BJJ Sparring... Some questions

Hey all, I'm a whitebelt so forgive me if this is a noobish question.

I just watched a few sparring vids, from this forum and on youtube.

Why do BJJers spar so slowly? Even in some really serious tournaments I watched, the compeditors appeared to be extremely laidback and appeared to spar almost in slow motion.

Also I'd like to know more about takedowns in BJJ. In the vids I watched there didnt appear to be any prominent and effective takedown methods used. Could someone give me some examples and how they work.

Thanks

 

People who do BJJ are just people to girly to do Judo because there afraid they mgiht get hurt if someone throws them

In all seriousness though, groundwork is inherently slower paced than standup fighting most of the time and more strategic, it requires you to be more methodical in your approach and ensure that you'r not making any mistakes, particularly true at higher levels.

In addition to this, if your doing it right, you don't always have to move right, you allow your hands to cross someones centre while your in their guard and they don't have to be quick about taking your back, if they are good they can do it methodically and slowly.

Having said that, some people do work very fast during grappling, particularly in no-gi competition:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=rOS2udBN9R4

At the other end of the spectrum you can see hear that, although very slow paced, Rickson is winning these fights very quickly:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=khFWXdmGIKU

In trainning, going slow is emphasised a bit as well to ensure that you aren't muscling through your techniques o make them work but do in fact have them right.

On the takedown thing, most BJJ guys suck at them, they usually have a halfway to being allright double leg and single leg and thats about it unless they have a background in Judo or wrestling, which a lot of them do.

 

I see, thanks.

That seems kinda stupid, that bjj is based on ground fighting but bjjers suck at takedowns?

Just how effective is bjj in a real fight situation?

 

Sparring in BJJ competition is also slower paced (to a degree) so that a person...

A. Doesn't gas out.
B. Doesn't make a costly mistake.
C. Doesn't walk into a trap.
D. Can fight another two or three people in the same day if they beat the first guy.

Also it's done in a gi that can be used to inhibit movement.
Parts of matches that seem slow can actually be full of small (but significant) weight shifting, grip changes, feints and posture changes that are very hard to see or read from the outside. Or they can just be slow due to fatigue or over-respect for the other guy.

For takedowns in BJJ check out a Jacare highlight...some fantastic stuff.

 

I was actually only meaning that from a Judo point of view, from the point of view of most other martial arts they are OK at take downs because they practice them against resisting opponents on a semi-regular basis, it's just that they are second rate when compared to arts like Judo or Wrestling.

 

What you can't see in the videos is that all of us are underwater holding our breath. Which, while making it much slower, also amps the difficulty level up a few notches!

 

Sadly there are BJJ academies that have horrible takedowns. If you go to one that starts from the knees all the time, your takedowns will suck. We do that like ~80% of the time as it safer and we are concentrating on the ground. I'd say every 2 weeks or so, and moreso when tournaments are coming up, we have takedown/throw only classes. 2 of our purples are taking Judo too, and we have a few guys with wrestling experience to work with too.

Not to brag, but I have never been taken down in a tournament, and I had no judo/wrestling when I started and I don't consider my takedowns to be all that great. Just some schools devote no time to it, so someone like me can look pretty good in competition!

 

My school doesn't really focus on takedowns. We have a competition class once per week that focuses on conditioning and takedowns. It's an hour long before the regular Sunday class, and then open mat after. Sundays are brutal. But you end up getting lots of mat time, some take down and a wicked workout.

 

judo is for people who are too weak to keep fighting after a throw

most bjj schools, and most bjjers, aren't training for mma or THE STREET - they're training for fun, and at most, bjj tournaments. most bjjers just don't care much about takedowns, and thus don't bother to train them. it's not, "they suck at what they do," it's "they suck at what they don't care to do."

if you go to a very competitive bjj school, particularly one run by a former wrestler/judoka and especially if it's part of an mma curriculum, you'll see people training takedowns extensively. if you go to the average school, with average bjjers who "just want to roll," they're unlikely to be very interested in impacting the mats at high speed.

i know one of the bjj/mt schools around here has judo on their schedule; i dropped by one day and saw that the printed schedules actually say "judo for bjj" on them. so they've got dedicated time for takedowns, and the rest of the classes for important stuff

 

Actually once a week is not bad. It's alot better than none. Why the schools that only do BJJ for competion don't is beyond me, I like being up 2-0 and on top. It's sad to see purple belts and above pulling guard.

One of our guys, who was a white belt at the time, tapped a blue belt in under 30 seconds because of it at a tournament. The blue belt jumped up to pull guard and our guy did not hold him up. When they hit the mat it took the breath out of the blue belt and our guy pulled off a quick gi choke.

 

*******....have you learned to fight blindfolded yet?

ask yer teacher if you want to find out ;p

 

Here's a video of one of our guys, Trevin, from last weekend at the tourney. He's about 230lbs and is a blue belt at my school. He gets a beautiful throw early in the video and eventually wins with an Americana:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8rEOXN_KUjQ"]Pac NW BJJ Tournament - YouTube[/ame]

Some of our dudes have good takedowns. We learn more than just single/double legs, although we do drill those frequently. We do arm drags, hip throws, fireman carries and all sorts of fun stuff.

 

Is that a red belt?

 

The red belt is for the ref/scorekeepers to tell the competitors apart. I was at one that had you tie a small red ribbon on your ankle.

That was a slick throw. He had good defense on his feet too.

 

What 1bad65 said. The red belt was for scoring only. They were both blue belts.

 

not all bbjer's spar slowly. it all depenends on the style and personality of the individual Bjjer.


naturally aggressive people will not spar slowly. laid back people will spar slowly.

 

Nice throw, I got caught by it in my first Judo grading fight.

And my second.

Bastards, I hate people who do that cheap throw.

 

On throws/takedowns....Judo is better if this is what you want to learn...

But as a BJJer I take the view that it doesn't really matter how you end up on the ground..it's what happens once you're down there.

Sure, if it's a competition you get points, but if we're talking fighting/SD, who cares if you get a great ippon sionagi (or whatever it's called), so long as if you end up down there too, you can dominate?

Depends where your training stems from...mine, I'm always thinking SD and that's the Rickson way (the association I train with). If your aim is medals and trophies, sure, learn nice technical takedowns and get your points. I'd much rather focus on where it's really at and from that perspective, BJJers tend to have superior ground skills.

Not meaning this to sound like a judgement - we all do what we do for different reasons and that's fine. We just need to understand that the objectives are different, therfore the focal points are different.

On the speed thing - Jiu Jitsu should be that way. If done in its intended way, power and speed should be an attribute that you add to superior technique...not vice versa. Again, this can change according to where you train - clubs that are competitio oriented are much more likely to be speed/power based as they're trying to force techniques within a timescale to score points so you have to muscle it a bit more. If you like that, cool, but your longer term development will suffer from not developing superior technique and sensitivity.

 

My instructor's so good, he even talks in slow motion.

 

So you are saying that for Fighting & Self Defence (I assume that's what SD is?) its better to pull guard or fall down haphazardly and work from there and that throws only works for technical points scoring in judo competitions?