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The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

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Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#81

Post by metamet »

romaniv wrote: post #57
dbs wrote: post #36

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life. Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business. I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient. You don't need to be…

> I don't know of any other martial art where I don't know any other martial art where so many practitioners claim that their MA is, literally, the best. From Gracie Academy website, which is the first one coming up in Google: "[...]Gracie or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the most effective martial art on the planet[...]". A little bit of modesty and camaraderie would go a long way here. A lot of martial arts have formative…

> I don't know any other martial art where so many practitioners claim that their MA is, literally, the best.

Eh. I'd say Aikido is the most proselytizing martial art out there. But they, like most martial arts, don't have any actual sparring. BJJ gets away with it because you can spar without much, if any, risk of injury.

I think this is where a lot of the mentality comes from--being one of the few MA's where theory and technique get tested regularly. If you've done any form of striking, you'd know how much different it is to practice against a bag than it is another human. Same goes for grappling.

> A little bit of modesty and camaraderie would go a long way here.

I think you'd see a lot of modesty and camaraderie if you went to a BJJ gym.

You have to remember that martial arts has a history of "who's better than who", which is what MMA grew out of. So of course there will be competition between various martial arts, as it simply comes down to marketing.

But a ton of BJJ folks train multiple martial arts. It's incredibly common to see Muay Thai taught in the same gym, and these places don't even market themselves as MMA.

(But yes, I agree--the chest puffing marketing doesn't appeal to me either.)

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#82

Post by stergios »

IndianAstronaut wrote: post #12
peatmoss wrote: post #4

Fascinating history. It's strange to see what the various jujitsu-descended arts choose as their comfort level with injury. The traditional jujitsu ryu had lots of maming / killing techniques, which have been taken out and readded depending on the art: Judo focused on making a very safe art that could be applied full-intensity in a sporting context. Aikido focussed on making a purely defensive art. Then Gracie jujits…

>broken eye sockets and arms aren't enough to call a fight. That is just wrong. In any professional MMA organization, fights are called at this point to prevent permanent injury to the fighters so that they can sustain a long career.

Josh Koscheck suffered a broken orbital bone at the hands of Georges St Pierre in the first round at UFC 124. The fight went the full five rounds.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#83

Post by metamet »

sanoli wrote: post #50
dbs wrote: post #36

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life. Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business. I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient. You don't need to be…

> I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. Judo and Wrestling kicked my ass as much, if not more, than BJJ practice. Probably more, as they're both faster paced than BJJ.

Wrestlers have the highest work ethic and ability to keep pushing out there. I wish I had trained wrestling in high school, but it didn't appeal to me at the time.

We get a lot of wrestlers who come in and try BJJ. Of those who don't give up in frustration after a couple weeks, they turn into monsters.

But I'd say that a lot of wrestlers quit BJJ early on because they're used to their power and wrestling technique getting them through, and not being able to pass someone's guard is frustrating. It's humbling (and also frustrating) to get swept and choked by a guy 40% smaller then you, over and over again.

But if a wrestler says "How did you do that?" or "What should I do there?", you know you've got a potential monster on hand.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#84

Post by carapace »

jamestomasino wrote: post #2

What a fantastically designed and executed site! I love the attention to detail all the way across the responsive sizes. Great work.

No. I typically browse with JS turned off and the scrolling doesn't work. It is therefore broken and poorly executed.

This is a presentation delivered through the web but it is not a web site.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#85

Post by PhasmaFelis »

qrendel wrote: post #48
V-2 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem with "deadly" styles and moves is known as Kano paradox (after Jigoro Kano the judo founder, not the Mortal Kombat Kano ;) ), or alternatively a randori paradox. It boils down to that: you can learn eye-gouging, but you can't really practice it, so it ends up less effective than more "modest" and safer techniques. Learning to rip out throats without actually ever ripping it lacks lacks in the so-called al…

Additionally to that, it's also not particularly useful in most situations even if it can be performed effectively. Unless you're truly in imminent danger for your life then killing someone will likely be a hugely disproportionate reaction, especially if done in such a brutal way as ripping out throats, and will lead to some serious consequences like long jail time, getting sued for medical bills, etc. There's a comm…

Your initial point makes sense, but:

> There's a common (apocryphal?) story about an untrained guy who got into fight with an experienced grappler. The grappler got the takedown, got on top and was beating on him a little to show he'd won. Then right when he was about to stop and let him go, the guy tries to stick his fingers in his eyes. He ends up getting completely brutalized by his now really upset opponent who had already won and wants to punish the loser for trying to permanently blind him rather than just accept he'd lost.

That sounds like the grappler making up a bunch of bullshit to excuse his own sadistic brutality. If someone has you pinned down and is beating on you "a little" (WTF?), a rational person does not assume that they're "about to stop and let him go". You assume they're going to keep on hitting you until their arm gets tired, and you take any measure necessary to save yourself from permanent injury or death. From the perspective of the guy on the ground, he was getting the shit beat out of him no matter what, so there's nothing to lose in trying for a gouge.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#86

Post by qrendel »

logfromblammo wrote: post #80
qrendel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally to that, it's also not particularly useful in most situations even if it can be performed effectively. Unless you're truly in imminent danger for your life then killing someone will likely be a hugely disproportionate reaction, especially if done in such a brutal way as ripping out throats, and will lead to some serious consequences like long jail time, getting sued for medical bills, etc. There's a comm…

No. The part about " and was beating on him a little to show he'd won " tells me that the guy on top is now the aggressor. The guy getting beat on does not know when the other guy will stop, or even if he will ever stop. Given that he got "completely brutalized" for using a maiming technique in self-defense against an opponent that clearly outmatched him, my hindsight judgment is that it would have been justified for…

I can certainly see why someone would find the entire story disgusting, and the point isn't to imply fights are fun tests of machoness. The point is not to escalate a fight if you're going to lose it anyway. To continue your example, if someone had chosen to threaten lethal force, they would have been escalating it yet again, and may have just as well ended up getting killed themselves. (For example, if the other person had an armed group of friends nearby.) The entire hypothetical thing is an example of how things can get out of hand really fast.

The main reason I brought it up was that a lot of people think of eye gouges and groin shots as a "get out of jail free" card in a fight, and doing so has a good chance of getting them seriously hurt against someone who will not be stopped by it.

That aside, I certainly agree with this part:

>This is why you avoid fights in civilized society, and disengage as quickly as possible if you cannot.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#87

Post by dbs »

romaniv wrote: post #57
dbs wrote: post #36

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is less about the show and more about a philosophy of life. Being trained in the arts many years ago, things like "a body is as strong as its weakest link", have served me well in life and business. I don't know of any other martial art where your formative years are spent being kicked up in the ass. You learn how to survive under very harsh conditions and how to be resilient. You don't need to be…

> I don't know of any other martial art where I don't know any other martial art where so many practitioners claim that their MA is, literally, the best. From Gracie Academy website, which is the first one coming up in Google: "[...]Gracie or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is the most effective martial art on the planet[...]". A little bit of modesty and camaraderie would go a long way here. A lot of martial arts have formative…

I'm not saying it is the best. I've done BJJ, judo, karate, sambo and krav maga. Each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

English is not my mother language and my comments weren't intended as marketing. I don't care about what is the best martial art.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#88

Post by qrendel »

atom-morgan wrote: post #46
V-2 wrote: post #43

I wonder if there are any HN-ers actually practicing bjj? Purple belt here

I did for about 6 months. By far one of the most humbling experiences I'd ever had. I just wasn't a fan of the people at that gym.

Same story. Trained for about two years. Loved the sport but had to deal with a lot of bad attitudes and unpleasant "alpha male" types, which is probably the biggest reason I've stopped. It wasn't just that one school; I've trained at several and it's generally the same story to one degree or another.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#89

Post by qrendel »

PhasmaFelis wrote: post #85
qrendel wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Additionally to that, it's also not particularly useful in most situations even if it can be performed effectively. Unless you're truly in imminent danger for your life then killing someone will likely be a hugely disproportionate reaction, especially if done in such a brutal way as ripping out throats, and will lead to some serious consequences like long jail time, getting sued for medical bills, etc. There's a comm…

Your initial point makes sense, but: > There's a common (apocryphal?) story about an untrained guy who got into fight with an experienced grappler. The grappler got the takedown, got on top and was beating on him a little to show he'd won. Then right when he was about to stop and let him go, the guy tries to stick his fingers in his eyes. He ends up getting completely brutalized by his now really upset opponent who h…

Perhaps I should have left that part out, but as I replied below, the moral is supposed to be that eye gouges and groin shots won't help much if you can't control the fight already. The guy already winning hands down is in a lot better position to pull those dirty tricks, so there is definitely "something to lose" by escalating it. The saying is "position before submission."

But a lot of people make money teaching unreliable self-defense stuff about how you can beat anyone with a quick eye gouge or groin shot, leaving people with a dangerous sense of self-confidence, imo. It's low percentage stuff, least likely to work on a truly dangerous opponent and mainly just good for hurting people who pose no threat to you anyway. Hence the story as a potential warning.

Re: The Gracie jiu-jitsu story

#90

Post by peatmoss »

metamet wrote: post #78
bmelton wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo." Sincere question, but when did that happen? I suspect that you're conflating Gracie Jiu-Jitsu with MMA. The art of jiu-jitsu seems to me to be as passive as it ever has been. There've always been choke holds, and armbars, and while the techniques evolve over time, none of that has changed in BJJ. A punch is not a BJJ technique, for example, but a boxing, or Muay Tha…

> "Then Gracie jujitsu decided to re-brutalize judo." This isn't particularly true. I think the poster was thinking closer to Vale Tudo (and, of course, MMA), which BJJ has close roots with. BJJ is a descendant of Judo in that it essentially takes Judo to its logical conclusion. Judo (and BJJ) begin standing. But Judo ends with a simple series of points (take down into, maybe, a submission). BJJ goes until someone ta…

> This isn't particularly true.

We may be disagreeing on what constitutes more or less brutal. And I freely admit that my experience with BJJ is limited. Quoting:

> one BJJ teacher (I forget who off hand) told his students to not strike with fist. Only slap.

This suggests to me that this was in contrast to the norm, which would be to mount and then strike with the fist. However, in judo, I know of no competition in which atemi waza (striking techniques) are permitted.

To me the application of strikes to a controlled opponent is more brutal / violent than judo, where those things do not occur. Actually, I've only ever seen atemi practiced in judo as part of kata.

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