Firas Zahabi, the famous John Danaher black belt and head coach of the Tristar MMA academy in Montreal, shares his thought on what Jiu-Jitu is lacking, and, as usual, is spot on in his analysis – it is BJJ conditioning.
Firas Zahabi is never afraid to speak his mind, and he does that again, pinpointing an area in Jiu-Jitsu where there is a major gap that grapplers need to fill. Compared to all other competitive combat sports, Jiu-Jitsu has a very lackluster approach to conditioning and it shows every time BJJ athletes encounter Juokas or wrestle.
“BJJ guys are s— athletes. No offense to the BJJ world. I love BJJ; I’m a BJJ fanatic” – Firas Zahabi said. I” just think that their counterparts — the wrestlers — have outdone them in the physical realm.
Firas Zahabi also believes that Jiu-Jitsu athletes make more tactical and strategic mistakes compared to wrestlers, particularly in MMA:
“Two, the wrestlers are better strategists. Why? When you wrestle, you have three rounds, so you start thinking about strategy as importance. In jiu-jitsu, it’s one round. When the wrestler starts in MMA, he’s thinking, I’ve got to win two out of the three, minimum. That’s the minimum for victory. It’s not what I’m looking for, but it’s the minimum. A jiu-jitsu guy will do something crazy at the end of a round he was winning. Maybe he goes from top position to the bottom looking for a fancy armbar and gives up the round or gives up the position. They make more strategic mistakes than the wrestlers.”
Finally, he points out that wrestlers are open to learning Jiu-Jitsu and other grappling martial arts, whereas most BJJ athletes act like grappling royalty and refuse to experiment and learn from other grappling sports.
“Wrestlers are learning jiu-jitsu, and jiu-jitsu guys aren’t so open-minded to the wrestling” – says Firas Zahabi.” They don’t understand that wrestling is as technical as jiu-jitsu. It’s jiu-jitsu standing up, why are you not in love with it? Why doesn’t it fascinate you?”
In summary, Firas Zahabi says the fact that Jiu-Jitsu athletes do not pay attention to conditioning, nor try to adopt writing into their game is a huge detriment to their abilities, especially in MMA.
