Why You Should Integrate 10th Planet Warm Ups In Your Training

Do you know how people in 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu warm up for a class? While this may be an unusual question to ask, it is an important one. 10th planet warm ups are drill scenarios that cover different key areas of Jiu Jitsu and involve both partners simultaneously. And, even though they use them for warm up purposes in 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu schools, that doesn’t mean you have to use them the same. 

What are 10th Planet Warm Ups?

The famous 10th Planet warm ups are a series of drills that Eddie Bravo has come up with to “force” people who hate drilling into drills. It may sound horrible when I put it like that, but it worked. 

What Eddie Bravo did a while ago is finding a creative way of putting together BJJ drills that takes away the boring aspect of endless (and often mindless) repetition-based drills, which most grapplers use (and hate) to this day. 

The 10th planet warm ups are, in essence, scenarios of common BJJ exchanges which extend past just drilling one thing from a static or very limited position over and over again. 

Instead, they focus on transitions, attacking combinations, and re-counters, involving resistance and realistic movements by both training partners involved, as opposed to the classic style of BJJ drills where one person is basically a grappling dummy. 

Eddie Bravo came up with the warm ups system when he was trying to figure out a way to train Jiu Jitsu that would resemble what strikers do when they shadowbox. In other words, he wanted to find a way to utilize the most used things in BJJ in a system that allows creativity and structure, offering those who use it to perfect key movements and patterns of the sport. 

The end result was themed scenarios (more on this in the next chapter) and involved one person initiating an exchange, with the other responding in a very specific, realistic, and expected manner. 

The exchanges do not stop there, though; both partners keep working through several different responses to each other’s moves until a certain drill scenario ends. They then repeat it repeatedly for either reps or time, switching top and bottom positions at one point. 

The 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu Warm Ups System

The way the 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu warm ups are organized is by using letters and numbers to define the subjects of different scenarios. 

Letters A to H (for now) are used to describe the general subject of a certain set of drill scenarios. For example, a warm up series can focus on Granby rolls as the centerpiece of every drill, taking people through four different scenarios involving this particular move and all the most common ways these exchanges branch out. 

Each 10th Planet warm ups series (A-H) contains four scenarios in which both partners participate: 

• Warm Ups Series A are Granby Rolls,
• Warm Ups Series B are “Hail Marys”
• Warm Ups Series C are Pressure Passes
• Warm Ups Series D are Standing Passes
• Warm Ups Series E are half guards
• Warm Ups Series F are Butterfly Guards
• Warm Ups Series G are top Half Guard Passes
• Warm Ups Series H are Open Guard Drills 

Eight different letters with four scenarios in each series bring the total of scenarios to 32. These are 32 realistic scenarios in which both the top and bottom person work on their game and do different this in response to each other. 

This is a lot of material to cover and doe stake time to put into motion, but once drills of this kind are incorporated in your training, your progress in Jiu Jitsu will skyrocket. 

How to Use 10th Planet Warm Ups to get Better at Jiu Jitsu

While I am all for building toughness, winning mindsets, and all, making people train in a way they do not enjoy is not nearly as effective in remembering what they are doing and integrating it into their games as doing it in an enjoyable and fun way is. 

Firstly, Eddie Bravo set up the 10th Planet warm ups to enable his students to understand his system better and become more proficient at developing muscle memory for transitions, attacks, and counters while embracing the chaos and, most importantly, resistance that is present in rolling/competing. 

For me personally, a few years of doing the 10th Planet warm ups, slightly modified to fit my needs really took my Jiu Jitsu to the next level when I was a purple belt. I did them along with a friend after class and referred to them as drills instead of warm ups. 

At the moment, I use the 10th Planet warm ups in a dedicated hour-long weekly drills session in my academy. Once again, since I am not affiliated with 10th Planet, I have modified the warm ups, a.k.a. drills, to my system of Jiu Jitsu. 

The results are undeniable in people developing the skills to effortlessly and instinctively transition in and out of positions, in most cases not even thinking about it after training in the drills system for a short while. 

The benefit from training in scenarios like the 10th planet warm ups is that people train as close as possible to reality, without the chaos involved in position sparring, and with lots to think about during the execution of the scenarios. 

Namely, moving further from the clear benefits of muscle memory and the increase in technical knowledge, but also in anticipation of the next steps, as you constantly have to think about what the next step in the scenario is, both for you and your opponent. 

Final Words

BJJ drills do not have to be a boring, repetitive affair that has nothing to do with actual rolling. The 10th Planet warm ups system is just one example of how you can set up drills differently than usual, making them more effective and fun in the process. Of course, you can use the warm ups as a blueprint to set up your own set of drill scenarios or follow them to a “T.” The choice is yours.