The Biggest Epiphany I've had in a LONG time [A Paradigm Shift]
A new way of understanding "Fundamentals" in jiu-jitsu and immediately make your jiu-jitsu better
I’ll start this off with a quote I made recently:
“If you want to know if you have good fundamentals in jiu-jitsu, incorporate striking into your grappling.
If you’re getting tagged, your fundamentals need work”.
What does that mean?
In jiu-jitsu, I can’t think of a more nebulous term than “fundamentals”.
The thing is, most people understand jiu-jitsu in the context of grappling and not in the context of “self-defense”. With that said, it’s easy to get lost and misconstrue what we’re supposed to be doing in the first place.
If everything becomes purely about sport, then there’s no need to use “jiu-jitsu” (quotes on purpose) unless points or the clock dictate that you need to.
If you understand what I mean by this, then you’re on the right track.
If you’re not understanding me, it proves my point that “fundamentals” is vague and in order to understand what fundamentals of jiu-jitsu are, you need to take it back to why we train in the first place.
This is important and I’ll clarify below. But first, consider where jiu-jitsu comes from.
First and foremost, and I’ve said this time and time again in my book, “Jiu-jitsu is a self-defense”. Jiu-jitsu, as I understand the history, has its roots in Judo and often incorporated striking. Fast forward to its migration to Brazil and now, in the early 1900’s you see it in Vale Tudo where practitioners of VT are using jiu-jitsu as we know it while beating the shit out of each other.
Now fast forward to a few weeks ago.
I had a big epiphany. I was doing some closed guard situational sparring (with striking) with an MMA coach.
I realized that my traditional, NoGi sparring strategy was leaving my wide open to getting tagged. I had to change it up so I did. [Note: It had been a LONG time since I’ve done grappling with strikes… a very long time]. What I found was that once I shifted my strategy, a whole new world of jiu-jitsu opened up and I felt like I understood it much better and on a more dynamic level.
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