Jiu Jitsu in the Streets?
“Situations dictate tactics.”
~ Greg Souders
In many ways I’m relieved that the debate about martial arts’ efficacy in self defense, that is real-world interpersonal violence, has largely been relegated to circles of charlatans and hucksters.
Bear with me.
Martial efficacy isn’t that complicated. Everything is a drag race to a weapon.
Anyone I’ve ever me that is truly competent in either sport martial arts or force-on-force tactics intimately understands both the utility and limitations of each.
Forget the movies. Have you ever tried to throw a roundhouse kick in a crowded bar? That’s the same delusion and correspondingly warranting of criticism as “pulling guard on pavement.”
In case you didn’t know, most interpersonal violence happens in small spaces — bathroom stalls, between cars in a parking lot, the back seat of a car, public stairwells, elevators, etc. That gives you maybe a 6x6 space, hardly a 16’ ring.
When I work with civilians on “personal preparedness and protection”; I emphasize three points:
Choose Safety: Detect, defuse, defend. The order is important.
Thou Shalt Not Go To A Secondary Crime Scene: You’ve all seen movies. The ideas have to come from somewhere. Die on the sidewalk, not in a dungeon.
Decide Ahead: What your moral, legal, and ethical obligations and limitations are (e.g. what it will cost to fight back, or not to, and what would you pay to get away safely).
When I work with law enforcement on "defensive tactics” I emphasize:
Hands Hurt: Grabbers grab things, like weapons.
Positional and Mechanical Dominance: Efficient control means less drastic (and therefore risky) behaviors and tolls (e.g. weapons) have to employed. This makes things safer for everyone.
Safe Disengagement: This will likely save your life more than once.
Can you spot the similarities?
Before we move on to “butt scooting” I want to share a story to clarify my thoughts on “sport” and “traditional” martial arts. I have no idea if the story is true, but the point remains the same:
Bas Rutten was teaching a rear naked choke to a group of students. Attending the class was also a group of self-acclaimed self-defense martial arts experts.
While instructing, Bas saw that the visitors were murmuring to themselves in the back row. Bas stopped instructing to ask if they had any questions. One of them spoke up and said; “We would just gouge the eyes (to defend).”
Bas nodded, and motioned for one of the visitors to come to the front of the class to participate as the uke (person demonstrated on). As per the rear naked choke, Bas, from behind, put one arm around the visitor’s neck and folded his other arm behind their head.
Bas said, “Okay, whenever you’re ready, gouge my eyes out, and on the count of three I break your fucking neck!”
The visitor looked up shocked and startled.
To conclude, Chris Haueter makes the brilliant point that in order to improve our skills — self-defense or otherwise — we need to train. In order for training to be productive, we need rules so that we don’t kill or maim each other in the process.
Now, on to butt-scooting…
When the aforementioned rules get installed, they will always be manipulated by the player(s) who most want to win. That’s their job. As such, limitations and weakness in positions and rules get brought to light by such exploitation.
It’s happened in submission grappling, judo, boxing, and yes, wrestling too. “Playing the rules” or “gaming the system” isn’t cheating. It’s efficient and smart.
This is a good thing.
It’s good because we don’t get better doing everything all at once all the time. Do MMA fighters only train “MMA” all the time? Or do they have separate conditioning, grappling, boxing, muay thai, grapple-boxing, and MMA training sessions?
If you really want to learn something, would you go to a generalist or a specialist?
If my job is to win a match, and the rules state that that must be by submission, and the most efficient way to do so is from the ground, on my butt, and entangling my opponent’s legs then so be it.
You can complain about “the streets” and I’ll collect the “W”, because that was my job for the day. Very much to the point of this article, the “win conditions” change the requisite course of action significantly.
Obviously this is the case if there are weapons or striking involved and also if it is a points-match or submission-only. But it also depends on the weight class or even the duration of the matches and number of matches in the day.
All of this comes full circle in the day-to-day training room. “Micro games” of course lose relevance the more minutely focused they become, but that is sort of the point. By taking things to the extreme you can learn a whole lot — not least of which is where the point of diminishing returns is.
The staple in our gym has become:
From a neutral standing position: the first person to score or submit wins the round.
We can also apply this to traditional “positional sparring” or “specific training.” Rather than just escaping the mount position (for example) the top person is incentivized to either submit or score by taking the back, but the bottom person cannot be content to “recover guard” or get mounted, they must achieve a scoring position.
Again, to bring things full circle, a few weeks ago I taught a police defensive tactics class during which we covered restraining a belly down “passive resistant” person. When I hid a rubber knife on the “suspects”, the top player, even my seasoned BJJ volunteers, got some nasty surprises even though they had taken the back and / or mounted their partner.
What’s even more amazing is that with the initial shock and just a few coaching cues, pretty much everyone figured out just how important hand-control was and did pretty good job staying alive — at least within the context of a single-session class.
The real kicker?
How important is hand-fighting, positional control, and mechanical superiority in “sport” grappling?
At the same time, fighting for your life (perceived or real), is literally antithetical to learning and developing new neural patterns. We must be able to play and relax in order to develop and implement new skills.
As the competition environment diversifies, so must our training.