No Gi or Gi?
Gunnar Nelson establishing a collar grip and maintaining control of his opponent
Glyn Powditch, a BJJ Brownbelt under SBG brought up the topic of how different both Gi BJJ and No Gi BJJ actually are which prompted me to overthink the differences over the course of a few days.
The differences are noticeable straightaway, the grips. In gi, your opponent can be controlled by cloth – the gripping of the gi and any part of it whether it be a collar grip, a sleeve, a pant leg, the belt or even a grip on the back of the gi. The can be used in any way either for defence (pulling the gi collars past your jaw line to avoid being choked with it) or for offensive (using the collar to attack for chokes). The increase of friction when wearing the gi immediately slow the ‘game’ down. Suddenly you find control of your opponent ‘easier’ as there is more friction and more handles to control your opponent.. but it also works the other way – again for defence purposes, your opponent can use the extra time to think about his escape or how to defend.
In No Gi, one of the main benefits that I find is the scramble. The wrestling and jockeying for top position. The lack of gi means lack of grips and friction for your opponent which results in faster movement (aided by sweat) which equates to scrambling. Escaping submissions is slightly easier but many gi loyal players claim it promotes bad technique as you rely on speed and athleticism to boost out of submissions.
Escaping from bottom positions is easier No Gi and again, those loyal gi players will always promote the use of the gi to help with your No Gi escapes. How? Well, if you can escape bottom side control in a gi when your opponent is using weight, grips and friction to control you, it essentially means you HAVE to use technique in order to escape – not attributes. This means in your No Gi game, your technique is sharper and coupled with your attributes – your escapes become that much more better and fluid.
Locking down your opponent is more difficult in No Gi but it also means you have to work harder to control your opponent using ‘natural’ handles on the body eg the neck, lat, triceps. If you cross this over to your gi game, your control of your opponent is now even better because once you lose those important gi grips – you can revert to those natural handles you picked up from your No Gi game.
So will doing No Gi benefit your Gi game? Infinitely. And vice versa. And always split your time between both.
The lack of wrestling in Gi will be boosted by your scramble and wrestling in No Gi. Your explosive mentality in No Gi will help with your aggression in Gi. Your natural grips in No Gi will transfer over to your Gi game when you can’t establish a proper gi grip. Your escapes become more technical when practising in the gi so when you come to the last fight in the No Gi tournament and you don’t have the energy to explode anymore – you have that technique.
Gunnar using the tight No Gi back control against Jeff Monson
