In Brazil, it was not considered macho to gang up on someone in a fight. A lot of BJJ was specialized with the idea that it would be one-on-one, maybe even more so GJJ. This was not just for competition, however, there was always the idea that it would be used on the streets (outside of competition). Some BJJ instructors do focus more on the self-defense aspects. You train it how you might use it. The self-defense aspects of BJJ are going to include training in street cloths, more stand-up and against a wall type training. Weapons such as knife and club, some gun at close range. Stand-up grappling and against striking and kicking. It still mainly is going to be one-on-one, however. The training of any martial art is going to be modified towards a purpose and environment. I admit that BJJ tends to train mainly for the competition setting, but that isn't a flaw. If one is to find a flaw in this training, it isn't for what it does, it is for what it doesn't do. What does it neglect. For self-defense, one should do at least some regular training in street clothes or what clothes would be worn and in an environment simliar to real situations. For safety reasons there are adjustments made. Training habits such as dropping a knee to the pavement on a shoot that could be developed in an environment where there are always pads on the ground quickly get realized as flawed when training on a hard and unforgiving surface. Training without protection against weapons or striking is also put into perspective when you add back in some striking and the possibility of weapons into your training. This is not just true with BJJ but any martial art. In fact, BJJ ground really takes advantage of strikers that neglect the ground fighting. I don't mean strikers that neglect grappling, that is a problem in itself. What I mean is those strikers that neglect training on how to strike in ground fighting. Many strikers develop good ability to use the legs and hips to generate power in strikes, they try to do the same thing on the ground but they find they lose a lot of their power. They don't know how to strike in ground fighting.
Developed mainly for one-on-one situations. Also specialized to take advantage of fighters that don't know how to strike well against a grappler, particularly from the clinch and ground. By taking striking away, that leaves more to be decided by who is the more skilled grappler. The more skilled grappler, if submission can't be achieved, then they will work on getting fatigue to be a factor in the fight. If you find you are using BJJ training and come against an opponent that is a really good grappler or someone who is good at striking in ground fighting and from the clinch, BJJ will come out as seeming very limited. Just to turn things around, most striking arts in the past had neglected training in the ground fighting, it was neglect in that it was not taken into account what a good skilled grappler can do.
Good posting fanatical Just to address this, it is a natural response for many to latch on to something when falling. How they train can override these instincts with some other instinct. Fighting needs to be instinctive particularly when there are many unknown factors such as multiple opponents being involved. Fighting is chaos and there is no time to think as you go along, but rather only time to follow already developed strategies/procedures and techniques that are "hard-coded" into your neural pathways and muscle-memory for stressful situations. Experience is probably the best teacher of such things. When it comes to takedowns, the skill of the opponent as well as your skill are both very relevant, such as this opinion: 1) An unskilled fighter or one caught by surprise can go down easily with a takedown. They may grab you, even grab you after they fall to the ground, but their technique and position probably won't be good enough to take you down with them. 2) A semi-skilled fighter or one that has an idea of what is going on is very likely to grab onto you when you attempt to take them down and take you down with them. That is if they have something they can grab on to. They may end up on the top or bottom. 3) A very skilled fighter has superior balance, footwork, technique, and will likely counter your takedown, preventing it from working... they may even counter you and take you down instead. If you both go to the ground, it probably is because they want to be there. Note: Anyone can be sucker punched so surprise is a big factor also. Where your skill comes in is in the dealing with the three situations above. Many are skilled enough to deal with situation one. Some are not skilled enough to deal with situations one and two. They end up be grabbed without immediately being able to counter it and take advantage of the situation. This can be very bad if the opponent is much bigger and stronger than you are. Very few are skilled enough to deal well with all of the situations one, two, and three. Those that can deal with situation three are some of the few that have developed good fluid, instinctived, and effective technique that can be used against people much stronger and bigger than they are, as well as skill that could be practical against multiple attackers. Some of this is very influenced by the situation and relative skill levels. If the opponent is very skilled at takedowns and your counters are not as good, well they probably will take you down unless you can use some other strength to find a weakness in what they do. Clarification: Anyone can find themselves in a situation against a stronger and multiple opponents. You can only do what you can... nothing is for certain... never give up if that is what it takes.
You are now talking about MMA like stuff, not submission wrestling. You can't punch someone in the face in a submission wrestling match no more than you can head butt in a boxing match or do a standing guillotine choke in a muay thai match. Thats what I mean by fit for purpose. You are training for a particular situation.
But while securing a triangle choke for a boxer is rather difficult and technical, punching someone in the face from mount is not brain surgery for a grappler.
This difference in rules of engagement had me very confused for a long time. When I first started BJJ training seven or so years ago, from the first day of training we were practicing striking from the mount, knees and strikes from side control and other similar things. This was all integrated with the grappling and chokes. Later I found out that many who train in BJJ don't strike. I thought maybe I was learning Vale Tudo. I talked it over with the BJJ instructor and he said that he was teaching us BJJ for self-defense. He knew we weren't interested in grappling competitions, he also acknowledged that our striking and standup skills, as well as ground attack, were already in our training. So it was specifically ground fighting we trained in. MMA is a mix of martial arts for all ranges (except projectile ranges), but this BJJ that we trained in was specifically for ground fighting... this means it was not MMA, just the ground range in MMA with some standup. I stress, just the ground range!!! In the ground range we worked not just on submission wrestling but we also worked on striking for the ground range.
