BJJ too complicated?

Maybe I has one of those sessions this week, but BJJ seems to be overly complicated in comparison with other combat sports:

Boxing: Fairly small number of defensive and offensive movements
Muay Thai/ Kickboxing: A bit more than boxing, but again relatively small number of movements.
Judo: Very much concept driven (e.g. Kuzushi). Fairly easy to remember concepts.

BJJ just has too much information in it sometimes. I regularly see people having mental meltdowns in class.

Is it just me? Is BJJ overly complex in terms of the amount of technical material compared to other full contact combat sports? I know it is complex to excel at any of the above, but I mean in terms of the amount if raw learning material, BJJ is in a league of it's own ( that isn't a compliment btw!)

 

Granted, isn't it's complexity, especially with regard to positional dominance part of the reason it is so successful as a combative art?

 

But just like Judo, in BJJ you only really specialise in a handful of positions.

 

Bjj reminds me of Tracy Kenpo. Hundreds apon hundreds of Techniques. I mean, I remember watching a Gracie interview and they said that their system has nearly 700 techniques total. I mean, that is a whole lot of memorization.

Like I have lamented before, I wish there was a grappling system that was balanced and a bit less memorization and more intuitive to learn. Grappling feels like trying to learn Latin with out a reference.

 

Once you become competent you DO start becoming intuitive. There are moves nobody had taught me that I do (and I'm sure exist later in the sylabuss).

 

That's just it Chadderz, you just nailed the issue. How many years does it take screwing around in the wilderness of confusion before you get competent and get it? What ticks me off the most is that the class's are so darn random. They don't flow from class to class. Could be advanced level inverted nonsense one class that is black belt suited then the next is white belt stuff. IT just feels so stinking random, no flow nothing tying one lesson to another.

I simply wish there was a better way to learn it, then the shotgun random approach seen all over hecks half acre.

 

That's an instructor issue not an art one. 3 years 3 times a week would be my estimation of "somewhat getting it".

 

Find someone who teaches Catch?

 

Learn to knock people out, throw em on the floor, run away. My punching is my main focus, I can do joint locks etc, chadderz competes and is a different animal

 

I've only done a handful of BJJ classes and have found the same thing. I think it's just part and parcel of how the sport is delivered. Individual techniques seem to be at the core of foundation over say, base principles and position (which I assume is something you're just meant to pick up along the way as you roll with others).

Not a bad thing for myself personally. I found it easy to just get on and train and realise what techniques fit principles of movement I'd already got ingrained.

 

Well taught classes make the complicated simple, and the simple, obvious.

Judo is exactly the same if you look through the BJA syllabus, but good teachers break it down into digestible chunks.

 

Of course it's more complicated. Striking is two columns of meat on two limbs trying to use all four limbs to impact the other meat column. Being on the ground you have far more options for basing, weight distribution, and leverage for any technique. Of course after a while the commonalities start to coalesce and you can become rather inventive by working from the principles instead of techniques but it's always going to be more complex.

 

Once you understand base/posture, positional hierarchy, hips, grips, pressure/space and have a handful of options from both top and bottom then everything really is a case of refining those elements, making them known bodily rather than intellectually, working on timing in rolling and drilling. BJJ feels like play and experimentation to me and I reckon it's pretty intuitive. Like Judo you tend to develop some staple techniques, plus a bunch of personal go to moves, a game style that suits your personality and the rest is just for giggles and exploration technique wise.

 

Yeah I just can't get enough of my superhuman left cross on the bag

 

I practice super low stances triangle footwork while I'm washing up

 

Boom headshot!

Getting up, making coffee, pancakes, getting in the car driving to work, and pretending to work for 8 hours, is complicated untill you do it a few thousand times, now its easy!

 

Once you have done it 1000 times though, you can start to complicate matters, like drinking the entire time.

Also, before you judge, i'm not driving while loaded, i'd get some other stooge to do that.

 

I've spent the whole decades budget of Columbia on drink,

 

Not the cia drug profits though

 

I've been thinking about this, the longer I train, the simpler it gets, but every now and again I get major breakthroughs where I see something amazingly simple that's totally game changing, I guess that's why I still train.