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Why Self-Defense is different than an MMA bout

Life vs. Sport, the tale of the tape:

 

Chances are you’re on this website looking for self-defense. While we offer many classes like Muay Thai and Boxing, it’s important to delineate the reality of a street fight. First and foremost and the core tenant of this article is the intent behind an attack, mugging,  or a street fight is vastly different than anything that occurs in a ring.

Should someone attack an individual they might trying to drag the person away, bite them, use a knife, or any other means to get what they want. The assailant isn’t trying to “win” in the traditional sense except that they want your property or something from your personhood.

This is why the curriculum in our Gracie Jiu Jitsu and JKD/Kali programs are so important. Both can assist in ring sports like MMA or Kickboxing, but these methods convey the intent of an aggressor. When someone wants to do a takedown for a few points in a BJJ match that energy and attempt is drastically different than when someone wants to carry you away or drag you to a car. The takedown doesn’t even function the same! This means that if you prepare for a street fight by doing sport methods, you will be left severely unprepared.

River City Warrior has you covered:

Check out this common street hold, the side headlock:

Notice that the blue belt student here is representing a common thug. Someone not that educated, who refuses to let go of your neck. He just wants to pull you down and try to exert his will. This is more realistic for a street fight, whereas this hold in an MMA situation isn’t that valuable. Your average assailant doesn’t have an idea to punch when you start resisting a hold, they think they have something good and will hold on for dear life! It’s our job as educated practitioners to take advantage of their commitment level and use it against them.

 

In a street fight there’s no rules, no gloves, no points, just an attempt to get home safely. This examples illustrates a concept of destroying the attackers limbs in order to gain an advantage. A lot of this won’t even work with a glove, but did you catch that elbow smash to the knuckles? Brutal! Not only is it effective here as an “empty hand” technique, but you can substitute any handheld tool. Maybe you have a leatherman in your pocket, a flashlight, a ballpoint pen, a knife, or you’re carrying an umbrella or cane. All of these hits can target the same component with even better efficacy if you know the basics.

If you’re training for life, make sure it’s legit:

The last example we’ll cover today is pretty brutal, if you can’t watch we’ll try to describe it for you.

The man on the bottom, to the bewilderment of the announcer, is using a move for BJJ SPORT that does NOT translate to an MMA fight. Okay you got us, we’re comparing two different sports here. We feel it can shed some light on the concept in this article. In BJJ this position on the bottom is called half guard, and is relatively safe. The term “half” meaning that both opponents have an equal position for offense and defense. However, when you add strikes into the mix you MUST have a knowledge of how to deal with punches and strikes while on the bottom. Sadly, most people don’t and this is the result.

This is why at River City Warriors in Tigard, we NEVER do BJJ moves that are purely for sport. We have a detailed program that covers these aspects of a real fight and more. In fact our Brown Belt exam is an hour long test where the student demonstrates street self defense in Gracie Jiu Jitsu.

This is a philosophy we’re proud of but can’t take credit for, people like Pedro Sauer and Dan Inosanto have been teaching and prescribing street self defense for decades. We get a lot of our education from these two amazing mentors and do our best to pass it down to all our students.

If you’re interested in self-defense, Gracie Jiu Jitsu, MMA, Kickboxing, Jeet Kune Do or the other programs at RCW we always offer a free trial. We don’t expect anyone to take our word for it.  Come see for yourself the quality of training at River City Warriors.

 

You can get your free trail here —> rivercitywarrior.com/free-trial <—

 

 

 

And as always, thanks for reading,

Professor Joe

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What’s the difference? Can you spot quality?

Just starting out in martial arts? Before you make the same mistakes I did, you’ve got to read this!

 

Whether it’s Gracie Jiu Jitsu, Muay Thai, Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kune Do, Kali, or any other method of training it’s imperative that you get off to a good start. In this article I’m going to cover some tell tale signs to look for to find good training, just in case you don’t happen to be anywhere near RCW in Tigard and the Portland Area. Maybe you even live near us in Lake Oswego, but you’re already training elsewhere, I hope this information will help you prevent the same kind of mistakes I made along my continuing 30 year journey of martial arts.

First and foremost, how to identify if the coach knows what they’re doing.

I’ll give a couple examples but this isn’t as obvious as it sounds. I wish it was, but good martial arts is a rare find. It’s like discovering a world class musician, painter, auto mechanic, chef, or carpenter. You can relate to their craft, probably enjoy it, but replicating it at that moment is an impossible task. Let alone understanding all he tools and nuances of that trade.

Martial Arts is NOT an activity in the same way people pick up other physical hobbies. There’s such a vast difference between an aerobic boxing class and boxing as a professional sport they’re not remotely the same thing. Most of us understand that doing Tae Bo doesn’t mean we’re learning real boxing and self defense. The problem comes into finer detail when they’re eerily similar but different. Have you ever hired a contractor to work on your house and took the lowest bid? Only to find shoddy workmanship later, and hired another professional to come back and fix those mistakes. It’s because during the bidding process they seemed so similar the price was viewed as the major deciding factor.

Anything look different?

Rickson Gracie knows what he’s doing, notice he and the team behind him do NOT have cauliflower ear!

Watch the instructor closely, watch the students even more.

A good instructor will be able to relate key details to their students and pass on the knowledge to create numerous copies of their work. Do the senior students exhibit these same qualities? Look to see if these long term students (there should be some!) can perform the technique of the day easily, coach beginners on how to do it, AND make it work in live drills or sparring with resistance. The instructor should be able to perform the movement even if they’re into their 40’s, 50’s or 60’s. They should make it look effortless and relate the concepts contained in the idea presented. At RCW currently our head coaches are just entering their 40’s and have been training for more than 20 years. We would never ask a student to do something we haven’t done ourselves and often we can demonstrate it on the spot.

A good instructor should NOT have to be rough to prove anything to you!

People who are qualified know how to train. That means they can prepare people for competition without injuring them in the process. I have been privileged to train with some of the best in the world, and the better they were the safer the academy. Being hurt cuts your training short, you have to take time off, you lose training partners who are also out hurt, and being tough has little to no benefits! IT does NOT mean you never spar, or that the technique is not effective.

You should be able to FEEL the technique is effective and senior students should be able to handle beginners through skill, not by trying to be overly aggressive. This is another key area, where the natural inclination is that the harder people go at it the more “real” it must be. Nothing could be further from the truth. People like Rickson Gracie, Pedro Sauer, GSP, Bruce Lee, Anderson Silva, and countless other professionals all advocate training safely. Yet at the same time parring is alive elements of timing, pressure, control, and strategy that simulate reality.

What are their qualifications? Ask questions!

Are they offering Gracie Jiu Jitsu? Then they should be able to point to members of the Gracie family they’ve trained with. Jeet Kune Do, then surely they have some credential from Dan Inosanto or someone in the association. Be careful with quick photos, and paperwork on the wall, anyone can attend a seminar on a weekend and say they’re the next grandmaster. Funnily enough, across the board anyone I’ve met who’s qualified as a grandmaster NEVER wants to be called that! Your future instructor should have dedicated mentors who passed not the trade just like a head chef or an electrician. Who walked them along their path?

Go to the seminars and workshops!

At any good school, you should have the opportunity to work with the head instructor’s mentors. At RCW this year alone our students were offered the chance to work with Master Pedro Sauer of Gracie Jiu Jitsu, Henry Akins a a student of Rickson Gracie, Greg Nelson, Ajarn Chai of Muay Thai, and Dan Inosanto of JKD and Kali fame. When you attend these workshops the material you’re covering should be the SAME. If you’re affiliated with Dan Inosanto and claim to practice Kali or Silat and attend the seminar and it’s nothing what you practice all year long, then your school is NOT following the program!

Only one of two things could be the case here, either your instructor is exposed to material and chooses to do his or her own thing back home. That usually means they think they’re own material is better but they are depriving you of what you’re paying for and after years of this they probably can’t perform the technique either! Secondly, they might not have ever been in the affiliation to begin with! Countless people SAY they do Gracie Jiu Jitsu but very few are actually connected to the family and the art. It’d be like getting hired at a fancy Italian restaurant with farm to table food and then they find out you’ve only worked at the Olive Garden. They’re similar on the most basic level but drastically different!

Don’t fall for extremism!

A quick glance on Youtube and you’ll find some top videos with literally MILLIONS of views, often provided by people who have ZERO experience in the advice they’re giving. Phony JKD representatives, bad Jiu Jitsu, and self defense technique that if you tried to use it in a real fight you might not even make it home. Worse still is I’ve seen schools adopt this attitude and start ramping up their vocal intensity as if it adds something to the movement. Sadly, people who lack confidence can view these people as knowledgeable and be quickly defrauded. That person might even believe, like a bad relationship, that their next instructor has to exhibit the same machismo all the time or it must not be authentic.

I cannot tell you how many former Krav Maga students, and even black belts, I’ve had come through RCW only to find out their intensity and material just doesn’t work. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but that is the sad fact. Many people don’t break free of the extremism paradigm and will fight to defend it. As recently as this week in November 2019 I had a recent transplant from Krav Maga in our adult classes. I came in to start the class and the young man was asking another coach “what if I do this, oh wait let me do it as hard as I can…I’ll try this now… ugh ugh!”

Our coach was barely responding and just asking what he was trying to do as this young man tried to throw him around every which way. Before we could deduce the intent, the man exclaimed, “are you serious! None of this stuff works, I wasted a year of my life for what? I thought I was learning something.” This young guy might not know it yet, but he’s in a field of one in ten or twenty who ever look deeper.

Van Damme is in shape, but it doesn’t mean he knows martial arts

I made all these mistakes and more…

That’s right, I’m speaking from personal experience. I hired the sub-contractor and was duped for years trying to find the gold standard for RCW. I was lied to by people who told me they had qualifications. I was lied to by people who told me they could give me qualifications. I too fell into the trap that if training was hardcore it must be genuine. There was even a would-be-mentor I worked with who I later discovered was basically running a small cult! The problem with getting hooked on horrible training is that it can be hard to tell the difference even after a couple years.  Once you’re drinking the Kool-Aid, the sensation of being trapped can take a tremendous mental will to break through.

I had to throw it all away

When I encountered my failure at finding genuine Gracie Jiu Jitsu and had to say “uncle” to Relson, I didn’t run from it. I knew I had found what I was looking for, I was in awe that this 60 plus year old man could wrap me up. He smiled ear to ear, he didn’t use any muscle, and I was playing what sounded like drum beats constantly tapping out. I could’ve blown it off, or called him a jerk, but I knew right then this was a real thing. I wanted that skill to use leverage and principle over muscle and aggression. If it worked for him, I hoped it would work for me and I left the MMA school for Gracie Jiu Jitsu and never regretted it for a moment.

 

TL:DR!

  1. It’s worse to train with horrible people than to not train at all
  2. Observe the instructor and other students
  3. Make them show you their credentials/who trained them?
  4. If advanced students can show efficacy while smiling, they probably have “it.”
  5. Attend workshops and compare your school to the material presented
  6. Being rough is not a sign of good training, it’s the opposite!
  7. Don’t be afraid to start over, it’s never too late!

 

 

 

Good luck out there! When I was a kid good training was hard to find because it was such a rarity. It’s still rare, but good training is now hard to find because there’s schools on every block. In the last 5 years almost as many schools have closed around RCW as have opened. The one thing you can’t get back is time, invest yourself and really find out where you should be training to get the results you want.

 

 

 

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Our community shows it strengths as everyone rises to the top

Gracie Jiu Jitsu isn’t just for the athletic, the strong, the young, or the GIANT! 

Helio Gracie, who launched Jiu Jitsu into the mainstream along with his sons, was not a large man. Tipping the scales at 145lbs and a height of 5’9 he was average in stature. What he accomplished is the stuff of martial arts legends and the point I’m going to make is beyond the fact he was an immigrant to the U.S, learned a foreign martial arts style (Jiu Jitsu was originally from Japan), and completely disrupted that system and evolved the ground game. Then along with his sons he developed the idea for the UFC and lit the world stage of MMA on fire. What I’m saying is, Helio Gracie and the authentic pioneers still pushing the art did something even more incredible than all of this!

Quest for authenticity:

I have been on a journey since the 1980’s to find “real” martial arts. There’s a number of reasons for this like having a fraudulent karate instructor who lied about teaching Jeet Kune Do (JKD) like we do at RCW. Another contributor was an MMA school where I was supposedly learning BJJ and Grappling. Yet, it didn’t seem to work on students bigger or more athletic than myself. I looked inward for blame and surely thought I must be doing something wrong! This is the nightmare that keeps me awake at night, someone is out there who hasn’t found this piece of the puzzle yet. They think Krav Maga and all the confidence they instill in their class is ready for genuine reality. In my career path I have learned the different between feeling confident, and having skill. You have to be certain without a shred of doubt that your material is going to work for you when you need it.

Real self defense prepares you to survive any situation

GM Helio Gracie’s biggest contribution to the world was packaging a system that could serve any one, any size. Other greats have been able to do this like Dan Inosanto who is the heir apparent to JKD. Gracie Jiu Jitsu/BJJ when done correctly though, is such an efficient form of defense that you almost don’t need anything else! That’s a monster claim, and I’ll address it momentarily, but for now check out our own Coach Holly demonstrating one possibility for escaping the bear hug. This hold can be used in a variety of ways, but typically on the street it is used to drag people somewhere they don’t want to go.

Self defense with coach Holly!Rivercitywarrior.com

Posted by River City Warriors on Thursday, 19 September 2019

 

What if…???

It’s one possible escape for the bear hug as shown here, and there are numerous others and perspectives that include striking. So why not do those? Well for one, this is the method as Helio Gracie and his successor Pedro Sauer teach it. Secondly, and this is the struggle for real BJJ, it often looks like there’s something else you could do like hit the groin or the throat. When someone grabs you correctly, it is impossible to do those things. Think about this, those moves were legal in the first several years of the UFC, but how come Royce Gracie didn’t get hit in the groin or the throat? Because the technique works! At our academy we believe a move or technique must satisfy a few requirements. It should be based on leverage, a connection to the opponent using weight and scientific principle, it should also be effective when done slowly against a full on 100% resisting partner. Sometimes when you’re looking from the outside, you can’t get a sense for how it feels. You might think to yourself it looks easy to fly a plane or drive a formula one race car, but behind the seat of the machine it’s a whole other world. Jiu Jitsu is like that, it’s simple and effective, but sometimes slow and once you have a feel for it you won’t settle for anything less.

Using BJJ as a way

Back to the packaging of Gracie Jiu Jitsu, when it’s authentic the curriculum encompasses all manner of scenarios. For instance on our white to blue belt exam, the first major milestone of your journey, we emphasize about 35 standing defensive maneuvers. Out of list of 88 total moves this is a huge percentage of the exam. This is what sets RCW apart from schools that do BJJ solely for tournaments. GM Gracie and Pedro Sauer believe that the self defense aspect is one of the most important pillars of the art.

If you get in an altercation out on the street there’s no points, and you certainly wouldn’t sit down on the ground and expect your assailant to walk in and grapple with you. Because of this we feel it necessary that all students at RCW have these stand up elements like the one shown in the video. Eventually all students will do these techniques under a high level of stress and pressure, because they’re ready for it and they have to KNOW that it works.

This is what I mean when I wrote that if you only had Gracie Jiu Jitsu as a form of defense it would be enough. We can ponder things like John Wick, but how many of us are going to whip out our .45’s and go guns blazing. Nobody, self defense is going to come in the form of someone grabbing you on the street, or a single person trying to hit you. If you’re smaller, or female, odds are that the person is trying to intimidate you with their size and strength. In altercations like these the techniques that come out of Jiu Jitsu address the most common situations you could ever get into. And because the movements aren’t size dependent, anyone can feel confident in their own skin.

BJJ = Gracie Jiu Jitsu

Sometimes. Maybe. It depends. At RCW we were trained by the source, we have two Gracie certified Black Belts on site teaching classes each week. The curriculum that was passed down to us features a strong back bone in self defense that continues even on the ground. Meaning when we are “rolling,” the sparring in Jiu Jitsu, we are always aware of how to defend strikes and get to the best position for an advantage. Many sport based BJJ schools throw out this material altogether and focus on winning certain competitions by points alone. They don’t do any stand up defense and you’d be lucky to find a school that has solid takedowns found in wrestling. Usually these places have a few athletic students, frequent injury, and less than 1% of people that come through the door progress through these systems.

The knowledge of self defense prevents your joints and ligaments from being vulnerable to injury. In fact I have had several intermediate to black belt students visit our school and the ones from outside the Gracie method have NEVER seen the self defense positions like we offer. Be very wary of schools where BJJ means a lot of grip strength, jumping around, flashy agility, and moves dependent on flexibility. This is not the art, and these athletes generally don’t hold up well tot he test of time. Pedro Sauer opens seminars with “you need to be spoiled by good mechanics,” built on leverage, finesse, and skeletal structure. Once you get a taste for this elusive style of Jiu Jitsu you’ll be after it’s rewards forever AND you’ll be able to enjoy a long and healthy relationship with an art millions around the world love.

 

Don’t take our word for it.

In closing, one of my favorite quotes from Master Sauer is a simple “let’s see if that’s true.” Everything must be tested, much like the origins of JKD, the early days of the UFC, we need to put ourselves out there. At RCW we do exactly that, come see for yourself any time the difference in our Jiu Jitsu. Maybe you’re new to the sport, maybe you’ve been injured before, maybe you moved right after you achieved your purple belt, whatever the reason we welcome you with open arms.

In fact, we offer a free trial year round and typically the first 30 days for $1 dollar to prove we have the goods to keep people around. You can get yours right here –>FREE TRIAL<–

 

Thanks as always for reading!

Professor Joe Heller

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We has YouTubes!!

In a visual world, why not put all your curriculum on You Tube?

We often get requests from students to make supplemental videos to training. We are definitely on the path and welcome that encouragement! Right now we’re exploring the best way to put curriculum online. Like some ancient culture our martial technology is precious to us. It also comes down to a level of respect and loyalty that we have for our instructors who shared the art with us. It’s not fair for us to see what they went through to attain this level of expertise and then give it all away online to the general public. Like Star Wars, incredible powers of self-defense and badassery that come with skills like Gracie Jiu Jitsu and Jeet June Do can be used for good or evil. Since thugs have access to the internet, we feel a little hesitation in a complete open source martial arts channel.

We’re gearing up to launch video content training soon!

Currently we’re researching platforms and organizing our content that will be released in the near future. It’ll happen! One day soon all our students, and even people around the world, can engage in the martial arts on display at RCW. For now at this crossroads we have a ton of stuff up on our Youtube channel. It’s a good mix of what you can expect from our classes and if you’ve been attending you’ll probably find some drills, techniques or at least fond memories from things we’ve explored together at RCW. If you want to head over to the channel just click.  —> The Tube <—

Nothing beats real human beings when it comes to learning a craft

The warriors in our tribe do the best they can to be generous and sharing with the material on offer. We feel as instructors that there are so many hurdles to training such as scheduling, health and wellness, family balance, and just learning a new skill that we NEVER put arbitrary golden carrots on a stick in front of students and start fishing. Have a question? We’ll answer it! Want to get better and improve? We’ll do our best to get you there! And if we don’t know the answer, we’ll bring in an expert who does. Trust us when we say we’ve seen quite the opposite, but RCW is always a stronger tribe when everyone is working and sharing together.

Here’s a small sample of our Jeet Kune Do and Kali class from a while back. This is the first of 3 core concepts for developing defense against a knife attack. Hope you enjoy and thanks for watching!!

 

Sincerely,

Guro Joe

 

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