In this article, we are going to talk about stand-up training such as Karate and Muay Thai, kickboxing or any other forms of stand up fighting or striking and the importance of training Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
In 1993, a Gracie family, represented Jiu Jitsu in the UFC, matter of fact they created the UFC to be able to promote and show the world Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as they were the most dedicated group in promoting Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
UFC is now very famous, popular and different from the initial years. UFC was a type of tournament where people had to fight 3-4 times in one night.
There were no much rules, no rounds and their intention was to show the world the importance of training/knowing Brazilian jiu-jitsu because back then people were only training stand up fighting like Karate or Kickboxing.
People were very much impressed on How much they did not know about the ground fighting/jiu jitsu, and after that everyone started training or seeking for Brazilian jiu-jitsu training.
Nowadays it is a different reality specially in America, everyone knows Brazilian jiu-jitsu or at least know a little bit to be able to get out of the holds and submissions and because of that they are able to practice their martial arts in a situation of real fight.
My theory here is that any other martial artist should know BJJ. By learning Brazilian jiu-jitsu actually, they will make their Karate or kickboxing better because by surviving on the ground, they eventually can stand up and again try to use their Karate form.
So their martial art forms actually get a little bit more complete. Everyone now needs to know Brazilian jiu-jitsu and by the way BJJ is super easy to learn in my opinion.
I had one student, competing an amateur – MMA.
he was a very good Brazilian jiu-jitsu competitor but in my opinion it was a bit too early to compete MMA, but he decided to go.
He unfortunately lost the fight. And days after the fight I asked him: “I know you have trained a lot of Muay Thai for this fight but what is the Muay Thai goal?
Your goal is actually knock the person down or out, right?” But when then I asked him how many times he had knocked someone out or down during training the answer was zero.
So he never achieved the goal in training how to expect to achieve in a real competition fight?
In Brazilian jiu-jitsu, we choke people out or get choked, we make people tap or get tapped, arm bars, foot locks, every day, without causing much damage and the person who taped can adjust, shake it off and get back at it again.
Without damage to the brain, to the skull and that’s pretty neat.
Another story from this lady. She was a Black Belt in Karate and she told me, “if I need to defend myself I’m going to knock the attacker out!” So I asked her, how many people have you knocked out in training from White Belt to Black and again the answer was zero.
So having that been said, how come you expect to go out there and knock out a man. Unfortunately, that’s the point. People expect to do in real fights what they actually never did in training, meanwhile in Brazilian jiu-jitsu the final goal of the fight happens every day.
I can’t remember, how many times I tapped someone out or I have tapped due to a choke or arm bars from White Belt to Black.
It is not the martial arts that does not work like Karate, Karate works and they work greatly The problem how you train and also the fact that stand up training is a little harder to learn and perform. They take a little bit more time to understand.
