If you’ve ever wondered how important exactly defense is in BJJ, or what is the ultimate purpose of defending in grappling, then we might have some answers for you today. Our focus is a new Chris Paines DVD instructional covering the highly entertaining and somewhat mysterious subject of Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense.
If you have rolled at least once in your life, you know how important offense and defense are in the sport. Essentially, you’re doing one of them at all times for most of the duration of every match and roll.
But, how do these opposing aspects of BJJ relate to one another, and how can you make the most out of understanding that relationship? These are the answers we’re looking for today.
Key Takeaways
- 5-part No-Gi DVD with just under two and a half hours of game-changing concepts.
- Covers the principles of offense and defense in BJJ from both top and bottom.
- Defines and simplifies how and when you can turn defense into attacks effectively.
- BJJ World Expert Rating: 9 out of 10.
CHRIS PAINES DEFENSE TO OFFENSE BJJ DVD AVAILABLE HERE!!!
The Art of Attacking While Defending
Why do we defend in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu? The short-term answers that most of you are probably thinking about are along the lines of “preventing submissions” and “recovering superior positions”. The long-term goal, most people are not connecting with defense is attacking.
defense serves as a means to help you establish positions you can launch attacks from while being safe from the opponent’s offense at the same time. Without defense, it would be a battle of attacks that will benefit whoever is in a superior position.
So, while the initial answers are correct, in a way, they all lead to the same goal – gaining an offensive edge over your opponent. Having an attacking mindset while you are defending bad positions and even submission attacks, means you are working towards a very clear goal and you’ll start recognizing options to launch those attacks much earlier than conventional Jiu-Jitsu behavior has taught you so far.
I’ve only seen sporadic mentions of this crucial concept in Jiu-Jitsu until now when an instructional directly covering the subject became available. Is the Chris Paines DVD: Turning Defensive Cycles into Offensive Cycles going to deliver, though? Check out the review that follows:
British BJJ Mastermind Chris Paines
I’ve had the pleasure of attending some of Chris Paines’ classes and I’ve always left with more ideas, material, and questions than a year of BJJ training. The man is simply not afraid to challenge all the stuff we’re taking for granted, in, what I interpret to be, an attempt to simplify Jiu-Jitsu.
Chirs is a fairly recent black belt, under defensive expert Priit Mihkelson, and you already probably know of him. A few years ago, one of Chris’ classes exploded in the BJJ World, available for free on YouTube and dubbed “How to defend everything“. And that is not even his best work!
Chris has been meticulously growing and breaking down Jiu-Jitsu since then, some of it available on his YouTube channel, but most of his most cohesive knowledge of grappling put into instructional format. The BJJ and Japanese Jiu-Jitsu black belt, one of the lead instructors at Fighting Fit in Staffordshire has several enticing and highly informative instructional to his name.
Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense is the latest Chris Paines DVD, and one that arrives with almost perfect timing, as I spend the last 9 months trying to teach this elusive skill to my advanced class.
Detailed Chris Paines DVD Review: Defense Into Offense
If you’ve ever seen Chris teach or you’ve watched any of his DVDs, you know that you’re in for an unorthodox experience. Chris likes to “dumb down” Jiu-Jitsu using lots of analogies you probably never thought of, which ends up being an extremely effective way of delivering key points to a large audience.
The Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense Chris Paines DVD is a 5-volume No-Gi BJJ instructional that features just under 2 and half hours of very informative and original material.
Part 1 – Why We Do Jiu-Jitsu
This incredible Chris Paines DVD opens up with an introduction, during which Chris decides to cover the subject of why we do BJJ from the perspective of gaining and taking away power. It is a slightly strange way of explaining the sport, but when you stop and think about it, it just makes so much sense!
Paines builds on his fundamental concept of Jiu-Jitsu, at least in the realm of defensive and offensive cycles, by addressing another staple of success in the Gentle Art – balance. He explains precisely what it is, how to keep a hold of it, and how to take it away from your opponent.
Part 2 – Guard Essentials
Defensive guards first emerged as a concept when Ryan Hall decided to issue a series of DVDs on the subject more than a decade ago. Since then, the concept remained a part of the sport but has never really been addressed in-depth.
Chris who has a very strong defensive background courtesy of the work he did with Mihkelson, has attempted to deconstruct both the defensive and offensive prowess of guards by breaking them down to their bare essentials.
That is exactly what he shares in this portion of his Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense DVD, starting with one of the staple concepts of wrestling – the tree trunk/pole concept. A lot of attention goes towards hand-fighting the key components of defense, and offense and combining both of them.
Chris covers open guards in this volume, addressing both how to use them as a guard plater and how to set yourself up to pass them.
Part 3 – Just Stand Up
Sticking to the tree trunk concepts which he dubbs “Bonsai”, Paines goes into one of the most useful, yet frustrating concepts of modern BJJ – standing up from guard. It is highly useful because it introduced another dimension to BJJ, one previously heavily used in wrestling.
Frustrating, because it can be extremely difficult to stand up while someone is not allowing you to, effectively focusing only on that task to the detriment of actually grappling. This usually results in chaos and loss of positions. Paines goes over the hand-fighting principles that are essential for standing up safely and effectively, before addressing some key defensive postures from bottom positions.
This part of the Chris Paines DVD mostly covers the defensive cycle, targeting the use of the turtle position and its relation to the ‘running man’ defensive posture. Chris’ goal is to guide us to standing without risking joint locks and chokes, all the while opening your own counter-submission opportunities.
Part 4 – Distance Management
past the halfway point of the Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense instructional, Paines switches his attention almost exclusively to offense, by presenting different methods that annoy people who attack you so much that they end up doing their worst, allowing you to capitalize.
That is exactly what his ‘sugar in the gas tank’ concepts cover – how to stop people dead in their tracks while they’re attacking you. The vital aspect, you guessed it – hand fighting. This time, however, it is distance that makes offensive hand fighting possible and Chris does a marvelous job explaining how it works in BJJ.
The turtle position features a lot in this volume again, with the focus now on the spine – both yours and that of your opponents. More precisely, Chris talks about alignment and misalignment of the spine and how it affects grappling.
Part 5 – Pressure
Wrapping this Chris Paines DVD up is a volume covering pressure, which, as I’ve discovered during my own experiments, can come from the bottom person (a.k.a. the one defending) as much as the one on top.
Paines’ final volume covers the use of shot points and counterweights, as the main components of having a pressure-based game that stops attacks and allows you to turn the tables in just a few moves. The cherry on the top, and the final chapter in the story, is a section covering Apex chokes.
Turning Defense into Offense
One of the most difficult things I’ve ever managed to achieve in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is to figure out how to turn the tables when I am defending. The challenge was not to initiate scrambles while I was defending, nor look for low-percentage submissions, like bottom-side control Amaericanas. It was to play defense in a way that slowly and methodically opens up high-percentage attacks with the attacker remaining oblivious to my intentions, but unable to achieve anything.
Suffice it to say, I spent countless rounds tapping out to silly stuff and stewing under the pressure of top players until things started to click. Of course, I had help along the way, and Chris was actually one of the few people who covered this subject in some of his earlier work.
Having the ability to defend confidently puts you in a position where you never feel panicked or threatened again – you’re in control even when you’re “losing” which is a very powerful position to be in. Once you master that shift in the grappling mindset, you will find out that attacking from defense is actually much closer than you thought.
DEFENSE TO OFFENSE CHRIS PAINES DVD DOWNLOAD
Attack, Attack, Attack!
You might say I am biased toward Chris Paines’ work in grappling because I am a fan of intelligent approaches to the sport that challenge unnecessary fluff which has overtaken the sport lately. That said, I really can’t see how anyone would go wrong with picking up the Turning BJJ Defense Into Offense Chris Paines DVD.
While you will need a solid foundation of defense, an you can only get that by placing yourself in bad spots and finding ways out, this resource is immense in providing a conceptual framework of where all your defense leads. I’d jump on this as soon as possible so that you have more time than your opponents to break it down and use it.
