I scoured the interwebs looking for a best Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu demo I could find to show you guys what BJJ is all about. For those who are new to BJJ, let me explain some of the fighting concept first. I won’t go into any history here, but you can always go to wikipedia to discover more about the arts amazing and recent history (BJJ has been around less than 100 years, and is proven as the most effective martial art in the world).
The art of BJJ is mostly on the ground, and uses leverage, not strength, to defeat an opponent by submission. If in boxing your goal is to knock someone out, in BJJ your goal is to tap someone out. Tapping is like saying ‘uncle’ when your friend or your brother in 5th grade twisted your arm behind your back and told you to”SAY UNCLE!”.
When you tap, say, in the case of an arm bar, you feel an enormous pressure and pain in your joints and the only thing you can do is tap to signal your training partner that if he doesn’t release the pressure ASAP your arm is going to break like when actor Jeff Goldblum arm-wrestled that guy in the 1986 movie, The Fly, and snapped his arm in two!
Although submissions are the way to finish a guy in BJJ, positioning is the first step in leading into a submission. Because of this, BJJ is all about position. When someone watches BJJ for the first time, it might look boring. I’ve heard several people ask, when they first watch it, “are they just laying there on top of each other?” Well, the more you understand what’s going on, the more amazing watching BJJ is.
As far as positioning goes, let me first say this. The guy on his back is often in the better position than the guy on top. I was talking about this to my dad, who knows boxing and wrestling, but BJJ? Not too much…
“Me? I’d rather be the guy on top. I wouldn’t ever want to be the guy on the bottom…no way!”
Then I showed my pops a few submissions from the guard like the collar choke and the triangle choke right there in the living room. As most who experience these chokes from the guard position, he quickly became a believer!
So, I continued to show my dad some of the basic positions, starting with:
The Guard – This is when you’re on your back, but the opponent hasn’t passed your legs. If you’re legs are wrapped around the guys waist and locked, this is called “closed guard” and is a very effective position in BJJ. There are many different types of guard positions including open guard, hooks guard, spider guard, half guard and several others. From the guard you can throw submissions, or sweep an opponent to gain:
The Mount – From here you are on top, but you have passed the opponents legs and are sitting on his stomach or chest. This is a powerful and dominant position for submissions, and it is difficult for your opponent to escape. The only position arguably more favorable than the mount is:
The Back – They call it “taking the back” and usually when it happens it means the end of the opponent, unless they have really great defense or more experience than you. The rear naked choke is a devastating submission from this position that cuts of blood flow to the brain, leaving you passed out in just a few seconds of squeezing in on the choke.
There are many other positions, transitions, sweeps and submissions in BJJ, but at least this gives you a very basic understanding. Now check out the video!
