My Experience with both Gracie Combatives and Sport BJJ

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So I have been training in both Gracie Combatives at a Gracie Garage and BJJ at a sport BJJ school for a year and a half now. I thought I would share my experiences and opinion since periodically someone will come on the board, ask questions, and get some very one sided answers from people who really have no experience with both.

"The world according to me (take it for what it is worth)."

The basis of all BJJ is Gracie Jiu Jitsu. That being said, sport BJJ is geared toward competition with rules so many schools no longer teach ANY of the pure self defense techniques. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has gone through a metamorphosis and has been adapted to fit the current competition environment.

BJJ techniques are geared toward facing an opponent in competition that also knows BJJ. The Gracie Combatives are really just a selection of the original self defense techniques taught by Helio and are not designed to be used against someone who knows BJJ.

Against someone who knows BJJ some of the Combatives work (Trap and Roll), others become irrelevant (punch block series), and other still will not work on them at all (this version of elevator sweep). That is not what they are designed for. However, in my experience they work REALLY WELL on those that do not know jiu jitsu. They work better and are more efficient than specifically BJJ techniques against these people. Some people my not believe this, but just think about it for a minute. Techniques are geared to act counter to a specific action. BJJ practitioners are much less likely to make a novice type of mistake. They have reactions to counter your technique and balance and the BJJ techniques take those reactions into account. An opponent untrained in BJJ with have completely different reactions than one trained in BJJ. Because of this certain techniques will not work on them as well, others work much better. Will BJJ techniques still work for self defense? Of course, but their are techniques in the Combatives that are more effective in this very specific situation.

Gracie Combatives techniques are great if you take them for what they were designed to do. They are not meant for sport competition, but they are still the original Gracie techniques as taught by Helio (not all of them, 36 of them to be exact).

Now onto the training in a garage vs training in a school controversy. In my opinion most BJJ instructionals are not detailed enough to allow you to learn very effectively at home without an experienced coach to guide you. Once you reach a certain level and know and understand the basics of jiu jitsu, then you can probably learn a great deal on your own with the instructionals and make them work for you without a coach. That being said I agree with many that it would be very difficult to learn on your own from the beginning without a good instructor.

Unlike the most BJJ instructionals, the Gracie Combatives are extremely detailed. They spend as much as 30 minutes to one hour on a single lesson (including explanation, demonstration, details, and drills). This makes the set very large by necessity (13 DVDs to cover 36 lessons). They cover all the most common mistakes, etc.

I really like some the BJJ instructionals like the Roy Dean Blue Belt set. It is great and for BJJ quite detailed, but not nearly as detailed as the Combatives. It cannot be, it covers many techniques in only 2 dvds. Also the Gracie Combatives is inexpensive ($120) for the amount of information that you get. I suspect that the only reason they can charge so little is that it they will make more money with everything else you buy on their site once you get hooked. Many of the things they sell on their online store are very expensive like $40 T-shirts, $45 shorts, posters, mats, belt testing fees, etc. I am not hating on them, it is business and they are very, very good at it.

I doubt that any BJJ instructor is going to have the time or means to make a set nearly as detailed as the Combatives. If they do it will have to be way to expensive for most people to afford.

Perceived weakness with the Gracie Combatives: no sparring until blue belt.
Alot of people really area against this and I can understand why. They are good things about it and bad things. How many of you have been injured multiple times or re-injured and had to take some significant time off training? How many have had to quite completely. I know that I have had to take months off because of injuries. The journey from white to blue is got to be one of the most injury prone periods in jiu jitsu because you really do not know how to roll safely at first and you do not know your own limits. If you knew the basics and were comfortable on the ground by drilling techniques and fight simulation drills for 250 hrs before competing for sparring you would be much less like to injure yourself. That would make you much more likely to continue your journey in jiu jitsu. This makes everyone happier. You are happy because you can continue to learn injury free, the Gracie's are happy because they have satisfied customers, you continue to train and buy things/spread the word and make the Gracies even more money and hence more happy.

Obviously the other side of this is that since you do not spar until later in the game you are not learning as quickly (maybe this is partially balanced by time out for injuries?). I believe in sparring. I think that it is what really sets this martial art aside from others. You can spar full speed and power and see if it works. Everyone can walk away unscathed (usually) and do it again the next day.

In my opinion it is very hard to pick up "clean" technique in a school. To really get technique clean and crisp you have to drill, drill, drill, drill...you get the picture. There is no time for that in class usually. In my experience you are usually exposed to too many techniques in too short a period to really learn much or build any reflexes. If you are lucky you pick up one and eventually in the next few sparring sessions you can make it start to work for you. I feel that this is a really inefficient way of learning. What I get most out of class is the sparring.

The Combatives is much better for learning technique, BUT again these techniques are not really great for BJJ. And the sparring is lacking until later of course.

Conclusion: Training Gracie Combatives is not better or worse than training at a sport BJJ school. They both have different purposes. I am glad I have done both. I love the sparring. One thing I have learned from the Combatives is that in order to make my sport BJJ better I really need a training partner with whom I can drill BJJ technique. That combined with class would be a great combo.
 
I'm not sure your conclusion that "Training Gracie Combatives is not better or worse than training at a sport BJJ school" is a valid conclusion given your observations.

If the one huge selling point is that Grace Combatives focuses on drilling crisp techniques, I have to tell you that there are plenty of "sport" BJJ schools that focus on drilling crisp techniques; give you time to drill the techniques; teach you solid, useful BJJ technique; and allow you to roll each class. It could be that you just found a club which doesn't drill much.

If you take out the drilling part of the equation, this may be a more valid conclusion based on your observations:

The Combatives . . . techniques are not really great for BJJ.
 
My conclusion:

You wrote this article to make yourself feel better about training at a combatives school because you have been getting womped on at tournaments by "sport bjj" players. It's okay though, they were really sneaky with their sweeps that you were never taught... and if reaping the knee and eye gauges were allowed you would have won.

"The basis of all BJJ is Gracie Jiu Jitsu" ... im pretty sure the basis came from Japanese jiu jitsu / judo.


Add knives / guns and both combative jiu jitsu and sport bjj are nullified.
 
bottom line is: if you have a drilling partner that is REALLY willing to drill 100's of armbars every day, you'll get better. Barely anyone at white belt is willing to do this much work.

for the most part, drilling is what gets you better. Dead reps, situation sparring, etc will all help more than just sparring. Sparring is just applying what you've drilling into memory.
 
well, I kind of agree with you on something....

Though right now at GB premiun, rookies are not suppous to roll befero 3 or 4 months... I do agree that at the beggining, rolling should not be that important, I do feel like teaching teachnique and doing situational rolling is more important than free rolling... when I go started at bjj, I started rolling after the 3rd class at much, I really had no idea what to do... I was like, ok... here we go, wtf do I do? after a couple of minutes I was trying to choke my partner from inside his guard... I think the studen has to has at least the most basic concepts down before starting to roll, such as what is a guard... what is the guard desing for, steps how to proceed once you are in someoens guard (open, pass, etc) etc etc etc...now when I roll with new guys, I try to guide them on what to do, and while rolling trying to explain why he has to do that, that is not just because "cause" .... (that goes down the pipe every now and then when Im matched with some big strong rooking trying to headlock the fuck out of me lol)

On the other side, blue belt level seems too extreme to make them wait, but considering that their blue belt requirments are not the regular blue belt requirment, I dont know how long it will take the regular student to get a blue belt, since most schools do not give the belts for how many techniques the student know but for how good their rolling is (among other aspects)....

anyways, I liked your report.
 
bottom line is: if you have a drilling partner that is REALLY willing to drill 100's of armbars every day, you'll get better. Barely anyone at white belt is willing to do this much work.

for the most part, drilling is what gets you better. Dead reps, situation sparring, etc will all help more than just sparring. Sparring is just applying what you've drilling into memory.

shit, for once we agree....
 
My conclusion:

You wrote this article to make yourself feel better about training at a combatives school because you have been getting womped on at tournaments by "sport bjj" players. It's okay though, they were really sneaky with their sweeps that you were never taught... and if reaping the knee and eye gauges were allowed you would have won.

"The basis of all BJJ is Gracie Jiu Jitsu" ... im pretty sure the basis came from Japanese jiu jitsu / judo.


Add knives / guns and both combative jiu jitsu and sport bjj are nullified.

Wow, that is a whole lot of assumption. So what do you think a good tournament record would be? What is your definition of getting "womped?" Please answer, I would be interested to know.
 
bottom line is: if you have a drilling partner that is REALLY willing to drill 100's of armbars every day, you'll get better. Barely anyone at white belt is willing to do this much work.

for the most part, drilling is what gets you better. Dead reps, situation sparring, etc will all help more than just sparring. Sparring is just applying what you've drilling into memory.

I agree completely. Finding someone else willing to do this with you is quite challenging (white, blue, pruple, etc).
 
no offense -but that was an awful lot of words to explain the diference between two BJJ systems which already list your reasoning in their own charters and mission statements.
 
I think BJJ schools should offer the Gracie Combatives program for their first white belt stripe.
 
well, I kind of agree with you on something....

Though right now at GB premiun, rookies are not suppous to roll befero 3 or 4 months... I do agree that at the beggining, rolling should not be that important, I do feel like teaching teachnique and doing situational rolling is more important than free rolling... when I go started at bjj, I started rolling after the 3rd class at much, I really had no idea what to do... I was like, ok... here we go, wtf do I do? after a couple of minutes I was trying to choke my partner from inside his guard... I think the studen has to has at least the most basic concepts down before starting to roll, such as what is a guard... what is the guard desing for, steps how to proceed once you are in someoens guard (open, pass, etc) etc etc etc...now when I roll with new guys, I try to guide them on what to do, and while rolling trying to explain why he has to do that, that is not just because "cause" .... (that goes down the pipe every now and then when Im matched with some big strong rooking trying to headlock the fuck out of me lol)

On the other side, blue belt level seems too extreme to make them wait, but considering that their blue belt requirments are not the regular blue belt requirment, I dont know how long it will take the regular student to get a blue belt, since most schools do not give the belts for how many techniques the student know but for how good their rolling is (among other aspects)....

anyways, I liked your report.

I actually like it when the new whites try to head lock me. There are a few good techniques for this in the Combatives. But it is much easier on your ears if you wear headgear. :icon_chee

Thanks for your post.
 
I actually like it when the new whites try to head lock me. There are a few good techniques for this in the Combatives. But it is much easier on your ears if you wear headgear. :icon_chee

Thanks for your post.

my ears dont like headlocks lol... and I hate headgear...
 
I quite like the combatitives program. I think it is an excellent addition to a white belts arsenal. a nice suppliment to their regular training.

however i think the grading system they have attached to it is bogus. I dont like how it seems to reccomend training without an instructor. dont like that it seems (from what I've heard) to take about half the time it normally takes to get to blue belt. especially since theres no rolling.
 
I'm glad I go to a school that teaches sport and self defense BJJ so I don't have to deal with this crap haha.
 
I'm glad I go to a school that teaches BJJ, period, that I've used literally dozens of times in self defense and succeeded well in tournaments using.
 
well explained TS, but IMO, sparring with resistance prepares you for real battle in the street. Knowing something than nothing is better, and GC will fill the gap if real BJJ school is out of reach.
 
How much experience do you have? A lot of this doesn't reflect my personal experience in training.
 
Saying instructionals are detailed enough to learn a technique without an instructor is like saying I could go into my BJJ class, learn the tech from my teacher and just begin repping it out no problem without help. This is rarely if ever the case.
Teachers walk around the class and answer the constant questions about things that people are having trouble with, or even pointing out the mistakes people are making, after having just seen the tech up close in person. And I'm not talking about white belts. No one watches a black belt demo a tech and just starts to rep it out flawlessly. Without someone watching and catching your mistakes you will probably just think you're doing great, but really it could be better.
I always ask questions about techniques I've "learned" from video when I get the chance to in class.

Also the fact that GC teaches techniques that will work against an unskilled opponent is nullified by the fact that techniques that work on a skilled opponent who is actively looking to thwart your use of those techniques, will also work on an unskilled opponent.

My that was a confusing sentence.

GC seems like it would be good for girlfriends or kids to comfortably learn some basics in a home environment, but would be rather useless as a supplement to real training.
 
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