BJJFlowcharts is a company that produces BJJ visual flow charts, supplemented by instructional video content to help improve your overall knowledge of a specific area of your game.
Almost everyone will be familiar with BJJ instructionals, especially from the likes of John Danaher and Gordon Ryan. For the most part, these instructional videos demonstrate how to systematically improve at a position such as butterfly guard. This is helpful for those people who want to improve a specific area of their game, although for beginners, it is perhaps a bit too much, too soon.
BJJFlowcharts are ideal for beginners or somebody who has got lost in various trainsitions. Nobody is going to give you an overhead instructional breakdown from position to position. It can’t really be taught in a private lesson and is too detailed for a single instructional video. In the past, this was something you generally had to figure out by yourself.
As a white belt you might find yourself having a good half guard sweep and then being completely stuck on what to do next. The same can be said for guard recovery, scrambles and various transitions. These positions are very difficult to teach and learn within BJJ, improvement usually only comes from experience rolling. This is where BJJFlowcharts steps in. You are able to learn things in your spare time which you will not learn in class.
Table of Contents
Introduction To Flowcharts
First off, I think it would be disingenous to say that learning this way is for everyone. With that being said, I am sure if I learned like this when I was a white belt, I would have improved much faster.
This is because there are many times when you have no idea what to do next. BJJ is a sport with many different positions. It’s not a sport like tennis where you have three or four set positions with a variety of techniques. A beginner may be overwhelmed when put into an unusual place they’ve never been before. The same can be said for attacking. If you don’t know what you are doing next, you will likely freeze and lose your advantage.
Visual Overview
From the top down overview of the chart, it is both detailed and simple. If you are lost you can use the simple “find” query in your PDF viewer. This will allow you to immediately locate what you’re looking for, such as side control.
After you’ve located exactly what you’re looking for, it should be easy to find the next step. For example, if you’re in mount and your opponent has turned too far on their side, it will tell you to take their back. Whilst there isn’t a solution for absolutely everything, it does have 99% of what you will need to know. This is especially true if you are a beginner.
Seamless Transitions
This is probably the main selling point of BJJFlowcharts. There is not really much else on the market that enables you to become knowledgable about transitions during sparring.
Whilst looking at a flowchart for the first time may seem like way too much information at once, you’re only going to be looking at specific parts of it. If you were struggling at attacks from side control when the opponent reacts a certain way, BJJFlowcharts has got that covered and instructs what you should be doing for each variation.
Video Content
Each position is supplemented by a short 1-2 minute video. If you are shown that you should be doing a mounted armbar for your next positional advancement, the flowchart will link you to this. This is ideal if you’re unsure what the flowchart is trying to tell you. The video will make sure you’re doing exactly what you should be.
Whilst the videos are not instructionals with heavily detailed breakdowns of the position, it would be silly to expect this. The aim of the video is to show a basic overview of what you should be doing. It won’t point out obvious mistakes, overly complicated technical details or finishing tips. It will however tell you what you should be doing next and how to do it.
The other type of product offered is the DDS flowchart series in which BJJFlowcharts has broken down various instructionals of Gordon Ryan and John Danaher. These flowcharts act as a supplement to their own instructional videos. Whilst their instructionals will teach you a lot more than a flowchart about the specific details and intricacies of a position. They often do not show exactly what you should be doing in a specific order. The flowcharts clear up any confusion you may have had, so that you won’t be doing the right moves at the wrong time.
Benefits Of Learning This Way
The core benefit of learning BJJ from flowcharts is that you will speed up your progress. It may take a beginner weeks or months to realise that they should actually be doing B instead of A. If you do find yourself in this position after a lesson, you can simply research the area that went wrong during your sparring. Once you are able to locate the position that went wrong, it will be simple to find out if you simply failed at executing the technique, or whether you were doing entirely the wrong thing.
Once you start training like this, your mistakes will be corrected faster. Even if you are to make the same mistake two or three times, it will only be a matter of time before you correct it. If you spar ignorantly with no idea of what the correct transition is, it could be months before you get things right.
The Blue Print 2 Systems & Tactics Attacks
The idea of the Blueprint 2 attacks system is to turn your positional advantage into a complete submission game. The flowchart instructional breaks down each position into a variety of areas depending on the reaction of your opponent.
If you have any experience with BJJ at all, you will know that you can almost never get exactly what you want. BJJ is a game where you must capitalise on what the opponent gives to you. The flowchart breaks down each of the opponents reactions and what you must do to counter this and submit them.
If you don’t have positional knowledge or this flowchart, your opponents could well be making very big mistakes in every roll. Without furthering your understanding of what to do next, you won’t be able to capitalise on these mistakes.
The Blueprint 2 gives you a systematic instruction of what to do next in every position. Whilst this may seem a robotic way to train, BJJ has fundamental rules and principles of what you will and won’t be able to do. You don’t have to fully stick to what the Blueprint 2 shows you, but as a beginner it provides an excellent framework to build from. As you become more advanced, your own flowchart will be building in your brain. Until this flowchart has been built (which may take years), it is good to have the Blueprint 2 to look back at and learn from.
Cost
At first I thought $77 was quite expensive when glancing at the price. However, once I downloaded the flowchart, I realised there is a lot of work gone into this. An instructional may take a day to film with a week of editing. The flowchart requires at least the same time to film and far longer to construct.
If you are a white belt there is no real better way to learn transitional positions than learning from BJJFlowcharts. If you are wanting to improve at a specific guard or passing technique, it’s likely your money will be better spent on an instructional video. However, if you’re lost positionally or don’t understand transitions properly, then the complete opposite will be true.
$77 for the Blue Print 2 – Attacks series is really good value. You will certainly not feel like it’s money wasted even if you are to just browse through the positions for a day or two. Even as you become a more experienced practitioner, there will be times when you are stuck from a certain position and come back to review what you should be doing.
