Talking to Bernardo Faria, Gordon Ryan spoke on what to train as a blue and white belt. He said the focus should be on escapes and defense to later build confidence in attacks as a higher belt. He said “The first thing you should look at is escaping bad positions and submissions. This will give you the confidence at later belts to attack from dominant positions. From purple to black belt you should focus on attacking people.”
He also reflected on his own progress saying “At brown belt when I had that confidence my career really started to take off until the current date.” and that you needed to combine escapes straight into attacks, to avoid constant being attacked and dominated by your opponent. It seems hard to disagree with this philosophy seeing as Gordon Ryan is widely regarded as the greatest ever when it comes to no-gi.
