People that compete successfully against guys that are at an overall higher level than them try to find a niche that your opponent is not developed in. That’s why in the past so many Blue belts and Purple belts were catching good Black belts in heel hooks in no gi tournaments, for example. There will always be “blind spots” or niches for people with less overall skill to exploit in their more experienced and skilled opponents games. That’s why I think competition can be, for a lot of people, more about gameplanning than actual grappling skill. I also think that’s why competition isn’t always the best indicator of someones grappling skill.
There is a huge difference between completely dominating someone in a grappling match and catching someone in an unorthodox submission/sweep and winning.
I think you have to train the things you know intelligently and relentlessly and always try to dig for a deeper understanding of your game, but I think you also have to have unorthodox “niche” skills to have some surprises for people that you will not be able to handle with an orthdox game.
I think another approach is to really develop the hell out of a small amount of information. Like becoming exceptional at Triangles, or a double leg takedown, for example. Spend all of your time developing a move to a really really high level and you will be able to win a lot of matches if you can draw good guys into your game (or if you develop really unorthodox ways of entering your game from a number of places).
sometimes I will intentionally make a mistake, then take it from there. I guess its like baiting the opponent. you just have to disguise it really well. It also makes rolling kinda fun too. I dont think about winning or losing when rolling with someone, I just try to continually flow, and keep a head of them. I dont even tap people that often, its more fun to flow.
Its a cool feeling to give the opponent an opportunity, have them go for it, only to take it away, and end up on top. It make me laugh, usually them too. Sneaky, sneaky!
Also, by intentionally giving your the lower hand, it forces you to learn, which is the whole point of rolling.
I’ve got a revelation for you…
90% of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is Bullsh!t.
The aphorism sometimes referred to as Sturgeon’s Revelation states, in essence ”Ninety percent of any field is crap”. (Actually he said ”crud”, but that sounds dumb).
I think the longer you do anything, the more you realize that this rule applies. BJJ is no exception.
BJJ is not a meritocracy; by no means are the best rewarded and the worst punished. Many of the worst people are celebrated while many of the best people are virtually ignored. And I’m not necessarily talking about skill here, though there are world champions & world champion level practitioners and amazing professors who have almost no money and fake black belts & colored belts making money running schools and selling products. In other words, it’s just like everything else in life. The more you learn about BJJ, the more you realize it is mostly smoke & mirrors. But that is, believe it or not, a GOOD thing.
The real indicator of progress in BJJ in terms of understanding what it is, is realizing BJJ is mostly bullsh!t. When you can recognize the faint outline of the TRUE nature of BJJ, you are starting to begin to really know it.
As with any endeavor you stick with long enough, you eventually find that the people you thought were the “real deal” are often frauds on some level. The ideas you thought were bullet-proof brilliance are actually highly flawed concepts, and the hierarchical structure you believed was unassailable authority, is just as artificial and affected by human foibles as anything else in any other realm of life.
When you realize 90% is B.S., then you can be free to concentrate on what is actually real about the history, techniques, people, organizations, etc.
Lots of ways to conceptualize this, and many will be complicated.
A simple way to look at it was first introduced to me here, I believe, when someone quoted Dave Camarillo quoting Jon Danaher (who may have come up with this himself, or heard it from someone else, I don’t know).
This simple way: create dilemmas. In other words, your jiu jitsu should attempt to put your opponent in situations where his options are limited, and all of them are “wrong,” even the “right” ones. I use quotation marks because, obviously, right and wrong are not black and white. That said, however, even when your opponent doesn’t make a mistake it can be the “wrong” answer if you are already waiting to capitalize on his “right” answer, etc.
Concrete and very simple example: when Marcelo Garcia attempts a butterfly sweep and his opponent posts a leg in order not to go over, but then winds up stuck in a very gnarly X-guard, did the opponent make a mistake? If so, what should he have done? Been swept directly by the butterfly? Of course, the opponents response was correct, in a sense, and Marcelo already knew that it was one of very few possible outcomes, and thus was ready with an immediate counter. Etc.
The more your jiu jitsu is like the above example, and the more answers you have to his second, third, fourth, etc. recoveries, the more “next level” your jiu jitsu will be. Of course, part of this is a natural sensitivity and the ability to think/see in 3D (in other words, you and I will never be Rickson:), but much of it can be learned and practiced.
BJJ, I think, is one of the most complicated martial arts out there. Like Matt Thornton always says, “it is an alive martial art.” It requires proficiency in not only techniques, but timing, balance, strategy, conditioning, and must be practiced with resistence as well. That is why it takes so long to learn. There is an almost limitless amount of possible variations from attacks moves. For every attack move there is some kind of counter if not many counters. No one could consistently be ready at the seconds notice to respond correctly to every single move or balance shift at all times because some attacks require anticipation to counter. Hence mistakes occur. I have heard many black belts talk about getting hurt by white belt spaz cases because they were anticipating the white belt to respond by moving a certain way, and the white belt does the exact opposite and does it explosively.
So when two very high level guys with apparantly equal coordination, speed, strength and knowledge spar, they are using systems of attack on each other and systems to defend or counter; they are not just using moves. Positions become reference points to engage your system of attack or counters. A devoloped attack system will almost always defeat random counter moves. Therefore, a system is needed to defeat another system (Mike Jen had a really good discussion of this this a couple of years ago on his forum). The system limits his opponents reactions and has a counter reaction for all the possible movements. The one with the more detailed or developed system in that area is the one that wins.
You ask what is the next level in BJJ, I think Roger Gracie is a good example of someone who has reached that next level (at least in certain areas or systems that he employs in competion). His system for guard passing seems to be more developed than the guard systems of his oponents. His side contol system is better than the escape system applied by most of his opponents. His side control system usually leads him to the mount. His mount attack system is vastly superior to the mount escape systems of his opponents, and it usually leads him to a finish from the mount or the back. Incidently, his closed guard attack system aslo appears to be superior than the defense and counter systems of his opponents.
When someon like Roger has spent the time to develop a thorough attack system from a certain position, he can just about force his will on people who do not have an equally developed system of defense from that position. Your attack system should limit your opponents counters and have a contingency for every countermovement. Your opponent might be using correct counter moves, but if your system is more developed, it anticipates those moves and continues down the path to the submission.
When I first met my instructor, Helio Soneca, he said his and Roger’s jiujitsu is similar in that he only uses five positions. Once I witnessed and realized that he was a walking BJJ encyclopedia due to his vast knowledge of the art, I thought his comment about only having five positions was a humble load of crap. However, when I started understanding this concept of systems, I think I better understood what he meant. When you spar with him, if he is rolling competetively, he is going to try to drive the match into one of his five areas where he has a developed system. If you just react to his system of attack from there with a countermove, you lose. You will do better by reacting with a system, but you will still lose if his attack system is more developed than your counter system. When two opponents have equal systems, then it might depend on who engages his system first (hence the saying, “Don’t let him start his game first”).
I am talking about the “signal to noise” ratio in all areas of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.
There is lot of stuff in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, which upon closer examination is just silly. But we all love BJJ, see that the techniques “work” and tend to take much of it at face value. Then after training for a while, hopefully, we start to question some of the more outlandish assertions.
Take for example the purported “history” of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu…
The truth is, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu IS essentially pre-war Kodokan Judo Newaza. It is in no way an off-shoot of Fusen Ryu or any other style of jiu jitsu. That is nonsense. Maeda never even studied Jiu jitsu. He studied only Judo at the Kodokan and before that Sumo, briefly.
You may say, maybe the history is somewhat questionable, but the techniques are revolutionary!
They are great but far from new. There is nothing the original Gracie Brothers were doing that people like Kimura not only knew, but knew FAR better. Famously, the Gracies didn’t even know “Ude Garami” (“The Kimura” Shoulder lock). Doubt you could find the same true of a single black belt at the Kodokan during that era.
Well, you say, maybe the techniques of BJJ aren’t all that new but it is the applying them to a fight context which is special about BJJ.
Nope. The Gracies were far from the first Judo/Jujitsu guys to popularize challenge matches against all comers (boxers, wrestlers, street fighters). Yuko Tani, Tokugora Itoh and more than a few others did the exact same thing, earlier.
Yeah, you might persist, but didn’t Helio change the leverage points, making BJJ work for smaller people?
This is too silly to take seriously, but it’s worth noting that Maeda was actually SMALLER than Helio Gracie and all the other Gracie brothers.
Well at least the techniques are solid!
Solid for WHAT purpose? Not for street fighting. Pulling Guard…? Deep Half-Guard…? This stuff is straying quite far from combative relevance. Most of the “advances” taking place in BJJ are firmly in the realm of gamesmanship; learning to beat another person playing the exact same limited rules game as you. Like Chi Sao or push-hands, you are primarily learning to beat others at “the game”, rather than learning to better fight other people using the art.
Well, at least BJJ isn’t like those other McDojo organizations out there.
Fact is, the IFBJJ/CBJJ have given legitimacy to fraudulent black belts. Further, you have to pay an exorbitant fee for your rank. Skill is not the entree to certification, money is. An alternative organization here in the U.S., USABJJ, has some highly questionable people leading the group and have already “certified” some frauds.
Organizations are almost always about two things and two things only: money and control.
So, those are just a few examples.
There are others questions like: Does going to the ground as the PRIMARY strategy in a real fight really even make much sense? (No, it doesn’t.)
But I love BJJ, deeply. I love it so much I want to know what it really is.
Just as in marriage, that doesn’t happen during the honeymoon phase. It is not until YEARS down the line that you start to begin to know, who you are really sharing the bed with.
I think what shen is getting at is that a lot of people, at first, over-complicate their pursuit of a subject matter. Probably because the amount of information on it is overwhelming. If you don’t know the difference between right and wrong, you tend to digest all of it. This becomes exceedingly frustrating when the subject matter you are studying is actively evolving and changing as you are studying it. Which is why it’s generally best to stick to the proven foundations of whatever field you are pursuing.
I can’t really speak to the experience levels in BJJ like shen can, but I think it applies to many other fields.
For example:
I work in a very niche field of offensive computer security which revolves around something called ‘exploit development’. Exploit development is essentially just the art and science of taking a flaw in a piece of software and turning that flaw’s often unpredictable behavior into a reliable feature which can be used offensively by an attacker.
Now, unlike many other computer science fields, exploit development is shrouded in mystery for a lot of people. It’s not a very documented or well understood field (for all intents and purposes) and often the things we do seem magic to people that don’t understand the intricacies of what is going on below the covers.
As with anything seemingly magic on a high level, people are often baffled at the results we get. A simple tool gets them remote access to some web server, or elevates their local privileges through some esoteric flaw in some OS kernel. People start projecting this magic thinking on the people who wrote the tool, thinking they must have obtained some secret strategy or knowledge to perform at that level.
When I first started working in the field, I was much the same. Very easily impressed by things I sort of grasped, but had never seen done at a high level up close.
13 years later I’m both jaded and unimpressed. And I’ve come to a conclusion that tends to frustrate people that ask me for advice in the field. Because at the end of the day I learned that what I do is in reality nothing more than debugging software. Tedious, focused, unrelenting, debugging. Sometimes for months at a time.
So when people ask me for advice on ‘how to get to the next level’, I just tell them ‘learn how to properly use a debugger for whatever platform and architecture you’re working on’. And that’s it. No secret sauce, no secret formula, just hard work and focusing on the problem in front of you. The more you do it, the more competent you get. But there is still someone better than you out there, guaranteed.
So when shen says, 90% of every field turns out to be bullshit. I tend to agree with him. 90% of everything _is_ bullshit, you just don’t know it yet.
People like to mystify and complicate things, especially when it does not compute for them. That cross-choke must be some sort of magic inch-shift variation that we do not understand, because I can’t make it work. Nonsense. You can make it work in the same way, it’s just gonna take you 10 years as well.
That’s great! There are lots of people who have used BJJ to defend themselves, my students included.
But you know what? There are more people who have used a golf club to defend themselves. Does that mean golf clubs are purpose built weapons? Is someone who points out a golf club is actually designed primarily to play golf a “hater” and angry troll?
No, he’s just being honest. Golf clubs are for golf and YES golf clubs have hurt and even killed plenty of people.
BJJ is not a self-dense system as much as it is a system for duel-fighting It is designed for two people fighting without weapons. It is for challenge matches.
Can people in many instances use it for self-defense? Hell yeah, of course. Is it really designed for that? Not really.
My point is that there is a lot of nonsense in every area, including BJJ and as you train longer, hopefully you stop entertaining the nonsense (“drinking the Kool-aide”) along with the good stuff.
BJJ is essentially Pre-War Kodokan Judo Newaza. If you practice BJJ, that is what you are practicing. Some people know this and find it obvious, other people have little clue because they still cling to their illusions and find it offensive if you tell them them the truth.
Great post, Shen. Like most things, the more you know the more you realize it’s not as great as you thought it was.
To answer the question, Lloyd Irvin explained it the best. Transitions. When you keep your opponent off balance and “moving”(even if it’s just to adjust) you have a chance to capitalize on that space to improve, reverse or finish the match. High level guys have to move, which means there’s opening. The difference is high level guys are ahead of you during that time so it seems like they’re impossible to beat. When you improve on that – your techniques “work better”. IMHO
I think probably MOST people on this forum as everywhere have trouble differentiating between, “self-defense”, “Street fighting”, “Martial Arts”, “Combat Sports” and tend to use them interchangeably.
Often on this forum, if one is talking about a self defense situation, people will respond by talking more about street fighting and confuse it with combat sports and, well… it’s usually a mess.
A challenge match outside a bar between people from the same peer group (e.g college kids) is hardly the same thing as getting attacked by a stranger on your way home. But it all comes under the rubric of “street fighting” on here.
Ignoring your rudeness, let me put in terms you can understand…
Are you a Marine? I’m just going to assume you are.
The longer you are in the Marines, you have the experience of realizing how much of the organization and things you have to do day-to-day are essentially bullsh!t.
Many rules and regulation are very important, but some things you have to do just to make others look good, satisfy arbitrary rule or fill time.
You still loves the Marines, but have a COMPLETELY different “take” on what the Marines are truly all about than when you first shipped in for boot camp.
If you stay in the Marines for 30 years, you will certainly have an even deeper appreciation of how the Marines operate and an even more acute B.S. detector for things in the Marines organization that are nonsense. You will know what is important and what is not. You will know what is true and what is not.
BJJ is the same way.
actually i’d go even further since Maeda had left the Kodokan a decade before world war 1 began – BJJ is essentially the judo newaza knowledge of one man (Maeda) as taught to him between 1894 and 1904, newaza knowledge that was subsequently refined and altered and influenced by a). by the amateur, catch and professional wrestling maeda himself experienced during his world wide tour and b). by the manifold (and varying degrees of) influences of BJJ practioners over the last 80 to 90 years.
A lot of people throw the terms Kosen and Fusen Ryu around as influences on Maeda and thus BJJ, but the Kosen ruleset didn’t even exist when Maeda left Japan and Fusen Ryu had only just been absorbed into the Kodokan, so the extent of its influence on Maeda in the short time before he left is surely hard to determine.
Exactly.
Because the Gracies learned only from one source (Maeda) they had significantly less “source material” to draw on, compared to other Judo-based styles of Jiu jitsu created during the same time. For example Okazaki’s Danzan Ryu Jiu jitsu drew heavily on the same pre-war Kodenkan Judo, but ALSO drew on several Koryu (“classical”) Jiu jitsu styles.
As a result, GJJ is actually far closer to early Judo than the other Judo influenced Jiu Jitsu styles created in the early 20th c.
About GJJ Self-Defense/Combatives…
For those who don’t know, the Gracie Self-Defense Curriculum (aka “Combatives”) is based on the early, informal (pre Kenji Tomiki) Kodenkan Goshin Jutsu. Kano’s student, Aikido master Tomiki, had a strong influence of the formation of the Goshin Jutsu Kata which was created in 1956 to demonstrate the “self-defense” techniques of Judo.
But decades earlier there also existed and extensive array of unofficial “Judo self-defense tricks” that were never codified into a formal syllabus by the Kodokan. It is from these techniques that the “Self-Defense Curriculum” of GJJ comes.
However as others around the world studied Judo then started to formulate their own styles of Judo-influenced Jiu Jitsu, many of these “unofficial” Judo self-defense techniques became formalized into these new (Judo influences) Jiu Jitsu styles(e.g. Kodenkan Danzan Ryu Jiu jitsu).
It is through these styles that we can see glimpses of the original Judo Self-Defense tricks and that is the reason why you see the exact same identical self-defense techniques in GJJ and in some other pre-war modern jiu jitsu styles.
In short, if you practice BJJ you are the torch bearer for both pre-war kodenkan newaza and the Judo “Goshin Jutsu” of the period, more than any art including even modern Kodokan Judo.
There has been quite a few good posts on this thread, some offering advice on developing a good jiu-jitsu game and others offering advice on myths of jiu-jitsu. Innate enjoyed them both. Shen I have said it before and I’ll say it again. You are a wise man. I’m almost tempted to add to some of your thoughts but I really don’t even want to get started.
Lord Kancho- As many have said jiu-jitsu at the higher levels is about getting and staying ahead of your opponents more than it is about looking for mistakes. The more you work your game the easier staying ahead of your opponents will become. Not only will your techniques become automatic, which frees your mind to think about the game more instead of if your arm is in the right place, but your system of attacks will develope more also. You will recognize when an opponent applies a counter that you had no answer for and it moved him ahead in the game putting you on the defense to his attacks. When you work your game try to spot these moments that your opponent was able to get ahead and then develope an attack to counter the move your opponent did. Your game will get deper and deeper and soon you will have an answer for almost every way that your opponent can react.
Shen’s point is a funny one. You will not understand him until you explore BJJ to the core, then you defeat highly skilled people by not using any of it. I do not mean that you make new transitions, or you purposely make mistakes. I mean you just do things you could have easily thought of without going to class at all! For instance, I just won in the worlds a couple days ago and the pans a month ago by just pushing off and flopping on people. I am not a heavyweight. People were like did you triangle anyone? Armbar? RNC? I said no. I just pushed off, and then I grabbed them. Thats about it. The point is that its scary to think that people who have dedicated their whole lives to a sport can be defeated by someone potentially that comes in and just does something simple that takes little training.
To The OP’s question:
When all things are equal, the guy with better TIMING wins.
In the beginning, you have partners who “make mistakes” or do techniques “incorrectly”…meaning they are not aware of the openings they provide.
Later, partners provide fewer openings (or are aware of them and manage them). When you reach this point, you create openings by applying PRESSURE.
Now, there are TWO meanings to “pressure” when it comes to grappling:
1) Force applied to your partner’s body (typically very specific: some part of your body applies pressure to some part of your partner’s body, often through the center of the body part and at a specific angle). Let’s call this “physical pressure”.
2) Psychological pressure that motivates your partner to act. (This pressure is common in kickboxing and standup fighting–even though there is no PHYSICAL pressure, some fighters put a lot of PSYCHOLOGICAL pressure on their opponents. They “force” them to move and react).
Let’s assume that you and your partner are both beyond the point of training where you make blatant technical errors: your techniques are precise and executed properly. You place your body in the correct position for offense or defense as the situation requires. You are both aware of your body and perform appropriately.
When this is the case, it’s necessary to apply pressure to your opponent. It can be physical pressure, psychological pressure, or both (physical pressure often creates psychological pressure).
With physical pressure applied, you move his body out of position. This creates a specific opening, and you must now time your attack properly.
With psychological pressure applied, HE will move his body out of position. This too creates a specific opening, and you must follow with a properly timed attack.
So in short:
1. Apply pressure (physical or psychological)
2. His response to pressure means he deviates from proper structure
3. Attack with optimal TIMINGTo develop this:
You must study the pressures you apply and the resulting responses from your partners. Search for a pressure that makes 80% or more of your partners all respond the same way. When you find that pressure, select an ideal attack based off of the response that people give you. Then drill your timing until you can apply the pressure and nail the opening as it occurs.
By the way, when your partner is lower ranked or makes technical errors, it’s almost the same, but the pressure (step one) is unnecessary.2. He deviates from proper structure (because he is making an error).
3. Attack with optimal TIMING
http://www.mixedmartialarts.com/mma.cfm?go=forum_framed.posts&forum=11&thread=1725079&page=1&pc=55
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