Grappling Dummy / Jiu-Jitsu

Should you buy a grappling dummy for Jiu-Jitsu?

by matmartial · Published February 17, 2020 · Updated May 18, 2020

Should you buy a grappling dummy for Jiu-Jitsu?

Short Answer

I think that grappling dummies are useful in the beginning when you are first starting Jiu-Jitsu. But you probably won’t use your grappling dummy as much as you think after that. However, you might come back to it from time to time.
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The short answer is that when it comes to training Jiu-Jitsu, I think grappling dummies are useful for beginners. I also think that beginners should be aware that they probably won’t use their grappling dummy forever or as often as they think, and probably for a lot shorter period of time than they initially think that they will.

Get better, faster: grappling dummy?

At some point, almost everyone who steps on the mats to train Jiu-Jitsu has to ask themselves, how do I get better faster?

If only I could train more often, I would improve way faster. That might be true. But frequency of training is another complex issue. How do you know if you are pushing the limits and training too much? We all have busy lives and priorities like family and work have to take precedence. But health is a priority too.

How do I know if I am really not training enough? I covered these considerations in my article How Often Should I Train Jiu-Jitsu.

Should you buy a grappling dummy for Jiu-Jitsu?

Maybe you are looking for a way to train more often without getting smashed. Or maybe you schedule and prior commitments make it impossible to get to the gym as much as you need to. So you find yourself wondering: maybe I should buy a grappling dummy…

Grappling Dummies are expensive

You start looking around online, and you immediately find that one thing is true: grappling dummies are expensive. So you immediately begin to have second thoughts. Maybe I don’t need a grappling dummy that badly.

You start looking around online some more. You see that some Jiu-Jitsu instructors take the position that grappling dummies are a waste of money. Take Jiu-Jitsu black belt Stephan Kesting. I admire and respect Stephan a great deal. I have never met him before, but he has some great resources for learning and improving your Jiu-Jitsu online. In fact, I listed him high on my List of Top Five Best Jiu-Jitsu Instructors Online.

Are grappling dummies worth the price

But Stephan says that you shouldn’t buy a grappling dummy in his in depth discussion that I encourage you to read here: Will Grappling Dummy Drills Really Help Your BJJ?

Stephan lays out a comprehensive argument on why he thinks that grappling dummies are, for the most part, a waste of resources. Again, I respect Stephan. He knows what he is talking about, and the subject of grappling dummies in no exception. In fact, in his article, Stephan informs us that he has “worked with about 9 or 10 different commercial grappling dummies.” He also tells us that he has even built 4 grappling dummies, by hand, himself.

Build your own grappling dummy for Jiu Jitsu

I would imagine that Stephan invested a large portion of time into making his grappling dummies. I have also built a grappling dummy by hand myself. It was a lot of work. It was a large investment of my time.

There are several different videos on YouTube demonstrating how to make your own grappling dummy. This is the one that I used: Build your own grappling dummy.

My point is that if he has worked with 9 or 10 commercially build grappling dummies, and has even put in the time and effort to build his own grappling dummies, how can he say they are not worth the investment?

When it comes down to explaining why he is against grappling dummies, like the true Jiu-Jitsu master that he is, Stephan makes his point simply and efficiently “they didn’t move.”

Advantages of grappling dummies for Jiu Jitsu

Yes, they don’t move, but you have worked with 14 different grappling dummies over the course of your career. If you did not find any benefit from training with a grappling dummy, why didn’t you stop trying after 1 or 2 or 3? Clearly there is some value to training with a grappling dummy, or Stephan would have stopped before he got into the double digits.

Again, Stephan’s YouTube channel is full of great Jiu-Jitsu instruction. I highly recommend learning from him. One of my favorite lessons that I learned from Stephan is 4 Counters to the Cross Collar Grip from Closed Guard in BJJ. I think that he is looking out for your best interests. If fact, his other major beef with grappling dummies is that they are so darn expensive.

Grappling dummies are a significant investment

On this issue he has some good advice:

“Commercial dummies are a pretty hefty investment. Many of them are well made, but typically cost from $500 to $700. Plus a boatload extra for shipping.”

“You’ll feel stupid if you’re spending that kind of money on something you never end up using. So maybe you know someone who owns one; can you can borrow or rent it for a week? Try drilling with the borrowed dummy 15 minutes a day for an entire week and see if you’re still as enthusiastic about the idea at the end of the week.”

Extensive experience with grappling dummies for Jiu Jitsu

At the end of the day, Stephan might be right. In his article, Will Grappling Dummy Drills Really Help Your BJJ? he writes:

“In my experience grappling dummies are almost always a waste of time, money, effort and space. So don’t bother. Find another way to train. At first the idea of getting a dummy and doing some extra drilling with it seems like such a good idea. If can’t make it to class as often as you would like, then maybe spending a bit of extra time repping techniques on a humanoid dummy could make up the difference, right? When people fork out the cash to buy a dummy they’re initially very excited. They’ve usually got a list of drills they want to do every day on it.
“But somehow, a week or two after arriving, their new toy is already lying off to the side of the living room with children’s toys piled on top of it. Then it gets relegated to the back of a closet. And eventually end up in the landfill (I know, I’ve sent several there myself).”
https://www.grapplearts.com/will-grappling-dummy-drills-help-bjj/

Learning the grips

I agree with Stephan that they are too expensive, which is why I built my own. And I will say that my own dummy came in quite handy when I was starting out. It really helped get a feel for where I needed to position my body in relation to the dummy. The grappling dummy also helped me a ton in getting the feel for finishing submissions.

For example, the Americana is a submission that everyone seems to learn early on. But if you think about it, it is actually a complex submission. By trying it out on my grappling dummy, I really was able to get a feel for the grips required to finish the position.

Improved mobility

Another way my grappling dummy has been useful to me, is that it got me down on the floor more often than I would have otherwise.

It was sitting there in the corner, and it was a lot of work to build it. I wasn’t going to let all that effort go to waste.

So I would grab it and get down on the mat and move around. Age my age, starting Jiu-Jitsu over 40, the more often I got down on the floor and move around, the more my mobility improved.

Improving my mobility was critical to surviving the first 6 months of training and sparring Jiu-Jitsu. My grappling dummy helped me do that.

Conclusion

In the end, I’m really glad I put in all the effort to make my own grappling dummy. I think it was useful and a great benefit to me when I started training. But I don’t really use it very much at all right now.

If you have researched it to your satisfaction and you still think you want to buy a grappling dummy, you might want to check back with MatMartial.com as we will be updating this post on grappling dummies for Jiu-Jitsu very soon.

In conclusion, I think that grappling dummies are really great for people who are beginning Jiu-Jitsu. But I think that the better you get, the less often you might tend to use your Jiu-Jitsu dummy.

Having said that, I’m going to go and grab my grappling dummy now and see if I feel like I need to train with it more often. Don’t worry, I’ll tap early and often.

Check back for more articles about Jiu-Jitsu.