Hands: In every jiu jitsu match you will ever have, whether daily sparring in the gym or the biggest competition of your life – ALMOST ALL INTIAL CONTACT WITH YOUR opponent IS WITH HANDS AND FEET. As such, I put a heavy emphasis on training hands and feet among my athletes. When people hear me say this, they usually assume I am talking about hand and foot STRENGTH, and assume we must do lots of strength work for our grip. I do believe that a strong grip is a good thing in jiu jitsu. Most world champions I have met and trained with had an impressive grip. What I really emphasize however, is hand PLACEMENT AND TACTICS. You can train grip strength for months and make only slight improvements and still run into problems of exhaustion and forearm fatigue – but just a few pointers in hand placement and tactics can make a massive difference in combat effectiveness in minutes. The most common problem I see among aspiring athletes is a tendency to GRIP AND HOLD rather than the much more desirable and effective GRIP AND ENTER. The idea is not hold people per se, but to hold them just long enough to enter into a planned attack. I have a respectable grip strength, but i could not expect to hold a resisting athlete of world championship caliber for more than a few seconds – that's why developing a mindset of GRIP AND ENTER is so important for your development. Have an idea of what you want to attack with, ascertain what is an appropriate grip to get to that attack, then get the grip and enter. That is the pattern of hand training we usually work with.
