How hard should one roll?

Who knows. What's probably safe to say is that you should be rolling "less hard."

You can probably tap a bunch of less skilled people just using your strength and athleticism. That's cool, but it's going to stop working once you roll with more skilled people. It's also going to prevent you from focusing on technique, and it's going to be annoying to training partners.

I don't mind at all if people roll hard, if they're skilled. If they're just being tough and spazzy, that's straight up annoying. I train every day and work out hard too, so it's annoying when someone is using a ton of strength, shaking with exertion, breath racing, etc. Like are you using this as a proxy for an actual fight? Or for your conditioning? To me, those are both annoying as fuck. Everyone else is here to work, have fun, build skills, and you're using this as your way to get out whatever weird aggressive energy you have. It's so immediately obvious when people have some weird internal issues going on that they are getting out through rolling.

In my opinion, you should earn the right to roll hard, by showing that you are safe and technique oriented.

Also, what are you getting by rolling super hard? Are you trying to mimic "real fighting" Well you're a white belt in jiu jitsu class - obviously your goal should be skill building, not fulfilling some combat adrenaline need. Are you trying to get conditioning? That's cool too but your training partners aren't your workout equipment.

I'm a large muscular athletic dude. If I used all that strength and athleticism in just everyday rolling in class, it would be pretty fucking lame of me.

/r/bjj Thread