How far can you get in grappling by yourself?

JustOnce

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If you do not have means to grappling classes for whatever reasons, whether it be location, financial, personal..... How far do you think you can get in grappling whether it's bjj or etc by yourself?

Can someone James Thompson his way through the arts of BJJ by teaching himself with DVDs?
 
About as far as you can trying to make a baby by yourself.
 
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Bro there are so many ways to find someone who is interested just to train in the front room of a house. Do you have any friends? Do you have access to the internet? If you really want to train, you would.
 
After years of watching ufc i can comfortably say i am probably at a purple belt level of bjj.
 
If you do not have means to grappling classes for whatever reasons, whether it be location, financial, personal..... How far do you think you can get in grappling whether it's bjj or etc by yourself?

Can someone James Thompson his way through the arts of BJJ by teaching himself with DVDs?

By yourself?

Just get some cheap jigsaw puzzle mats and get a friend to drill some stuff from YouTube. That how it was back in 10 years ago with VHS tape and no YouTube stuff.
 
It's very challenging to work on anything other than your fitness or an infantile exposure to techniques. It would be the equivalent of learning just the Russian or Japanese alphabets and how to pronounce each letter, but not knowing what any of the actual words mean.

The higher you progress, the more benefit you can gain from resources such as books, videos, or solo training sessions, but that's only because you already have an understanding of most of the underlying how and why.
 
You can't. You need a partner.

It's very challenging to work on anything other than your fitness or an infantile exposure to techniques. It would be the equivalent of learning just the Russian or Japanese alphabets and how to pronounce each letter, but not knowing what any of the actual words mean.

The higher you progress, the more benefit you can gain from resources such as books, videos, or solo training sessions, but that's only because you already have an understanding of most of the underlying how and why.

Basically this and what a few others have said. If you can't join a school to train properly your going to need to train with a buddy.

But if you and your buddy basically have very little to no grappling experience it will be the 'blind leading the blind'. You may develop bad technique/poor habits and not know it. So that has its own downside.

Assuming your like the average person its very hard to learn BJJ on your own because you need an experienced person to guide you.

At best you'll pick up how to do the most basic submissions.
 
all you can do is tons and tons of hip movement drills youll get burnt out bored of it after a week too
 
If you do not have means to grappling classes for whatever reasons, whether it be location, financial, personal..... How far do you think you can get in grappling whether it's bjj or etc by yourself?

Can someone James Thompson his way through the arts of BJJ by teaching himself with DVDs?
By yourself? as in no partners? or as in no professor but some dummy training partners to train with?
 
Honestly, I think you can be a decent blue belt with just DVD's and a grappling dummy.
 
LOL Blue belt is not that big a deal.

I agree blue belt is not a big deal, but you still need to know 'what your doing and why'. The biggest advantage in earning a blue belt on the mats with a coach is the 'sparring'. Technique, alone, only gets you so far. It has to be "Technique+Sparring" to commit it to brain and muscle memory.
 
I never trained with anyone until I was a blue belt. It was very easy to self train.
 
LOL Blue belt is not that big a deal.
I’m not saying it is. But I don’t get how you could be a mid level blue belt having never rolled once.

In fact not just never rolled but never even attempted a technique on an actual person, resisting or otherwise.

Gracie combatives had people upset over giving out blue belts to people who had to film themselves demonstrating techniques on another person. Your talking about no instructor, no training partner. That’s absurd to me.
 
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