Flow with the Go

Why go slow? Fights are often fast, tense and, unless someone gets cut, rarely involve flowing so shouldn’t our training reflect this? The answer is simple – Slow flow rolling accelerates your technical improvement dramatically. You get good really, really fast.

Slow Flow jiu jitsu is a training method in which you and your training partner roll in a light, relaxed manner. Notice I said ‘training partner’ not ‘opponent’. The goal of slow flow rolling is not to win but to learn. It is designed to remove as much strength, speed and power from the fight equation as possible and emphasise technique, position and transitions. Aside from virtually forcing you to work on the things you should be working on anyway this approach to grappling further benefits you by:

• Increasing the safety of rolling. Making it more likely you can train again tomorrow.
• Enabling you to roll with anyone regardless of strength and size.
• Giving you time to think what to do and time to do it.
• Encouraging you to experiment and explore.
• Clearly showing you where you’ve been patching your technique with your attributes.

Slow Flow jiu jitsu is becoming more and more common in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu academies. It comes under many names: ‘chess BJJ’, ‘one step rolling’, ‘tempo grappling’ and even ‘technical rolling’ (although that last one just makes me wonder what the rest of their training is like) but all of these are generally slight variations on the same theme.

Here is the formula I use to teach and perform slow flow rolling (with a nod to Matt Thornton)

1. Slow Pace – Go at 50% of whatever is your normal competitive rolling speed. If you struggle to do that try going at 25%. 
2. Light Pressure – Instead of grabbing your partner and clamping down hard try to relax your arms and legs and let go of any tension you may have. Your hands should still be in the right place you’re just not squeezing in.
3. Position – Your main emphasise should be on position and transitions. Try to continually improve your position and transition at least once every 5 seconds.
4. Submissions are catch and release – Only! No one should have to tap during slow flow rolling. Get to the point where you could apply the sub then let your partner escape.
5. Communicate with your partner – If your partner’s going too fast or is too tense tell them. The flip side of this is you have to listen when your partner tells you to ease up as well.  

Slow flow rolling is about having an opportunity to play with each other and not compete against each other. There is no better time to try new moves, go to new positions and work out new escapes.

Some gyms encourage you to deliberately let your partner into superior positions but I personally disagree with this approach. Practising doing something dumb only makes it more likely you’ll do it when it matters. That said, if you are following the principles above, the light pressure and slow pace combined with trying out new things should result in no one person being particularly dominant over the other anyway.

Slow flow rolling should take up at least a third of all rolling time. Competitively rolling against others using all your attributes takes some getting used to and needs to be practised just like everything else but this should only happen occasionally. The rest of the time you should competitively roll at around 70 to 80% of your capabilities whilst still emphasising technique. I like to start the rolling portion of each class with around 5 to 10 minutes of slow flow and can highly recommend turning up a little early for class and warming up with some gentle slow flow jiu jitsu; this does wonders for your game and only requires an extra 5 minutes commitment.

So remember, relax, have fun and go slow to grow.