A peer-reviewed study published this week by the International Grappling Behavioral Institute has found that the average Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioner’s pre-class strategy for avoiding one specific training partner demonstrates significantly more positional awareness, contingency planning, and tactical depth than his actual competition game plan.
The study, titled “Evasion Hierarchy vs. Submission Hierarchy: A Comparative Analysis of Strategic Complexity in Recreational Grapplers,” tracked 1,200 practitioners across 40 academies over six months and found that 97% of subjects devoted more cognitive resources to not making eye contact with one particular person than to any technique they had ever drilled.
“The sophistication was remarkable,” said Dr. Elena Vasquez, the study’s lead author. “We observed subjects who couldn’t remember a single grip sequence from last week’s class execute a flawless 14-step avoidance protocol involving precise arrival timing, a decoy conversation with a third party, two strategically placed water breaks, and a pre-arranged partnership with someone they don’t even like — all without a single written note.”
The study identified five distinct phases of what researchers have termed the Avoidance Game Plan (AGP):
Phase 1: Pre-Arrival Intelligence Gathering. 83% of subjects checked the gym’s parking lot before entering to identify the target’s vehicle. 31% maintained a secondary information network — typically a group chat titled something innocuous like “Saturday open mat crew” — used exclusively for surveillance.
Phase 2: Entry Timing Calibration. Subjects arrived an average of 4-7 minutes after class began. Late enough that initial partner selection was already underway. Not so late as to draw attention from the professor and risk being assigned to the target directly.
Phase 3: Spatial Awareness. During warm-ups, subjects maintained a minimum three-person buffer from the target at all times, demonstrating spatial awareness they had never once applied while inside someone’s closed guard.
Phase 4: The Fake Commitment. When the professor called for partners, 91% of subjects immediately locked eyes with their predetermined backup partner — a technique researchers described as “the most decisive action these individuals have ever taken on the mat.”
Phase 5: Contingency Protocols. In the event of AGP failure — the backup partner was absent, or the professor assigned partners directly — 67% of subjects had a rehearsed bathroom exit, 22% developed a sudden need to retape their fingers, and 11% simply pretended to be injured. All strategies they explicitly refused to employ during actual competition.
Dr. Vasquez noted that the average subject’s competition game plan, by contrast, consisted of “pull guard, then see what happens.”
“One subject had a six-layer decision tree for what to do if his avoidance partner walked toward him during the water break,” Vasquez said. “His entire competition strategy was ‘go for the arm thing.’ He couldn’t even name which arm thing.”
The study also found that 78% of subjects maintained what researchers called a “phantom excuse rotation” — a pre-loaded library of 3-5 reasons for declining a roll that were never repeated to the same person within a 30-day window. The most common entries included “I’m working on something specific today,” “my neck is a little tweaked,” and the perennial favorite, “I actually need to head out early.”
Subjects who deployed all five AGP phases successfully reported higher satisfaction with their training sessions than subjects who simply trained with whoever was available — despite learning objectively less jiu-jitsu.
“These practitioners have essentially developed a second martial art,” said Dr. Vasquez. “One they actually study.”
The target training partner — the individual being avoided — was completely unaware of the protocols in 100% of observed cases and was, in fact, “just really excited to train with everyone.”