Gracie online training/grading

Eddie bravo also offers it.

IIRC 'the gracie acadamy' Is only one very small branch of the family, And the belts they offer are (or used to be anyway) In combatatives NOT BJJ.

 

You can't learn a martial art without a gym of some sort. Even if its your instructors back yard.

 

No need for opinions on if its legit or not. If its bjj it gets tested. If the online students compete and win its legit. If not its not.

 

Really really minor point which proves how shoddy it is -

''Four-stripe brown belt is the highest rank you can achieve through the Video Evaluation Process. Testing for black belt requires participate in a five-day qualification test at the Gracie Academy headquarters in Torrance, ''

http://www.gracieacademy.com/online_learning.asp

The really bad part is, There videos are great, the instruction is great, if they didnt do the grading bit, the online system would actually be more popular amoungst the BJJ community.

Another thing that is irksome, is that the marketing tries to convince people, that your better off, training at home with this system, then learning non 'Gracie Acadamy' BJJ under a blackbelt. Its the same marketing line given out by eddie bravo, and its complete hogwash.


This link here explains how there making money from it -

https://gracieuniversity.com/Instructor.aspx

 

I'm not bothered. I'm 4 yrs in and will get the bb in the next 15 or so. All good.

 

in the grand scheme of things it probably doesnt really matter, most people drop out of BJJ at bluebelt level (and many rarely stay in the art past 25) so the chances of many of the on line students making it to brown is remote.

And so what even if they do? BJJ is a different animal these days and stands on its own and doesnt need the Gracie name anymore so this really wont effect the sport that much.

 

It's a shame that this is (quite rightly) attracting flak.
Because the material offered, the structure and the way it all fits together as a system (and as a way of negotiating your way through a fight) is really good.
Very methodical, with each lesson building on the previous one. It really is useful stuff.
Compared to the way kata and patterns are structured in Karate and TKD (where they don't often relate to each other or build on previous lessons) the way the Gracie's teach is great.
It'd be better though if they just offered a "Fundamental Level" cert rather than belts because the BJJ belt system is self regulating and seen as legit.

 

Upon further reflection the I still don't see a negative with this. I do not value the bjj belts and when I see a purple or brown that I don't know I'm not wowed by that I want to roll with them, and that is when you find a persons true rank. Even within my academy there are different types of belt/person, I put them into 4 categories:

General Population grade- promoted for time invested and personal growth, may or may not compete.
Master class grade- can be same as above but the instructor holds promotion until you can dominate your grade with a few exclusions
Competition Team grade- those who regularly compete in nationals
Pro competiton grade- elite team, pro fights, sponsored.

A blue in the last grade can beat a brown/black in the general pop during a roll due to conditioning and drilling levels.

So when I see someone new I train with them to see where they fit into that and go from there. The brown/black that is beaten by the blue has the moves that they can show just like in Gracie Online but doesn't have the pressure testing and aggressive nature.

This is the defnkng factor of bjj- not the techniques but the crucible. And there is nothing stopping the online guys from competing at a tourney, and there is no real difference for those browns and blacks in the general pop group going on to open a school...

 

me and a friend who i do JJ with had talked about this, we roll a lot in our JJ classes and had wondered how valuable it would be. ultimately we agreed that BJJ is rather competition based, I'm not sure if you need to compete to grade like say in some Judo systems, but we werent sure how valid the 'belts' would be just from videoing us doing some techniques.

but as mattt said, in many clubs you'll have different quality of grades for different things, in my first ever JJ competition as an orange belt I beat a second dan - belts don't always mean how good you are, but how much you know - but does this still hold true in more 'sport/competition' based arts?

 

Not in this case.
The Gracie stuff is much more in line with the original ideas of Helio and Carlos and is geared towards negotiating your way through a street fight with a larger, untrained opponent.
It's not 50/50 guard and funky omoplata set-ups.
It's always aware of dealing with strikes, for example, by good distance management and body positioning.
That's not always stressed in sport BJJ.

 

To clarify - the sports competition aspect is what pressure tests your game for anywhere. It's this aspect that makes bjj superior to JJJ, nothing to do with the techniques. It is the people pushing then to the limits. If JJJ did the same if would be as good.

 

Ignoring the belts for a moment I do think that someone coming from a different grappling background could pick up some decent skills from this.

I trained about 90% no-gi and just rolled with different people. I had no desire to compete. On those rare occasions when I went to a gi class I was sometimes surprised to see the actual belt the person held. I surprised a few people as well since I was technically a white belt even though I had over 5 years of grappling experience and I was 58 when I stopped training. Bad knees finally did me in.

 

58, that's impressive.

 

I cannot see how anyone can learn a martial art properly by video, but I'm very much of the mindset that a martial art is an interactive skill. You can learn forms all day long but until you cross hands with someone you will have no idea if or how you can use it in a fight.

You can learn FORMS via a video and you can learn TECHNIQUES via video, but until you work with an opponent, I cannot see how you can learn.

And then there is the idea of grading and testing. How do you do THAT via video? If your art is primarily based on forms, then I can see how it can work, but in an art that requires hands-on work (BJJ, Judo, Aikido, Taiji, Wing Chun, etc.), I cannot see how an instructor can evaluate you properly without being right there and working with you.

 

If you want to grade in BJJ, go to a BJJ club, Grades are quite a strong indicator of ability in BJJ still. You dont get a blackbelt without doing at least 5000/10000 hours on the mats.

Online grade are pretty much laughed at everywhere.

 

Its always bell curve, But becuase of where you are gym wise, you will see the high level guys more.
And at the end of the day someone with poor technique but a lot of conditioning aint gonna teach me much as a teacher apart from how to programme my conditioning.