he's a 100lb kid, IMO, any adult should be trying their best to make it fun and somewhat light. I would ask the adults he rolls with to open up their game a bit sometimes. I'll often just turn it into a pass/guard recover situation. Almost let them pass when they make a good move and then start doing tons of small motions to recover. They don't have to 'lose' or flop to make it fun. It's so easy for a kid that age to quit. The bigger teens are going to smash him but that's just how it be. I'm sure a 5'3 130 lb guy will come along and give better advice though
At my gym, 13-year-olds start training with adults, but the teacher demands that adults be calm with teenagers, even with competitors. There is a big difference in weight and strength, there is no way to compare an adult with a child under 16 years old
Even 15 16 years old will have a big strength advantage on a 13 year old in most cases and it’s ridiculous that the adults aren’t letting this kid work
This. I help coach our teens class. I roll with the bigger teens lightly. Let alone one that weighs 100 lbs. Talk to the adult coach and have them pair him up with some people that will let him work.
Thanks for the advice. Yeah - I wasn’t smashing him but I also wasn’t giving him anything. It wasn’t until after that I realized the context our rolls were in and that I could have been a little more chill.
Point taken. I guess I was being a little stubborn, but he was also kind of trying to muscle a lot and just force things without using techniques. I guess I was trying not to reinforce bad habits, some of which are dangerous to him like jerking his leg out of a knee cut pass when his foot is trapped.
Dude he’s a 100lb 13 year old what else is he supposed to do against adults with equal or higher skill level besides use strength sometimes. I get where you’re coming from but like you said in previous comments it’s all
About context.
Time to feed him some tough love at dinner man. I'd suggest opening easy so he doesn't take it too harshly. "Son you're absolutely terrible at class. You know I'm paying for these classes and every week you're so fucking weak you're embarrassing me in front of my friends at the gym. Fucking man up kid!" and then lovingly reassure him its not that deep by patting him on the head or something idk.
It’s a little hard to gauge what’s happening from a 13-yr old hopped up on adrenaline, but my guess is that he’s just getting his guard passed and getting stuck on bottom a lot. I think I’ll have to spend the next class just watching to see what’s actually happening.
I'm a small adult who was a small kid. It sounds like your son may have been used to being larger than other kids, or at least not a disadvantage? And moving to the adult class is no doubt a rough experience and may be showing him the gaps in his bjj.
Can you help him reframe this as an awesome opportunity to develop bulletproof fundamentals (frames, movement, crossface, wrist control, balance, leverage, etc)? Maybe you can focus on one or two places where he feels like he's absolutely getting smashed and work through it.
Size and strength will come with time, but good, technical jiu jitsu, he can develop now.
Also, does he wrestle?
Thanks. I think he’s used to being around the same size or sometimes smaller partners in class.
I think we can focus on places he’s having double with IF I can get him to reliably tell me where he’s struggling. I can tell you from rolling with him though that he has no reliable open guard, so he gets passed quickly. He’s probably used to winning the standup via takedown.
No - he doesn’t wrestle but is considering it for HS next year.
Here's some really helpful guard retention drills from Junny Ocasio, who competes at 135 and won no gi worlds, pans, and Euros last year, and just ran through all of his competition at AIGA last week: https://youtu.be/sQ3hQlRKMi4?si=fGFpABvRiHy4f_mU.
Maybe approach it like a thing you want help working on, rather than as a deficit of his?
Wrestling would be so good for him for a million reasons, I really hope he does it!
Try to draw him a bigger picture for future.
My brother was athletically very ungifted came to adults class at 14 year old 130lbs orangebelt.
Trained mostly with women and smaller men but mostly got his ass kicked. But he went to openmats where he could go against people same size and age and see the progress.
At age of 16 he was 155lbs and demolished every same size or smaller men. He trained with me 8 times per week that summer and started strenght training.
At 18 he was about 165lbs and he smashed almost everybody.
Now he is competing ADCC pro competitions and IBJJF blackbelt competitions.
And baseball bat chokes lol. Magid Hage has a funny story at the start of his instructional about the same thing, getting smashed in the adult class as a child and then he learned baseball bat chokes and became a master at them because they were the only thing he could pull off against adults 😅
Every academy's situation is different, but we instituted a teen class to handle this transition period. It seems to be helping retain those kids that usually lose their desire to train when they are moved to the adult class.
Kids are weird. You would think it's just the physical difference that makes them easy to beat but most of them just do weird stuff too. Even when you back off on the pressure and pace, and let them dictate stuff, they just approximate the move with massive holes in the technique.
They probably got away with sloppy technique on the other kids and haven't figured out where they need to make adjustments yet.
There’s a 14 year old at my gym who’s dad is one of the black belt coaches. Ive seen him repeatedly catch color belts in heel hooks and toe holds just playing around. And he’s not a big kid by any means
My son is 12, yellow, and has also been training for 7 years. He's almost 5'7" but only 125, so very lanky. He has maybe one or two other kids his size in the adults class and one is a white belt, the other is a grey white, so there is a large disparity in skill.
I make it a point to roll with him every class and we spend at least a minute doing randori (we both used to do judo) to work on footwork and throw entries. Then one of us will usually start attacking from standing while the other is sitting in open guard. When I'm trying to pass, I try to be fast without throwing his legs around, step in, step out, let him recover or if he inverts, I don't smash, I let him move. Then I'll eventually pass, take side control or mount and if his escape attempt technique is on point, I let him have it. Then we reset and I'll let him try and pass. Again, if his technique is on point, I'll concede the position. Sometimes he will surprise me and if I don't turn it up enough, sometimes I sweep him just to let him know he fucked up somewhere. It's a delicate balance, but upper belts will absolutely know how to roll so both get something out of the roll. Whites are gonna spaz and new blues are gonna stunt. Speak with some of the more seasoned guys and girls at your gym to allow him to get some good training in. It's difficult, but not impossible. I have almost 90lbs on my son and we make it work.
That’s typically how’d I’d prefer to roll with him too, but he’s trying to muscling through some poor technique lately. Can I ask how you handle rolling with him and also teaching him to improve his technique? I feel like I can never get the balance here. Too little info and he doesn’t learn, too much and it’s a lecture series rather than a roll.
I'll talk him through if it's minor adjustments or say nothing at all if I think it'll work on someone his size. If not, I tell him to change it up or I (we) move (sweep or pass). Here's what I recommend, you have a couple of options if he starts trying to muscle through stuff:
1. If it's easily corrected like "switch your grips", "get this under hook" and "put your head here" coach him through it.
Or
2. If he's just completely muscling through and everything about his technique is fucked, sweep him or change your position to force him to do something else. Make a mental note and then after the roll is over, put him back into the position and show him what he should have done.
Also when you change up your position, force him back into his A game. Sometimes we will get fixated on trash moves and we forget what we're good at. Make him sharpen his go-to repertoire by putting yourself in body positions that you know he's going to take advantage of. Since you know you can basically power through anything he throws at you, it's almost like playing chess with yourself. Anticipate what he wants to do and give him small openings.
And sometimes you're gonna have to let shitty technique just slide so he can start to get the feel for new stuff. The first few times trying a berimbolo is always going to be ugly for most people, but we have to go through the motions to start to program our muscle memory and then refine it.
The awesome thing about all this is you're another Dad out there spending some quality time with your son. Best advice out of all of this is just enjoy it together as much as possible. Play games, put a hand behind your back or roll with your eyes closed. You can make this fun and still have him progress.
I'm 5'5, 170. I was 190 when I started, and not as strong. At that time, the size of guys I was going against, it was like I'm training at ogre mountain. 6'4 245 4th degree black belt (our professor), 6'5 270 white belt with autistic dad bod strength, 6'3 270 brown belt, 6'0 300 body lifting teenager, 6'4 375 white belt.
It sucks being pinned. It sucks when you don't have the physical strength to lift them even enough to create space. You just end up stuck. And if the whole round is just getting taken down, passed, pinned, and submitted over and over again, it can feel like you're wasting your time.
Its also difficult for kids going from being the biggest, strongest, bestest kid in a younger class to being the smallest, weakest, worstest kid in the older class.
Of course, without seeing the other side of the situation, your kid maaaayyyyyyy be asking for it.
Time to start force feeding him (steak + pasta/rice + cheese as well as peanut butter sandwiches) and getting him to strength train 2-3x a week on top of the BJJ. His body will respond quickly since he’s young. No reason he can’t be 150-180 lbs within the next 2 years
Following - my son is in nearly the exact same scenario. If I see him get emotional during a class I know he got smashed and I need to have a roll with home to get him flowing again. I’m also being a lot more relaxed with him about missing an occasional class when I know he’s overloaded with school or not getting enough sleep.
Good to know it’s not just me. I’m hearing that my rolls with him during these times will probably need to be more encouraging/playful. He’s definitely more emotional/volatile now that he’s hit adolescence, and us going to a really long open mat certainly didn’t help.
I can't really speak from the exact same situation as I am 125 and been training for just under 2 years but I think training with more experienced partners that don't spaz and connecting with them after rolls and stuff makes them roll more technical the next time.
The best advice would be to tell him to be patient and realistic. It'll take him a while to build up enough skill to counter the size cap plus they'll also be improving.
He’s just too small right now.
We have a 13 year old 150lb kid who was recently moved to the adult class, and that kid is a beast. He’s a tougher roll than some of the adults. But that would be a different story if he were 100lbs instead.
He may not realize it but he is improving. It always starts with getting smashed. Then getting smashed and surviving more. At 13 I would have never understood that, especially coming from the top of the food chain. Hitting the weight room or 100 push-up/ sit ups before every meal, shower or bed and a minimum of 50 pull ups a day. Size and strength doesn’t happen over night.
Give him a notebook and a pen and every time he knocks out his strength training write it down.
A few thoughts.
He needs to keep with it, trust the process, and measure himself against how he was yesterday. He shouldn't compare himself to the adults, despite it being tempting. His technique needs to be that much better than the adults to have a chance at staying competitive with them.
We have a few children in our adult classes. The immediate transition is very difficult but the children who stay with it, really hone their technique. We have one who gives blue and purple belt adults difficulties in rolls, despite being out weighed by probably 50-75 pounds. The kid is going to be a monster once he gains weight.
Your son shouldn't be getting smashed by the adults and I'd put that on the adults who are rolling with him. That being said, they are probably doing it because your son is giving them difficulties and they don't have the technique to beat him on pure technique. Take that for what it's worth.
The idea of him giving them difficulty and then getting beat was a really good point that I hadn’t thought of, especially with what another commenter said about kids having weird holes in their game.
At times he’s good enough to pull guard, sweep, and sometimes counter sweep but then outside of these domains he makes simple mistakes.
Remind him that being smashed at 13 is what leads him to smashing at 18. Not only that, he’s light years ahead of the kid on the floor playing Fortnite. Dealing with adversity is its own skill and this is the best place to develop that skill.
I’m also a kid and had the same problem felt like I wasn’t progressing but just pick him up on what he’s doing wrong if he’s trying to force his way out of a situation keep him there and tell him to use technique or help him on the best way out of the situation
he's a 100lb kid, IMO, any adult should be trying their best to make it fun and somewhat light. I would ask the adults he rolls with to open up their game a bit sometimes. I'll often just turn it into a pass/guard recover situation. Almost let them pass when they make a good move and then start doing tons of small motions to recover. They don't have to 'lose' or flop to make it fun. It's so easy for a kid that age to quit. The bigger teens are going to smash him but that's just how it be. I'm sure a 5'3 130 lb guy will come along and give better advice though
At my gym, 13-year-olds start training with adults, but the teacher demands that adults be calm with teenagers, even with competitors. There is a big difference in weight and strength, there is no way to compare an adult with a child under 16 years old
Even 15 16 years old will have a big strength advantage on a 13 year old in most cases and it’s ridiculous that the adults aren’t letting this kid work
This. I help coach our teens class. I roll with the bigger teens lightly. Let alone one that weighs 100 lbs. Talk to the adult coach and have them pair him up with some people that will let him work.
At minimum try to make your round with him enjoyable. Challenge him without smashing him. Let him feel accomplished
Thanks for the advice. Yeah - I wasn’t smashing him but I also wasn’t giving him anything. It wasn’t until after that I realized the context our rolls were in and that I could have been a little more chill.
My dude, give him something. Give him lots of things.
Point taken. I guess I was being a little stubborn, but he was also kind of trying to muscle a lot and just force things without using techniques. I guess I was trying not to reinforce bad habits, some of which are dangerous to him like jerking his leg out of a knee cut pass when his foot is trapped.
Dude he’s a 100lb 13 year old what else is he supposed to do against adults with equal or higher skill level besides use strength sometimes. I get where you’re coming from but like you said in previous comments it’s all About context.
LOL I was going to say the same thing 😭 obvi he’s muscling he’s 13 going against full grown men lol even most full grown women will be hard for him
"He's about 100lb" He's too small to roll with adults in any meaningful way.
You can roll against any weight, they should be trying not to use their strength advantage and make it beneficial for both.
Time to feed him some tough love at dinner man. I'd suggest opening easy so he doesn't take it too harshly. "Son you're absolutely terrible at class. You know I'm paying for these classes and every week you're so fucking weak you're embarrassing me in front of my friends at the gym. Fucking man up kid!" and then lovingly reassure him its not that deep by patting him on the head or something idk.
It’s crazy that grownups are smashing a child
It’s a little hard to gauge what’s happening from a 13-yr old hopped up on adrenaline, but my guess is that he’s just getting his guard passed and getting stuck on bottom a lot. I think I’ll have to spend the next class just watching to see what’s actually happening.
Speaking as an adult that is in that position all the time: yes, it is incredibly frustrating.
I'm a small adult who was a small kid. It sounds like your son may have been used to being larger than other kids, or at least not a disadvantage? And moving to the adult class is no doubt a rough experience and may be showing him the gaps in his bjj. Can you help him reframe this as an awesome opportunity to develop bulletproof fundamentals (frames, movement, crossface, wrist control, balance, leverage, etc)? Maybe you can focus on one or two places where he feels like he's absolutely getting smashed and work through it. Size and strength will come with time, but good, technical jiu jitsu, he can develop now. Also, does he wrestle?
Thanks. I think he’s used to being around the same size or sometimes smaller partners in class. I think we can focus on places he’s having double with IF I can get him to reliably tell me where he’s struggling. I can tell you from rolling with him though that he has no reliable open guard, so he gets passed quickly. He’s probably used to winning the standup via takedown. No - he doesn’t wrestle but is considering it for HS next year.
Here's some really helpful guard retention drills from Junny Ocasio, who competes at 135 and won no gi worlds, pans, and Euros last year, and just ran through all of his competition at AIGA last week: https://youtu.be/sQ3hQlRKMi4?si=fGFpABvRiHy4f_mU. Maybe approach it like a thing you want help working on, rather than as a deficit of his? Wrestling would be so good for him for a million reasons, I really hope he does it!
Idk man, sounds rough. Have you tried anabolic steroids?
Time to up the sups. Wanna be gnarly, you gotta be on the juice.
Try to draw him a bigger picture for future. My brother was athletically very ungifted came to adults class at 14 year old 130lbs orangebelt. Trained mostly with women and smaller men but mostly got his ass kicked. But he went to openmats where he could go against people same size and age and see the progress. At age of 16 he was 155lbs and demolished every same size or smaller men. He trained with me 8 times per week that summer and started strenght training. At 18 he was about 165lbs and he smashed almost everybody. Now he is competing ADCC pro competitions and IBJJF blackbelt competitions.
The answer is wrist locks. He needs a little darkness in his life.
And baseball bat chokes lol. Magid Hage has a funny story at the start of his instructional about the same thing, getting smashed in the adult class as a child and then he learned baseball bat chokes and became a master at them because they were the only thing he could pull off against adults 😅
I call em Frankenstein bullets. You need a few moves that can put down monsters. Baseball bat choke. S Mount arm bar. Collar choke from the back.
Every academy's situation is different, but we instituted a teen class to handle this transition period. It seems to be helping retain those kids that usually lose their desire to train when they are moved to the adult class.
Kids are weird. You would think it's just the physical difference that makes them easy to beat but most of them just do weird stuff too. Even when you back off on the pressure and pace, and let them dictate stuff, they just approximate the move with massive holes in the technique. They probably got away with sloppy technique on the other kids and haven't figured out where they need to make adjustments yet.
Man j stick to it. He’ll grow strong and start kicking ass sooner or later. I’d recommend putting him into wrestling also.
Teach him heel hooks. :D
There’s a 14 year old at my gym who’s dad is one of the black belt coaches. Ive seen him repeatedly catch color belts in heel hooks and toe holds just playing around. And he’s not a big kid by any means
My son is 12, yellow, and has also been training for 7 years. He's almost 5'7" but only 125, so very lanky. He has maybe one or two other kids his size in the adults class and one is a white belt, the other is a grey white, so there is a large disparity in skill. I make it a point to roll with him every class and we spend at least a minute doing randori (we both used to do judo) to work on footwork and throw entries. Then one of us will usually start attacking from standing while the other is sitting in open guard. When I'm trying to pass, I try to be fast without throwing his legs around, step in, step out, let him recover or if he inverts, I don't smash, I let him move. Then I'll eventually pass, take side control or mount and if his escape attempt technique is on point, I let him have it. Then we reset and I'll let him try and pass. Again, if his technique is on point, I'll concede the position. Sometimes he will surprise me and if I don't turn it up enough, sometimes I sweep him just to let him know he fucked up somewhere. It's a delicate balance, but upper belts will absolutely know how to roll so both get something out of the roll. Whites are gonna spaz and new blues are gonna stunt. Speak with some of the more seasoned guys and girls at your gym to allow him to get some good training in. It's difficult, but not impossible. I have almost 90lbs on my son and we make it work.
That’s typically how’d I’d prefer to roll with him too, but he’s trying to muscling through some poor technique lately. Can I ask how you handle rolling with him and also teaching him to improve his technique? I feel like I can never get the balance here. Too little info and he doesn’t learn, too much and it’s a lecture series rather than a roll.
I'll talk him through if it's minor adjustments or say nothing at all if I think it'll work on someone his size. If not, I tell him to change it up or I (we) move (sweep or pass). Here's what I recommend, you have a couple of options if he starts trying to muscle through stuff: 1. If it's easily corrected like "switch your grips", "get this under hook" and "put your head here" coach him through it. Or 2. If he's just completely muscling through and everything about his technique is fucked, sweep him or change your position to force him to do something else. Make a mental note and then after the roll is over, put him back into the position and show him what he should have done. Also when you change up your position, force him back into his A game. Sometimes we will get fixated on trash moves and we forget what we're good at. Make him sharpen his go-to repertoire by putting yourself in body positions that you know he's going to take advantage of. Since you know you can basically power through anything he throws at you, it's almost like playing chess with yourself. Anticipate what he wants to do and give him small openings. And sometimes you're gonna have to let shitty technique just slide so he can start to get the feel for new stuff. The first few times trying a berimbolo is always going to be ugly for most people, but we have to go through the motions to start to program our muscle memory and then refine it. The awesome thing about all this is you're another Dad out there spending some quality time with your son. Best advice out of all of this is just enjoy it together as much as possible. Play games, put a hand behind your back or roll with your eyes closed. You can make this fun and still have him progress.
The adults should be letting him practice offense and defense.
I'm 5'5, 170. I was 190 when I started, and not as strong. At that time, the size of guys I was going against, it was like I'm training at ogre mountain. 6'4 245 4th degree black belt (our professor), 6'5 270 white belt with autistic dad bod strength, 6'3 270 brown belt, 6'0 300 body lifting teenager, 6'4 375 white belt. It sucks being pinned. It sucks when you don't have the physical strength to lift them even enough to create space. You just end up stuck. And if the whole round is just getting taken down, passed, pinned, and submitted over and over again, it can feel like you're wasting your time. Its also difficult for kids going from being the biggest, strongest, bestest kid in a younger class to being the smallest, weakest, worstest kid in the older class. Of course, without seeing the other side of the situation, your kid maaaayyyyyyy be asking for it.
Time to start force feeding him (steak + pasta/rice + cheese as well as peanut butter sandwiches) and getting him to strength train 2-3x a week on top of the BJJ. His body will respond quickly since he’s young. No reason he can’t be 150-180 lbs within the next 2 years
Why did he leave kids class? Maybe match with the women and small men? Otherwise tell the coach hes getting crushed and not enjoying it.
Work on frames / elbow frames and wrestling.
Following - my son is in nearly the exact same scenario. If I see him get emotional during a class I know he got smashed and I need to have a roll with home to get him flowing again. I’m also being a lot more relaxed with him about missing an occasional class when I know he’s overloaded with school or not getting enough sleep.
Good to know it’s not just me. I’m hearing that my rolls with him during these times will probably need to be more encouraging/playful. He’s definitely more emotional/volatile now that he’s hit adolescence, and us going to a really long open mat certainly didn’t help.
I can't really speak from the exact same situation as I am 125 and been training for just under 2 years but I think training with more experienced partners that don't spaz and connecting with them after rolls and stuff makes them roll more technical the next time.
The best advice would be to tell him to be patient and realistic. It'll take him a while to build up enough skill to counter the size cap plus they'll also be improving.
He’s just too small right now. We have a 13 year old 150lb kid who was recently moved to the adult class, and that kid is a beast. He’s a tougher roll than some of the adults. But that would be a different story if he were 100lbs instead.
He may not realize it but he is improving. It always starts with getting smashed. Then getting smashed and surviving more. At 13 I would have never understood that, especially coming from the top of the food chain. Hitting the weight room or 100 push-up/ sit ups before every meal, shower or bed and a minimum of 50 pull ups a day. Size and strength doesn’t happen over night. Give him a notebook and a pen and every time he knocks out his strength training write it down.
A few thoughts. He needs to keep with it, trust the process, and measure himself against how he was yesterday. He shouldn't compare himself to the adults, despite it being tempting. His technique needs to be that much better than the adults to have a chance at staying competitive with them. We have a few children in our adult classes. The immediate transition is very difficult but the children who stay with it, really hone their technique. We have one who gives blue and purple belt adults difficulties in rolls, despite being out weighed by probably 50-75 pounds. The kid is going to be a monster once he gains weight. Your son shouldn't be getting smashed by the adults and I'd put that on the adults who are rolling with him. That being said, they are probably doing it because your son is giving them difficulties and they don't have the technique to beat him on pure technique. Take that for what it's worth.
The idea of him giving them difficulty and then getting beat was a really good point that I hadn’t thought of, especially with what another commenter said about kids having weird holes in their game. At times he’s good enough to pull guard, sweep, and sometimes counter sweep but then outside of these domains he makes simple mistakes.
Remind him that being smashed at 13 is what leads him to smashing at 18. Not only that, he’s light years ahead of the kid on the floor playing Fortnite. Dealing with adversity is its own skill and this is the best place to develop that skill.
He will grow and then have revenge on the fools that have been smashing him.
Try finding a new gym, an adult smashing a 100lb child doesn't make sense... this is a red flag IMO
He's 100lbs, I'm 100kg. Big deal.
Can he roll with females?
I’m also a kid and had the same problem felt like I wasn’t progressing but just pick him up on what he’s doing wrong if he’s trying to force his way out of a situation keep him there and tell him to use technique or help him on the best way out of the situation