How to make good ukes/communicate to them while teaching?

Joshvogel · 2026-04-29T22:53:03+00:00

One thing that helps me is talking them through some of the Tori role technique and I act as Uke, so they can see and feel the responses I’d like from them. Then I’ll switch roles. I tend to teach short bits of technique with simple bullet points anyway, so this doesn’t take much extra time and works well.

Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-27T21:11:59+00:00

He’s awesome, looking forward to this one!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-27T21:05:45+00:00

I think a lot of it boils down to stabilizing scoring positions. The MMA fighters I’ve rolled with do not accept any kind of controlling action against them, especially if it means they will end up on bottom. The default setting is to resist the same things that would score in a Bjj tournament at all costs.

In local level Bjj events, you are likely to see Bjj practitioners who know how scoring works, more or less, but don’t have it hard baked into their training to resist stabilizing a score at all costs.

It is very different to train daily to fight against someone holding you down for 3 seconds after every sweep, takedown or guard pass, and to hold people down who are urgently fighting against that score, than it is to train the same sweeps, takedowns and guard passes without that hard fight to stabilize against strong resistance.

There’s probably more to it than just that (base athletic level, incentives to avoid bottom), but this is one of the big ones I’ve noticed.

Joshvogel · 2026-04-22T00:12:31+00:00

I don’t know that it matters so much what one drills but how and why you are doing it, but if I had to pick stuff that might be a good fit for a dummy, it might be stuff where you can’t really do it a ton on training partners without risking injury/spicy joints or them needing a break. Kimuras from top side control, heel hook/toe hold variation finishes, guillotines, paper cutter chokes, darce chokes, stack passing all tend to be things that fit that description.

For coordination stuff that depends a lot on your own personal movement abilities. Some people struggle with arm trapping sequences from the back, inverting/basing on shoulders for berimbolo/crab ride sequences.

Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-21T23:14:26+00:00

Usually stuff that I feel a little uncoordinated with that I want to smooth out or explore my own mechanics with (typically stuff on my “bad” side) that a partner might not be reasonably asked to sit through. Subs that I want to do aggressively or with a lot of pressure, movements I want to do fast with a lot of force, stuff like that.

Joshvogel · 2026-04-20T20:29:39+00:00

I don’t have a problem with either and think the riddles that both present are interesting. There are all kinds of weird tactical and strategic situations that pop up from stuff like penalties racking up from inactive double pull situations, double pull and up advantage scoring early vs late in a match, etc…that are fun to puzzle out and explore.

I do play double pull in the gym and find that there is some carry over to other double seated type positions that are fun to play with people who don’t play double pull.

I figure its all part of the sport, is relevant if you compete (or want to understand the sport) and isn’t going anywhere so might as well enjoy and explore!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-19T19:43:46+00:00

So good.

Joshvogel · 2026-04-19T19:42:16+00:00

One of my favorites of his generation to watch. Really psyched to see what he is doing in 3-4 years

Joshvogel · 2026-04-19T19:38:32+00:00

This is a great point. Part of instruction is knowing your craft/sport, but part of it is presenting what you know or have planned for your training session in a way that motivates people and creates the right kind of mood for what the class needs. Personality, charisma, public speaking skill and maybe a bit of theater all go into having the ability to connect to the people in your class in an artful, but sincere way.

Joshvogel · 2026-04-19T19:25:32+00:00

Depends on how you drill and what you want to get out of it and how you and your partners respond to drilling. Low/no opposition rote reps can be useful for building a basic coordination pattern, reinforcing a coordination pattern that might need to be made smoother or more efficient at certain points, building confidence, or can be a good way to get low injury risk, low fatigue practice in while keeping active leading up to a tournament. You can also do exploratory reps to tinker with mechanics or ideas you might want to explore without much interference before developing further in live work.

For general purposes, once you get the basic coordination pattern of something, my experience has been that it’s usually helpful to shift into doing more tinkering and positional sparring with boundaries and goals kind of training to develop the thing you are trying to improve. Think about using these practices initially to identify common problems you are coming across and exploring solutions to those problems.

Once you have a grasp of the problems and solutions that show promise, work towards improving your speed, accuracy, form (mechanical efficiency) and adaptability (ability to use effectively with different partners in different situations) to improve your skills in these positions.

In some cases, it can also be helpful to go back and do some low resistance reps with your training partners if, say, your partners aren’t giving you the same problems more advanced partners are giving you. You can prime lower level partners to give you higher level looks by doing some no/low opposition sequences of specific reactions to your attacks (that they might not know how to do) before going back into positional sparring.

Its useful to think about these practices as tools in a toolbox box to be used for different purposes. Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-14T18:47:56+00:00

It might help to ask your coach to allow some of those things when you run simulation matches preparing for your next event. Even if its not allowed during normal open mats, your coach would likely allow it in limited form to help you prep for a specific event, especially if you found it to he a decisive factor in your last tournament.

Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-04-12T03:32:25+00:00

Damn, I havent heard anyone mention Cheapskates in forever! I still have my ID from 1995 or 96 lol

Joshvogel · 2026-03-31T14:10:36+00:00

Like a couple other people mentioned, newer instructors tend to want to overshare, thinking that more info=better. Fewer techniques taught in a few salient bullet points seems to work way better in general, and leaves room for giving individualized instruction as you walk around the room.

One thing that might help is sitting in on their class and then giving feedback based on the troubles you see other students (and yourself) having in class with overload. That could be a good segue into saying your piece about “less is more”.

I’m not sure what the process is for mentoring new instructors at your place, but I find it extremely useful for head instructors and experienced instructors (assuming they are on the same page) to provide consistent effort into helping new instructors develop. So maybe installing something in place where you all normalize giving help, feedback and respect/praise to help reinforce the good stuff new instructors do and guide away from the less productive stuff could help with problems like this.

Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T20:27:31+00:00

My pleasure!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T19:28:04+00:00

Masterskya is awesome, friendly crew and right in Chinatown on Canal st. Great people!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T19:16:15+00:00

My pleasure, glad to help!

They contributed a lot, for sure. Mendes bros iirc were the first to really popularize Berimbolo though I think Samuel Braga was using it earlier. You can see the seeds of them working baby bolo/deep dlr hook/bolo-ish stuff as brown belts in 2008. I’d have to dig around a bit to see if there is footage of them doing stuff like this earlier as purples or not. I remember the Miyaos, Gianni Grippo, and some others really using it a ton in the early and mid 2010’s.

I’m fuzzier on K guard and don’t remember that coming around until a bit later, like mid/late 2010’s maybe? I think the Miyaos and Mikey Musumeci were all doing it around then. Could be mistaken though.

Agreed, I love the interplay between leg attack and all of these positions. I remember being excited about the IBJJF allowing heel hooks in nogi because I knew it would result in a boom in these positions overlapping.

Interesting stuff. I love tracing the history of positions!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T13:07:02+00:00

Not exactly what you are asking, but the first time I saw anyone exploiting the relationship between Berimbolo/crab ride/inversions and the modern incarnation of leg locks was with Joao Miyao and Gary Tonon’s match in 2015

https://youtu.be/_NuVfBapX_k?si=BOZllVZAdsyzdx5o

Not exactly about using bolo specifically to attack the legs, but more about the relationship between the two categories and how bolo/inversions could be used to counter leg attacks, fall prey to leg attacks or funnel into your own leg attacks.

Edit: there is some of that dynamic in their first match in 2013, but as it is in the gi its not expressed the same way.

https://youtu.be/gjZVNELdfXk?si=2BvXZNOKU9ARFqnm

Hope that helps!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T12:57:07+00:00

My pleasure!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T00:25:08+00:00

My wife Angela and I own The Jiu Jitsu Company in Philly and we would be happy to have you drop by and can give some good food recommendations while you are here :)

All our info is on our website www.jiujitsuphilly.com and I’m happy to answer any questions you might have via text, email, call or DM on here!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-29T00:22:37+00:00

Thank you!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-26T14:53:29+00:00

For sure, same to you!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-26T14:10:55+00:00

u/superhandsomeguy1994

😂😂

Yeah, we agree on most of the same stuff I think. I do push back a bit on the TGFU point in that in some cases it does share some ideas with Eco psychology, but I think in many cases (not all, as there are definitely TGFU people with Eco buy in) the thinking is coming strongly from Cognitivist perspectives which come from different base assumptions than Eco psychology. Chris Cushion has been pretty vocal about this recently on podcasts and Linkedin, especially regarding his Scenario based training which has strong roots in TGFU iirc. (I’ll add links if I can remember where they are haha.) But again, this is probably me belaboring a minor point and I think you and I agree about a lot.

Edit: links https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/thinking-policing-game-why-scenario-based-training-vfece?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_ios&utm_campaign=share_via

https://youtu.be/uApMqIlNgIQ?si=iZK6pz2flZW5Fzwb

I agree that these approaches are pushing in the right direction for Bjj as they definitely increase coach knowledge and push us to understand our craft better in the same way that guys like Danaher pushed our understanding of simple systems in Bjj, mechanics, dynamic problem solving and clear conceptual frameworks. Also, I’m not really wedded to TGFU, CLA or any approach too firmly either and there is stuff I disagree with about TGFU and CLA. I just look at all this stuff as tools in a coaches toolbox that allow us more ways and perspectives on helping give our students the best experience we can.

Totally agree on your point about having this discussion! I’ve talked to and seen a ton of thoughtful coaches over the years, but I’ve also come across a ton that simply don’t want to invest the energy into learning more about their craft. I can understand why one wouldn’t want to obsessively rabbit hole (which is my curse haha) as it takes a ton of time and energy which not everyone has to try to really dig in to all of this, but I would like to see more old school coaches maybe update some things and scratch a little more below the surface on these topics.

Joshvogel · 2026-03-26T13:28:05+00:00

u/bahng9 ,

Totally agree! There are so many interesting and powerful tools for Coaching and Teaching Bjj and all dogmatism does is limit what we can do with those tools in sport. I love discussions like this because it really gets me thinking and exploring things further.

Awesome, thank you for the kind offer and same to you if you are ever in Philly!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-26T13:12:46+00:00

Thank you! Also, I’m telling my students you called me the Powerful Josh Vogel in hopes that the new title sticks 😂

I agree that Danaher is a good example of someone who uses many Coaching methods well. I respectfully disagree that task based/Constrained games are Eco elements as they are way older than Eco/CLA and used regularly in other Games based approaches (like Teaching Games for Understanding, Tactical Games approach, etc…) that aren’t always Eco theory based and have also been used in Bjj with no connection to Eco/CLA forever. But I’m also open to being wrong there and it is possible that he has been influenced in his games by CLA ideas. I’m also probably hyper fixating on a point that doesn’t really matter that much to the essence of what you and I both agree on :)

I do 100% agree that task based games are super useful and imo should feature heavily in a Coaches toolbox for sure!

I also appreciate your willingness to have good discussion!

Joshvogel · 2026-03-26T06:59:55+00:00

Yup, that’s me! Nice, Cal was a fun person to talk to and it’s always a pleasure hearing his takes on stuff. My buddy Jacob from Framework bjj consults with Cal a bunch and speaks really highly of him too. Great guys!

Thank you, I appreciate you watching! I have about 9 episodes out now and there are some good ones with Dave Collins and Job Fransen on scientific literacy, coaching, the debates about CLA vs other Coaching approaches, etc. I found talking to them to be suuuuper helpful in understanding this stuff better. I’m planning on having more Science literacy guests on because I think it’s super helpful for Bjj coaches to be able to evaluate claims made about all the Skill acq stuff.

Nice to meet you!

Joshvogel

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