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Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture
Is BJJ catching TMAs cold?

This is an interesting watch. The first thing to note is that there is some bad language and crude sexual references in this video (not from Stephan Kesting, but the gent he’s interviewing). Not one to watch at work, with children around, or if you are easily offended. It adds nothing to the points being made, and it’s a shame it’s there, but if you see past that there’s some really interesting points being made.

I’ve long said that modern systems need to learn from the mistakes of the older ones. Sadly, we see a lot of same mistakes being repeated and as a traditional martial artist you want to say, “Don’t do that! We did that. Nothing good came from it!” If you listen to the video, you will see what I mean. The points they raise are ones that we have discussed here many, many times.

I like the fact they put “traditional” in quotation marks – Stephan even makes air-quotes when he says it in the video – because what they talk about is not really traditional at all. Instead, it is a modern watering down that took hold relatively recently. In the video they say the same stuff has started to happen to BJJ over the last 10 to 20 years. We are 40 or so ahead of that and we know first-hand that these things don’t end well.

The first point made is a concern about the “deification” of instructors. If you listened to my recent podcast (Karate 3.0) then you’ll know I make the exact same point!

https://www.iainabernethy.co.uk/content/karate-30

They also discuss the over use of “oss”. Jesse Enkamp did a good piece on this:

http://www.karatebyjesse.com/meaning-oss-osu-japanese/

They also talk about training without live practise. Once again, that’s something we talk about all the time here. There is an inescapable need to drill things live. As part of this discussion they also talk about how “kata” alone is pointless; which it is when it is divorced from the wider training matrix. Here is an old article I wrote on this topic:

https://iainabernethy.co.uk/article/four-stages-kata-practise

The need to pressure test to clean away myths and misinformation is also covered i.e. the debunking of chi-based light tap knockouts, etc.

What struck me when watching the video is that many of the “traditional values” they worry about, are the same things that we traditionalists worry about! They are modern phenomenon (mainly post WW2 in Karate’s case, and it seems mainly the last couple of decades in BJJ’s case) so not “traditional” in the dictionary sense of the word; but they’ve certainly became associated with arts that, incorrectly, are known by that label.

If you watch the video, and listen to my most recent podcast, you will find much commonality (in content, if not style of delivery). The difference is they are talking from the relatively early days of these problems, and I’m talking from a position of “we’ve been through that and we need to get back on to the straight and narrow”. Lots of common ground through. It seems “bullshitsu” (to steal a term from Jamie Clubb) is infectious.  

All the best,

Iain

Marcus_1
Marcus_1's picture

Very interesting and thanks for sharing.

A few points that grabbed me - 

Yes the term Oss/Osu/Ossu is being over used, back when I were a lad (quite a while ago), it was only ever used at beginning and end of training, now it's whenever told to do something!

The other point that really stuck for me was the amount of belts and why they are being issued (essentially to keep the attention of students). When I started in Karate, we graded every 3 months and that was only if we were deemed to be ready for that grading. These gradings were hard, physical and mental things for a kid to deal with and it made me want to succeed every time I graded! Having belts (or stripes/spots - I hope never on the same belt!) issued out for turning up for training x amount of days a week/month just takes away the true sense of achievment one should get when one passes a grading!

Dave. H
Dave. H's picture

I know a few BJJ guys who treat they're instructor like some sort of idol, yet claim that they left the 'traditional' martial arts because of this type of this behaviour, and one of them (someone i actually got on very well with up that point) actually threatened me with violence when i tried to discuss the similarities with Judo(both of them being offshoots of Jujitsu aimed at a competative arena), and stated his instructor would have actually become violent towards me had he been there for daring to say such a thing. It is not just BJJ either, there are many 'reality' based systems that have moved in this direction too.  Substituting the Gi and Japanese/Chinese language for combat trousers and military slang.  Yet in both cases the perpetrators will go out of the way to tell you how different they are from TMA, and very few (in my experience) will even acknowledge that TMA is in fact a modern interpretation of the martial arts.

I have had a similar discussion myself with Jamie Clubb, and the behaviour is very similar to the way in which religions and cults work, with the same refusal to see or accept reason or evidence.

Azato
Azato's picture

Many valid points. I think that martial arts in general would benefit a lot from dropping the rank and file traditions. I actively encourage my students to refer to me by my first name. Couldn't help but chuckle a bit when the one guy referred to the no touch knock out artists claiming that their methods don't work on 30% of the population. Reminded me a lot of conversations I've had ad nauseum with BJJ practitioners where I stated that greater than 30% of all assault cases involve multiple assailants, rendering an almost entirely ground based martial art a recipie for disaster, but my criticisms always fell on deaf ears. All martial arts are guilty of blind faith to some extent. We all naturally love the art we chose to invest ourselves in. I think that BJJ did the karate world a favor by exposing the lack of grappling generally practiced. Eventually it will come full circle and BJJ guys will start to incorportate more striking into their training.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Azato wrote:
Reminded me a lot of conversations I've had ad nauseum with BJJ practitioners where I stated that greater than 30% of all assault cases involve multiple assailants, rendering an almost entirely ground based martial art a recipie for disaster, but my criticisms always fell on deaf ears.

Good points! I’ve shared that experience. Here in the UK most one-on-one violence is drunk young males punching other drunk young males and causing no real injury as a result. Around 40% of situations involve more than one person, and that is where the majority of severe injures take place. So while the majority of situations are not multiple enemy, it is a significant number and it is also where the vast majority of severe injuries take place. Deliberately taking fights to the floor – even if the situation starts one-on-one – is a very unwise tactic. As undeniable as this is, you do see some pretty impressive cognitive gymnastics to maintain the party line.

The latest one seems to be along the lines of, “no matter what style you are you should run when facing multiple enemies.” This truth does not square the circle because we still see deliberately taking the enemy to the floor presented as a good idea when there is one enemy. The reality is you should always try to run (irrespective of numbers). Other people can get involved no matter how it starts, and “I could have ran, but there was only him so I took him to the floor and strangled him to death” is not something anyone wants to be saying in court. There is also the fact that if you are on your feet you are in a far better position to run than if you and lying on the ground with someone holding on to you. Strikes can also be used to maintain distance and facilitate escape. This is a good real world example. Consider how well he would have done if he’d taken the first one to the floor, or if he didn’t have the striking skills to keep the distance.

Azato wrote:
All martial arts are guilty of blind faith to some extent.

Indeed! And honest self-reflection is the way to avoid that and the associated problems. There are plenty of dogmatic traditionalists, but I hope the situation is changing for the better as it becomes clear that honest self-critique yields a more positive path than sticking to cherished dogma.

Azato wrote:
I think that BJJ did the karate world a favor by exposing the lack of grappling generally practiced.

Very true. BJJ, MMA and the “reality revolution” of the 90s really helped convince karateka to honestly assess and choose how best to move forward (which included a lot of looking back to the more holistic karate of the past).

Azato wrote:
Eventually it will come full circle and BJJ guys will start to incorporate more striking into their training.

I think you may well be right. The same honest reflection that got karateka reconsidering may well convince BBJ folks that a basic striking skill set (pre-emption with dialogue for both individuals and groups, and hand strikes to multiple targets with movement to facilitate escape) will plug the gap for the multiple enemy side of things. That will keep the physical self-defence side of things covered allow unquestioned exploration of the sport and fighting side of things. It’s a great system that has given the martial arts world so much.

All the best,

Iain

Zach Zinn
Zach Zinn's picture

I don't know, i'd say these things are true in almost any human endeavor that gets passed on in person, and involves a skillset directly transmitted from teacher to student. Hence, the reason to seek out good instruction, and *always* be a good, critcial student - no matter our rank.

I do thinks it's funny though how what comes around goes around. While BJJ has developed enough standardization in the past 15 years or so to run into the same problems that TMA has always had, TMA has gotten more progressive in many corners. It'll only be a matter of time before both cycles start to reverse themselves, ad infinitum.

Live training and pressure testing are obviously of utmost importance, but it strikes me that not all live training is the same, there are vastly different types of live training, and saying our martial art will be effective simply due to live training is almost as nonsensical as saying we don't need it. If this were the case, all those years some of us spent on dojo sparring in the 80s and 90s would be all we needed.  To me the arguments in the video made for live training differ somewhat from those made by Iain and others. They are closer to what i've seen from Bullshido and similar sites, where it is believed that competitive sparring formats are a sort of panacea for effectiveness. I hate to generalize, but that's the tone of part of the video as I heard it.

Underlying this whole discussion is an issue I have with BJJ/competitive rolling in general: even with all the (very valid) critcisms of the things mentioned in the video, what is BJJ/sub grappling for exactly? Are they training for competition, self-defense, fun? Do they think that those are the same goal, reached through the same means? If there's no answer to that question, it seems like it will be hard to fix the problems they are rightly concerned with.

I remember watching a Gracie family member on one of his videos spend  half an hour talking about JJ for "the street", and how many schools have lost this knowledge. All good, he made a lot of sense up to that point, and it had some real paralells with Karate training. However, after this he completely failed to make any distinction between a "streetfight" between two people and "self defense", he seemed to think they were about the same thing. If you can't get past a simple conceptual thing like that, I don't see how you can fix these sorts of problems. 

In this sense, the hurdle they face is somewhat different from TMA, because they are coming from a system which evolved for something rather specific (defeating a single opponent on the ground), but they seem to have a desire to be all things to all people.

In the case of Karate people like Iain and others were able to look to the past and to holistic training methods to arguably get the ball rolling in the direction of returning Karate to it's intended purpose - as an art of civilian self defense. So it seems like a part of the solution was correctly understanding the identity of the art. If BJJ people continue to believe their own mythology where  groundfighting must be all things to all people, they will go in the same direction  Karate did during the "dark times" (lol) and slowly lose functionality.

With it's slowly diminished role in MMA, it seems like BJJ for the average Joe is in a bit of an identity crisis, it'll be interesting to see what emerges from that, and what BJJ programs are like 10 years or so from now.

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

That is an AWESOME post Zach! Loads of good points very well made. Thanks for posting that!

The points about the failure to differentiate between contexts, define objective, and the temptation to succumb to “this solution answers all possible problems” thinking are particularly well made.

Zach Zinn wrote:
I do thinks it's funny though how what comes around goes around. While BJJ has developed enough standardization in the past 15 years or so to run into the same problems that TMA has always had, TMA has gotten more progressive in many corners. It'll only be a matter of time before both cycles start to reverse themselves, ad infinitum.

Probably. Hopefully they can learn from TMA's mistakes though. As the old saying goes, “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

All the best,

Iain

Mulberry4000
Mulberry4000's picture

Yes good posts, I have been in real fights, and they are nasty, quick, brutal and full of suprises. I do not regard karate, judo or any other matial  arts as street effective. Yes they have  good skills, lots of possibiliites, but in the end it comes   down to  a good punch, suprise or just pure meaness. 

My karate club teaches throws, close quarter fighting and break falls, this  is regarded by some people at the club as being very not  karate, but its. The Judo club is all strength, competition throws, ie let go if a person throws you. I do not i counter and go on top. do not care about competitions, still they have lots of great stuff to learn.