Question Exclusively for BJJers

[Hardball]

This question came up last night in our traditional JJJ dojo. Do you BJJers treat breakfalls as a seperate element of your art? How much time do you spend on it? What specific type of breakfalls do you practice?

Thanks in advance for your responses

[SamuraiGuy]

At least in my experience BJJ breakfalls are taught as a part of the warmup.

Your going through the warmup then everyone in the class will kinda get to one side of the gym, than everyone does front breakfalls (rolls) down the mat, when your finished you run back to where you start.

Backbreakfalls with a back roll

Back breakfalls stand in base.

It varies but thats usually what we do, sometimes we dont do the stand in base etc...

If an instructor sees a problem with someones they pull them to the side and correct it, or just correct it while their doing it, by just shouting out a step their missing or something.

I cant remember doing a side breakfall at BJJ but I've definetly seen people do them.

The other comment is that they can be pretty ugly at times, but as long as they get the basics down they are usually good to go. Simple things like not having your leg folded underneath your other leg after your front roll when your standing up go un noticed. They standup, and it doesnt look like their would be a balance issue, but if someone was attacking you or whatever there would be.

At judo it was kinda the same thing, breakfalls just came directly after the warmup. We would do several rounds of front rolls, several of backrolls, we'd do tails, breakfalls over people, etc..

There were times when we just did breakfalls for a half an hour, everyone in a circle repping em off, back, side, side, back, side, side, back side, side, side, back etc....

Personally I think BJJ breakfalls are lacking, but I guess when you arent getting thrown into the mat HARD every minute its not as much of an issue.

[cakegirl]

What SamuraiGuy said. We do it pretty rarely, though, at my school.

[DJColdfusion]

HardBall, most BJJ schools don't work breakfalls anywhere near often enough.

I remember, back in my JJJ days, I trained for six months doing very little more than breakfalls and rolls before I was "officially" accepted as a student and allowed to put on a white belt.

I don't really think a BJJ school needs to go that far but I do think most schools need to work on breakfalls much more often.

[aseepish]

I'll echo what everyone else said - breakfalls are not a big thing at any of the BJJ clubs I've trained with.

[Hardball]

Personally, I get tired of them. I think we work them too much!! It's o.k. to know how to fall properly but it takes a lot of wear and tear on your body. Also, they put a lot of emphasis in doing them technically sound.

[leviethain]

not that much at my school, which i guess i really never noticed since i come from a hapkido/karate background, both schools did break falling so i was already familiar with em.

but yea overall iev never seen a bjj school put a ton of emphasis on breakfalls