As we progress along our grappling or striking journeys we’ll often hear coaches and athletes mention the importance of timing.
Someone could have great timing, another might be off on a given day or worse still have lost their timing all together after an extended period off the mat with injury.
The essence of timing is doing the right thing at ‘precisely’ the right time.
It’s an easy concept to describe but in practice very difficult to master.
Good timing is the heart and soul of any high level game and builds from a combination of skilled movement, tactical mastery and subtle misdirection.
A less mentioned topic is tempo. Different positions and techniques require differing speeds to be effective.
We understand this intuitively when striking or wrestling on the feet but this idea can sometimes be confused once the action hits the ground.
Imagine a perfectly executed jiu-jitsu bridge done at 1/4 optimal speed. Is it likely to be effective against an equally sized and skilled opponent. Probably not. Why? Because as any amateur physics enthusiast will tell you speed determines ‘power’ (F/t).
A slowly applied bridge won’t develop the required power to move our opponent where we need them to go quickly enough and instead will gift them ‘relatively’ more time to execute an appropriate counter.
So what does that mean? Should we be blasting away at full speed with every technique? Of course not. Moving fast all the time is an unsustainable strategy which inhibits your technical growth and inevitably leads to fatigue.
Like many other elements in fighting and grappling timing and tempo are intertwined and just as we actively discourage bigger or stronger practitioners from relying on their weight and strength advantage so too we don’t want beginners racing from one position to the next missing the details and nuance needed to develop their technical skills.
Don’t be fooled though. Not every movement can or should be performed slowly and learning when and where to turn up your speed can often be the difference between success and failure.
As with utilising our strength there is a time and a place for doing things as fast as possible.
Just make sure it’s not all the time!
See you on the mats!
Ben Power
Head Coach
SBG Australia