Lockflow Interview with Ryan Hall
The whole key is saying, ‘Look. I don’t want to beat regular people. I don’t want to beat guys that are kind of good. I don’t want to beat hobbyists. I don’t want to pull out a sweet highlight reel full of backflips and wacky nonsense.’ You know who has a sweet highlight reel? Roger Gracie. If something doesn’t work against the top 1% of competitors, I don’t want to do it. If you fight for a living and you have a lower standard than that, you have to be out of your mind ...My suspicion, as I wrote Griff in a thank you e-mail, is that Ryan is mean reverting with a little more velocity than he might otherwise, having been so supersaturated with guard play for so many years. It seems like jiu jitsu guys go through phases from time to time in which the typical virtues of "wrestling" seem to outshine the virtues of "jiu jitsu".
Ironically, this is playing out a little bit in training as Rodrigo has been working us especially hard on the physical aspect of grappling: more butterfly guard, more back-tacking, more pummeling. About a week ago, while we were in the midst of the drilling fury, Rodrigo was pointing out that he wanted us to avoid going to our backs too eagerly, to be more ready and able to fight for top position.
Of course, it's all jiu jitsu, the wrestling v.s. jiu jitsu divide becoming less and less apparent everyday. But clearly there are aspects of jiu jitsu that are being called upon with more and more frequency these days and those aspects do seem to increasingly favor guard passing and taking dominant position over submissions from the back.
A very good read, especially if you've followed Ryan Hall's jiu jitsu career since his days as a the provost of Ryangle University (I bet he would groan out loud if you said that to him today!)
A last look at the "old" Ryan Hall? Here he is in competition with another top up 'n' coming American, Joel Tudor.
