Rally driver jiu-jitsu
Last night I got into a conversation with James about how I train against certain attacks.
There are certain types of submissions that I personally feel are not something that I would ever come up against in the street. My main purpose for doing jiu-jitsu is street self defence, and if someone manages to submit me using these (what I see as) purely sport jiu-jitsu techniques, I don’t worry too much about trying to defend them.
I asked James about this way of training and pretty much go the answer I was expecting, which was “this is a bad way of training”. He explained how he saw things and one thing he said that really stuck was, “Imagine being a top rally car driver, how much easier would it be for you to drive in a normal environment”.
This is something that I have not really thought about before. Training, sparring, rolling, whatever you call it, is all about learning all the possible attacks you may be forced to defend against, so that you are so comfortable in any position, (under mount, under side mount, where ever) that you have all the time in the world in a real situation to defend yourself against the two or three likely attacks. It’s like having all the advanced weaponry in the world and all your enemy is attacking you with is a 9mm Beretta (which he still has to load).
This way of thinking has made me contemplate the bridge between the Gracie Combatives program and the full range of The Master Cycle. The Combatives draws you a very nice picture, beautifully detailed, but in pencil only. The Master Cycle comes along and fills in all the colours….
Tags: jiu-jitsu philosophy, Sparring