Fact: Ryron and Rener Gracie are the best dudes in Jiu Jitsu

I am partial to Nick and Nate Diaz as the best dudes in jiu jitsu.
Many years of proving jiu jitsu's effectiveness in MMA. Staying true to their beliefs in spite of the trappings of fame and fortune.
I'm ok with r and r. They are legit.
 
I am partial to Nick and Nate Diaz as the best dudes in jiu jitsu.
Many years of proving jiu jitsu's effectiveness in MMA. Staying true to their beliefs in spite of the trappings of fame and fortune.
I'm ok with r and r. They are legit.

What be these beliefs in spite of fame and fortune?
 
Loyalty to team and family. Not playing the media game. Humble to white belts. Helpful to children. Not Changing to fit an accepdable media archetype. Demanding respect without polished verbal eloquence.
Changing the game to financially benefit their fellow competitors.
 
I respect Rener and Ryron. I don't have a problem with your argument.
 
Loyalty to team and family. Not playing the media game. Humble to white belts. Helpful to children. Not Changing to fit an accepdable media archetype. Demanding respect without polished verbal eloquence.
Changing the game to financially benefit their fellow competitors.

Without polished verbal eloquence is putting it very lightly. They dont exactly portray themselves with the cleanest image.

What do you mean humble to white belts? Not whooping on them every single time is kind of expected. If you are far more advanced, and you constantly whoop on the beginners, then you are just a total psychopath (in any endeavour). Not doing this is kind of expected, and is normal behavior.

If they volunteer for children's charity, then they are just following in the footsteps of every celebrity.
 
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That little kid blue belt instructor is one thing (I at least recall him being mildly humble about his lack of skill) but that Colorado girl cosplaying as a black belt just drives me nuts every time I see it. She's even got that frayed look to her fake black belt. Didn't her dad buy a gym for her and her sister to do their play acting?
 
I have heard they are very good instructors. I don't doubt it. But I'll give you two things that make them not the best, one little, one huge. The little one is the way Ryron acted like he proved some point by not getting tapped by Galvao at the first Metamoris. Yeah, okay, you proved you can stall. That's not a moral victory. It was literally the only rule set under which that strategy would work, and it's not really a rule set that's germane to what you supposedly teach, i.e. self defense. You just lay on your back and hold your own collars in a self defense (or MMA) situation and you're going to get the shit beat out of you.

The second, much bigger reason are the online belts. It couldn't be more of a cash grab selling out their grandfather's legacy. I'm sure the Gracie U material is quite good, but promoting people you've never met in person lacks any integrity and demeans the belt system. That alone DQs them from being 'the best guys in BJJ'.

Marcelo is clearly the best guy in BJJ, with Demian Maia and Cobrinha being close behind. Though there are a ton of really good guys, Draculino for instance is one of the coolest people you'd ever want to meet, Terere has a lot of demons but spends most of his time running social projects for favela kids, and that not even to mention the many small time gym owners no one has ever heard of who will open their doors to anyone in the community without a second thought.
 
I really like them for their free stuff online and I've loads of respect for their work in the self defense and police/army oriented BJJ.

I just find it a bit irritating that they always bring up Helio and the ''Gracie'' Jiu Jitsu stuff and the ''our Grand father'' every two sentences. The Gracies shouldn't be considered as the royal family. There's so many good school that branched out of the Gracies it's as if they try to discredit anything that's not directly from Helio.

They are Heliocentrists

I know that you should respect the founders but I'm not ok with all this worshiping
 
I really like them for their free stuff online and I've loads of respect for their work in the self defense and police/army oriented BJJ.

I just find it a bit irritating that they always bring up Helio and the ''Gracie'' Jiu Jitsu stuff and the ''our Grand father'' every two sentences. The Gracies shouldn't be considered as the royal family. There's so many good school that branched out of the Gracies it's as if they try to discredit anything that's not directly from Helio.

They are Heliocentrists

I know that you should respect the founders but I'm not ok with all this worshiping

Doesn't help that most of the time they mention him it's to try and get people to buy things from them as opposed to giving their business to other coaches who are, on paper, more successful in producing high level students.
 
I have no issue with online promotions. That actually frees up BJJ from the formality. Informal training and development is promoted more and encouraged more if have this incentive to train outside of going to formal school.
 
I have no issue with online promotions. That actually frees up BJJ from the formality. Informal training and development is promoted more and encouraged more if have this incentive to train outside of going to formal school.
I have a fundamental issue with online promotions. Flat out it's crap.
 
I have no issue with online promotions. That actually frees up BJJ from the formality. Informal training and development is promoted more and encouraged more if have this incentive to train outside of going to formal school.

You're implying the formality is a bad thing. I disagree. Formalism can be a problem when it gets in the way of innovation and growth, but in terms of maintaining a high level of quality over time it's very valuable. It matters to be in the room, and it matters for the teacher to actually know you to be able to effectively assess your progress and level. I don't think this discourages informal training and development, it just encourages committing to formal training which is what most people need, especially beginners who are hardly qualified to guide their own development. And certainly only promoting people you actually know and who carry the weight of your reputation has acted as a very effective quality control tool in BJJ.
 
We haven't done a lot, but some self defense centric stuff at my school.
Some of it seems really useful, like the leg kicks to technical standup etc.
All the "if someone grabs you're arm do this" stuff I don't think is really useful.
I feel like rolling at high intensity on a regular basis has me more prepared for a confrontation.

I do think it's cool they do light striking during their rolls
 
I have a fundamental issue with online promotions. Flat out it's crap.

Perhaps the presentation is not great, or the curriculum is too general, or the requirements for each belt are too easy or even the overall instruction is not very good because you can only do so much long distance/remote instruction.

But if it encourages practicing outside of formal training, then serves some purpose. Belts rankings, and formal promotions always eventually get watered down. Look at TMAs. Keeping the purity of each belt is secondary to spreading the sport around and just making it a fun activity for people to do.
 
You're implying the formality is a bad thing. I disagree. Formalism can be a problem when it gets in the way of innovation and growth, but in terms of maintaining a high level of quality over time it's very valuable. It matters to be in the room, and it matters for the teacher to actually know you to be able to effectively assess your progress and level. I don't think this discourages informal training and development, it just encourages committing to formal training which is what most people need, especially beginners who are hardly qualified to guide their own development. And certainly only promoting people you actually know and who carry the weight of your reputation has acted as a very effective quality control tool in BJJ.

You want to know why Muricans suck so bad at Soccer. It is way too formal. There is virtually no street soccer unless you are brown LOLZ.

The only thing that matters is playing the sport. For MAs, the equivalent is sparring. If you do it, you do it for yourself. You do not partake just so someone else can tell you how good you are. You push yourself. You find people who can challenge you because you enjoy the challenge. You do not need formal recognition. Your own satisfaction is all you need.
 
Perhaps the presentation is not great, or the curriculum is too general, or the requirements for each belt are too easy or even the overall instruction is not very good because you can only do so much long distance/remote instruction.

But if it encourages practicing outside of formal training, then serves some purpose. Belts rankings, and formal promotions always eventually get watered down. Look at TMAs. Keeping the purity of each belt is secondary to spreading the sport around and just making it a fun activity for people to do.

I don't know that that's true. Judo was the origin of the belt system, and their belts are not really watered down. The difference isn't how long the belt system has been around in a particular art, it's about how tied it is to competition. Which is a big part of why online belts are bad: they're not earned and generally not defended in competition. This is the flip side of what R&R did with their online belts. They made them self defense oriented, thus absolving their online 'students' from having to defend those belts the way everyone else is expected to (even if you don't compete, the expectation is that you won't get schooled by other people at your belt level).

I'm fully supportive of people using online resources to speed improvement, even lower belts. But I don't think that online learning being potentially useful obviates the need to keep promotions on a face to face basis with a coach who actually knows you and can assess your level over time.

I recall back in the early 00s when I first started training in Indiana and we didn't have a black belt, everyone got promoted twice a year when Caique came to town for seminars. These were generally pretty big seminars, and Caique didn't actually know hardly any of us, so he tended to more or less give all the white belts the same number of stripes, gave blue belts out to 4 stripe white belts, etc. Only the more advanced blue and purple belts really got any individual assessment, and you know what happened? You had no idea how good anyone was based on their belt color until they had been blue belts for a while because only at that stage did actual quality control start kicking in in the form of Caique's personal attention. It would be infinitely worse with online belts, you'd never have any confidence that anyone really looked at that person's performance over time and that they could defend their rank. Use whatever resources you want to train, but just like we don't give Khan academy users college degrees we shouldn't give people who spend lots of time on MGiA belt ranks.
 
You want to know why Muricans suck so bad at Soccer. It is way too formal. There is virtually no street soccer unless you are brown LOLZ.

The only thing that matters is playing the sport. For MAs, the equivalent is sparring. If you do it, you do it for yourself. You do not partake just so someone else can tell you how good you are. You push yourself. You find people who can challenge you because you enjoy the challenge. You do not need formal recognition. Your own satisfaction is all you need.

That's not why Americans suck at soccer. Americans suck at soccer because our best athletes go into other sports, and because the formal systems which you're so disparaging which produce elite talent in other countries don't exist in the US. If you're a soccer fan, you probably know that clubs like AC Barcelona literally have clubs + schools for teenagers where they rigorously assess their progress, give them great coaching, and generally run a factory for creating stars. That's how you produce great people, it's the same reason almost all the top competitors in BJJ come from one of 4 teams. The formal systems for nurturing talent are really, really important. Like I said in an earlier post it's great to have online resources, but in terms of advancing through a well thought out curriculum with continuous coaching and correction of your mistakes a real coach is irreplaceable. And that process is the only one which will produce consistent, quality belt ranks.

I do agree that belt ranks shouldn't be the reason you train, but even in sports where there are no ranks as such like boxing or Muay Thai all the best people still come from elite gyms, and that's not an accident. I don't know of any self taught Lumpinee or Ring Mag champs. Coaching matters, and online isn't going to get you to the the top.
 
Perhaps the presentation is not great, or the curriculum is too general, or the requirements for each belt are too easy or even the overall instruction is not very good because you can only do so much long distance/remote instruction.

But if it encourages practicing outside of formal training, then serves some purpose. Belts rankings, and formal promotions always eventually get watered down. Look at TMAs. Keeping the purity of each belt is secondary to spreading the sport around and just making it a fun activity for people to do.
No one said practicing outside of formal instruction is bad. ONLY practicing out of formal instruction is bad and then getting ranked via video is terrible. Imagine trying out for the olympic soccer team only by doing 1 on 1 drills with a compliant partner showing off your passing/dribbling/shots via online video.
 
I have no issue with online promotions. That actually frees up BJJ from the formality. Informal training and development is promoted more and encouraged more if have this incentive to train outside of going to formal school.

It is all nice and seems innocent.

But they are the one that refuse to go to a formal school.

But yet, they are the one that would want recognition via online grading.

Run their garage training and hoping to expand to CTC.


You might say that it is not the case of all the online students. You might say that most of them lives in remote places with no school. You even said that it is nice to do GJJ without going to a trained instructor.
Did you read about that online blue belt that start teaching?
A student walked and crossed chocked and the dude went to sleep because he did not know what it was as the combatives does not have any GI jacket techniques.

What about the kids that are running official CTC? You surely would not agree that a child can run a martial art class. Would you trust them with the safety of you kids?

I have some friends like that. They said that they are so good that no one can grade them in their country, they said they only seek the best and purest Bjj techniques as everyone else was not up to their standards. .

Now they fly in their instructors twice a year for a 3 hours seminars which they must open to public so they can cover the cost. Maybe over 50 people at the seminar, how much will you learn?
Oh wait, they been given a book of techniques for their curriculum which is like 400 pictures.
 
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It's discussions like this that always make it very very apparent who has trained or coached or competed at any decent/competent level and who has not
 
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