Pedro Sauer Association and Gracie Combatives??

[Floki]

Pedro Sauer is a bit of a sad case, he's such a legit old school guy but he's got some bad schools in his association. The whole Keith Owen - Ari Bolden thing was bad enough, but tales of giving out really soft belts has haunted his org for a while. If you have a Machado school I'd definitely go there over a Sauer affiliate.

oh so keith owen is a fraud too? i had a feeling, a guy like that does not seem like a legit blackbelt, i have no doubt blue belts would destroy him

 

[lechien]

I think a lot of them are artificially more complicated than they have to be. Since they are BJJ self defense, they all present grappling solutions to problems. However, a self defense situation is not a grappling match. I think a lot of the situations are much more easily solved using striking solutions.

For example, the famous headlock attack. Why no strike to the groin of the guy headlocking you? Drop your base, and it's right there. Hammerfist up into it from behind. That's the simplest, easiest way to get the guy to loosen it up so you can escape. I mean you can mess with all the other escape stuff too, but that's like the backup plan if just hitting to the groin doesn't get a reaction. Yet it's completely overlooked because striking is not the pure BJJ apparently.

Same idea for something like a two handed front choke. Yes, you can duck your head out, you can standing armbar the guy, etc. But it's way easier to just realize that the guy choking you now has no free hands to defend himself, use one of your two free hands to collapse both of his choking arms, and use your bonus free hand to elbow him in the face. You can also headbutt. Again, this is all simpler, higher percentage, and tougher to counter than any of the pure grappling defenses.

Most of the striking self defense stuff I learned in Karate is way simpler and better. BJJ is obsessed with using only grappling to deal with everything. It is not the most efficient way.

whoa, that gonn suck.

Especially when I see a resurgance of the self defense "program" in certain schools.

The school that do not well anymore in sport BJJ.

They starting to promote the self defense program, enforcing the compulsary white gis, rolling and sport techniques are no longer the main focus etc..

 

[Uchi Mata]

oh so keith owen is a fraud too? i had a feeling, a guy like that does not seem like a legit blackbelt, i have no doubt blue belts would destroy him

No, I think Keith is legit in terms of his own skill. Pedro gave him his black belt. But Keith seems to have pretty low standards if he's giving brown belts to guys like Ari.

 

[Floki]

For example, the famous headlock attack. Why no strike to the groin of the guy headlocking you? Drop your base, and it's right there. Hammerfist up into it from behind. That's the simplest, easiest way to get the guy to loosen it up so you can escape. I mean you can mess with all the other escape stuff too, but that's like the backup plan if just hitting to the groin doesn't get a reaction. Yet it's completely overlooked because striking is not the pure BJJ apparently.

Same idea for something like a two handed front choke. Yes, you can duck your head out, you can standing armbar the guy, etc. But it's way easier to just realize that the guy choking you now has no free hands to defend himself, use one of your two free hands to collapse both of his choking arms, and use your bonus free hand to elbow him in the face. You can also headbutt. Again, this is all simpler, higher percentage, and tougher to counter than any of the pure grappling defenses.

Most of the striking self defense stuff I learned in Karate is way simpler and better. BJJ is obsessed with using only grappling to deal with everything. It is not the most efficient way.

balto maybe you are 250 lbs and jacked and maybe dont understand that not everyone can just unleash a barrage of strikes like they are jackie chan on a much stronger person squeezing the shit out of them and at that point you need to use your entire body. I think people forget what self defense is all about... it is a tool not the solution.

And maybe you survive... BJJ aint magic

 

[Floki]

No, I think Keith is legit in terms of his own skill. Pedro gave him his black belt. But Keith seems to have pretty low standards if he's giving brown belts to guys like Ari.

i see, my bad, he just seemd kinda outta shape and soft in his vids and just him knowing ari bolden made me doubt him

 

[lechien]

No, I think Keith is legit in terms of his own skill. Pedro gave him his black belt. But Keith seems to have pretty low standards if he's giving brown belts to guys like Ari.

It was just part of his plan to build his own association.

He was looking at having about 40 schools under his associations.

 

[Crossface9]

Long story short, Ari Bolden was a fake black belt who put out a bunch of low quality videos that a lot of people watched, he was sketchy about defending his credentials, the few times he competed he got totally waxed, all of which made him infamous in the BJJ community.

Sounds a lot like someone whose pretty well known on f12 by now...

 

[Balto]

whoa, that gonn suck.

Especially when I see a resurgance of the self defense "program" in certain schools.

The school that do not well anymore in sport BJJ.

They starting to promote the self defense program, enforcing the compulsary white gis, rolling and sport techniques are no longer the main focus etc..

I just fundamentally reject the basic premise of most of the BJJ self defense, which is "there is an unskilled guy striking at us, but we are not going to strike him back." That has no relevance to me.

If you want to grapple with someone, just throw strikes. They will naturally clinch with you to avoid getting hit. Watch two noobs do boxing sparring, and you will see tons of clinching just instinctively.

If the guy happens to be some awesome MMA fighter who knows how to strike and clinch without getting taken down by you, then none of the traditional stuff is going to be that effective anyway. It's not 1993 anymore. We have modern MMA now to teach us how to fight that way.

I get why we don't strike in the sport. It's grappling. But when BJJ guys start talking about self defense, what they really mean is how to fight guys striking you using only grappling. That makes no sense to me. It's not a sport, and it's a pretty silly self defense mindset.

I love BJJ, but my Karate and Muay Thai striking training is going to be my first line of defense in just about anything. It would be ridiculously stupid of me not to use it. Why do I want to mount a guy when I could drop him in one strike? The BJJ is my sport and my backup plan in case my strikes don't work.

 

[Balto]

balto maybe you are 250 lbs and jacked and maybe dont understand that not everyone can just unleash a barrage of strikes like they are jackie chan on a much stronger person squeezing the shit out of them and at that point you need to use your entire body. I think people forget what self defense is all about... it is a tool not the solution.

And maybe you survive... BJJ aint magic

Lol I am not 250 lbs and jacked dude. Not even close.

You don't need to "unleash a barrage of strikes like you are Jackie Chan" to get a guy to release a headlock.

You get the strongest dude in your gym to headlock me. I bet I can hit him in the nuts hard enough to make him let go. He can squeeze the shit out of my head, and I will smash him in the nuts. I will take that bet.

And if you just so happen to have the next Joe Son at your school, then the fact that I am BJJ brown belt can come into play. But that took me ten years of training to get. I learned how to strike someone hard in the nuts from a headlock a long time before I learned how to use my entire efficiently in BJJ. It's just much simpler, so it should be taught first and should be the first defense.

 

[lechien]

Striking for self defense is a good idea but it is not like you can practice elbow strikes to the head or kick to the balls at 100%.
While grappling, you can test the self defense at 100%.

 

[Crossface9]

I train No gi under a Sauer affliate and love it there. I've been 2 well known BJJ schools in the area and I prefer this school by far.

 

[Floki]

Lol I am not 250 lbs and jacked dude. Not even close.

You don't need to "unleash a barrage of strikes like you are Jackie Chan" to get a guy to release a headlock.

You get the strongest dude in your gym to headlock me. I bet I can hit him in the nuts hard enough to make him let go. He can squeeze the shit out of my head, and I will smash him in the nuts. I will take that bet.

And if you just so happen to have the next Joe Son at your school, then the fact that I am BJJ brown belt can come into play. But that took me ten years of training to get. I learned how to strike someone hard in the nuts from a headlock a long time before I learned how to use my entire efficiently in BJJ. It's just much simpler, so it should be taught first and should be the first defense.

Hey I agree that the easiest and quickest solution is the one to go with I just don't think it works for everyone and knowing self defense like u said is good to resort to. Lots of everyday people would need to go directly to the backup plan. Not to mention when defending yourself you don't want your only option to involve maiming or damaging the person. These days you get sued and thrown in jail for defending yourself for doing anything the law deems excessive.

Nutshots while in a headlock probably is ok to do lol but let's just say for some crazy reason some crazy chick jumps on you... ur not gonna hit a girl, not that it would be out of line but it would just be embarrassing.

 

[Balto]

Striking for self defense is a good idea but it is not like you can practice elbow strikes to the head or kick to the balls at 100%.
While grappling, you can test the self defense at 100%.

You can practice at 100%. To work on your power, you hit the heavy bag. Also padwork.

If you want to spar it out, you can wear protective gear. If you wear elbow pads and give the guy a face mask, you could easily do 100% elbows without hurting the guy. An elbow is significantly less powerful than a punch from a force perspective. Consider the much shorter lever involved. The only reason elbows do sick damage is because the elbow is much harder and pointier than the fist. But if you pad that up, the elbow is not that strong so you can go 100% without wrecking people.

Kick to the balls would be the same if you really wanted to. Wear a cup and wear a cushy groin pad over it to take the edge off.

I mean if you want to get particular about it, that's why they make those marshmallow man suits for combatives training sometimes. Like you obviously couldn't spar with a dog 100%, right? It would rip you up. Yet they make suits that protect you, and they train the dog to "spar" with you 100% when you run from it.

Personally I am okay with just practicing the strikes full power on the pads and easing up a little in sparring like everyone else who does striking. But if you really want to go 100%, the equipment is certainly available.

 

[lechien]

nah, never a great fan of hitting each other in nuts and expect you can pull the trigger and achieve results during the real thing.

Well anyway. Gracie self defense uses strikes.

Royce grab rorion by the throath and pushes him against the wall
option 1 elbow strike
option 2 knee strike

Royce bear hugs Rorion from the back
Rorion head butt him in the back
Rorion heel kick him in the nuts.

The valente bros demonstrated self defense
everything seens to end up in a hip throw and a strike once the opponent is down.

 

[Balto]

Hey I agree that the easiest and quickest solution is the one to go with I just don't think it works for everyone and knowing self defense like u said is good to resort to. Lots of everyday people would need to go directly to the backup plan. Not to mention when defending yourself you don't want your only option to involve maiming or damaging the person. These days you get sued and thrown in jail for defending yourself for doing anything the law deems excessive.

Nutshots while in a headlock probably is ok to do lol but let's just say for some crazy reason some crazy chick jumps on you... ur not gonna hit a girl, not that it would be out of line but it would just be embarrassing.

I guess I don't understand why it's a given that everyday people need to go directly to the backup plan? I am an everyday person. I started Karate because I was five years old, and I wanted to be a Ninja Turtle. I am not some massive NFL player. I was terrible at all the team sports.

I agree that we need to avoid excessive force, but the standard BJJ defense strategy is usually even more excessive than what I discussed. I mean, in the case of the standard BJJ headlock defense, we are talking about doing a scoop throw takedown to a guy on a hard floor, mounting him, punching him in the face from the mount until he turns, and then choking him unconscious with the RNC. That would be the standard BJJ self defense sequence as I have been taught it.

I don't see how that is less force than striking him in the nuts from standing.

If I'm attacked by a crazy chick, I guess I'll use my BJJ defense then. Luckily I have Helio's technique to fall back on to protect me from the women of the world.

 

[Balto]

nah, never a great fan of hitting each other in nuts and expect you can pull the trigger and achieve results during the real thing.

Well anyway. Gracie self defense uses strikes.

Royce grab rorion by the throath and pushes him against the wall
option 1 elbow strike
option 2 knee strike

Royce bear hugs Rorion from the back
Rorion head butt him in the back
Rorion heel kick him in the nuts.

The valente bros demonstrated self defense
everything seens to end up in a hip throw and a strike once the opponent is down.

Not sure why you are not a fan? It is pretty reliable. I don't even have to do the real thing to get results. I can do the fake thing to BJJ guys who aren't expecting it. I just ball tap them high school style, and they instinctively let go to protect themselves. I love doing this actually when we someone is going over headlock escapes. They are usually like "Shit...why didn't I think of that?" I mean it's right there.

I haven't seen much (any?) striking in the traditional Helio techniques. There is a video by the Migliarese brothers where they run through every traditional Helio self defense technique that they learned from Relson. It includes empty hand, gun, knife, club, etc. They are heavily grappling based, even when a strike would be easier.

 

[Alonbenav]

The knife and gun I agree with. However if you do the Gracie Combatives with gloves, a mouthpiece, etc...you can work the clinch to take down, guard work, half guard work, in a very realistic manner. It's not fun but essential as some positions you normally like in sport grappling don't really translate well with a striking opponent.

Can anyone seriously tell me that being able to do these techniques, especially when they're trained in a fashion so anti-ethical to BJJ's methodology, makes you safe on the streets?

The knife and gun ones actually made me laugh.

Shit, even the guy in the video abandons that shit and basically says, "find a blunt weapon" to defend against the knife attack in a real life situation

 

[Balto]

Here's the Migliarese video:



The first two techniques are relatively simple and use strikes. They are almost exactly like what I learned in Karate.

But then everything else I saw was essentially pure grappling with maybe a token "punch him after he's down" thing at the end. I watched about halfway through to 3:00 and only saw those first two really using strikes. I guess maybe you could count the Royce Gracie fake sidekick to the clinch, but that's more of a fake than a real strike.

 

[Balto]

Oh I caught a knee at 2:11 too. So there's that.

I guess my point was that it is super heavily weighted towards grappling for no reason that makes sense to me other than BJJ = grappling.

It's the same idea with the boxing glove drill. The boxing glove guy just punches, and you just clinch and grapple. Why can't you punch back? The scenario does not make sense, and I don't ever foresee myself restricting myself from striking back when a guy is striking at me. It just makes things much harder than they have to be.

 

[Musheen]

I train with at a Pedro affiliate, and I personally think it is far better than Gracie Combatives. For starters, you are tested in real life, from a real BB. For blue belt, there is a mix of BJJ and self defense and 4 basic takedowns.

I'm not a huge fan of the self defense beyond blue, but I think it is worthwhile until that point. Balto has a point, that yes, it can be a little elaborate or flashy, but at least you have a given response (which should be muscle memory by the exam) to someone going for a two hand choke etc. I think it builds a solid base at least.

Most Pedro schools are pretty legit. Not a fan of Keith Owen, but he is a legit black belt. I honestly can't see Pedro allowing Ari get his BB when I compare him to the standard of the browns I roll with (most are badasses).