Have you ever apologized after a loss? If so, stop it.
I’m not talking about the extreme situations here where you do something foolish that causes a loss — failing to prepare properly, or making a huge mistake ignoring your coach’s advice during the match. If you do those things, go ahead and say you’re sorry.
That’s not usually what happens, though. Most often we lose because we had a tough matchup, or because we’re learning and growing and ran into a situation where we didn’t know the right thing to do.
Mostly, I’m talking to myself here: I used to apologize when I got knocked out of tournaments. I used to feel like I’d let my teammates, coach and training partners down if I lost.
There is no “I” in “emo,” but there is a “me.”
This is very different from my perspective now. I have begun think of tournament competitions as just an extension of training: instead of training with the people I roll with everyday, I’m putting myself in a different situation with an opponent whose techniques are unknown. This is an extremely valuable training experience, since you aren’t going to know if your opponent wrestled, did judo or anything else.
Changing this viewpoint took me a long time. The impulse to say “sorry” is understandable: your instructor and training partners put a ton of energy, sweat and bodily risk into helping you prepare. You want to run strong for them.
But I came to realize that it misses the point: it misses the process, the journey. It misses what makes you proud about your gym and teammates. When I sat down and thought about what makes me proud of my instructor and teammates, competitive success barely made the list.
I’m proud of the way we support each other. I’m proud of the way nobody lets anybody else quit during a hard workout. I’m proud of my friends’ competitive achievements, yes, but I’m just as impressed by the grinders that show up and train every day even though they haven’t had tournament success — maybe even more so. I’m proud that, like any family, we sometimes bicker but we get over it and keep helping each other get better.
What’s a medal compared to that? What’s a great day at a tournament — even the best day — compared to years of that shared experience?
Win, lose, whatever: you get back up.
A loss might end a tournament for you. It might sting. It should sting: if you’re preparing right, you’ve put a ton of effort into the experience. That tiny part of your jiu-jitsu journey might end in that painful fashion.
But a loss won’t stop your gym, and a loss won’t stop you. The journey goes on. The effort you put into training, the work you put in and the sacrifices you made don’t go away. They’re the ingredients that have made you improve, at jiu-jitsu and at life.
The process is the big picture. Think of a tournament as just part of training, a necessary but impermanent part of your permanent, day-to-day practice.
So go out there and win every match if you can. But if you lose, you don’t owe me, or your teammates — or anyone — an apology. You don’t owe anyone anything but, where applicable: “thanks for helping me out: see you in the gym tomorrow.”
If you’ve trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu for any appreciable amount of time, you’ve had injuries.
Personally, I consider myself one of the more fortunate. Sure, I’ve had the occasional malady, but I have been lucky to avoid a major injury that would require surgery. Besides the pain and expense — as much it galls me to admit this — I don’t want to take the time off from training that a major injury would require.
One of the first pieces of advice I try to tell the new guys who go too hard is that injury is the real enemy: if you want to get better at jiu-jitsu, staying on the mats is job one. Especially for a guy who weighs 138, turns 40 this year and trains regularly, I’ve been very lucky.
It takes a very steady hand … and believe me, the “Skill Game Where You’re The Doctor” bit from the original game applies to our community’s rampant self-diagnosis.
That’s what I keep telling myself this month. Leading up to the New York Open, I had a nagging foot injury that I trained through. At the tournament, I re-injured it during my finals match. Now, every time it gets manipulated in the wrong way — even gently — it becomes debilitating.
But there’s the Catch-22: you can’t train without risking injury, but part of the reason you want to avoid injury is so you can keep training, especially with a tournament (like, say, the Mundials) coming up. Where is the line between being tough and being stupid?
The answer I’ve come to is that you must evaluate two factors: risk of re-injury and reward of training. When you’re nicked up, which is how I’d classify my current injury, you can still train some things. For example, one of my training partners hurt his knee and spent his healing time working half-guard. You also must evaluate your ability to protect yourself while drilling and rolling, and figure out whether you’re taking too great a chance on setting yourself back.
Naturally, figuring this out depends on the severity of an injury. I’ve had back injuries that were simple stiffness and would loosen up once I got moving, and back injuries that I’d have had to be a lunatic to train through.
Given my various experiences with being nicked up, I’ve often been surprised at how easy some injuries are to train with and how hard others are. I do a lot with gi grips, for example, but finger and hand injuries are relatively simple to train with. You can wrap ’em up and hide the injured hand. (In fact, at least one person reading this has choked me using only one hand).
The opposite end of the spectrum: rib injuries. I’ve had two ribs pop out. You use your core for everything, in jiu-jitsu and in life. One of my rib injuries was extremely painful and fairly debilitating. The other one didn’t hurt much. But then I tried to sit up and couldn’t. This foot injury has shown me — again, stupid as it sounds — just how much you use your foot, both in guard and on top. It’s harder to hide than you’d think.
After musing on which of my little bumps and bruises were hardest to train with, I made this graphic rating the injuries on a scale of 0 (a cakewalk) to 10 (sweet merciful crap, maybe we’ll stay in bed and watch videos).
This is just my own experience and is not meant to be taken very seriously. The only medical advice I feel comfortable giving is “you should eat right and train jiu-jitsu.”
This is a super-scientific image from my most recent x-ray and MRI. They combined them into an MRX.
There shouldn’t be many surprises here. The big muscles and joints are always big problems. I also always think it’s worth noting that if you have an infection, that’s a 10 and you should stay home, period: I raise an eyebrow at how many folks don’t get this.
One notable rating, and this might be a function of the severity of the injury: I personally found it easier to train with a messed-up knee than with a messed-up foot. Obviously, my knee injury wasn’t a major thing, but I was able to change up the things I was doing fairly effectively to protect the knee.
With the foot? Can’t be on top, you’ve got to stand on it. Can’t really keep the guard closed, and with open guard, you either have to step on hips and biceps (ouch!) or try to hide that foot by putting it further away from your opponent — which means you need to shrimp off of it (also ouch).
We all have strengths and weaknesses. In terms of the old remedy of Rest, Ice, Compression and Elevation, my ICE game is tight, and the rest I have a problem with. (See what I did there?)
The old saying goes, “If you wake up one morning after training and nothing hurts, you died.” My hope is we all start to prove that saying wrong. Happy and healthy training to all of you.
I wanted to write this post before the tournament this past weekend.
It’s easy to be grateful when things go well. Besides, good decision-making is about putting a good process into place, not about results: if you make quality choices, quality results follow. If you’ve done all you can to prepare well, that’s really all you can hope for, so it’s appropriate to thank the folks that have helped you prepare no matter how the event itself goes.
The best laid plans go astray, though, especially where travel and making weight and living up to other responsibilities goes. So while I meant to make this post Friday, I’m making it now, and I can gratefully report that the IBJJF New York Spring Open went as well as I had hoped it would.
A longstanding goal, finally realized.
I took double gold, both in my light feather weight class and in Absolute. I competed in Master 2 blue belt, and got two really good, tough matches in. I don’t really talk about my goals a lot, for a variety of reasons, but I’d always wanted to win an IBJJF absolute gold. The closest I’d come was bronze at the NoGi pans last year, and I thought that might be as close as I’d ever get.
But I trained so, so hard for this tournament. Really tried to do everything as correctly as I possibly could. It took a lot of discipline, and I’d be proud of the way I trained even if I hadn’t gotten the results I wanted. You can’t control how your matches go, but you can control how you prepare, and I prepared harder and smarter than ever before.
Semis in absolute.
No one does anything like this alone. There are a lot of people that I need to thank, and my Facebook friends have already put up with an enormous amount of jiujitsu, so I’m thanking them all here.
First and foremost I have to thank my coach Seth Shamp, who is black belt under Royce Gracie. Seth’s the best instructor a guy could ask for: technical, a gifted teacher and passionately devoted to his students. Best of all, Seth believes 100% in you. I think I could’ve been facing Cobrinha in finals and Seth would’ve said something like: “OK, Jeff. This guy’s truly great. A legend of the art. But I think you can do some things with him! We can do this! Here’s the plan.” That kind of support you can’t put a price on.
“Jeff, this guy is big. Don’t sweat it. Here’s the plan.” — Seth Shamp
I also want to especially thank two other Royce Gracie black belts, Jake Whitfield from TJJ Goldsboro and Roy Marsh from Sandhills Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Jake and Roy live and breathe Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and each has taught me so much in the past few years, either directly (through instruction) or indirectly (through beating my ass while training). Along with Seth these guys make up my Holy Trinity of BJJ instruction.
Perhaps most importantly, I want to express my gratitude to every single one of my training partners at Triangle Jiu-Jitsu in Durham and Triangle Jiu-Jitsu in Goldsboro, North Carolina. Every day you guys and ladies work me hard, kick my butt and make me better, and I couldn’t possibly be more grateful to you.
I want to shout out two guys who especially inspire me from Roy Marsh’s school at Sandhills BJJ. One is my friend Brian Freeman, who needs to get out to Durham and train with us soon. The other us Alec Cerruto, who is a great young man with sick jiujitsu and an even better attitude. Alec is donating money for every match he wins this year to help feed underprivileged kids. I’m going to add to my own Charity Challenge this year and donate $10 for every match I win to Alec’s “Submit Hunger” project in addition to my own charities.
Just a couple of more important people to thank: I want to be sure to thank Boomer from Cageside MMA and Toro BJJ. Besides making great products and letting me design really fun BJJ gear, Boomer does a lot — behind the scenes and not — to help local fighters, BJJ practitioners and human beings generally. I can’t say enough good things about the gear he produces. I could say even more good things about him personally.
Finally, I’ve thanked Eric Uresk already multiple times, but for the first time I’ve been working with a nutritionist, and let me tell you — it makes an incredible difference. Eric’s a genius, and his WellFit program works. If you’re interested in taking nutrition seriously, let you know and I’ll put you in touch.
I am definitely leaving some people out that deserve thanking, but this is already long. I’ll have to leave it here and thank the rest of you in person. Rest assured, though, even if this is a one-time post, I’m grateful to all of you, all the time. So thanks.
You all make me make this face …And do this when I walk through airport metal detectors.
Just a quick post since I’m swamped training for the New York Open: the rashguard I made for Toro is up on BJJHQ tonight at 11! I know some people wanted one and missed out last time. It sold out fast last time, so try to get yours early this time!
Today, Royler Gracie headlines the third Metamoris Pro jiu-jitsu invitational in a high-profile match. Although I’ve never taken a seminar from or trained with Royler, I will be cheering hard for him today.
Because his opponent, Eddie Bravo, can be a controversial figure, this matchup has been polarizing. But when you look back on what Royler Gracie has accomplished during his storied career, this much is clear: it isn’t necessary to say anything negative about an opponent when there is so much positive to say about Royler.
Royler was the first truly dominant featherweight. During a run of dominance from 1996-1999, Royler won gold at the World Jiu-Jitsu Championships (Mundials) for four straight years. At the time, this was a record. Who did he beat in the finals? Only guys like Shaolin, Leo Vieira and Draculino.
All told, Royler Gracie has nine black belt gold medals from Mundials, ADCC and the Pans. Nine! In 1999, he took gold at the worlds ADCC and the Pans in the same year.
He also took a moment to let a random blue belt get a picture with him at the 2002 Mundials.
I’m listing mostly sport jiu-jitsu achievements, but Royler also made his mark elsewhere. Royler has 11 professional MMA fights. He is also a renowned teacher, developing a next generation of jiu-jitsu talent as leader of Gracie Humaita.
What we’ve just discussed is a complete body of work, a legacy that encompasses all aspects of the martial arts: training, competing in multiple formats and rulesets, doing the open weight divisions, fighting, teaching. That’s a legacy worthy of great respect.
Royler Gracie turns 50 next year. He looks like he’s in his early 30s, so sometimes people forget or misjudge that. As someone who turns 40 this year, I also appreciate his willingness to put it on the line when he really has nothing to prove to anyone.
Here’s the crux of it: for the same reasons I am rooting for Royler, I ultimately do not think it matters what happens today. No one can take nine gold medals from the most prestigious tournaments away from him. A body of work is completed over a lifetime, and for years, Royler has created a resume that few can even approach.
No matter what happens today, Royler Gracie is one of the absolute greatest of all time. I will be rooting for him to add another win to his resume at Metamoris.
Since I was six years old, I’ve been doing yoga in one form or another. Over the past three years, though, my jiu-jitsu training has relegated my yoga practice to an occasional enterprise.
This isn’t abnormal for me. My yoga practice has always run in cycles. Thankfully, over the past few months I’ve been able to work more yoga into the routine, usually two or three times a week. That’s one class of hatha yoga and one or two classes of Bikram yoga — the kind you practice in an artificially hot room.
Both have real benefits. And I’m not the only one who thinks so! From Rickson Gracie to Sebastian Broche‘s Yoga For BJJ project, the old school and the new seem to concur that yoga helps with your training and your life. Nick Gregoriades of the Jiu-Jitsu Brotherhood, a Roger Gracie black belt, says that he finds yoga to be “by far the most effective” additional training method.
Let me drop 10 things yoga does for your jiu-jitsu, some of which are meant to be taken more seriously than others.
1. Flexibility. This is the most obvious one. Yoga is always going to improve your ability to bend, which has a wide array of benefits. And Bikram Yoga’s 100-plus degree room ensures you’ll be warm when you begin.
I don’t have any photos of me doing Bikram yoga. This is totally me as far as you know.
To be honest, though, I find jiu-jitsu improves my flexibility for yoga just as much as the converse. The positions we find ourselves in while training are different than yoga postures, so I think these two activities are self-supporting.
2. Injury Prevention. Injury is the enemy. Although Dalton from Road House once astutely observed that “pain don’t hurt,” an injury does keep you off the mat, which is way worse than feeling pain. As a smaller person, I’ve been squashed in numerous different positions. Without the strength and flexibility I’ve built through years of yoga, instead of discomfort several of those positions would have caused time off from jiu-jitsu. Staying on one mat helps you stay on the other.
3. Healthy Habits. Making healthy choices creates a positive feedback loop. If you eat poorly, you feel badly, and you don’t train. If you don’t train, you feel badly, and avoid training. One of the benefits of jiu-jitsu is also a benefit of yoga: it encourages that positive feedback loop. We all know we should drink more water, for example. But get up for a Bikram yoga class, and that will come into stark relief. You’ll drink that water, you’ll feel better, and you’ll have more fun training jiu-jitsu later. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I’m supposed to drink more than a gallon of water a day. I knocked out 72 ounces before 8 a.m. this morning thanks to a 6 a.m. Bikram class.
4. Balance. True, the best way to get good at something is to do a lot of it. I’m a huge believer in training jiu-jitsu to get good at jiu-jitsu. But so much of jiu-jitsu is about getting on top and staying there that balance shouldn’t be understated. So many yoga postures provide the balance and strength that help you avoid sweeps. The Bikram balancing series is challenging even for seasoned athletes, and I’m sure it has helped me dance out of De La Riva sweeps more than once.
5. The Ego Check. Again, this is something that jiu-jitsu is also wonderful for. We’ve all seen the young, dieseled up MMA fighter come into a jiu-jitsu gym and get submitted by the lady, the old guy, and the small guy. There is always something humbling in training.
But yoga comes with a different type of ego control. Even when I’m in my best shape, there are grandmothers who can do postures better than I can, who can hold poses longer and somehow maintain serenity while I’m dying. This keeps you mindful and humble.
It’s here that I want to quote Sebastian Broche: “The more Yoga and BJJ you practice, the more you will realize that the essence in the two is the same, and everything you learn in Yoga can be immediately applied on the mat.” It’s true!
6. Laundry. I’m the sweaty guy in the gym anyway. I bring two towels to Bikram yoga classes and when class is done, they’re both soaked. Working hard for 90 minutes in a 110 degree room makes you thirsty for a reason, and all the water has to have gone somewhere.
This leads to the World’s Toughest Laundry. I might not be able to tap you, but my laundry can beat up your laundry, or at least asphyxiate it. At least you can say to your romantic partner when they sniff your car with derision, “no, I didn’t leave a stinky gi in the car this time.”
7. Great Early Morning Training. I do 6 a.m. drilling twice a week. I am deeply grateful for the training partners I have who get up with me, because most gyms don’t have pre-work classes. Many yoga studios do, however, and it’s a tremendous way to start the day. That’s in no small part because of …
8. Mental Strength. There’s a lot to this particular intangible. Personally, I don’t find it hard to find motivation when I’m training jiu-jitsu. Someone is trying to choke me and bend my limbs the wrong way: that’s incentive enough. Yoga presents different mental challenges: the ability to stay focused, to stay calm, and to focus precisely on one’s breath. And you don’t have anyone else challenging you, so you have to find your own fortitude.
When I did a seminar with the great Rickson Gracie, he said learning breath techniques was the second-most important thing he ever did (after jiu-jitsu itself). So there you go.
If Rickson does it, you might think about doing it, too.
9. Weight Loss. I’m not a big believer in “weight loss” in and of itself. I think we should eat healthy, train hard, and however many pounds our healthy body is, that’s just fine. But in reality, especially here in America, many peoples’ fitness goals include weight loss. Yoga is a relatively low-impact way for people carrying extra pounds to get to their goals in a steady, healthy fashion.
Also, you may have noticed: jiu-jitsu competitions have weight classes. Do absolute, but if you need to get into a particular weight class, also do yoga.
Finally,
10. [Something Different]. I mean “something different” in two senses here: yoga is something different to diversify your training, but I also expect you will find benefits to yoga that are different than the items on this list. Like jiu-jitsu, there are numerous benefits to the practice that vary from person to person. What I’ve listed are the reasons I have: your list may (and should) include something different.
Yoga means union. If you’re looking to unite your jiu-jitsu training with another system, yoga might be for you.
I mean that literally. The most basic of butterfly guard sweeps, and I’ve never been able to pull it off against anyone save a brand-new white belt with no sense of what “base” means. This despite the fact that I, by virtue of my small size as well as personal preference, spend a lot of time working on my guard.
Now, if you know me — or if you read this blog — you know that I am obsessive about getting better at jiu-jitsu. I train a lot, drill, take privates, go to seminars, watch videos, read books, you name it. Yet this most basic jiu-jitsu technique eluded me at every turn. For more than three years.
Until last night. My instructor — a black belt under Royce Gracie — was watching me drill it, and immediately noticed two small but vital mistakes I was making. The sweep works now. It took him probably two minutes of instruction.
This man knows a thing or two about teaching jiu-jitsu.
I feel deeply fortunate to be living in a time when we have access to all these training resources that the people who came before me didn’t have. My teachers came up in a time when having a black (or even a brown) belt around was extremely rare. What videos they could get were expensive, infrequent and took a long time to ship. Failing to take advantage of these training supplements would be silly.
That’s what they are, though: supplements, not substitutes. The way I was doing (well, failing at) the butterfly sweep for the past few years looked exactly like it did in the books and videos. It was enormously frustrating that I couldn’t get it to work during live sparring, even after a ton of drilling.
This doesn’t have to be a butterfly sweep, of course. It could be any basic technique. If you’re just repeating what you see in videos, it is nigh impossible to correct errors. You might spend, oh, a few years doing something incorrectly. Without someone experienced to ask questions, you could waste valuable time . Worse, without meaningful live sparring, you might not even really know you’re making move-killing mistakes.
Or you could train with a legitimate instructor who can fix your problem in minutes.
This seems like an easy decision to me. Bear in mind also: I am a jiu-jitsu-obsessed, guard-playing, Internet dweller who watches technique videos the way some people breathe air. I of all people should be able to recognize the value of online training.
And I do recognize its value. I’ve seen the Gracie University videos: they’re excellent. For people who want to learn more about jiu-jitsu, I think they’re great.
The flashpoint of the current flap.
A few problems, though. First, there is a different between abstract knowledge (how a move works in principle) and applied knowledge (how to make a move work against a live opponent). Also, so much of a technique must be felt instead of simply seen. Where should my pressure go? What does correct posture in this position feel like? How high or low should I be? Rener and Ryron are terrific teachers. But they aren’t going to come over and diagnose your trouble with the butterfly sweep, or upa escape, or collar choke.
Besides, even the most basic sweep has so many details and moving parts that no video, no matter how long or comprehensive, can cover it in totality — while an instructor can see what you, the individual practitioner, need the most help with. The training you will get at a legitimate academy is qualitatively better than even the best online-only training site. This is a point that I don’t even really consider debatable.
Second, there is the fact that Gracie University is doing belt promotions. Personally, I try not to think about rank. Training should be an end in itself: you do it because you enjoy it, and you want to learn the art. But in an art like jiu-jitsu, where belts are earned through a ton of hard work and no small amount of pain, it’s easy to see why someone getting a blue belt through the mail after sending in video rubs many the wrong way.
Online training, I think most would agree, is a fine addition to your academy. Getting a promotion from someone who hasn’t ever rolled with you — whose hand you have never shaken — is a different matter.
Both of these men have beaten me up and shaken my hand.
The only argument for online-only training, from my perspective, is the absence of any other option. You can make a case that, for people in remote areas, training in this manner would be better than nothing. Honestly, I think this is far from a certain truth, but I can see the argument.
That’s not what’s happening, though. Students who received a blue belt through Gracie University are opening their own schools now — schools in areas with qualified black belt instructors nearby. This strikes me as unjustifiable, and frankly inexcusably disrespectful to people who have spent a decade or more earning a black belt.
I can think of lots of blue belts under Royce Gracie off the top of my head that are better than I am. Then, I think of their instructors, and how much more jiu-jitsu knowledge they have than the blue belts that beat me. Every single one of those blue belts I expect has more jiu-jitsu knowledge than the overwhelming majority (and perhaps all) of online-certified instructors. None of those blue belts, myself included, would dream of opening a school at this point.
Jiu-jitsu, it’s often said, is a journey. All long journeys worth taking contain errors, losses, setbacks. To successfully navigate journeys of this nature requires both commitment and humility.
Sometimes that means admitting that you’ve been doing a basic sweep wrong for three-plus years. Sometimes it means acknowledging that taking the easy way at first is only making the eventual trip longer — or undermining the purpose of the journey in the first place.
The derision directed toward “point fighters” seems to be growing lately. Hey, I’ve even engaged in it myself.
At first blush, this seems reasonable. The match is about the tap. The logical conclusion of an encounter between two grapplers is a submission: this gives us the finality our minds crave. To settle for less — for merely achieving a position of control — seems to diminish the martial artist in many eyes.
As I reflect on this, though, I think so-called point fighting has gotten a bad rap beyond what it deserves.
Since I’m still pretty early in the journey — hello, blue belt here — I’d like to hear what others think about this.
Making fun of point fighting is not productive. It is, however, funny.
Before I get into the details of my argument, here is the essence: positional dominance is at the core of jiu-jitsu. It’s critically important to get to a safe position (sidemount or mount, for example) and be able to hold that position. In many contexts — say, a 5 minute BJJ match or a 15 minute MMA fight — this faces criticism as “stalling” or “playing for points.”
Let me also explain a few things I don’t mean. I certainly don’t mean that you shouldn’t focus on submissions in training. We should all be developing a robust, diverse submission game and working hard on finishing those submissions during matches and rolling sessions.
Believe me, I’m also not arguing against Submission Only tournaments. Quite the opposite: I love them. Being forced to fight until the end without time limits gets back to the roots of jiu-jitsu. Having multiple tournaments with different rulesets is also good, in my view, since it forces people to adapt to multiple situations. I think as we build our jiu-jitsu, we’re wise to focus on control first.
My reasons are two: first, jiu-jitsu is about self defense, and controlling position is an essential self-defense skill; and second, many objections to so-called “point fighting” are actually objections to certain tactics of gamesmanship in sport tournaments and sport MMA.
Jiu-jitsu is rooted in self-defense, and controlling position is vital for self defense.
As the saying goes, we should put position before submission.My instructor consistently preaches the importance of submission setups: when we put enough time and effort into the setup, the finish should be easy.
Why do we put position before submission? Several reasons. The ideal outcome of a self-defense situation — for me, at least — is to end the confrontation without anyone getting hurt. This isn’t always realistic, but from a human and legal perspective, it’s a good vision to start from. What’s most likely to lead to this outcome? Avoid fights. If a guy tries to fight you, leave, or talk your way out of it.
If that fails, though, and someone does attack you, the best way to stop anyone from getting hurt is to take that person to the ground, get a dominant position, and control that person. It’s also a lot easier to explain to the police “he was attacking me, so I controlled him to protect myself” than it is to explain “he was attacking me, so I broke his arm.”
This is one reason I’ll even defend stalling to a certain degree — or I should say a certain type of stalling. A lot of fights are “heat of the moment” fights, where if you give the angry guy the chance to calm down — or exhaust him underneath you, and let him see his struggles are fruitless — that’s the end of it.
And let’s delineate what I’m calling “stalling” here from common jiu-jitsu tournament stalling. There’s a big difference between locking someone down in side control, where I’m largely safe in a fight, than in 50/50, where I’m not. Similarly, there’s a big difference between going for an actual submission and pretending to toehold someone while making a constipated face. I think these are the practices most reasonable people — legitimately — take issue with.
Are there self-defense situations where taking someone down and controlling them isn’t sufficient? Certainly. Sometimes, a person defending themselves will need to just get up and get away (in the event of multiple attackers, for example); and in some rare cases, only a submission will keep someone safe. This is why we train for as many potential situations as we can.
But I would argue that even in these two situations, controlling position is vital. Need to get away? You’d better be able to either sweep from the bottom or stand up and create distance. Need to get a submission? Again, in the majority of cases, you’ve got to be controlling position first — and you’re taking a big risk if you go for a submission when you aren’t.
This, incidentally, is one thing I worry about with sport tournaments. People often talk about the bad self-defense habits tournaments create: artificially insulating you from punches and kicks, incentivizing being on bottom, etc. One thing I haven’t heard folks talk about a lot is encouraging premature submission attempts due to the match time limits.
It’s certainly important to develop a dangerous submission game. It’s more important, in my view, to develop a dominant positional game. One follows from the other. If you can control someone and give them no chance to escape, you’ll submit them eventually.
JoJo isn’t trying to submit me here. But don’t you think he’s going to eventually?
Speaking of sport tournaments:
Most of the objections to “point fighting” are rooted in a spectator mentality.
Submissions are exciting. That much is undeniable. It’s rare that you come away from a tournament or a fight card saying “wow, my favorite part of that match was his mount maintenance.”
From a self-defense perspective, though, it’s not the point to be exciting. The point is to stay safe. The point is to survive the situation and, using technique, ensure that you face minimal danger throughout. Grandmaster Helio Gracie famously wanted jiu-jitsu practitioners to be able to defend themselves with no rules, no time limits and no points, and he was willing to defend that principle in his own fights. No one can deny the effectiveness of the art he created.
When we talk about entertainment, though, we’re talking about something different. How many of today’s UFC fans would have watched Helio Gracie fight Waldemar Santana for nearly four hours? (And how many shouts of “Stand them up, ref!” would we have had to endure if they did?) This is fan mentality, and an unproductive one.
In a real-life situation, there is no referee to stand you up. If your attacker can’t escape your mount, that’s it: he’s stuck. That’s why, imperfect as they are, we have points: as a proxy to encourage fighters to achieve dominant positions.
“Point fighter … non-point fighter. I’m the guy in the mount.”
Again, I’m not defending the get-an-advantage-and-stall style of sport jiujitsu that has rendered many matches unwatchable. It’s fine to want to create a sport that is exciting for the viewer. Let’s not lose sight of the fact that a sport competition for entertainment is a totally different thing, with a totally different purpose, than self-defense jiu-jitsu.
The fact is that excitement is often in tension with safety. A fighter that is always going rapid-fire for the finish is a thrilling thing to watch. That strategy isn’t usually optimal for that fighter’s safety, however. And jiu-jitsu isn’t just for young competitive athletes who can wow the crowd with their skills: it’s also for older people like me, who of necessity must take greater care.
My ideal jiu-jitsu is jiu-jitsu that maximizes my safety in all situations. I feel like focusing first on position, and taking the time to secure positional control before I even think about the tap, stands the best chance to do this in most cases.
I had so much fun doing it, it’s time to run that back. My first tournament of the year is going to be the US Grappling NC State Championships on April 5, and shortly thereafter the New York Open on April 12. My tournament schedule isn’t going to be as ambitious as I initially believed — life got in the way — but there will still be plenty of competitions. I plan to do all the local US Grappling tournaments, the Atlanta Open, the No-Gi Pans and the Montreal Open. I’m also going to the Mundials again, and I might try to sneak in one more big tournament as well.
What does this mean for you, the charitable-minded blog reader? It means you can help in one of two ways!
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Last year, we did some very cool donor rewards. I plan to do something like that again, something probably BJJ gear-related. I’ll keep that a surprise this year. Like Indiana Jones said, it isn’t about the fortune and glory.
There you have it. Wish me luck, and please give generously.
I thought I’d wait until tomorrow morning to post about the Godzilla v. Gamera rash guard I designed for Toro BJJ. But dang, it went live at 11 p.m. and the larges, extra larges and 2XLs are sold out already!
This is awesome, from a commercial success perspective, but if you want one, I hope you’re a smaller dude like me. Head on over to BJJHQ and get you some.
