#1 Tip to Make Your No-Gi Grappling Better

This is going to be a short but important post. Here we go!
The first thing you should do is get your hands on a foam roller. Foam rollers are cylinder shaped pieces of closed cell foam. They are useally used to massage knots out of muscles using your bodyweight and they do a great job at that but we are going to do somthing very diffrent with them. Place the foam roller in your arms as if it was somones neck and apply your best rear naked choke(RNC). Squeeze as hard as you can possibly can for atleast 1 minute. do this for both sides and then try other moves on the foam roller such as the gulliotine or triange choke. pretend that the foam roller is the neck of a master grappler and your in the biggest grappling competition in the world... POP HIS FREAKIN HEAD OFF. If you cant find a foam roller try the RNC on your knee and when squeezing the foam roller the goal is to dent it, don't fret it will recover from the deep indents from your forearms or legs.

My Newest Martial Rant

So a couple days ago I was at the bookstore and I decided to pick up the X guard by Marcelo Garcia. I own a couple other books about grappling most notably Mastering the Twister, Mastering the Rubber Guard both by Eddie Bravo and also Jiu Jitsu University by Saulo Ribero. I love Saulo’s book its great it gave me my bearings in the grappling game but this post isn’t about him or his book. When I first checked out the 10th Planet Jiu-jitsu I realized something. And that magical something was that Eddie had developed an entire system that in theory took the weak points of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and exploited them in nogi grappling and I suddenly understood shaolin kung fu. Now I know that makes zero sense but let me explain. I was reading about the history of shaolin a long time ago on the beach. What I noticted about the history of shaolin was it all started with 18 movements bodhidharma’s muscle tendon change classic and from that we get all 200 forms of kung fu we see today. However why does a kung fu form like praying mantis or drunken monkey seem so complex? It’s because it wasn’t designed to beat a random street thug who couldn’t fight it was made to beat another shaolin style so that the temple would adopt the style and regard the style as superior. The rubber guard is the same thing!!! When first exposed to eddies eccentric Jiu Jitsu it I was like this makes no sense why do all this work to set up an omoplata or a triangle when I could just slap it on like Royce Gracie did in his fights? Because he was so successful he taught everyone his style and now everyone knows it. You can’t just slap on a triangle because you opponent most likely knows how to escape from it. 10th planet system was made so that people who aren’t as talented martial artists could defeat people who emulated the martial style of the Gracie family. The practice of adding a layer of complexity and developing new moves or a whole new system to counter another previous system works… for a little while. Its like the game you play where you put your hand on top of someone else’s and they respond by placing theirs on top of yours and it goes on in that fashion forever. It’s really really hard to permanently win that game the other person always pulls their hand out from under yours and places it on top. At ADCC 2003 Eddie got his hand on top but the other grappling teams soon pulled their hands out from under his and placed it on top of his. This is where we come to Marcelo Garcia’s book. When I read his book and looked at his butterfly and x-guard game something clicked and I was like wow the 10th planet system is cool but its Childs play compared to this. The entire introduction to Marcelo’s book is about how he sampled all the positions and looked within himself and found this one. He developed the position and he loves the x-guard like he loves a child. It has emotional content his grappling game is an expression of him. It’s a physical art. He is a martial artist not a competitor. He’s not trying to counter or beat anyone he is just expressing himself though grappling. Honestly more people miss the meaning of art in phrase martial art then people ignore the martial aspect. A grappler or fighter is just as much of an artist as a painter. When you learn to stop playing games and start expressing yourself in a martial way then you will become unstoppable in combat. Did I mention that the X-guard by Marcelo Garcia is a great book and everyone interested in grappling should buy it?

Martial Art of the Week: Tae Kwon Do

Gosh this is a martial art close to my heart. Tae kwon Do is not only a popular martial art but all though nowadays it seems run of the mill it is truly unique. Watch the way an experienced Tae Kwon Do practitioner kicks and you’ll notice that it is very different from any other martial art. Tae Kwon Do was developed by general Hong Hi Choi (the order of his name is different everywhere due to the difficulty of Romanizing an Asian language); Tae kwon do was created to be the Korean martial art but really what he did was combine aspects of Karate with Taekkyeon. Tae kwon Do really focuses on kicking. Some instructors claim that it is 70% kicks and 30% punches… in my experience it has been more like 99% kicks and 1% punches.


What I like: Kicks, beautiful kicks. It’s a traditional martial art take it or leave it but you’re going to learn Poomse(also known as kata or forms) and have to bow alot but honestly there is value in that and it’s a great place to start your martial arts training if you have never trained before.
What I don’t like: high kicks are fun, good for competition and nice to look at. However you have to be very flexible and if you don’t take your time learning proper technique or your teacher is a bonehead you will get hurt and it will probably be your knee. It’s not a self defense art; will someone trained in TKD fair better in a street fight then if they were untrained? Yes, but if you want self defense training don’t look here.
Where to learn: So many great teachers out there, so many terrible ones. Make sure your school is a member of the kukkiwon and get involved in sparring once you get your blackbelt you will become very bored with the Poomse and sparring really fills the gap.

What A Fight Should Be.

This post details a concept I took from a book called The Book of Martial Power it was written by Steven J. Pearlman. It’s a principal called the pure objective. The pure objective shows the best possible scenario in combat. As in if you get into a fight this is exactly what you would want to happen.
“1. Victory should be instantaneous
2. Victory should be effortless.”
Its goes without saying that you need to win as that is a prerequisite to both of these conditions. The first thing that I noticed that is critically important is the order. It is much more important that you win quickly than it is that you win effortlessly. Therefore you should pour effort in until you can win quickly or immediately and then work on trying to use less effort. The really great thing is that this principle does not only lend itself to street fighting but competition sports also. Actually it can be applied to anything. A lot of top level Bjj teachers and players make detailed game plans of what they are going to do in a match. The pure objective is a perfect way to focus those game plans. If I was preparing for a fight (which I amJ) I would focus on finding the fasted way to knockout or submit my opponent that requires the least effort. An important question raised by this is why is it important to win quickly? Well fights are unpredictable and the longer a fight goes on the more chances there are for your opponent to knock you out, break one of your bones or incapacitate you in some other way. The less time you spend slugging away the less chance there is for that to happen. The author of The Book of Martial Power makes the point that the pure objective isn’t an unreachable goal. In the comment section below give an example of a fight scenario in any form that fulfills the pure objective.

Martial Links

So here it is as of July 15, 2010 a list of the best martial arts related links that I know about.

Martial Videos
http://tv.blinkx.com/show/human-weapon/9-H6bpf-_71pYUFy
Hate Bill Duff and Jason Chambers? Think they are sucky martial artists? Me too but you have to admit that Human Weapon is a sick show and has some pretty cool information and footage of martial arts from around the world. The link above has links to almost every episode of the show and I’ve watched every single one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnEFL0dt73g&playnext_from=TL&videos=WLnYiylAnJY
A study of Sakuraba’s match with Carlos Newton it’s awesome. I learned a lot. Watch it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvTxH11O2HU&playnext_from=TL&videos=oY3ygo5yuvw
A video about two very bad martial arts techniques. It’s hilarious take a look.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elGO4Tm0hbw&feature=PlayList&p=60ECA9A2B3E4215E&playnext_from=PL&index=15
Marcelo Garcia vs. Pablo Popovitch this is a great, technical and long match I enjoyed it a lot.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Submissions101
Got a question about a submission or grappling technique? These are my go to guys; they have great videos on nearly every submission, sweep or takedown ever invented.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qx8oxGrF2F4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e8xNmi77PM&feature=related
Those two videos by Professor David James of Vee Arnis Jitsu are the best lessons in self defense I’ve ever had.

Martial Websites
http://damagecontrolmma.com/
Great MMA site they have tons of great videos and articles on MMA

http://www.grapplearts.com/index.php
A website all about grappling, another great resource.

http://www.keithpascal.com/
http://www.kerwinbenson.com/who_we_are.html
Tons of E-zines, E-books and articles great website, great guy.

There it is the list of my absolute favorite Martial Links if you have something you think belongs on the list post it in a comment and ill check it out. If I think it’s really good I will add it. More links to come.

Martial Art of the Week: Ninjitsu

Ninjitsu is a collection of techniques used by groups of assassins who fought for against and with the Japanese samurai. Ninjitsu focuses on stealth, espionage and escape techniques so that if on an assassination mission they would only have one fight and if they were on a spying mission no conflicts would occur. In the area of combat ninjas first learn empty hand techniques many of which resemble Japanese Jiu Jitsu and modern street fighting methods. Ninjas would then learn how to use a variety of weapons and also how to defend against them.

What I like: Ninjitsu includes more than jsut combat methods it also teaches you how to escape. Plus who dosent want to be a ninja its freakin cool :)
What I dont like: Ninjitsu is old and antiquated it does not have any way to deal with attacks from guns or navigating modern landscapes. However it wouldnt be hard to add these aspects into a moden ninjitsu curriculum
Where to learn:If you’re looking to learn Ninjitsu Masaaki Hatsumi is the only way to go.

Don't read this if you like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu or want to be a better grappler.

In the context of this post BJJ or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu will be treated solely as sport art. A famous quote in regard to the nature of BJJ: “if you use strength you tire, if you tire you die.” Why? Who says if you use strength you tire? Everyone has had a time when they completely gassed out and was so tired they couldn’t move. A clear solution to this problem would be to simply train for stamina while grappling. If the human body can be trained to run for 26 miles than surely you could train it to grapple for 25 minutes without completely gassing out. So now that we have covered the one single disadvantage to utilizing ones strength while grappling lets cover the advantages. Look at all the grappling games of fighters in the UFC that are focused on submitting their opponent. How often these fighters are not able to impose their BJJ based grappling games because their opponent stands up, powers out or just refuses to go to the ground? Often. Don’t get me technique is one of the most important aspects of grappling and nearly all styles of grappling contain the same techniques simply because there are only so many ways you can twist and turn a human to make them break. There’s nothing wrong with the technique of BJJ it’s the manner in which they are applied that makes it pretty much ineffective when facing other styles. “Helio grabbed me in both lapels, and attacked me with O-soto-gari and Kouchi-gari. But they did not move me at all. Now it's my turn. I blew him away up in the air by O-uchi-gari, Harai-goshi, Uchimata, Ippon-seoi. At about 10 minute mark, I threw him by O-soto-gari. I intended to cause a concussion. But since the mat was so soft that it did not have much impact on him. While continuing to throw him, I was thinking of a finishing method. I threw him by O-soto-gari again. As soon as Helio fell, I pinned him by Kuzure-kami-shiho-gatame. I held still for 2 or 3 minutes, and then tried to smother him by belly. Helio shook his head trying to breathe. He could not take it any longer, and tried to push up my body extending his left arm. That moment, I grabbed his left wrist with my right hand, and twisted up his arm. I applied Udegarami.” that is a telling of his match with Helio Gracie by Masahiko Kimura himself. Kimura was huge believer in strength and power training and did 1000 pushups a day. Kimura would go on break Helio’s arm with the udegarami lock which would be nicknamed the Kimura lock after him. Another example is Kazushi Sakuraba also known as the Gracie Hunter. Sakuraba would fight against multiple masters of BJJ in his career as an MMA fighter. He didn’t win his matches because he had better technique than his opponents but because of the way he applied his grappling techniques. Sakuraba came from a Catch Wrestling background which has a very different opinion on the use of strength. A finial and third example is the Matt Hughes Royce Gracie fight. Hughes is not a better grappler than Royce. He better at takedowns due to his wrestling background but once it hits the octagon floor Royce is way superior technique wise. Yet Hughes mopped the floor with him, why? Because instead of drilling technique and rolling all day he trained his butt off and got some strength and stamina. Next time you grapple limit your submissions only to the Kimura lock, rear naked choke and the straight ankle lock move as fast as you possibly can and go for the tap with all the strength you have in you. If you disagree with this post feel free to post a comment I’d love to have some discussion about the matter.