Top 5 Partner Drills That Can Improve Your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu

The partner drills are very important for every grappler to do in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The one simple reason for this is that it simulates the grappling in a professional BJJ match to a great extent. So you can have the experience of a real match with a response to your actions and techniques, which will help you to adjust your gaming strategy. So now you know that such types of drills are very important for you. But what drills should you do? What are the top five drills in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu? Let’s dive into its details.

The partner drills are the type of drills in which you practice your technique with your partner. Such types of drills are very helpful in testing whether you have successfully learnt the technique or not. Your partner acts as a receiver of all of your movements, actions, and techniques, and they try to defend and counter that. So you are learning a real BJJ match experience in partner drills. You can switch the roles. In the first role, you can act as an offensive player, practicing and executing the technique on your partner, while your opponent will act as a defender. In the second role, you will play your role as a defender while your partner will be executing and practicing the technique on you.

Partner drills are very important for several reasons, some of which are the following:

• They help to develop your muscle memory for a particular technique so that you can better execute your technique without feeling any pressure or nervousness.

• They allow the BJJ practitioners to practice the techniques, simulating a professional BJJ match.

• They help to improve the execution of techniques. Practitioners gradually become better with time.

• You get quick feedback on your execution of techniques, helping you to improve it.

• They provide you with a dynamic environment in which you can execute your techniques.

There are a number of partner drills that will help you in your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but some of the best are given below:

• The partner drills to improve your mobility and conditioning are very important for every grappler. These drills provide a lot of benefits, which ultimately help in the improvement of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The most common benefits associated with the mobility and conditioning drills are flexibility and physical fitness. Both these benefits are crucial for every grappler to have. Physical fitness ensures that you are fit and strong enough to execute the movements and techniques in BJJ, and flexibility allows you to move your body and joints easily for executing the techniques.

• So the grappler needs to find a way to develop these two qualities in themselves, and that is only possible by doing the partner drills to improve the mobility and conditioning. This type of partner drill also provides another main quality, and that is stamina. You don’t always grappler in very short bouts. You can have to fight for too long with your opponent, and you can only fight for such a long duration if you have enough stamina. Your stamina ensures you can fight for a long time with your opponent. So with these kinds of partner drills, you develop the stamina and resilience which is very necessary for you in long fights.

The following are examples of partner drills that improve your mobility and conditioning:

• Armbars from guard

• The triangle jumps from the guard

• Kimura situps

• Roman chair situps

• 360 sitouts

• Chimp passes

• Koaia rockers

• Leg drags

• Inverted twists

• The most important purpose of doing the partner drills is to improve the execution of techniques. It is the ultimate goal of every drill, exercise, or any other physical activity in the art of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. You don’t do any activity that does not benefit your execution and implementation of techniques or moves. You even prioritize such activities that give benefits to BJJ over others that are not beneficial for your BJJ game.

• So, every grappler must do some partner drills to improve their techniques, execution, and implementation. It will also help them in the movement of their body, the timing and precision of their attacks on their opponent, and the angles they need to make for making a perfect technique.

The following are examples of partner drills that improve your execution of techniques:

• Leg drag

• Leg drag cross over

• Leg drag shoulder roll

• Bull fighter to knee on belly

• Bullfighter cross over

• Spider guard stiff arm

• Leg lasso

• Swinging armbar

• Back control hip shovel

• Back control chair sits

• There is a very famous misconception that every grappler must have heard somewhere that you don’t need strength at all for the execution of the techniques in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. This is an absolutely false statement and a complete misguidance for grapplers, particularly those who are just beginning in the art.

• This misconception is more dangerous and harmful for the beginners because they are new and they don’t have experience with anything, so they have to believe everything that others say about the art. So if some people are saying that strength is not needed in BJJ, then they will not care about improving their body strength for the perfect execution of their techniques, and therefore, it will be a disaster for their BJJ career.

• Just imagine that if you have to lift some weight, how can you lift it? Is it possible to do this without having enough strength? No! Certainly not. You must have the strength and power to lift that particular weight. Only then can you lift it.

• The same case applies to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. In this martial art, you need to have the strength to execute the techniques, movements, and skills. Without having enough strength, you can do nothing. So you need to do some partner drills to improve your strength for BJJ.

• But this does not entirely mean that you should focus only on developing the strength in your body. You should focus more on technique, but also don't forget to develop your body strength.

The following are examples of partner drills that improve your strength:

• Greco drill transferred into folkstyle. In this drill, you lift the body of your opponent upwards and then rotate them while pushing them downwards on their back. For doing this drill, start by holding your opponent’s body with both your arms across the middle part of their body, particularly around their belly. Move your arms across and then lock them together. After this, lift them up from one side and then drop them on the other side, and then lift them again, and this way continue doing this drill.
• This will improve the strength of your body, particularly your arms. This is the best exercise for strength, unlike traditional gym exercises. The reason is that you are improving and developing the strength required exactly as BJJ needs you to have, because you might have to lift or move your opponent’s body, and this exercise is perfect for that purpose.

• The warm-up is very crucial for you in your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu training before doing any intensive exercise or sparring. Warmup means that you are preparing yourself for an extensive session in BJJ coming afterwards.

• You might have realized that whenever you need to fight any tough or tense situation in your life, you can better tackle or deal with that difficult situation if you are already prepared. The logic behind this fact is that if you prepare yourself both mentally and physically, it means that you know what you need to do and what you should not do in such a situation to better pass that situation. So whenever such a tense situation comes, because you are already prepared, you can easily deal with that situation because you know exactly what you need to do.

• The same case applies in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. If you have not prepared yourself mentally and physically, then how can you even do your intense training? You won’t be able to do it properly. So warm up is a way to prepare yourself for an intense session. You need to prepare your mind and warm your body for such sessions before them. This will help you to effectively do that session. There are a lot of partner drills that can be used as a warm up exercise. You should do such drills early in the day before starting your intense and tough session to help you do that training better. An example of such partner drills is pressure passing, in which you can warm up for intense BJJ sessions.

Submissions and escapes are both very important for every grappler to learn in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. With submissions, you can make yourself able to win the game, and with the escape, you make sure that your opponent is not able to trap you in their techniques, and if they do, somehow, you should be able to get yourself free from their trap. So these two are very crucial skills that you need to have in your tool list. To improve these, you should do specific partner drills, which will help you to improve your submissions and escapes. The following are examples of some of the best partner drills that will help you learn the escapes and submissions:

• Armbar drills

• Kimura situps

• Roman chair situps

• Rare naked choke drills

• Inverted twists

The partner drills are very important in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. They serve various purposes in your game. You can get a lot of improvement in many things by doing it daily, such as improvement in the execution of techniques, developing your muscle memory for a particular technique to execute it better under pressure, experiencing real match scenarios, and many other benefits like these. So it is very important for you to implement these drills in your game.

The partner drills are the type of drills in which you practice your technique with your partner. Such types of drills are very helpful in testing whether you have successfully learnt the technique or not. Your partner acts as a receiver of all of your movements, actions, and techniques, and they try to defend and counter that. So you are learning a real BJJ match experience in partner drills. You can switch the roles.

There are a number of partner drills that will help you in your Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, but some of the best are given below:

• Partner Drills to Improve Your Mobility And Conditioning

• Partner Drills For Improving The Execution of Techniques

• Partner Drills For Improving Your Strength

• Partner Drills Can Be Effective As a Warmup

Partner drills are very important for the following several reasons:

• They help to develop your muscle memory.

• They simulate a professional BJJ match.

• They help to improve the execution of techniques.

• You get quick feedback on your execution of techniques.

• They provide you with a dynamic environment in which you can execute your techniques.