tallgeese

Welcome aboard!

Excellent!

It really depends on what you're looking for. If you have a wide array of interests in the arts then clearly diversity in your instructors resume is important. If you really just want to focus on a single thing, maybe even compete in it at high levels, then diversity is unimportant. The question is how can that coach make you the best in whatever art it is that he/she is teaching. Again, it's about one's goals.

I use a rash guard every training session. You can get them from about any grappling outlet. I highly suggest them.

Welcome to KF!

Relax. It's a marathon and not a sprint.

Do they need to be evaluated based on combat effectiveness? It depends. Do they purport to be combat based arts? If so, then yes. However, if the answer is "it's a sport art" then no. Is fighting without violence possible? No.

Flexibility is an attribute like any other. Some grapplers have it in spades and this drives their game a certain direction. Others lack it a bit, their game is different as well. Need? No. Jiu jitsu, and grappling as a whole, is pretty adaptable and will work differently for those with different attributes. Healthy lifestyle? Totally. As long as one trains smart, and is coached properly, the risk is less than many combat sports. Now, if one overlooks good instruction and refuses to tap then injury is likely, as it is in about any endeavor. Not more or less than any other athletic endeavor. All athletes run a great risk of wear and tear. It's the cost of it. But not more.

Congrats!

Yup. This.

So were you being a punching bag or being demoed on so the other class could see what technique they were supposed to be doing? There's a difference, in most cases. One hard style I trained in one was kinda like the other, but there was a purpose. I'm not sure which you're talking about now in this illustration, as to what happened with you, not in the video. Regarding being a punching bag in karate.Before karate, living in a rough neighborhood, with tough friends and always bullies floating around, eventually constantly belonging to gangs and fighting in the streets with rival gangs, in the early 1970's. By time the late 1970,s came around, I joined karate. Being beaten up or fighting didn't bother me. The black belts in the club just took it that I can fight and had a killer instinct, that they understood and accepted. So as a white belt and onwards I was hanging out with all the black belts socially. As I was skinny and only 5'7" but an experienced street fighter and fearless. Sparring with me the higher belts could try out techniques that would send me flying or hit me full force with spinning hook kicks and punches, they were bigger, stronger, faster and more experienced. As I would still get up to take more punishment, I never backed down. The Sensei sold the dojo and that was the end of the club, that many students help to build, with free time. This is when my respect for black belts ended. In the short time of just till the club closed, I changed significantly. My sparring changed with it, my kicks and punches now contained emotional content; just like Bruce Lee preached. I floored my Sensei, to his surprise and the surprise of the other black belts in the club, I was at a green belt level by then. So to have or allow a TKD 4th degree black belt to knock my arm down, with a crescent kick, then to proceed with a technique, without me resisting; not likely. The head TKD instructor never once sparred with me! Reason being many of the black belts there were embarrassed, from sparring with me earlier, as I was a white belt in their style, sparring with them as if they were black belts in karate, like the old days for me but with EMOTIONAL CONTENT not anger. Okay, your club closed. you learned a lot prior to this. That actually a normal thing in martial arts. I can get all that. None of us like it when these things happen, but they do. It's the first bold statement I go back to. It was a demonstration of technique to teach others. Not a fight. The difference is real, I laid this out in my first post. It's neither here nor there if I like that tactic, it's the class you elected to go to. If you don't like those tactics...change systems, but I think it's shortsighted to go along the lines of resisting during technical training and not only get the specifics yourself, but to also make it more difficult for the rest of the class. To the second line, maybe this is the case. Maybe it's an ego thing. Those guys are out there. But also consider it might not be. There are a lot of reasons that BBs won't work with lower ranks sometimes. Sometimes it's technical (they are working on something you're not good at yet), sometimes it's making a point (the lower rank in question needs to straighten up his training attitude), it can be a lot of things. I'd suggest doing some serious self reflection on this- and the art you've chosen to peruse. Maybe your needs and the style you've picked aren't' meshing. This is a common source of issues. Here's a bit of an illustration from my history, as embarrassing as it is. I came into gi jiu jitsu after years of no-gi work in the MMA and shootfighting arena. I was younger then, stronger, faster, and more athletic than I am now. I grappled as such with little formal training in the gi. I was relatively successful early on, not because I was good at jiu jitsu, but because I could be athletic. Because of this, I'd often roll with some of the higher ranked (blue belt) guys. I thought I was pretty good. Then I noticed that the guys I really wanted time with, the guys that were really technically sound, purple belts and up, kept passing on rolling with me. I got a comment about "rolling like you're in the Worlds," I thought, in my naiveté that this was a compliment. I started to get salty, to think that they were ducking me. Then one of them got fed up. He put me in my place hard one night. Embarrassingly hard. Don't get me wrong, he worked, but it was very clear who was in charge. I though: Finally! I went back the next class night to roll with him. I thought I had finally found someone who would bang with me and take me to the next level. I go over during open mat and ask him to roll. Jason, who I'll never forget or thank enough for this moment, just looked at me and tells me "I'll pass. You've gotta learn jiu jitsu." That was it. It was a rock dropped on me. Here's a guy who had just that very week cleaned me up. He and I both knew he could take me. And he just didn't want to. I fretted about this a bit. Whined to one of my blue belt buddies, Chris- who I will always be equally indebted to- offered to roll with me. I ended up fighting hard for an omo plata. We get done and he tells me good job (I'm a few stripe while belt at the time) and explains I could have got the sub way easier by simply transitioning to the armbar I had access to. I say thanks, blow it off, and drive home. The whole drive I'm go back and forth between "he's right" and "why does it matter, I got the sub." Then it hit me. Because by using athleticism to crank out the one sub I knew from there I was keeping myself from learning jiu jitsu. Then Jason's words hit me. I need to learn jiu jitsu. Why is an advanced guy, with a wife, kids, job, etc. going to get elbowed, banged up, and potentially hurt by some guy who's just running on emotion and lacking technical finesse to make him better. The cost/ benefit analysis just didn't work out. It was an awakening moment for me. Those incidents made me change my attitude toward learning. I opened up, lost rolls because I would try things, took my athleticism out of the equation, lost some more. But I learned to flow, I learned technique. After I had served up about 8 months of actual learning, Jason asked me to roll. I flowed, just like I'd been doing. I still lost. Badly. I didn't try to muscle out of anything or emotionally invest in tapping. By mid roll Jason looks up and says "Now that's what I'm talking about!" I never looked back. My jiu jitsu exploded. See, we've all been a places where we assumed that people weren't working with us because of x or y, when in reality that may not be the case at all. Sometimes we're just not far enough along in a given art to understand that. In my case, I was 20+ years into martial arts when this happened. It's not just a new guy problem. Take it for what it's worth. It might change how you look at and perform the arts.

This has been my career. It's why I've ended up working with so many individuals in so many arts and it couldn't be more helpful. Particularly given my line of work.

So were you being a punching bag or being demoed on so the other class could see what technique they were supposed to be doing? There's a difference, in most cases. One hard style I trained in one was kinda like the other, but there was a purpose. I'm not sure which you're talking about now in this illustration, as to what happened with you, not in the video.

As everyone has pretty much said, there's a big difference between learning and testing. There's zero use for resistance in instruction. It makes learning the movement from the students difficult. Taken a step further, nothing irritates me more in class than watching new students trying to resist each other when LEARNING a tactic. One needs time to process, to learn mechanics, etc. before laying in resistance. Now, once a tactic is learned, then by all means test it. These are two radically different things. One of the strengths in BJJ is that half your education is against resistance. Which is why it irritates me beyond belief to see guys wasting technique time in class fighting each other. We, literally, have half of your mat time to do that. Half. At least. Use class time to get better. Nothing makes me go super traditional and have everyone doing line exercises quicker. For demo it proves nothing either. Of course everyone can resist a tactic when you know that is exactly what I'm going to do and not transition to anything else. No brainer. It proves nothing to the class, the instructor, or anyone else except that the resister is a selfish uke with what is probably a radical misunderstanding of teaching methodology or a huge ego. I give guys like this one chance. I go a second time, and while they are resisting I just move on to a tactic they are not expecting. I could care less if it's on the platter for the evening, this is jiu jitsu 101. I don't fight it with strength or muddy my teaching. If the uke is resisting I just roll with it. Example, someone once tried to muscle against a triangle I was teaching in a BASIC class. Made a point to correct a slight adjustment so that the uke had a chance o rethink. Then I simply moved on to an armbar. It falls in, he taps, and I simply explained the philosophy of resistance then sent everyone to work on the triangle. Next demo, new uke. Open mat, no rolls from me for uke. The rest of the senior guys pick up on this. Now he's rolling with blue and white belts for the rest of the week. Problem solved. Losing your mind isn't needed if you're professional about it. But it should be clear that this is counter productive to learning. Not to mention it instills bad habits in newer people who don't know better. Please don't misunderstand me, I am not saying never resist. That leads to charlatans that we see all over the internet. I'm just saying time and place. My guy fixed his problem with this subtle adjustment. If the behavior continued he'd never uke again. If he did this to his partners we'd talk (I've had this conversation as well without the resistive uke demo) and make sure he got the "why" of it. It if continued he'd be gone. He is, at that point, hindering learning of everyone else in the club. This turns into a cancer. Pretty soon every new person is fighting everything, learning nothing well, and hurting good, paying students in TECHNIQUE! We haven't even got to open rolls and people are putting on ice bags. Unacceptable. That guy would go away.

For all my talk about self defense jiu jitsu, some of my favorite stuff to play is more artsy or competition based open guard. Spider guard is a favorite of mine, and this variation has become a go to for me: How many people are playing open guard routinely? Are you aways ready to go back to closed guard? How many people are using leg entrapments to supplement more traditional sweeps?

As a BJJ guy (mainly...these days) I'm really glad to see you guys doing this sort of thing. Any exposure that other artists have to this arena of combat is good. Particularly, if they aren't up for, or have access to, cross training. Great job!

Very satisfied. In almost every case. We often overlook, particularly if we're new, how important these concepts are. Strategy being the overall grand scheme of events as you'd like them to go, the driving principles of a system and tactics being the application of tools to achieve those goals. Often, tools get misconstrued as tactics and tactics for strategy. It's important at advanced levels to understand the difference. For me in some of the primary arts I've studied I've been exposed to some great strategy based off the strengths of a given art. For example in BJJ we strive for the following in my lineage: Close the distance Get the fight to the ground Establish dominance Finish the fight So, a tactic for closing the distance might be a cover and level chance. This means tools for this tactic would be proper level adjustment, coverage of the face, proper penetration. To take the fight to the ground, the tactic might be a single leg. So now we're looking at grips, proper placement of the head and chest, etc. But if he's countering with a blocking forearm, then the tactic may be a duck under so I can finish the application of the tools of a single leg. Etc... This play out to the conclusion of the fight. When I did kemp exclusively our strategy was thus: Evade Stun Unbalance Control So we avoid the damage from the strike, struck the individual back, used some form of balance control to often get him off his feet, and then utilized some form of follow up control to the attacker to prevent further attack. There were various tactics for this. Evasion could consist of footwork, redirection, blocking, etc. Not confusing this macro and micro elements helps one set up a good progression of learning and fighting. Now, that said, Over the years I've come to learn that no one strategy will be adequate at all times. If this were true I would have never experimented with other arts and some systems have edges in specific venues. For example, I had some fundamentally good ideas about knives and knife defense from Kempo but is wasn't until I added tools and tactics from Kali that I really began to move past a basic level of understanding and response. BJJ is superior on the ground to either, but has no answer for weapons and FAR less strike defense or actual fight mindset than Kempo. It's why we use different tactics in the police world for different situations. The same is true in MA. Now, to make this work you need more than a simple, first glance understanding of whatever you're going to use. That takes time and a certain level of commitment. There is a reason that single system artists are common. But it will depend on your goals for the arts if you need to pursue multiple strategies and all that come with it.

I don't think people use it to be intimidating. It's just how they talk. It doesn't make you sound smart, but it can drive home a point. Everyone is stylistically a bit different on this. If I'm on the mat for our fundamentals class I try to never use it. There are kids and parents still floating in and out and it's less than appropriate. Once we get to the advanced class, I'm a bit more free since now we're all adults. Stylistically, I don't use it in periods of instruction, but I might let it creep in at a PG level to illustrate a point during an example or a side bar conversation. Now, move to our Friday night comp class or Saturday self defense class. It's all adults. It's more high energy. It's less instruction and more drilling. I'll let stuff slip here and there without much worry while I'm demo-ing or teaching because it's more appropriate to the setting. Now, I leave the gym and go teach a class at the range. I'm talking like I normally do. I don't make a point to cuss, nor do I avoid it. It's setting specific. Now, I go from a civilian range and work my day job at the range with a bunch of cops or go to a SWAT training with guys I've been with for years.... Then all bets are off. Simply because it's situational normal. Now, this is a BJJ perspective on things with a bit of day to day thrown in for context. I totally get that some gyms will be far more or less permissive. That's okay. It's your traditions. It's just not something I worry about at ton as long as it's situationally appropriate.

This. This is really the crux of it. Everyone trains for different reasons at different times in their life. The only think I ask is that everyone should be up front with what they are teaching. New students may not understand the decision making process or realities of various outlets for martial arts. I used to be way more hardline on this. Martial arts is about fighting.....blah, blah, blah. I was militant about it. The 40 year old me is far more forgiving on this matter than the 25 year old me was.

This is a nice system, and it truly puts the burden on the newcomer to get to where he or she thinks they should be. I agree. This seems to be a really well defined, functional method of grading people in.

Visitors should get to wear their rank. I have no problem with this. Once they "switch styles" then they need to go to a rank appropriate to their skill in that art. This could be white belt (no previous relevant experience- such as a striking to grappling art) or a kyu rank (a proficient striker who largely does business the same but does not know specific kata, etc.) It's entirely possible the second ranks in higher. It depends on the focus of the school. Even at that, BB requires some degree indoctrination into the system and shouldn't just be handed over.

welcome to KF!

I kinda agree with what you're saying here. I get really tired of hearing it. The "He's a point fighter..." ignores the fact that by getting takedown points, passing guard, and holding position is pretty dominating. Don't want to lose to points? Get better at escapes. I'll go a step further though, I also get really irritated by people who bash guard pulling. It's one of the major positions of our sport. It gets people to our game. Don't like people pulling guard? Get better at passing. We get so wrapped up in what each of us THINK jiu jitsu should be we've ignored the fact that 20 years of evolution has brought us to some pretty interesting positions.

I'm biased, so lets start there! Adding a pure ground-based art to your stand up repertoire will pay off quicker with greater dividends across all ranges of combat. I'd go with jits. Actually, now that I think about it, it's what I did.

I personally don't find them intimidating or painful enough to be an expression of endurance. Mileage may vary I suppose. For me, mine (2) are an expression of important aspect of my life and I got them at important milestones.