The funny thing about beliefs

[ReAnimator Reagan]

I think resistance training to keep your body healthy and mobile is more important than strength training.

It comes in handy for dates as well.

 

[rmongler]

I never said they weren't flexible or mobile. Are you saying physiotherapists and injury specialists across the country are prescribing squats, cleans, snatches, deadlifts and bench presses when somene comes to them with muscle imbalances or injuries?

They do if they know what they are talking about.

The problem is a little of A: the subject does not know what he is talking about, and a whole lot of B: it is time intensive to talk about.

Compound lifts are, naturally, complex. This is why they are potent tools, and also why instructing someone to lift with good technique often requires hands-on and personalized attention for long durations.

If you are in the business of fitness, as many are, this is bad for your bottom line. So the incentives, as they so often are, is towards one-size-fits-all, plug-n-play, idiot proof mcfitness programing that makes it easy to get people in and out with a minimum of attention (and thus a minimum of skilled staff you have to find, train, and pay) necessary.

In the fitness business, the ideal gym is rows and rows of nautilus machines, with one teenager working part time to mind the desk.

This dynamic is something Dr. Stuart McGill talks about often; a doctor only has so many hours in a day, and the more patients he can 'process', the better. Sometimes the math just doesn't add up to proper assessments, prescriptions, or treatments.

 

[JosephDredd]

They do if they know what they are talking about.

The problem is a little of A: the subject does not know what he is talking about, and a whole lot of B: it is time intensive to talk about.

Compound lifts are, naturally, complex. This is why they are potent tools, and also why instructing someone to lift with good technique often requires hands-on and personalized attention for long durations.

If you are in the business of fitness, as many are, this is bad for your bottom line. So the incentives, as they so often are, is towards one-size-fits-all, plug-n-play, idiot proof mcfitness programing that makes it easy to get people in and out with a minimum of attention (and thus a minimum of skilled staff you have to find, train, and pay) necessary.

In the fitness business, the ideal gym is rows and rows of nautilus machines, with one teenager working part time to mind the desk.

This dynamic is something Dr. Stuart McGill talks about often; a doctor only has so many hours in a day, and the more patients he can 'process', the better. Sometimes the math just doesn't add up to proper assessments, prescriptions, or treatments.

I don't know what you're saying here, tbh. I don't know if the problem is you or me, but I'll try reading this again tomorrow after I slept.

 

[smfg]

No it's not. You don't rehab/prehab or build mobility and flexibility with powerlifting or bodybuilding stuff.

Rehab from an injury? Probably not. Prehab though, certainly. Strength training strengthens tendons and increases bone density (and therefore structural strength), and probably helps reduce the extent to which you get rag-dolled by your opponents. It should be pretty easy to see how this can reduce the chance of injury. Of course, flexibility/mobility is trained through stretches, not strength exercises.

Body building training is not the same as strength training. Body builders tend to perform higher reps (10 - 16), often to failure, in order to increase the size of their muscles. They often focus on specific muscle groups to make them stand out (i.e. bicep curls). Like I said earlier, strength is a side effect of body building training, not the goal. In contrast, a good strength training program will specify relatively low reps (4 - 6) of complex, full body exercises.

I highly recommend checking out the book "Practical Programming For Strength Training" by Mark Rippetoe to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

 

[JosephDredd]

Rehab from an injury? Probably not. Prehab though, certainly. Strength training strengthens tendons and increases bone density (and therefore structural strength), and probably helps reduce the extent to which you get rag-dolled by your opponents. It should be pretty easy to see how this can reduce the chance of injury. Of course, flexibility/mobility is trained through stretches, not strength exercises.

Body building training is not the same as strength training. Body builders tend to perform higher reps (10 - 16), often to failure, in order to increase the size of their muscles. They often focus on specific muscle groups to make them stand out (i.e. bicep curls). Like I said earlier, strength is a side effect of body building training, not the goal. In contrast, a good strength training program will specify relatively low reps (4 - 6) of complex, full body exercises.

I highly recommend checking out the book "Practical Programming For Strength Training" by Mark Rippetoe to get a better idea of what I'm talking about.

It wouldn't address issues like muscle imbalances or diminished mobility. Most people suffer from the latter in some way just from modern living.

 

[jack36767]

You don't always bust up your hand when knocking someone out bare knuckle to the chin. It's a risk, but I'd say most of the time it doesn't seem to happen. I am friends with some MMA fighters who fight a little too much, and they don't break their hands when they drop some random tough guy at the bar. Oddly enough they seem to break their hands more often in their actual fights with wraps/gloves. Probably due to the fact that they just throw so many more punches period in those situations. It's usually a one punch deal in the real fight. Then it's lights out.

I agree with you that I think takedowns make sense. I mean I do them myself more than most in BJJ. I'm just saying that for the guys who just don't like them, it's tough to really argue against the practical reality that they can be pretty darn effective without them.

If we're just even picking specific "basic" BJJ submissions like you gave above, I know some really high level guys who completely ignore some even day one stuff.

I know guys who just about never use the RNC. They do gi grappling exclusively, and they think collar chokes are easier. They could probably roll every day for a year and never use an RNC.

I know guys who never use any guillotines. Never use any head/arm chokes like anaconda or darce. Never use any leg locks. Never invert. Never turtle. Never kimura (I think even Marcelo has said he doesn't use the kimura at all).

Just about anything you can think of, there's probably some guy out there who doesn't use it. I like to be a little more broad with my BJJ so I do just about everything, but I can't deny that there dudes out there who would kick my ass while completely ignoring large chunks of the BJJ technical repertoire.

While you are making somewhat of good points.. there is a little bit that I'm trying to make sure I understand with no sarcasm intended. And you keep taking the wrestling at an old age to an extreme. Just because one doesn't feel like going with college wrestlers doesn't mean that you can't train smart and safely on the feet even when you are older

You are saying that takedowns are soooo "dangerous" and unnecessary and that bjj people are so fragile that teaching them how to get in a basic stance, basic handfighting and things like front headlocks that can be worked on with and a part of regular bjj sequences.. or doing controlled situations like single legs where you pull guard to deep half or come up

 

[yetanother]

You are saying that takedowns are soooo "dangerous" and unnecessary

One could make a fairly strong argument that learning takedowns isn't actually worth the effort for gi bjj. For judo it's a very strong argument. For wrestling you will loose some opportunity to finish sweeps as single legs but it's time you could into 50/50 sweep/passes etc.

 

[Balto]

While you are making somewhat of good points.. there is a little bit that I'm trying to make sure I understand with no sarcasm intended. And you keep taking the wrestling at an old age to an extreme. Just because one doesn't feel like going with college wrestlers doesn't mean that you can't train smart and safely on the feet even when you are older

You are saying that takedowns are soooo "dangerous" and unnecessary and that bjj people are so fragile that teaching them how to get in a basic stance, basic handfighting and things like front headlocks that can be worked on with and a part of regular bjj sequences.. or doing controlled situations like single legs where you pull guard to deep half or come up

Personally I don't think they are sooooo dangerous. But that is my opinion. Other people draw the line at different points. I do think that takedowns are more dangerous than groundwork overall, just due to the physics involved.

Plus some guys just simply do not like them. So there's that.

Overall they're pretty much optional to effective BJJ so there's not much practical incentive for the abstainers to change.

In BJJ competition, I actually coach my high level wrestler guys to pull guard first. It works out better for them scoring wise. That's a whole other post if anyone wants to know why.

Get killed on the street if you don't know takedowns? Hard to say anything for sure when we're talking about the hypothetical "street", but I trained at a gym for quite a while where most people did zero takedowns. Blue belt from there that did zero takedowns got into a real fight at a bar when a guy grabbed his wife. Guy threw a punch at him. He ducked, went behind, and RNCed the guy unconscious right there.

Would takedowns have been a nice option to have? Sure. But at the same time it's hard to play No True Scotsman with that situation and tell him that he didn't just successfully defend himself in a real situation using BJJ with zero takedown knowledge.

 

[Uchi Mata]

Haha yes I see you know your old school Karate history as well. That is all true.

But if we keep going with it, if we continue to make more and more things legal (switching into MMA eventually in the 90s), then good hands start to dominate good feet again. In modern MMA, I think it's a lot more useful to have good hands than good kicks/knees. Although there are of course a few exceptions I can think of.

The general point was that you can totally ignore certain things (even if they are effective) to have success at even the highest levels. I think we'd all agree that leg locks can be brutally effective fight enders in BJJ and submission grappling. Yet one of my friends won ADCC trials this year using none of them. He's not that great at them, and he doesn't really use them at all. His strategy is to just stay on top with wrestling and not let anyone touch his legs. That's exactly what he did to win the trials, and it worked.

Slamming a guy on concrete is an effective way to end a fight. So is pumping his chest full of lead. So is hitting him on the chin with a good cross. But you don't need to be able to do all of these all at once to be effective. If you can just consistently get him into an RNC, that still works too.

Just because something is effective does not mean it is necessary.

The theme is always that rule sets define strategies, and that most strategies in any given rule set will not take advantage of all possible techniques within that rule set and that's fine. The debate about TDs in BJJ really comes down to what you think BJJ is for. If you only care about sport, it is absolutely true (at least for lighter weight fighters) that you don't need to know a single takedown to become a world champion. But if you believe that BJJ is for self defense and that sport BJJ is just a safe way of testing what are ultimately techniques and strategies for a real fight, then TDs are absolutely essential and it's a flaw in the rule set that you can do without them.

BTW, I'm not sure if hands dominating feet in MMA is a long term trend, or just a stage in the evolution of the game. Most guys in MMA can't kick for shit, and the ones that can are still pretty bad at setting up their kicks in an MMA context. The very few guys we've seen who did have smart kick setups like Machida, CroCop, and Aldo were deadly with them. MMA just allows for so many different strategies that you don't see a ton of people dominating with any one game plan simply because of the breadth of options available to them. It mostly comes down to what any individual does well and how intelligently they're able to build a game around their strengths. Almost any generalization about MMA is likely to have so many exceptions as to be untenable.

 

[RJ Green]

Most guys in MMA can't kick for shit, and the ones that can are still pretty bad at setting up their kicks in an MMA context.

It does seem like people have neglected them lately. You've still got the occasional leg kick TKO but I wonder if the Wediman/Silva fight didn't scare the shit out of people?

I guess it makes sense in America - you've got a lot more wrestlers wanting to learn to boxing and sub defense than you've got TKD dudes wanting to learn to grapple. I think it's a combination of people not having those kicking skills (both trainers and athletes) and people generally concerned with maintaining their base. If you whiff or fall down with a kick you'd damn well better be able to scramble or defend off of your back.

Plus the rules...you can't really knee/kick anyone effectively when they're on the ground without worrying about the DQ. Maybe if they transition back to Pride-style rules we'll see more kickin, but given the current rules and low pay it seems the risk/reward balance favors humping someone up against the cage and punching them in the face.

 

[Uchi Mata]

It does seem like people have neglected them lately. You've still got the occasional leg kick TKO but I wonder if the Wediman/Silva fight didn't scare the shit out of people?

I guess it makes sense in America - you've got a lot more wrestlers wanting to learn to boxing and sub defense than you've got TKD dudes wanting to learn to grapple. I think it's a combination of people not having those kicking skills (both trainers and athletes) and people generally concerned with maintaining their base. If you whiff or fall down with a kick you'd damn well better be able to scramble or defend off of your back.

Plus the rules...you can't really knee/kick anyone effectively when they're on the ground without worrying about the DQ. Maybe if they transition back to Pride-style rules we'll see more kickin, but given the current rules and low pay it seems the risk/reward balance favors humping someone up against the cage and punching them in the face.

I think this is the real reason. The UFC is primarily an American sport, and you just don't many good American kickboxers. PRIDE used to have a fair number of converted KBers, but PRIDE also recruited a lot more from Japan, Brazil, and Europe where kickboxing is popular and people are actually good at it. I keep waiting for OneFC to get a big influx of Thais, so far there has only been one but he did become their straw weight champ (Thais are a small folk).

In America there aren't many kickboxers, pure boxers make more money just boxing, Judo has a serious cultural beef with MMA (and the US isn't that great at it anyway), so we're probably going to keep seeing a bunch of wrestlers and BJJ guys with so-so striking being the main guys coming into the UFC. Though I will note that we recently saw what I think is our first MMA native UFC champ in Max Holloway, and his striking is really creative and effective (and he likes to kick). That'll probably be another trend that'll bring effective kicking more into the sport: people who aren't converted from anything but who grew up in MMA gyms so they've been working the full gamut of striking skills throughout their development.

 

[MaxMMA]

I know I'm going to get shit for this, but I really think strength training(powerlifting) is incredibly overrated for Martial Arts in general. Lifting a bar off the ground and lifting a struggling body off the ground are 2 completely different things. Not to mention, each Individual martial art already contains all the necessary "strength training" required to excel at that art.

Long argument made short, whether I am sparring strictly Jiujitsu, or striking, or MMA, I smash part timer practitioners. The part timers that also lift weights last no longer than the ones that don't. It's the people that show up on a regular basis and put the time into exceling at the various arts that last longer than the people that fancy themselves "conditioned athletes" just because they spend as much time lifting weights as they do drilling.

 

[MaxMMA]

Also, I think most of the people that don't like to do TDs just haven't had a decent coach that is knowledgeable in the stand up aspect of grappling. Wrestling requires no less/more technique and strength than jiujitsu does and if you have a good coach that can relay that to you, it becomes obvious and really fun to get good at stand up grappling.

 

[RJ Green]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24532151
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22541990
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21849912
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24361825

 

[lechien]

A thread on reddit with people losing their minds had me musing. I almost wrote a Danaher like soliloquy. But instead I shall be laconic

It will never cease to amaze me the amount of mental gymnastics, pedantics, and squawking... "some" bjj people will go through to justify not strength training, pushing themselves, and practicing takedowns

In Bjj, people believe that technique beats strength. But for competition purposes, if the technique level are the same, then strenght matters. Well cardio matters more as well.


Not pushing themselves.
I don't like pushing people and like the fact that some individuals would do it on their own.

Takedowns:
Blame the instructors but the students as well.

 

[Russky]

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22541990

A positive effect was detected for resistance training programs on vertical jump performance (mean difference 3.08 [95% CI 1.65, 4.51], Z=4.23 [P<0.0001]).

Science!

 

[Was at Pride GP 2000]

Because admitting so for a lot of them is admitting they're scared, or admitting that a big part of it is not wanting to be made a white belt again or "lose" to the wrestler

Interesting. I find a lot of my friends that I have trained with for 10 to 20 years will not train take downs or lifting to avoid injuries. Typically avoided if there is already an injury . I find it less as an ego issue as you state. Most people who train for this long really understand the fight is not between them and someone else. The fight is between their two ears. Most true Maria artist have found humility is key to growth

 

[jack36767]

Personally I don't think they are sooooo dangerous. But that is my opinion. Other people draw the line at different points. I do think that takedowns are more dangerous than groundwork overall, just due to the physics involved.

Plus some guys just simply do not like them. So there's that.

Overall they're pretty much optional to effective BJJ so there's not much practical incentive for the abstainers to change.

In BJJ competition, I actually coach my high level wrestler guys to pull guard first. It works out better for them scoring wise. That's a whole other post if anyone wants to know why.

Get killed on the street if you don't know takedowns? Hard to say anything for sure when we're talking about the hypothetical "street", but I trained at a gym for quite a while where most people did zero takedowns. Blue belt from there that did zero takedowns got into a real fight at a bar when a guy grabbed his wife. Guy threw a punch at him. He ducked, went behind, and RNCed the guy unconscious right there.

Would takedowns have been a nice option to have? Sure. But at the same time it's hard to play No True Scotsman with that situation and tell him that he didn't just successfully defend himself in a real situation using BJJ with zero takedown knowledge.

See the problem is that people keep taking it to an extreme, basically that they think they'll have to be a "wrestler, there are literally ways to do warm-ups that build confidence and can make it that one isn't terrified of standing grappling. Like I've said repeatedly, pulling guard should be a strategic choice/option (as in there are actual other options available) not the only thing you can do because you are clueless on their feet. I am aware of meta and how street fighting works. I still don't think that one should be an experienced grappler and literally be terrified of standing grappling against someone of equal skill. Much like while no one expects me as a former wrestler to have as good a guard as a pure bjj person, unless I put in a significant bigger amount of time into bjj and guard development. It's not unreasonable that I'd be expected to at least be able to somewhat play guard against people of equal skill

If you want to talk about the quality of instruction or how little many bjj instructors know about teaching standup safely or teaching in general.. that's a whole other discussion

 

[jack36767]

Interesting. I find a lot of my friends that I have trained with for 10 to 20 years will not train take downs or lifting to avoid injuries. Typically avoided if there is already an injury . I find it less as an ego issue as you state. Most people who train for this long really understand the fight is not between them and someone else. The fight is between their two ears. Most true Maria artist have found humility is key to growth

See.. that's the part I find amusing more than anything, terms like "true martial" artist, and "no one I know has ego issues

 

[Uchi Mata]

See the problem is that people keep taking it to an extreme, basically that they think they'll have to be a "wrestler, there are literally ways to do warm-ups that build confidence and can make it that one isn't terrified of standing grappling. Like I've said repeatedly, pulling guard should be a strategic choice/option (as in there are actual other options available) not the only thing you can do because you are clueless on their feet. I am aware of meta and how street fighting works. I still don't think that one should be an experienced grappler and literally be terrified of standing grappling against someone of equal skill. Much like while no one expects me as a former wrestler to have as good a guard as a pure bjj person, unless I put in a significant bigger amount of time into bjj and guard development. It's not unreasonable that I'd be expected to at least be able to somewhat play guard against people of equal skill

If you want to talk about the quality of instruction or how little many bjj instructors know about teaching standup safely or teaching in general.. that's a whole other discussion

An important factor to consider is that most BJJ instructors aren't that good at takedowns or teaching them. And if they are, it was usually because they did Judo or wrestled at some point so they tend to teach the way they were taught, and both those arts (in the US at least) are taught in a very smash-mouth, tough-it-out way. When I taught standup specifically for BJJ, I don't know that I every had anyone get hurt because most of what I was doing didn't involve any more impact than getting swept. I mean, if you're teaching BJJ folks who aren't very good at falling big hip throws like you learn in Judo, you're doing it wrong. An ankle pick is a lot better for BJJ competition, and the fall from an ankle pick is nothing. If I am teaching higher impact throws like osoto or kosoto (about the highest impact throws I teach BJJ people), I try to use a crash pad. You simply don't need to have the intensity of a college wrestling practice nor the high impact repertoire of Judo to teach effective TDs for self defense or BJJ competition.