PDA

View Full Version : Brazilian and Japanese Jujutsu



Lens
11th June 2002, 09:23
Hello again,

I was wondering while browsing a lot of sites,
Why do a lot of brazilian style people bash Japanese Style People?
Not all but many do.

I think they are forgeting that Jujutsu is Japanese and they themselves learned from the Japanese.

One of them even stated on one site that Clasical Jujutsu is superflous and ineffective!!!

Do they actualy think they are the best?

Yes they are very good indeed but like many others.

I always belived that there is no superior style but only superior practitioners.

Is Classic Jujutsu in trouble?

Regards

Mike Williams
11th June 2002, 10:09
Sigh...

Lens, I've just had an uncanny sense of deja vu.

Look, every style bashes every other style. It's an unfortunate by-product of MA training. Grapplers bash strikers, Realists bash Competition, Traditionalists bash Eclectic styles, etc. etc. etc.
Just look at the amount of style rivalry that exists in Aikido, Ninjutsu, Karate...

Deal with it and move on.

:rolleyes:

Cheers,

Mike

red_fists
11th June 2002, 10:20
Lens.

I will head to the BJJ School that is down the road from me and ask them what they think about JJJ.

Considering that the School is in Tokyo, I am sure I will get a fair answer.
;) ;)

BJJ is geared towards ring fighting and so a certain macho atitude is too be expected.
OTOH, BJJ only uses a subset of the skills of JJJ, so my bet is:

1.) BJJ will beat JJJ in the ring(UFC, Pride, etc)
2.) JJJ will beat BJJ outsidde of the Ring.

Funnily enough the Gracies themselves started to train striking arts and standing grappling.

Have fun.

meat
11th June 2002, 12:15
Interesting u bring this up. I train in both styles(longer in jap), and one night my teacher asked me to show him some stuff that id learned. He picked it apart so quickly and easily I couldn't believe it. He said, yes, they(bjj) are quite good on the ground, but they don't understand the science of what they do. He is right. At the class i go to, we get taught techniques, yes, but we don't get taught the science behind it - the balance, movement principles etc. The class is great for experience coz i get to wrestle wif alot of diff people, but it doesnt come close to jjj for level of understanding and real world skill.

Kit LeBlanc
11th June 2002, 14:46
...but you do learn so much about people from the content of their responses to trolls.

R Erman
12th June 2002, 01:29
Kit,

you're just mad because all that bjj influenced newaza you do is soooo easily picked apart, and bereft of scientific principles. It's sad when you realize that you've wasted so much time, don't ya think?

OK, sarcasm mode off. WTF? Jigoro Kano categorized most of the scientific pricnciples that "classical" systems use today. BJJ is a younger sibling to Kano's judo and applies the same science. It's been said before by better technicians than me, if you roll with a bjj blackbelt you're going to be chewed up and spit out, regardless of "holes" in the system. I love japanese jujutsu, but it's only one piece of the puzzle, IMO, bjj is another piece...as is judo, why can't we all just get along?

Benjamin Peters
12th June 2002, 02:57
I always belived that there is no superior style but only superior practitioners.

Nice line. I think it comes down to knowing how to effectively apply what you know at the appropriate time. If you can apply your abilities at the chance moment, theoretically you'll win.

Perhaps your quote is more true than people care to imagine(?).

But one thing is true, BJJ is a very involved science and it is not a crude thing as most would arrogantly suggest.

Kit LeBlanc
12th June 2002, 12:58
Originally posted by R Erman
Kit,

you're just mad because all that bjj influenced newaza you do is soooo easily picked apart, and bereft of scientific principles. It's sad when you realize that you've wasted so much time, don't ya think?



Plus trying to figure out why much of it actually does work "on the street," at least when I use it, and why training in it makes JJJ more realistically applicable.

Must be doing something wrong..."the experts" keep telling me it isn't supposed to be like that.....

meat
12th June 2002, 13:12
My my my. How quickly someone can be misunderstood. Geez you guys, try reading what other people write. Anyone would think that i trashed bjj to the @#^%house and told people not to go near it. I never said that a black belt bjjka wouldn't chew me up and spit me out. Why is it when you try to give an honest response that everyone assumes ur trying to troll or start a flamewar?
And the quote that i was "arrogantly trying to suggest bjj was crude", what the hell was that? You know nothing about me, so to assume im arrogant by something i said on a web forum is a bit prejudicial on your part. also, i don't believe i said that bjj was "bereft of scientific principles"
When i go to my bjj class and they don't even do a simple arm bar effectively and correctly, it prompts me to believe that they should look a bit deeper into the underlying principles. Perhaps that is just my dojo, and if it is, then i will gladly apologize for my statement. Yes bjj is another part of the picture, why do you think I go there? to gain experience on the ground. Yes we can all get along, but hey, if something is picked apart, get over it, look into it and modify it. Wats the big frickin deal?

Kit LeBlanc
12th June 2002, 14:03
Originally posted by meat


When i go to my bjj class and they don't even do a simple arm bar effectively and correctly, it prompts me to believe that they should look a bit deeper into the underlying principles. Perhaps that is just my dojo, and if it is, then i will gladly apologize for my statement.



It's your dojo. Who is the instructor? What is the instructor's rank? Lots of blue belts these days teaching. The way you wrote it, you did not clarify YOUR dojo, but BJJ in general. Then you need to see more BJJ.

(I should say I am NOT a BJJ practitioner. I am a judoka/jujutsuka that has cross-trained with a brown belt, a purple belt and some blue belts, practice submission with a guy that studied with Royce, Rickson, Relson and Renzo but was not ranked (and who toyed with the brown belt I mentioned), and done some seminars with black belts.)

Seems to be popular these days for budoka to state "BJJ ain't all that, I've gone with a guy and tapped him repeatedly or other BLAH BLAH BLAH," never mentioning that the guy was a white belt, or even blue belt these days, and not bothering to check if the guy was considered any good even in his own dojo. I am sure you can see the ridiculous basis upon which such comments are made.

The softest, most realistic technique I have ever felt was from a BJJ black belt, though I have felt softer in JJJ, neither did it appear to me to be as effective were it a resistive situation. The BJJ I am talking about WAS in resistive grappling. And if it is not about refined technical principles, explain how a small man in his 40's can roll, one after the other, with virtually an entire seminar's attendance and easily defeat men twice his weight and half his age and not be exhausted? This is not unusual, it is a COMMON practice at BJJ seminars with the Brazilians.

As to teaching theory, perhaps they choose to teach through action and physical training rather than talking about it. Novel concept. What belt level are you in BJJ? Have you even got to the point where the instructor would even teach theory to you, or do you need to work on your chops and flow more to even be ready to comprehend it?

How much JJJ have you done? REAL JJJ, koryu from legitimately licensed instructors? The reason I ask is that in my experience with koryu, theory was not talked about either...we practiced kata the way the teacher wanted us to. We actually did talk about theory and variations and stuff in more informal circumstances or when he specifically told us to, but then again, my teacher wasn't Japanese...if he was, from what I have heard, we wouldn't have talked about it at all until years and years had gone by.

And last, theoretical talk is cheap. I suggest that your JJJ teacher who is picking apart the BJJ understanding of theory (which is actually, JJJ theory....ever think he might have been picking apart what is YOUR understanding and application of the theory and not the theory itself...hmmmmmm) go to the next black belt's seminar (or at least someone of comparable level to his experience). He can ask for a demonstration of their take on JJ principles against antagonistic resistance with a skilled stranger, not in his own dojo against a student of his own.

Perhaps he will be proven right and demonstrate that his knowledge of JJ principles is superior in such an encounter. It shouldn't matter ground or standing, right? Start from standing, I am sure the BJJ BB won't mind. Your teacher, if he has that level of understanding, should be able to prevent going to the ground, or at least getting put in a bad position once there.

If he does it right, it will be more like a challenge, and then at least the encounter will be more like a real fight, so he can test whether his JJJ theory is better "in the street."

I don't think it is what we are reading into your post, it is what you left out.

charlesl
12th June 2002, 17:36
I figure my opinion doesn't count for much as I started paying attention pretty late in the game (just over the last couple of years), but when it comes to smack talking somehow involving bjj, everything that I've observed indicates to me that generally non-bjj or part-time bjj people are overwhelmingly the rulers of that arena: ie. they talk more meaningless smack about bjj by far than I've ever heard any bjj practitioner or advocate even bother with. In fact I've found whole webpages dedicated to how such and such martial artist from X ma have defeated such and such bjj practitioner, etc.

It is enough to make a guy think that all these smack-talkers are jabbering because the art they practice really doesn't cut it, and that's why they're so defensive about it. I'm not saying this is true, I'm just saying that this is what it could easily be interpreted as.

I have a bit over 7 years of training in ma, of which about 3 months is training in gjj. The last few years I've been primarily training in a more traditional Japanese weapons based ma, and was looking for something with more contact. So I went around here in Honolulu and checked out a bunch of different places, tae kwon do places, judo places, traditional jujutsu places, gendai jujutsu places, karate places, just really a whole lot of places. I went with the gjj for a lot of reasons. The techniques and training impressed me more than the others. They actually had less salesmanship going on, they were letting the art sell itself so to speak. And it was/is the friendliest, least cliquish, most easy going and fun place to train that I found (and this by FAR). The teachers, in my opinion, are better, basically because they are professional martial artists who'd been training for a very long time.

And I've never heard anybody there talking smack about other martial arts. I'm not saying that they definitely aren't, but I haven't picked up any of that kind of hostility or negative attitudes towards any other groups training.

Anyway, those are my observations, for what they're worth, which many people will say isn't much.

-Charles

charlesl
12th June 2002, 18:13
btw, I have no beef against smack talking for fun, or even for real, so long as it doesn't get misconstrued as something else. I think if you're going to talk smack you've gotta take into account how your words or whatevers are going to be viewed.

-Charles

Benjamin Peters
13th June 2002, 00:05
The BJJ I am talking about WAS in resistive grappling. And if it is not about refined technical principles, explain how a small man in his 40's can roll, one after the other, with virtually an entire seminar's attendance and easily defeat men twice his weight and half his age and not be exhausted?

Kit I'm with you all the way!

It's a problem when people argue points, they often don't have real or good enough working knowledge and experience in.

BJJ is very technical and can be applied very effectively. Most don't wish to acknowledge this though and that's a real pity.

red_fists
13th June 2002, 00:17
Sorry, late post.

When I said that "BJJ uses a subset of JJJ skills" I was not running them down or anything.

BJJ is good at what it does, it took a set of skills and specialised in them.
And with that come benefits and shortcomings. If People like it or not.

I see BJJ as a very specialised form of Judo/Ju-Jutsu.

What erks me is that manyy BJJ Guys keep inisting that ground grappling/cross training is needed for any other TMA to be effective.

Peace.

P.S.: I haven't studied either JJJ or BJJ, but have sparred with both to test my style against their skill.
Got respect for both.

Lens
13th June 2002, 09:34
I happen to have friends in both Jujutsu and BJJ. Not all bash each other. My friends have very good respect for eachother. Since years ago i was in Jujutsu, not so long ago i had some sparing with both the Japanese Jujutsu Guys and the BJJ guys. They are both very good. BJJ are better on the ground and JJJ i found better to put me to the ground. The JJJ guy is also very good for doing stand up locks, arresting and all that and BJJ are good for arresting on the ground.

So all have something to offer.

The thing is that out there there are a lot of bad Martial Artists and if you happen to train under a bad martial artist that does Japanese JJ then you would outomaticaly think JJJ is not good and if you happen to be training under a bad BJJer than you would automaticaly think that BJJ is not good. Same goes to all the other arts.

Even Karate. I cant understand why some people say Karate is not good. Back in my fighting days a Karate guy 3 quarters of my size broke me a bone in my ribcage which is still defective to this day + disforming my face and brousing my lower body parts with powerfull kicks.

The only problem i find in ground grapling arts is: in self defence, from my experiance. YOU SHOULD NEVER GO TO THE GROUND. And i say this because almost all the fights ive seen and experianced were all from 2 - 3 attakers. Some people do manage to throw you to the ground, but do get the hell up for your own good.

just my opinion