Self defense BJJ VS Sport BJJ

[nas89]

Doesnt anybody else tht BJJ is falling into the same mistake tht Judo fell in When Kano messed judo up by turning it into a spectable sport bjj is gettin the same type thing with all these people trying to get in the olympics and the way things are going i can see bjj waterd down 20 years tell me what u lot feel about it.

 

[JadecloudAlchemist]

I don't think they are water down.

Seoi nage (shoulder throw) is still as effective in competition as it is in street scenerio. I also do not think Kano messed up Judo.

 

[bigfootsquatch]

Doesnt anybody else tht BJJ is falling into the same mistake tht Judo fell in When Kano messed judo up by turning it into a spectable sport bjj is gettin the same type thing with all these people trying to get in the olympics and the way things are going i can see bjj waterd down 20 years tell me what u lot feel about it.

Read Kodokan Judo before you talk about Kano messing up Judo, which he created. It's a good read and well worth the price

 

[D Dempsey]

Doesnt anybody else tht BJJ is falling into the same mistake tht Judo fell in When Kano messed judo up by turning it into a spectable sport bjj is gettin the same type thing with all these people trying to get in the olympics and the way things are going i can see bjj waterd down 20 years tell me what u lot feel about it.

BJJ will never get into the olympics. First it is way to similar to judo and secondly it costs way to much for lessons compared to judo and well most olympic sports. I recall reading an article about on BJJ.org.

As for the sportification, the rules haven't really changed much since they were implemented in the 70's so I don't see it getting out of control. Besides that there are way more recreational players out there than competitors and once again it boils down to cost. For example at the school I'm at, out of 40 or so students maybe 5 compete in BJJ and of those 5, 2 compete in MMA. Thus it wouldn't really make sense from a business standpoint to focus on competition as you would end up alienating almost all of you students.

 

[slideyfoot]

Doesnt anybody else tht BJJ is falling into the same mistake tht Judo fell in When Kano messed judo up by turning it into a spectable sport bjj is gettin the same type thing with all these people trying to get in the olympics and the way things are going i can see bjj waterd down 20 years tell me what u lot feel about it.

Personally I don't care about self defence, but to go off on a bit of a tangent, I've found the "sport vs self defence" thing has always come across as a dubious distinction. Taking part in competition (i.e., as in 'sport' BJJ) does not automatically mean a style is no good for self-defence. It merely means that its possible to use the techniques of that style in a regulated environment, which conversely can result in people who are capable of defending themselves using those same techniques, presuming its trained with 'aliveness'.

That is in marked contrast to somebody who only ever trained 'self defence' full of eye gouges/groin strikes/biting in a predetermined drill with no resistance, for example. More 'deadly', but ultimately useless due to the lack of realistic feedback from your training partner. As it is difficult to train eye gouges/groin strikes/biting etc in a full-contact manner, Jigoro Kano removed the so-called 'deadly' techniques from judo in order to enable live rolling. That had the end result of considerably increasing efficacy: because those early judoka could train 'non-deadly' (in the sense that you don't have to fully crank an armbar, lock on a choke etc, as your opponent has the option of tapping before serious damage) techniques full-contact, they became highly proficient, and in fact more 'deadly' than their non-sparring contemporaries in 'self-defence' orientated styles.

Mastering Jujitsu has a great historical summary at the start, which goes through the theory I've basically regurgitated above.

To work through an example, lets say you wanted to train the typical self defence scenario: someone tries to punch you in the face. First of all you're not going to be able to recreate the kind of situation you'd face in a 'real' fight - you probably know your training partner, they don't actually want to cause an injury, you're most likely wearing loose training gear, you're in a comfortable training venue etc.

Next, if you want to get a genuine feel for how to defend yourself in that scenario, you need a partner to be able to genuinely try and punch you in the face: stopping short, as in a drill, isn't going to put your technique into practice (to use a cliche, you can't learn how to swim without getting in the water). Also, they aren't going to be able to hit you properly if they're bare-knuckle. As the early UFCs proved time and again, doing that will lead to a broken hand. So unless your partner has superhuman bone strength, or you have lots of people willing to break their hands on your skull, you're going to need gloves. For similar reasons, you'll probably want to wear a gum shield.

Once they've punched and either hit you or you've prevented them doing so, you're going to either have to stop and restart, or if not, get someone to watch you so they can call a stop. No doubt you can see where I'm going with this: eventually, you're going to end up with something like a sport fight. That's because the sport setting, with 'alive' sparring, is the best training methodology for learning and testing a technique.

Also, to give you a specific BJJ example, read Rob T's article over on the EFN.