If you’ve watched a modern jiu-jitsu competition then you might be wondering what its application to a real world scenario would be.
Ie, is someone with a high belt in jiu-jitsu (for example purple belt or above), going to win a street fight?
The answer to that question is “it depends”.
The main “it depends” is how you train.
For example, today there are a lot of jiu-jitsu schools which are “no-gi only”. This means they do not train with the traditional judogi (gi or kimono). Their training uniform consists purely of tights/shorts and a rashguard or t-shirt. And in this type of training grabbing the clothing is forbidden as it is not as durable as the gi.
I can almost guarantee that these types of schools focus 100% on “sport jiu-jitsu”.
From my many years of working as a bouncer in Sydney’s CBD, I would estimate in almost all cases (without exaggeration) of altercations, it involved one person grabbing the clothing of another person in order to prevent them from getting away and to land some strikes. And I’ll bet my pound to your peanut that the person who trains both gi and no-gi will have a better chance of survival in this situation.
The second “it depends” comes down to the style of jiu-jitsu. If your school only focuses on sports jiu-jitsu then you will probably spend a lot of time playing a “sport guard” vs a “fight guard”.
You can see an earlier blog post of mine for more information, and images, here:
https://www.tumblr.com/scjja-cronulla/749588402689687552/the-guard-old-school-v-new-school.
Next, it can go too far the other way. Where all the techniques practised are “self defence situations” which are done without any resistance. You see this a lot with more “traditional” style schools, or aikido schools, where the attacker complies with whatever position the defender does. This is essentially a form of kata that has next to no application in the real world. Defenders of this type of training argue that it would be too dangerous to train this with resistance as the techniques are too deadly. The problem is that training without resistance doesn’t really work when it comes time to use the positions in the real world.
Finally, it depends on if your jiu-jitsu instructor actually teaches positions which are relevant to a real fight. Again, a lot of modern day jiu-jitsu clubs focus too much on sport and just totally neglect this part of the art. And because their students, who focus just on sport keep winning competitions, then they eventually get graded to black belt without ever having worn a gi, nor been taught the whole art.
If your goal with jiu-jitsu is just to win no-gi jiu-jitsu competitions, then SCJJA is not the right academy for you. At SCJJA you will never be graded to even blue belt if you do not know the fundamentals of training with grabbing clothing. Plus we also cycle through training with strikes and also the most common and useful self defence situations, with resistance.
In 2009 I won the Australasian ADCC trials at just 77kg. So I know a lot about competing in no-gi competitions. However I got into jiu-jitsu because I was being bullied at school.Then in my 20s I was the head bouncer at the Slip Inn / Chinese Laundry, where I obviously had my fair share of scraps, and never once faced charges from the police or any patron. In fact, I never threw a single punch in almost a decade of working the clubs.
Jiu-jitsu as I see it and teach it, is a martial art, and SCJJA I want to give you the best opportunity to defend yourself in a street situation first. Competitions are always a secondary consideration for me.
