Georges St. Pierre once famously said that he is a martial artist and not just a fighter. That quote of his went as viral in the combat sports world as anything I’ve seen. People started posting it, saying it, even tattooing it on their bodies. But what exactly does it mean? Yes, it seems straight forward, but it was said in the context of MMA, first and foremost. What if you try to apply it to BJJ? Can you make the distinction between sport Jiu-Jitsu and the martial art of BJJ? As similar as they might sound they’re far from the same. Yet, interestingly enough, they require each other to make BJJ what it is today. Bear with me and it’ll start to make sense.
Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is the one physical activity out there that people of all ages and sexes can do at the same time. It is an everyday occurrence to have 60+-year-old white-collar folks and professional MMA fighters on the mat at the same time. They even train with one another. Not many other sports can claim the same. Or, martial arts, for that matter. But what is it that makes this marriage of Sport Jiu-Jitsu and the Gentle Art work so well. Moreover, where does one end and the other begin?
What Is The Difference?
First of all, it is really crucial that we pinpoint the difference between sport Jiu-Jitsu and the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Let’s use some more general examples to figure out where BJJ stands, exactly. A good example of a martial art, old-school-style is Aikido, no offense to any lingering Aikidokas who are perhaps reading this. I chose Aikido because it has no competition, although it involves contact training. The premise of Aikido is that when an opponent does a certain specific thing to attack you, you react with a certain specific thing to defend/counter it. This is what defines martial arts as such – the “if this, then that” approach.
Sports, on the other hand, are on the opposite side of the spectrum. A great example Is wrestling. Nobody ever called wrestling a martial art. Contrary to martial arts,, sports are geared towards results in a competition based environment. They tend to have far fewer techniques compared to martial arts, and all combat sports, in particular work off of the premise that a good defense is key to launch any kind of offense. In other words, sports embrace the chaos of athletic competition and are designed to give you the most chances of coming out on top. In the case of port Jiu-Jitsu, this is literal.
BJJ, as the unique blend of art and a sport that it is, lies somewhere in the middle of all this. This is exactly why people from all walks of life can train at the same time and still achieve personal goals. However, that also raises a dilemma -= which approach to BJJ fits you and your goals best? Because the fact of the matter is, both approaches deliver on very different results, although they head in the same direction of progress in grappling.
Sports Jiu-Jitsu
I’ll start off with what I consider to be the best definition of what sport JIu-JItsu is (all credits to Chris Haueter for this one). Sport JIu-JItsu is how effective you are in combining your technical knowledge and al your physical and athletic abilities in order to quickly achieve a very specific goal. IN a sport setting, that would be winning a match, or better said all of them, in a given tournament. In a self-defense scenario, it would be protecting your self and/or doing harm to the assailant, depending on a lot of things.
Looking at JIu-Jitsu as a sport is not easy. IF you truly want to be a BJJ athlete, you need to look at BJJ the way a boxer does at boxing or a wrestler as wrestling. Something both of these have in common is that they have to start in positions that keep them safe. Have you seen a boxer with their hands down? Ore a wrestler not protecting their hips with their arms? It is the same with MMA. A defensive posture, that acts as a platform for launching attacks, and is a place to fall back to if things don’t work out is the mia characteristic of combat sports. And there’s a good reason for this – in a sport setting, combat sports are essentially fights, and as such, they usually come with bodily harm, even if it is in the form of involuntary injuries.
If sports Jiu-JItsu is what you’re after, then your training to be a fighter (in terms of GSP’s quote ). You have a goal – to win. You also want to win in the most efficient way possible. There’s no place for the “if I do this you do that”| approach. For sports, you need several techniques that work efficiently from a fundamental basic position that allows you to be safe. An example would be Keenan and his worm guard. when he goes there, he has a defensive setting that keeps him safe and allows him to launch a myriad of attacks. Even then, he doesn’t do every sweep or submission in the book – he only uses several things over and over again.
The Artsy Side Of Grappling
The art of JIu-Jitsu is where most recreational folks will find themselves. Luckily (I guess) compared to Aikido like arts, there’s no traditional philosophy that accompanies BJJ. There’s no need to be a master at Chi energy and/or Buddhism to consider yourself a martial artist in regard to BJJ. Looking to clearly define as we did with sport JIu-Jitsu, it would be something like this: The art of Brazilian JIu-Jitsu is the quest for controlling and then submitting an opponent 9in that order) while using as much knowledge, timing and tactics, and as little physical and/or athletic attribute as possible.
When it comes to training BJJ as an art, there’s no winning or losing, there’s no pressure like in sports, and there is endless material to work with. You simply as questions about everything that’s going on, try to find answers, and use them to figure out solutions. You then gather all these solutions in a giant deck-of-cards and hope to be able to get he one you need when a specific situation arises.
The beauty of the Jiu-Jitsu as a martial art is that it allows us to experiment and constantly evolve both the art and the sport. Without the art side of things. BJJ could never keep growing the way it does. Boxing hasn’t changed for the better part of a century, and neither has wrestling. As sports, they’re superior in their precisely designated area of operations. BJJ, on the other hand, both as a sport and art grows constantly because of the old-school martial its approach to things that is still a big part of the game.
Using what you learn in BJJ as a martial art will likely do you little good in the chaos of a sport setting or self-defense, but only if you train it on its own. Rolling is the bridge that connects the two,. allowing professional grapplers to safely train with recreational ones. Tha, and it is what allows people to train deep into their late years in a way that still makes sense.
All in All
You fight the way you train. If you train in sport Jiu-Jitsu, you’ll fight like an athlete. If you train the martial arts side of things, you’ll try and apply that in a fight, or a roll. The best part is that in BJJ, both of these opposites feed off each other to make the entire sport/art grow. From the martial arts aspect, you gather solutions for your problems. With sport Jiu-Jitsu, you get to test out all those solutions in realistic and chaotic circumstances. This is the perfect combination which is exactly why we shouldn’t look at it as art vs. sports thing, but rather as an art and a sports thing, combined.
To begin with, Marcelo loves his chokes. Whether he gets a rear-naked or guillotine choke, he does so much more often than finishing people with armlocks. His take is that it is the technical properties of the move that matter the most. He also famously downs’ do any conditioning, claiming that hard rolling is all you need to be in shape for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
In that sense, there are about a dozen different chapters, which translates to a dozen sequences that work by themselves or tie perfectly together. For example, you have jumped back takes against opponents on all fours, unbalancing drills, body lock back takes, and even re-jump ways of getting to the back which are most definitely Marcelo Garcia trademark stuff.
The versatility of the armbar as a submission is beyond any doubt. A move that you can catch from just about any position, and one that happens to work the same on people of all belt levels. Not only that but the armbar’s mechanics area easy for people to understand and replicate, meaning it has a really small learning curve. Plus a solid armbar setup and a tight finish look beyond cool.
The armbar that involves holding the foot, is one of the slickest ways to completely render an opponent defenseless that I have ever seen. Coming right after are details on switching sides from side control, which is seven more important than in the mount. Knee on belly armbars, Kimura grip armbars, and other stuff we’re used to also get third time under the sun here. However, so do some more unorthodox moves, like the trap armbar and the Borg armbar, for example.
One thing to completely forget is hesitation. If you stop hesitating and just go for whatever it is you’re thinking (or feeling) you should do, you’ll not just come off as more aggressive, but actually be aggressive. Three’s no time to overthink stuff, regardless of how chess-like some people like to portray BJJ. Simply go for things and you’ll notice that you actually start getting more of them to work.
That said, the biggest thing you can do with someone whose overly aggressive in BJJ rolls is to say you’re not interested in rolling. You have the right to say that to anyone, without any worries for repercussions or the likes. Alternately, you could always try and talk to the person, explaining that their style is a bit too aggressive for you, and you’re not interested in that type of rolling at the moment.
The standing Kata Guruma is what we usually think of when someone mentions the name. In most cases, it seems like there are too many steps to set it up for BJJ. This does not have to true. Instead of that boring old and ineffective collar and sleeve 50/50 grip, go for an overhook. The further you can reach over and grab the triceps of an opponent. The better. If you can trap their palm underneath your armpit, even better. This is the starting position for all Judo throws for BJJ we’ll be looking at today.
The entry is pretty much the same – posture and angle remain unchanged, as does the initial grip (the overtook). If you drop too low (bad posture) you’ll give away your back or a front headlock. So keep the posture upright. This time when you do the penetration step, you drop completely to the knees with both your legs. Your free arm once again has the task of grabbing s deep as possible behind the knee of the opponent’s leg.
The goal of the entry is to get your hips as close to the lead leg as possible. Simply sit down to a hurdle stretch position, trapping the foot and grabbing the leg, like in previous Kata Guruma variations. That’s it.
When it comes to seminars, if you’re expecting a lot of rolling, you’re probably in the wrong place. A Jiu-Jitsu seminar will last in excess of several hours, and it will be so filled with information that your head will probably be buzzing at the end. This is exactly why seminars usually revolve around a specific topic. If a seminar went into a Q&A, with everyone asking different things, nobody would really learn something, Actually, the power of a BJJ seminar is in that you get to go deep into a very specific area of Jiu-Jitsu for hours, most often with an expert in that field or an overall superstar of Jiu-Jitsu.
A mini-seminar is something you organize in your own gym. Moreover, it is something that doesn’t require a black belt, or a world champion in order to set up. It does, however, take an expert in a field of BJJ, regardless of their overall training experience. Luckily, given that everyone has their favorite moves and distinct styles, this is not too hard to come by. In fact, any purple belt will already have several favorites that they’ve spent years working on. Why not put knowledge like that to a good test?
Next up it benefits the person doing the seminar. First of all, they get to sit down and plan a seminar. While not everyone is cut out for teaching, most people end up as instructors or coaches eventually. This is a great way to expose them to the whole teaching experience and help them get ready early on. Moreover, they get to experience the sweet feeling of earning at least a few bucks from the experience. In my academy, all the fees go to the person that held the seminar. It is a small token of appreciation, but people do receive it extremely positively and get motivated to train even more.
Considered by many to be 
Born in Wales, Davies played rugby as a child, before deciding Judo was even a better close contact sport for her. Her parents both being Judokas probably had something to do with it. She did good in Judo, making the Wales National team, but decided to take a break. At age 17, she re-discovered her flair for grappling, which then led her to discover MMA, and eventually, trying her hand at BJJ. During that time she rally focused on No-Gi, looking to do something different from Judo. She fell in love with BJJ so much, that she moved to Cardiff to train in DarraghO’Conaill’s Academy and made a living by being a bouncer.
The man we all know, either from his competitive success, or all the DVDs he produces, Faria is certainly a household name in the sport. How did he start BJJ? Well, he was always playing fighting with his brothers and their friends, and always ended up losing. So, Faria followed one of his brother’s friends into a BJJ academy, in order to get himself some skills. And so he did. He was 14 at that time and after just a year of training, he knew that he found his passion and profession. 
Eddie is not just the man behind 10th Planet Jiu-Jitsu, but also the man responsible for a whole different style of BJJ. It was the UFC that prompted Eddie to give Jiu-Jitsu a try. Before that, he had moderate experience in wrestling during high school. He also trained in a variety of striking arts, like Karate, as most martial arts enthusiasts of his era did.
For the purpose f hitting an armbar from side control, you need to choose an arm first. Y can go on the near side, or the far side. A more common attack is the far side, as you can move between pinning each shoulder until you set up the perfect attack. That doesn’t mean near side armbars are not effective though. On the contrary, they’re even more unexpected the far side armbars.
