Should You Do Gi Training For Improving Your No Gi Jiu Jitsu?

The Gi and No Gi are two essential elements of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and most beginners remain confused regarding the selection of the element for their career or training. Moreover, after the selection of the type, the practitioners switch between the two for training. This makes the beginners often more confused. It looks like a very odd and weird question. And that is, if you are in a No Gi BJJ, should you train for some time wearing a Gi, in the most common type of Jiu Jitsu Gi? Giving the answer straightforwardly, yes, you should do it. But why? What are the benefits and how often should you do it? Let’s explore them in detail.

Doing the training while wearing a Gi gives you a lot of benefits which you cannot gain from training in No Gi BJJ alone. So you need to include it as a part of your daily training, whether you are doing it your home or at the academy. The following explains some of the benefits that you can definitely get by training in Gi with logics and facts to help you understand its importance:

• No Gi Jiu Jitsu is faster than the Gi Jiu Jitsu, in which the involvement of Gi makes the game very slow. In this type, one technique needs a lot of time to be completed. Moreover, the actual reason is the availability of the grip points, such as collar, lapel, or literally any other part of the Gi, which can be used as a grabbing point.

• Because of the gripping opportunities, the practitioners take a long time to execute a single technique. This has one benefit, and that is the more time required for completing a move or technique, the better a practitioner can understand the technique during the sparring due to a lot of time available to them. This extra time can be helpful for them when they apply the same techniques in their No Gi BJJ.

The main difference between the Gi and No GI BJJ if we look at it from the far side, is that the Gi means you will not have any points or things to grip or grab to help you execute your techniques better, or have new techniques in No Gi BJJ. On the other hand, in Gi BJJ, you can use the grips for many advantages. The first advantage you can use them for is the body control of your opponent, and accuracy and precision of your techniques and moves' execution. So you learn these things in your Gi training, and once they become your muscle memory, it can easily translate into your No Gi training.

• The grip is one of the widely used and most important components of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, whether it's Gi or No Gi BJJ. You need strength for grips when you are going for chokes, locks, armbars, or many other techniques, particularly the submission techniques. So learning the effective grip and improving your grip strength is very important for you because this one element can improve many techniques in your life.

• But where can you learn such grip strength? The answer is Gi Jiu Jitsu. The reason is that you can grip many things in Gi BJJ. So continuous training in Gi type BJJ will help you improve your grip strength, which will translate to your No Gi BJJ training and professional grappling matches or tournaments.

• Another important thing you learn and grasp into your mind is the fundamentals. For learning or growing in anything, the first and foremost thing to do is to learn the fundamentals. This is the mistake that most beginners make, and they just keep trying to jump onto the advanced techniques and skills, and don’t focus on the basics or fundamentals.

• Fundamentals shape your game, and the more you grasp the basics, the better your game will be. So focus on the fundamentals. The easy way is to just start training in Gi Jiu Jitsu. It has an advantage over No Gi BJJ in terms of learning the fundamentals, as you will gain practical experience in all fundamentals you need to have. The basic things like the grips, escapes, or other things which you must have learnt, can be learn by training in Gi BJJ. So this is another advantage that you can get from its training.

• To be a great and one of the best ever Jiu Jitsu fighters, you should do the cross training. You must be adaptable across both types. This is the true symbol of a great Jiu Jitsu grappler. Training in Gi BJJ equips you with various skills that you cannot get in your No Gi BJJ. The same applies to the training in No Gi BJJ. So, although training in both types has many techniques which are common to each other, you will not find any difference at all. But there are also many other techniques which are unique to each type.

• And also, most of these techniques are like you can be applied in the other disciplines. So you are basically increasing your variety and range of attacks by training in both disciplines. This makes you a complete all round and adaptable grappler who can compete in both Gi and No Gi BJJ. Your main discipline will remain only one of them, but you are training the other, in the present case, the Gi Jiu Jitsu, to make yourself better and at an advantage over the others.

There is no fixed number of days or weeks in which you should do your Gi training for overall improvement in your No Gi Jiu Jitsu. It depends on many factors. You must take all such factors into your consideration and then decide the frequency. The following are some of the factors that you should take into your account for determining your required frequency of Gi training:

• Breathing in the air full of competition everywhere, what we often forget is our health. We always keep our health as the least priority. This is the wrong approach. With this mindset, we cannot move forward. This is the reason the people who are only focusing on everything but health cannot continue their journey for too long and are left either injured or with various other health issues. This is because the Jiu Jitsu is a field in which you need to focus a lot on your health. This is necessary for you to achieve your goals.

• You have to focus a lot more as compared to when you were not training the BJJ. And if you are training in both Gi and No Gi BJJ, you have to make sure you are keeping a healthy diet and keeping note of other health issues. So the first factor is always listen to your body. If you think you can do Gi training once a week easily, then do that. Start with this frequency, and later on, you can increase that. But if your body cannot afford this, then don’t do that and shift to a lower frequency. Because sacrificing your health won’t take you anywhere.

This is the most important thing. Don’t sideline your goals. Always keep your goals in your mind while deciding for anything, such as type and frequency of Gi training. For example, if you have to grapple in a professional No Gi BJJ match, then you should not do any Gi training at all. You need to focus on a No Gi Jiu Jitsu training. But on the other hand, if you are just sparring, then you can focus on both Gi and No Gi training. If a Gi sparring is upcoming in which you need to take part, then you should train in Gi. So it all depends on your goals. Make sure you align everything with your goals.

The only way for improvement and innovation for you is to keep experimenting. Jiu Jitsu is not always about replicating your coaches and other great BJJ grapplers. It is about bringing something unique to yourself, which gives you an advantage over the others. For this, you need to discover new ways, techniques, moves, and skills to help you improve your game. That is why you should keep experimenting, learn new things from other disciplines, and utilize them in your preferred martial art. 

Gi and No Gi training both provide you numerous benefits. Although many of the benefits are the same, you can still find many unique benefits, and you can translate from one type to the other by modifying it a little bit. So there is no longer a need for the question whether you should do Gi training or not if you are in the opposite discipline. You should always consider it and add it into your daily training. But make sure you keep in mind your factors for taking the right decision about the frequency. Some prefer to do the Gi training on alternate days, whereas others do it only on weekends. So it just depends on your goal. Nevertheless, the training is very beneficial for you and you should consider it.

There is no fixed number of days or weeks in which you should do your Gi training for overall improvement in your No Gi Jiu Jitsu. It depends on many factors such as:

• Always listen to your body

• Align the training with your goals

• Keep experimenting

The following explains some of the benefits that you can definitely get by training in Gi with logics and facts to help you understand its importance:

• Slow pace of Gi BJJ helps you understand the art better

• You learn better control

• Better grip strength

• Better understanding and execution of the fundamentals

• Adaptability in both types of Jiu Jitsu