A different take on Sport vs. Self-Defense

skribs

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Often times, the "Sport vs. Self-Defense" debate is something along the lines of "Krav Maga vs. MMA". But that's not what I want to look at today. What I want to look at is what I think is a realistic expectation of what you need to know to be high level in a sport, vs. what you need to know to successfully defend yourself in the most common self-defense situations (especially the most common you can realistically use your skills in self-defense).

I have experience with sport arts in the past, including wrestling as a teenager, and some Taekwondo competitions as an adult. However, I instead want to focus on my much more recent experience in BJJ. I feel I am already better at BJJ than I was at wrestling (based on my success rate against my peers), and BJJ rolling does tend to be more realistic than the point sparring I did in Taekwondo. Of course, I am not a high level in BJJ yet, but I can extrapolate based on conversations and relating back to what I do have more experience with.

What it takes to be successful in BJJ:
Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
Essentially, what you need to know to be successful in any sport is a branching tree of what you can do, what your opponent can do, how to accomplish your goals despite your opponent's best efforts to stop you, and what your opponent can do in response to your efforts to stop them; and you need to know all of these things in every phase of the game. From there, the more "stuff" you know, the further ahead you can think in the chess game, and the better you can execute (due to muscle memory and the muscles themselves), the higher level you will be.

But what does it take in self-defense? Most cases of self-defense are going to be against someone who has had a bad day or too much alcohol, and hasn't been on the mat getting out their aggression. Folks who train are much less likely to try and pick a random fight. Based on clips I see all over the place on Youtube, most people using BJJ in self-defense are doing so against people wholly unprepared for a technical grappler. This is also based on my experience being the victim of the blue and purple belts in my gym, and being the aggressor against some of the newer white belts. When I'm rolling with the purple belt, there isn't really a give-and-take. He just controls the fight. He does more adapting by letting me play than he does by winning.

Your two options if you don't know grappling are freeze and spaz, something that an experienced BJJ fighter should be able to deal with no problem. So let's take the above list, and strike out what is no longer relevant when you are no longer competing against someone who is roughly equal trained as you.

Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
In a situation where you are much more trained than your opponent (which is very likely in self-defense), then you don't need to think 5 trees ahead, or have a 5-dimensional spider-web of possible counters and combinations. It's much more linear. Or at the very least, it's 2-3 dimensional instead of 5D chess. I took the original 19 items from being high-level in sport, and dropped them down to being 6.5 items. I also took most of the hardest items out, the things that separate black belts from 2-stripe white belts.

I realize that not all self-defense situations will be like this. Sometimes, the person is trained, or there are other factors at play. But I acknowledge that at the start, and understand that any martial art is going to have those gaps (even gun fighting has gaps that cross-training will fill).

I think too often we get into this discussion of what works and what doesn't, and how if you're not realistic if you do or don't do sport. BJJ is realistic because you can go 100%. But BJJ is not realistic because you're on a mat in a controlled 1v1. Someone who trains BJJ can look at the 19-part list and say that if you can't do all of that, you won't be able to use your grappling in a fight. But that's not what I've seen when people are putting an aggro subway rider or basketball PUG to sleep with a RNC. But, you can look at the 6-1/2 part list and see what will make you successful in those situations.

Taking it back to the argument of arts like Hapkido compared with BJJ, and I see that the 6-1/2 part list is very similar to the strategies we used in our Hapkido practice. Defend your opponent's initial attack, gain control and take them down, then break something. A BJJ fighter will do something relatively similar against a similarly untrained opponent. They might take a slightly different approach, but the high-level concept is the same. Which kind of makes it pointless to argue and insult each other, in my opinion.
 

Buka

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Often times, the "Sport vs. Self-Defense" debate is something along the lines of "Krav Maga vs. MMA". But that's not what I want to look at today. What I want to look at is what I think is a realistic expectation of what you need to know to be high level in a sport, vs. what you need to know to successfully defend yourself in the most common self-defense situations (especially the most common you can realistically use your skills in self-defense).

I have experience with sport arts in the past, including wrestling as a teenager, and some Taekwondo competitions as an adult. However, I instead want to focus on my much more recent experience in BJJ. I feel I am already better at BJJ than I was at wrestling (based on my success rate against my peers), and BJJ rolling does tend to be more realistic than the point sparring I did in Taekwondo. Of course, I am not a high level in BJJ yet, but I can extrapolate based on conversations and relating back to what I do have more experience with.

What it takes to be successful in BJJ:
Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
Essentially, what you need to know to be successful in any sport is a branching tree of what you can do, what your opponent can do, how to accomplish your goals despite your opponent's best efforts to stop you, and what your opponent can do in response to your efforts to stop them; and you need to know all of these things in every phase of the game. From there, the more "stuff" you know, the further ahead you can think in the chess game, and the better you can execute (due to muscle memory and the muscles themselves), the higher level you will be.

But what does it take in self-defense? Most cases of self-defense are going to be against someone who has had a bad day or too much alcohol, and hasn't been on the mat getting out their aggression. Folks who train are much less likely to try and pick a random fight. Based on clips I see all over the place on Youtube, most people using BJJ in self-defense are doing so against people wholly unprepared for a technical grappler. This is also based on my experience being the victim of the blue and purple belts in my gym, and being the aggressor against some of the newer white belts. When I'm rolling with the purple belt, there isn't really a give-and-take. He just controls the fight. He does more adapting by letting me play than he does by winning.

Your two options if you don't know grappling are freeze and spaz, something that an experienced BJJ fighter should be able to deal with no problem. So let's take the above list, and strike out what is no longer relevant when you are no longer competing against someone who is roughly equal trained as you.

Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
In a situation where you are much more trained than your opponent (which is very likely in self-defense), then you don't need to think 5 trees ahead, or have a 5-dimensional spider-web of possible counters and combinations. It's much more linear. Or at the very least, it's 2-3 dimensional instead of 5D chess. I took the original 19 items from being high-level in sport, and dropped them down to being 6.5 items. I also took most of the hardest items out, the things that separate black belts from 2-stripe white belts.

I realize that not all self-defense situations will be like this. Sometimes, the person is trained, or there are other factors at play. But I acknowledge that at the start, and understand that any martial art is going to have those gaps (even gun fighting has gaps that cross-training will fill).

I think too often we get into this discussion of what works and what doesn't, and how if you're not realistic if you do or don't do sport. BJJ is realistic because you can go 100%. But BJJ is not realistic because you're on a mat in a controlled 1v1. Someone who trains BJJ can look at the 19-part list and say that if you can't do all of that, you won't be able to use your grappling in a fight. But that's not what I've seen when people are putting an aggro subway rider or basketball PUG to sleep with a RNC. But, you can look at the 6-1/2 part list and see what will make you successful in those situations.

Taking it back to the argument of arts like Hapkido compared with BJJ, and I see that the 6-1/2 part list is very similar to the strategies we used in our Hapkido practice. Defend your opponent's initial attack, gain control and take them down, then break something. A BJJ fighter will do something relatively similar against a similarly untrained opponent. They might take a slightly different approach, but the high-level concept is the same. Which kind of makes it pointless to argue and insult each other, in my opinion.
I think you're overthinking this, buddy. You've been in BJJ for a couple months, give it a few years and reread your thoughts.

I'd say the same to anyone studying TKD, wrestling, Kenpo or whatever for two months. And that's regardless of their background in other arts.

But I'm really psyched you're digging on the BJJ. :)
Rock on, Skribs.
 

Kung Fu Wang

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There is no difference between self-defense and sport when your fist meet on your opponent's face.

fist_meets_face.jpg
 

Steve

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I like the way you’re thinking about BJJ. There’s a guy, Stephan Kesting, who put together a roadmap for beginners. Might be worth looking into.
 
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skribs

skribs

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I think you're overthinking this, buddy. You've been in BJJ for a couple months, give it a few years and reread your thoughts.

I'd say the same to anyone studying TKD, wrestling, Kenpo or whatever for two months. And that's regardless of their background in other arts.

But I'm really psyched you're digging on the BJJ. :)
Rock on, Skribs.
This was an opinion I had before taking BJJ. Part of the thing with most martial arts, is they are designed pretty much to fight themselves. For example, Wing Chun seems designed to work primarily against people using Wing Chun. A boxer only deals with punches, etc., etc.

And in any of those, once you get past the beginner level, you're mostly learning how to deal with someone who already knows the beginner level of that art. While it is good exercise, good for competition, and good for putting yourself further ahead of the person you would be defending yourself from, most of what you're doing is overkill for that type of self-defense situation.
 

drop bear

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You can get better at basics though. UFC fighters are probably doing the same techniques you have already been taught.v
 
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skribs

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You can get better at basics though. UFC fighters are probably doing the same techniques you have already been taught.v
They also have to get that much better because their common fight situation isn't some rando in a bar, it's another UFC fighter.

I'm not saying you can't get better. I'm saying that in most cases where you need to defend yourself or someone else, the bar is much lower than people think.
 

Tony Dismukes

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Often times, the "Sport vs. Self-Defense" debate is something along the lines of "Krav Maga vs. MMA". But that's not what I want to look at today. What I want to look at is what I think is a realistic expectation of what you need to know to be high level in a sport, vs. what you need to know to successfully defend yourself in the most common self-defense situations (especially the most common you can realistically use your skills in self-defense).

I have experience with sport arts in the past, including wrestling as a teenager, and some Taekwondo competitions as an adult. However, I instead want to focus on my much more recent experience in BJJ. I feel I am already better at BJJ than I was at wrestling (based on my success rate against my peers), and BJJ rolling does tend to be more realistic than the point sparring I did in Taekwondo. Of course, I am not a high level in BJJ yet, but I can extrapolate based on conversations and relating back to what I do have more experience with.

What it takes to be successful in BJJ:
Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
Essentially, what you need to know to be successful in any sport is a branching tree of what you can do, what your opponent can do, how to accomplish your goals despite your opponent's best efforts to stop you, and what your opponent can do in response to your efforts to stop them; and you need to know all of these things in every phase of the game. From there, the more "stuff" you know, the further ahead you can think in the chess game, and the better you can execute (due to muscle memory and the muscles themselves), the higher level you will be.

But what does it take in self-defense? Most cases of self-defense are going to be against someone who has had a bad day or too much alcohol, and hasn't been on the mat getting out their aggression. Folks who train are much less likely to try and pick a random fight. Based on clips I see all over the place on Youtube, most people using BJJ in self-defense are doing so against people wholly unprepared for a technical grappler. This is also based on my experience being the victim of the blue and purple belts in my gym, and being the aggressor against some of the newer white belts. When I'm rolling with the purple belt, there isn't really a give-and-take. He just controls the fight. He does more adapting by letting me play than he does by winning.

Your two options if you don't know grappling are freeze and spaz, something that an experienced BJJ fighter should be able to deal with no problem. So let's take the above list, and strike out what is no longer relevant when you are no longer competing against someone who is roughly equal trained as you.

Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
In a situation where you are much more trained than your opponent (which is very likely in self-defense), then you don't need to think 5 trees ahead, or have a 5-dimensional spider-web of possible counters and combinations. It's much more linear. Or at the very least, it's 2-3 dimensional instead of 5D chess. I took the original 19 items from being high-level in sport, and dropped them down to being 6.5 items. I also took most of the hardest items out, the things that separate black belts from 2-stripe white belts.

I realize that not all self-defense situations will be like this. Sometimes, the person is trained, or there are other factors at play. But I acknowledge that at the start, and understand that any martial art is going to have those gaps (even gun fighting has gaps that cross-training will fill).

I think too often we get into this discussion of what works and what doesn't, and how if you're not realistic if you do or don't do sport. BJJ is realistic because you can go 100%. But BJJ is not realistic because you're on a mat in a controlled 1v1. Someone who trains BJJ can look at the 19-part list and say that if you can't do all of that, you won't be able to use your grappling in a fight. But that's not what I've seen when people are putting an aggro subway rider or basketball PUG to sleep with a RNC. But, you can look at the 6-1/2 part list and see what will make you successful in those situations.

Taking it back to the argument of arts like Hapkido compared with BJJ, and I see that the 6-1/2 part list is very similar to the strategies we used in our Hapkido practice. Defend your opponent's initial attack, gain control and take them down, then break something. A BJJ fighter will do something relatively similar against a similarly untrained opponent. They might take a slightly different approach, but the high-level concept is the same. Which kind of makes it pointless to argue and insult each other, in my opinion.

They also have to get that much better because their common fight situation isn't some rando in a bar, it's another UFC fighter.

I'm not saying you can't get better. I'm saying that in most cases where you need to defend yourself or someone else, the bar is much lower than people think.
You're sort of on the right track, but it's not so much about the bar being lower in a self-defense situation than in competition. It's about the priorities of what you need to work on being different.

You seem to be using BJJ for your examples, so I'll stick with that.

There are a lot of commonalities in the skills and attributes you need to develop to use BJJ in different contexts (grappling competition vs MMA vs street self-defense etc), but I'll just focus on some of the differences in priorities to begin with.

Sport BJJ competition

High priority: Passing the guard, avoiding submissions and submissions (much of modern BJJ competition is guard passing vs sweeps/submissions from guard)

Medium priority: Takedown skills, standing up once taken down

Low priority: Defending against strikes, using strikes, awareness of surroundings and weapons, disengaging and retreating, avoiding legal consequences

Self-defense BJJ application

High priority: Distance management, clinching, defense against strikes, awareness of surroundings and weapons, avoiding legal consequences, standing up if taken down, disengaging and retreating, using strikes to set up grappling opportunities and vice-versa

Low priority: Passing guard, escaping submissions. Let's face it - the odds of a mugger jumping out from a dark alley, pulling guard and trying to armbar you are pretty darn low.


That said, the more you train these different aspects of the art, the more you discover that they feed into each other. For example ...

It's not important for most self-defense situations that you be good at escaping an armbar ,,, but the more you understand about how to escape an armbar the better you will get at applying that armbar and preventing someone from escaping - and that will make you more effective if you have to use an armbar in self-defense.

It's not important for sport grappling competition that you be able to shut down punches or control an opponent's weapon ... but the body positioning skills you learn for controlling an opponent's weapon or strikes will improve your ability to execute takedowns, pins, and submissions in pure grappling.

Short term, if you are training for just self-defense or just sport competition then it makes sense to focus on the elements of the art which are directly applicable to that context. Long term, if you are working towards mastering the entire art you will find that the training for one context contains useful lessons for other contexts.

And as I mentioned before, there are a lot of commonalities which apply regardless of the context. The underlying physical principles are the same, it's only the situational tactical application of those principles which change.
 
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You're sort of on the right track, but it's not so much about the bar being lower in a self-defense situation than in competition. It's about the priorities of what you need to work on being different.
I think it's a little of column A, little of column B.
 

Buka

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I think one of the most important things about the study of BJJ after having studied other style(s) is the complete and total emptying of the cup.

And it sure as hell saves some time.
 

Gerry Seymour

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Often times, the "Sport vs. Self-Defense" debate is something along the lines of "Krav Maga vs. MMA". But that's not what I want to look at today. What I want to look at is what I think is a realistic expectation of what you need to know to be high level in a sport, vs. what you need to know to successfully defend yourself in the most common self-defense situations (especially the most common you can realistically use your skills in self-defense).

I have experience with sport arts in the past, including wrestling as a teenager, and some Taekwondo competitions as an adult. However, I instead want to focus on my much more recent experience in BJJ. I feel I am already better at BJJ than I was at wrestling (based on my success rate against my peers), and BJJ rolling does tend to be more realistic than the point sparring I did in Taekwondo. Of course, I am not a high level in BJJ yet, but I can extrapolate based on conversations and relating back to what I do have more experience with.

What it takes to be successful in BJJ:
Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
Essentially, what you need to know to be successful in any sport is a branching tree of what you can do, what your opponent can do, how to accomplish your goals despite your opponent's best efforts to stop you, and what your opponent can do in response to your efforts to stop them; and you need to know all of these things in every phase of the game. From there, the more "stuff" you know, the further ahead you can think in the chess game, and the better you can execute (due to muscle memory and the muscles themselves), the higher level you will be.

But what does it take in self-defense? Most cases of self-defense are going to be against someone who has had a bad day or too much alcohol, and hasn't been on the mat getting out their aggression. Folks who train are much less likely to try and pick a random fight. Based on clips I see all over the place on Youtube, most people using BJJ in self-defense are doing so against people wholly unprepared for a technical grappler. This is also based on my experience being the victim of the blue and purple belts in my gym, and being the aggressor against some of the newer white belts. When I'm rolling with the purple belt, there isn't really a give-and-take. He just controls the fight. He does more adapting by letting me play than he does by winning.

Your two options if you don't know grappling are freeze and spaz, something that an experienced BJJ fighter should be able to deal with no problem. So let's take the above list, and strike out what is no longer relevant when you are no longer competing against someone who is roughly equal trained as you.

Stand-Up:
  1. Know what take-downs your opponent can use, how to read their intent, how to counter them
  2. Know what take-downs your opponent can set up with the initial technique they are showing you, and how to be ready for them
  3. Know what take-downs you can use, how to prevent your opponent from countering them and/or how to transition to a different technique that makes use of their resistance to the first one
Guard (Bottom):
  1. Know how to maintain guard
  2. Know how to submit from guard
  3. Know how to sweep
  4. Know how to escape a stalemate situation (more of an MMA thing)
  5. Know how to return to guard from a less favorable position
  6. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
Guard (Top):
  1. Know how to avoid getting submitted
  2. Know how to avoid getting swept
  3. Know how to escape guard to reset
  4. Know how to pass guard and advance your position
  5. Know the counters to what you're doing and what your opponent is doing, and the responses to those counters
End-Game:
  1. Know how to progress in a favorable direction, such as going from side control to mount or taking the back; or how to escape mount and get back to guard
  2. Know how to prevent your opponent from progressing in a favorable direction
  3. Know how to prevent your opponent from gaining or taking space in order to progress
  4. Know how to read your opponent's intentions based on where they are spending their energy
  5. Know the available submissions from each position: how to apply them, how to escape them, and how to prevent your opponent from escaping them
In a situation where you are much more trained than your opponent (which is very likely in self-defense), then you don't need to think 5 trees ahead, or have a 5-dimensional spider-web of possible counters and combinations. It's much more linear. Or at the very least, it's 2-3 dimensional instead of 5D chess. I took the original 19 items from being high-level in sport, and dropped them down to being 6.5 items. I also took most of the hardest items out, the things that separate black belts from 2-stripe white belts.

I realize that not all self-defense situations will be like this. Sometimes, the person is trained, or there are other factors at play. But I acknowledge that at the start, and understand that any martial art is going to have those gaps (even gun fighting has gaps that cross-training will fill).

I think too often we get into this discussion of what works and what doesn't, and how if you're not realistic if you do or don't do sport. BJJ is realistic because you can go 100%. But BJJ is not realistic because you're on a mat in a controlled 1v1. Someone who trains BJJ can look at the 19-part list and say that if you can't do all of that, you won't be able to use your grappling in a fight. But that's not what I've seen when people are putting an aggro subway rider or basketball PUG to sleep with a RNC. But, you can look at the 6-1/2 part list and see what will make you successful in those situations.

Taking it back to the argument of arts like Hapkido compared with BJJ, and I see that the 6-1/2 part list is very similar to the strategies we used in our Hapkido practice. Defend your opponent's initial attack, gain control and take them down, then break something. A BJJ fighter will do something relatively similar against a similarly untrained opponent. They might take a slightly different approach, but the high-level concept is the same. Which kind of makes it pointless to argue and insult each other, in my opinion.
I'd argue a lot of the things you took out in the second set still belong. For example, in training for self-defense it's still important to understand the counters to what you do. Whether you find someone with a little skill, they happen to counter without skill (sometime people just move the right way), or you just mess up and run into a situation that functionally counters the movement (a standing analogy: you miss-step on an entry and jam your own technique), knowing what the counters are, how to recognize them, and how to move to the next thing when they happen are still all part of the skillset. This is why dynamic training is so important for both contexts.
 

drop bear

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They also have to get that much better because their common fight situation isn't some rando in a bar, it's another UFC fighter.

I'm not saying you can't get better. I'm saying that in most cases where you need to defend yourself or someone else, the bar is much lower than people think.

Easy test. Do a first time MMA fight against some shlub who hasn't been training that long. Which is normally the case in a first time MMA.

then you can find out if your average joe with limited training can defend your attacks at full speed.

Get a c class or equivalent.
 
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I'd argue a lot of the things you took out in the second set still belong. For example, in training for self-defense it's still important to understand the counters to what you do. Whether you find someone with a little skill, they happen to counter without skill (sometime people just move the right way), or you just mess up and run into a situation that functionally counters the movement (a standing analogy: you miss-step on an entry and jam your own technique), knowing what the counters are, how to recognize them, and how to move to the next thing when they happen are still all part of the skillset. This is why dynamic training is so important for both contexts.
Someone who counters by spazzing with no real plan isn't really advancing their position, they're just actively (and accidentally) stalling. In that case, you may need to react to what's available or think up to 2 moves ahead, instead of thinking (or having been trained) several moves ahead like against a similarly-trained opponent.

For example, if I'm in mount and they happen to buck me off, chances are that random spaz isn't going to land them in back control and gift them with a RNC. Chances are I've now got them in guard and I still have relative control over what's going on.

You also run into a sort of meta-game where you're trying to bait out trained responses from your opponent; responses an untrained person wouldn't have.
 

drop bear

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Yeah. There are a few weirdies to deal with like the bottom clamp down. It doesn't help them but it may stall you.

Not super weirdie when you add punching.
 
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Easy test. Do a first time MMA fight against some shlub who hasn't been training that long. Which is normally the case in a first time MMA.

then you can find out if your average joe with limited training can defend your attacks at full speed.

Get a c class or equivalent.

Another easy test is against newcomers to the gym. Which I prefer doing a BJJ roll than an MMA match due to less risk of concussion.
 

drop bear

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Another easy test is against newcomers to the gym. Which I prefer doing a BJJ roll than an MMA match due to less risk of concussion.

Well yeah. Because a bjj roll is easier.

I prefer doing that.
 

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