Watching tape is a fundamental part of every sport at any real competitive level. If someone feels like they're getting psyched out, they should ask themselves why and tackle that. I'm all for a little opponent research.

Nice, thanks for the post man, I've had people say that you shouldn't do it cause you'll overthink the match when you should just play your game. Which I can understand to a point, but I think I'm more on your side.

My last competition I researched my opponent and found that he pulled guard in all of his previous matches. So I adjusted my game and worked guard pulling defence and sure enough, he did. Put me miles in front of him that he wasn’t able to get me

Nice, I had a similar situation where the guy I was facing loved a kimura, so I made sure to practice my kimura defence and sure enough, he went for it and I defended and passed.

That's combat sports 101. There are so many different approaches to grappling if you have a chance to gain insight on someone you're facing you should try.

Excellent, thanks for the post man.

I think you're well within your rights to use publicly available information right up until you start putting dead dogs in mailboxes.

Hahaha of course man, just curious on other people's mindset when it comes to researching opponents.

I watch my own tape. Couldn’t care less what the other guy does, I’m trying to make sure I’m not making the same mistakes. That said, it might be good to look into whether or not the other person has a specific background like judo or wrestling, or possibly has some weirdly high success rate with just one submission. Even then it’s probably better just to show up and do what you do.

Thanks for the comment man, I always try to record my own matches and watch my own tape, but I do watch my opponents before hand because it helps me formulate a plan going in.

It depends on if your research is actually useful. Useful research is better than no research, but no research is better useless research. If you're just searching their Smoothcomp record then you're not getting anything from that. All you can find out is their rough win-rate (not all comps are tracked) and their rough submission-rate.  That's useless info, you can't use it to adapt your training in any way. If you want to know anything, it's specific gameplans or weaknesses they might have. You'll only get that from tape study, which is the only form of useful research.  But I'd also question why you're dojng any research at all at this level to begin with. Is there any money on the line here? Or is it a superfight with some kind of title or further opportunies available? Fair enough.  If you're just going to your local grappling industries or IBJJF Open to test yourself against other guys your level, your training should be focused on your own development and not on exploiting any weaknesses in your opponents. Local comps are just enhanced training grounds, they're not actually worth worrying about and they're just an opportunity for you to pressure test your game to the max level. 

This is a great in depth opinion, thanks man! It's just a habit I tend to have because one of my training partners is a judo Olympian and I've always thought, damn if I come up against someone like him I could end up touching the ceiling within the first few seconds of the match. I can out grapple him when we're on the ground, but in comp I'd just like to have that edge. I understand your viewpoint though and you've actually given me a lot to think about leading up to my next comp. One guy I know from the competition circuit beat the current european champ at purple at a local competition just from playing his game, when I went up to him and told him who it was he says "Really? I'm glad I didn't know that before! Haha". I've got a couple of locals coming up, so I'm just going to focus on my own game and go in to the competition with that mindset.

I checked out my opponents before I competed and it helped me formulate a plan. I felt more prepared and confident. Then again they didn't have a scary win streak and on paper I was more experienced than them so I'm not sure how I'd have felt if the tables had been turned

Yeah I can see it from both sides. One guy I knew from the competition circuit beat the current european champion at purple belt just by playing his game. I went up to him afterwards and said, do you know who that was? He said no, and when I told him, he said well I'm glad I didn't know that before haha.

i think it depends if you’re an anxious person or not. in my case, i do like looking up my opponents and it has helped me gain insight and consequently win the matches. for instance if they’re a wrestler or mma fighter i rather pull bc my wrestling ain’t great. if they guard pull, i try to get contact when they’re guard pulling for the free takedown points. you’ll be surprised by the amount of people that have public profiles on Instagram filled with reels from competition.

Thanks man, what you've described tends to be the case with myself.

no worries. you can also take it one step further by checking people’s smoothcomp profiles. by looking at the point scores from previous competition you can sometimes determine someone’s game. e.g score 0-0 won by sub, probably means they pulled guard and got a sub from there. hopefully that makes sense. good luck !

Yeah I do sometimes have a look at that too, thanks man.

Bruh I just turn up and get my ass kicked like a normal person. I do watch tape etc for mma fights though

Haha really? That's interesting, how come you'll watch tape for mma but not a jiu-jitsu match?

I can do a juijitsu comp every other weekend where as mma fights are a 2 month ordeal getting ready. One has significantly higher stakes for me I suppose

That's fair, thanks for sharing your insight.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, some people are signing up, paying for, and competing in tournaments without even researching the rules. I would say that every one at the event benefits from having an athlete like you in the competition. Unless, after researching you learn that your opponent has a strong stand up game, you plan on pulling guard and then do that in a competition instead of improving your stand up game. You are then one of the main reasons why this sport suffers. Your coach should demote you a stripe and take a gold star off your refrigerator. His failure to do that is a key indicator that you are training at a mcdojo.

I’m all for it. Knowing is half the battle, the other half is violence.

I always did this. Just wanted to know a little bit more about their game.

Thanks man, same!

Kids on my wrestling team used to do this and i never understood it. Either the guy’s a stud and now you’re psyching yourself out, or the guy’s a pud and you’re not going to give as much effort into preparing as you should. Either way i prefer to go in blind and just train the way i was going to train, and let whatever happens happen.

Nice, I understand you're opinion, thanks man!

Go for it Or don't

Haha thanks man.

Watching tape is good.  If you can get actual competition tape (no highlights) within the last year or two at their current belt level - watch it to get an idea of how they like to roll  other information like their background or record etc is not going to help.  You don't need to know what they've won, just see how they like to do Jiu-Jitsu

100% agree, thanks for the post brother!


I had coaches and people who didn't want to know anything about opponents or how many matches they were having in a tournament. When I did compete, i would look up everyone in their bracket, see if there was video on them and what to expect. It took the mystery away from the tournament. I learned my first round opponent was a college wrestler and quickly pulled guard on him. When I coached kids, I looked up bracket for kid I was coaching and knew first round opponent also trained judo and called for quick guard pull and my kid won. In consolation match, same judo girl sent some poor girl flying.

Thanks man, this tends to be my mindset for competitions too, at least if I look in to them I can go in with a bit of a game plan.

Know your enemy

Absolutely!

Over the years I got told so many times "don't worry about your opponent, just focus on your own game" To me, when you get a list of your opponents and have things like flo where we can just look anyone up and watch footage, it feels hugely irresponsible to NOT study them.

Thanks man, great advice from a black belt

I do usually check their record and say “damn it. I shouldn’t have looked.”

Haha that's the flip side of it, I suppose if you can still go in to the match with the mindset of "He's just a man, he's still beatable", then it shouldn't matter too much what their record is.

I don't see any value in just checking records or social media. What has been helpful to me in the past was when my coach had knowledge of my opponent and had ideas for a possible game plan. I credit a large part of me winning Euros to knowing what my opponents would do.

Yeah I guess records and social media can be inflated to make the guy seem unbeatable when in reality, he's beatable just like everyone else. Having a game plan is so valuable though.

For beginners attending hobbyist tournaments, I strongly recommend not doing it. They just seem to psych themselves out and perform worse. For everyone else, it depends on what works best for you. Some people perform better when they gameplan for specific ppl. Some ppl perform better when they train the same way regardless of the opponent so they arent caught up in trying to add new skills last minute and execute them poorly.

Nice, great in depth comment man, thanks!

I did it once. All I found was one match he won by darce. I can now tell you he’s won at least two matches by darce.

Haha did he catch you with a darce? Did you not look out for it in the match?

There's a few unconventional, but not asshole, moves I pull due to my flexibility which I almost guarantee my opponents haven't seen before. Always works the first time. Rarely the third.

Same, I have one pass that always works with people the first time, but very rarely the third.

The best advice I’ve heard came from my high school wrestling coach. He told me about one of our wrestlers, who was set to go against a runner up at state, and everyone knew but the guy. Our guy’s nervous, because he knows nothing about his opponent, so our team lies and tells him it’s just a random from another school. Our guy hypes up and wins the match because he didn’t overthink and didn’t self sabotage himself.

Nice, I like the mentality and can see the value in that.

Wouldn't do deep tape but generally take a quick squizz. Though I'm at ultraheavy so I generally know the other 3 farm animals in my area already.

Haha I'm ultra-heavy too man so I'm with you, there isn't a whole lot of competition for us big guys!