye gouge like it kind of. It's a bit not great, but john jones has amazing reach. That makes a huge difference in striking, yeah, same thing like, um, I believe conor mcgregor's got actually quite a long reach, yeah. And here's the thing if you've got even volkanovsky for his high big reach, he has big reach, which means he can touch you. You can't touch him.
Speaker 1:
The other thing too, for the uninitiated I only learned this recently, but that the shoulder width contributes to reach, oh yeah, I always used to just think it was like shoulder to hand length, yeah, but it's actually the total length. So if you, you might look like you've got kind of short arms, but if you've got really broad shoulders, like volkanovski, he doesn't look like a long-armed guy, no, but his shoulders are very broad. So long reach. Because when you rotate, that's yeah for sure, that's how you fucking throw a punch. Oh god, dynamic.
Speaker 1:
Listen to my other podcast bulletproof for striking arts. Whoa, I didn't even know. There you go. It's behind the paywall.
Speaker 1:
Um well, let's look at a guy like Gordon Ryan. He has ridiculously long arms. I didn't realize this right Like I'd watched a few of his tutorials. Uh, I downloaded uh one of his passing, uh BJJ fanatics things, and what I came to realize is he has fucking long arms and I didn't really understand it until I stood next to him. I stood next to him at the um 2019 ADCC. It was just like the Danaher Death Squad crew was standing. It was post-comp. I was in around all the guys Lockie had done his thing, so there was like absolute MMA crew. Everyone was there. It was cool because the comp was over. So people were like kind of letting their guard down. People were just standing around. It wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 1:
Oh, my God, gordon Ryan's hands are almost by his knees. You know how they have that exaggerated look of like the gorilla or the orangutan. Yeah, the knuckle drager part of the reason why gordon is so comfortable to reach around like take your back. He has incredibly long arms. Now, I actually don't know his wingspan, but I would suggest it is far more than his height. Right, like proportionally, proportionately right. That's the crazy thing, like, and I think that when I think about my old coach, dan cherubin he also has crazy long arms. He could have you in close guard, pretty much reach all the way around to your back for the far side, lat and just turn you around yeah, like, and that is a massive, freaking advantage. I've never heard anyone jujitsu talk about how long is that guy's rich? Yeah, it's only in mma they talk about that, right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and having long legs and long arms and a short torso means you've got a smaller surface area to control in the middle. Yep, that's actually harder to get in on. That's harder to get in on if they're good at using that. Yeah, but if, but, if you're a kind of Mike Tyson-esque grappler like me, want to get inside and just fucking, you know, I just want to get in close and hug the shit out of you. If I can get inside your long limbs, you're kind of dead. Yeah, and that's the downside, isn't it? Yeah, like I know generally with long-armed folks, if I'm able to get like a cross-face underhook on them from the top, once I've controlled that arm overhead, their upper arm is so long that it's like really hard for them to get it back inside, whereas I get that on someone like you and it's like you only need a little bit of space and then your elbow slips back in. Yeah, I got them.
Speaker 1:
Vin Diesel, short daddies, yeah. And so there is definitely pros and cons, but then the framing of the long person is a fucking nightmare to deal with. It's like these baseball bats coming out at you. Yeah for sure. You know, jess fraser was the first person to sort of um. She mentioned that about when she's rolling with people, like when she's visiting a gym, and she, she assesses someone's body pre-roll. Ah. So she's like, oh, yeah, that's right, and she'll assess them. And I'm like what are you looking for? And she's like, well, if it's someone that's like long and lanky, then I'm like this guy's going to be like a bag of frames and I got to get inside there and shut that shit down. Good, call um. Or if it's someone that's like short, a bit more squat, squat, then she's like, okay, now it's going to be a different kind of thing. I got to maybe I've got to get to guard first. You know, I've got to control the back or whatever it is, but she's, she's using the body type as information Definitely, which I've never done. But when she told me that I'm like, oh man, that makes so much sense. Yeah, I mean I'm.
Speaker 1:
I went to a Hoyler Gracie seminar and he was talking about how you assess your opponent. It's like, oh, this guy's bigger than me, he's stronger than me, but he's looked stiff. He will tap to a foot lock because his ankles will be stiff. It will be easier to apply pressure there. Yeah, you know so, he, he would always assess in that way. So, um, what I want to say say is this like part of the reason why this came up.
Speaker 1:
Back in the day I did a anthropometry course, which is like just basically learning how to do fat calipers. I did it at, uh, deacon university, skinfold test, skinfold test. It was basically a three-day course on how to do skin folds, which is very boring, but at least I got my little certificate and I was allowed to do that. But also, what they talked about is lever length and they explained the difference between if you have like a long femur, like your upper leg, and shorter shins, that will make you good at certain things yeah, um, you know, and, but running isn't one of them, right, like if you had shorter femurs but you had really long shins, that was actually really fucking helpful, right, like they were like. But if you're like a 50 50, which I am which is like my, from the edge of my femur to the end and from the top of my tib fib to my ankle, so thigh bone, shin bone, it's 50 50. Yeah, right, much easier for me to squat. Yeah, you know what I mean. Yeah, if you're someone with really long femurs, that's really hard because your hips have to go so far back to come down. Does that make sense? Absolutely Same thing my feet are way too big for my height.
Speaker 1:
Maybe I should have been taller, I don't know, but I have like a size 12 foot. I'm a pretty, I'm a kind of 5'9" stretch into a 5'10" kind of guy. Like my foot shouldn't be that big, I don't need it to be that big. Yeah, but that means I have a much more stable base when I squat. I have all these factors that just enable me to be good at squatting, which people probably underestimate. Same thing with bench pressing If you have short arms, bar travels a lot less. Yeah, it's so much easier. Yeah, but because jiu-jitsu is so fucking complicated and we don't want to think about this shit. We're like just let me roll. I don't want to think about body types and stuff.
Speaker 1:
What you might find is you may be playing a game that doesn't suit your body and that could mean you're getting injuries you wouldn't otherwise get if you played a different game. Absolutely, this is kind of my angle. This is what I want to talk about, because what I had found is, even playing single leg x, I couldn't do that against ben hodgkinson because he had such long legs like I just couldn't put my foot up on his hip. It was so much work. So I had to actually adjust my jujitsu if I wanted to, um, play guard against. Yeah, I pulled some x guard-guard on Eric on Monday night and he just like moved to the side, just like kind of did a half Cossack, and I'm like I feel nullified here.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, it's true, right, like certain things that work, generally when you find someone that's on a particular end of the spectrum, it all of a sudden may not work. Yeah, definitely. And so for you out there, folks, you're just starting jujitsu and you're like what kind of jujitsu should I do? It's often not explicitly told to you, it's like just come learn it all. But actually, what might help you get ahead and what may help you avoid certain pitfalls is by having a look at certain body types and the games they play.
Speaker 1:
So this is just a rough outline that I will put out there that for me, having shorter legs, uh, playing a game that didn't rely on longer levers was better. So, for example, um Della Heva, close guard and spider guard are great if you have really long legs. Yep, they are a hundred percent. Yeah. But butterfly X guard half guard is a short limb daddy kind of game. Yeah. So those games really suit me. Same thing like reverse de la Riva.
Speaker 1:
Now, you can't Like leg triangles. Leg triangles, they're not going to be huge. If you've got short limbs, no, arm bars, arm bars, hip extensions, arm bars, guillotines, squeeze knees yeah. So you know I struggle to do a DARS, you know, because it's just like trying to get around. Leg attacks are typically hard for longer-limbed folks too, aren't they? They are because it's hard for you to get your own legs out, yeah. Whereas if you've got short legs, like here's the funny thing, kit Dale has a massive torso and very short legs. Yeah, if you tried to keep his legs in your guard. He'd just bloop, bloop. He in your guard, he just look, look, he just whipped them out like there was, it was, he had big quads and it's like it was really hard to control his legs.
Speaker 1:
And I found this rolling with bruno malfacini. Uh, malfa is a smaller human. It's so hard to get any control on him. His leg, his arm, like he just slips it out. Yeah, like what the hell? How can you do anything here? But he had mastered a game which is movement-based game, which just meant there was no way to really pin him down. Yeah, I fucking love watching him roll at, like seminars and stuff. He just blitzes. He's like he's on fast forward. Yeah, it's like watching Mighty Mouse fight that ultra heavy brown belt the other day. Yeah, all over, just like someone's on fast forward. Someone's on slow-mo yeah, summers on slow-mo. Yeah, it's. I think it's. It's a bit unfair to old mate. In that video you're like you're fighting the goat, yeah, like he put a gi on, yeah, but that guy moves incredibly, yeah, and so there there can be.
Speaker 1:
I would say there could be an argument for it that if you not, that you need to get out the tape measure, but if you identify. Hey, I've got longer legs. Maybe I should try this because, for example, I actually had a bit of a role the other day and someone tried to body triangle me and I have a thick torso. I always wish I had a more tapered hip, but I just I have a thick body, a fridge body, and this guy wasn't bigger than me and he was trying to body triangle me and I'm like, bro, you're going to hurt your knee, like take my back by all means, but bro, don't, don't hurt your knee.
Speaker 1:
And and this is the thing I have actually injured myself in a similar way, trying to compensate with flexibility, like I'm flexible, I can move my leg here, yeah, and just didn't have the, the shin bones for it. I get fucking punished every time I throw a body triangle on someone you're just squeezing needlessly. And and I think this is this may speak to some of our, our friends out there if you're a flexible person, rubber guard is just, it's money. It's like, oh, there's a guard where I can just, I can just put my leg here and put my shit. Wow, that that was quite easy to do. And then there's folks out there who are not flexible or, like I want to do rubber guard. I want to be like eddie bravo, and they're cranking their knees and they're cranking their ankles and you're like, bro, you're a half move away from recoing your own knee. People are like, no, no, it's fine, it's fine, I'll stretch it, I'll stretch it. And they never do so. Here's the challenge Finding the right jiu-jitsu for your body type.
Speaker 1:
I believe that most people do lean towards a particular game that suits them. So if you're a kind of bigger body person, big body, best. If you're a high calorie human, you've got a bit of weight playing off your back isn't going to feel like a lot of fun. It's going to feel good to be on top and squash on people and use your weight and use gravity. That said, I do know some of the larger humans I've trained with who just let you come on top and then they just reverse. Oh, they reverse, they just go whoop and then you're like, fuck, they let you get the underhook and then they just trap.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, that's true, it's not the best strategy, because once you catch hold of it, you're like, okay, try not to let that happen again. But because once you catch hold of it, you're like, okay, try not to let that happen again. But yeah, it is a strategy, right, and so that might speak also to strategy. If you're someone who has a particular body type, you're like I know how to use what I got, you don't necessarily know how to combat what I got, yeah, so there's another layer to that game too. But no, I just wanted to bring it up because I think and I bring it up because I think and I'm not sure and this is, we'll see this over time that people who persist in playing a game which is maybe not, not contrary to their body type, but not the most sympathetic yes, or simpatico, it's not, it's not, it doesn't mesh up quite as well might be struggling.
Speaker 1:
And I know, for at least the first two, three years of my jiu-jitsu, I was doing that. I was really trying to play close guard as hard as I could. My adductors got very strong, yeah, but it was just a really hard game for me and no doubt, like once you close your guard, because your legs are strong and they're like max, like you're going to generate a lot of force there, yeah, but for sure there's a, there's something lost in the efficiency of that position and there's certain people you just can't do that to, you're never getting your legs around. So just fighting endlessly there because your coach says it's a good idea doesn't mean it is the way, yeah. The other thing I've taken away from this, which is you can look at training partners and you can kind of understand what their strengths are. Based on that, you'd be like oh yeah, okay, that's why, whenever I end up in so-and-so's close guard, I usually get triangled because they've got big, long legs and they're really comfortable there. So then it's not the case that you're not trying to work on your triangle defense, it's not the case that you need to avoid bad situations. But then you can think I'm not going to let them put me in close guard. That's what I'm going to do in today's training session. I'm going to avoid and you speak with, like you know, you speak with Adam and he's like bro, if I get into that situation, like I don't fucking let it get to there against you because I know you'll do X. I'm like, oh, you're actually strategizing, and this is strategy, is like helpful Part of the game, part of the game, um, whereas you know, for me I've never really looked at it like that. But so the takeaway for me is like, yeah, like understand that the strategy is a thing, recognize other people's body types and that might give them a certain ability or advantage in a certain way that you need to be wary of. Yeah, yeah for sure, and definitely want to just say, because some people say, oh well, I don't know, I, my coach, isn't telling me have a look around at jujitsu people, jujitsu folks.
Speaker 1:
Part of the reason why I brought this up was I was talking about that gordon ryan passing dvd and part of the reason why gordon is so good at doing his kind of posting game where he he floats with the legs and and pummels with the legs and leans forward on his arms, is his arms are so long it it's so hard to like off, balance him Right. Same thing with Leandro Lowe. Leandro used to do a similar thing where he would post on his arms and kind of float on the legs. A friend of mine he won't be named has really short arms. Shout out Justin, no. And he was like bro, I'm on this Gordon Ryan stuff, man, it's so good. And he was trying to do the Gordon Ryan posting and he was getting swept. It's like, oh, I just must be doing it wrong. I'm just not Gordon Ryan.
Speaker 1:
But yeah, but you've got to consider the factors that might be counting against you. So not that you necessarily have to meet the guy, but look at if you're a lighter weight person. Possibly look at some of those lighter weight folks and see if you can see some pictures of them. Suss them out. Do they have long legs, do they have a short torso or do they have like just even proportions? And then maybe look at that and go, oh, wow, okay, maybe there is a body type that suits me and then maybe that person's game will also suit me. Just a thought there it is Putting it out there, folks.
Speaker 1:
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