Pedro Sauer Association and Gracie Combatives??

[Balto]

I guess I didn't watch that video far enough because they do some good stuff at about 3:35.

I have never seen that stuff actually taught in a BJJ class though. Maybe I've been to the wrong ones, but it's always the grappling headlock escape, the grappling front choke escape, the seoi nage when the guy RNCs you, etc.

 

[Alonbenav]

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.

Well that and an unhealthy obsession with Helio and the rigid orthodoxy to his 'filter' that comes along with it.

 

[lechien]

Gracie Sel Defense.

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[KJGould]

As a slight off topic but related, how many self defense classes in BJJ keep in mind the current state or I guess federal laws regarding self defense when teaching?

 

[LJS199330]

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

Like I stated if you go with a partner who has the fight gloves on and actually go live they are pretty solid. Sure if you just go through the motions in a slow manner with no resistance of course they are weak. No argument on that one.

 

[Alonbenav]

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).

Pedro will be at Ari's school sometime this month IIRC. I was in Victoria last month and went on the website to see if I could drop in, saw some flier for a seminar. Pedro is fully on board with this whole thing, or if he's not, he has a funny way of showing it.

 

[Balto]

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).

I like the fact that you have certain given responses. I just can't help but notice that most of the time, I prefer the simpler given responses I've already learned in Karate.

My Karate teacher was influenced by Ed Parker's Kenpo a lot, so we had like 50 little self defense techniques in the BJJ style. They were essentially mini katas much the same as the BJJ self defense techniques are practiced.

Some of the 50 techniques were pretty useful, and some were completely stupid like Dance of Death. Dance of Death involved slipping a punch, hitting the guy in the nuts, taking him down, stomping all over him, breaking his neck while he's down (I guess this kills him?), and then stomping all over his dead body again. I am 100% serious.

I see the BJJ techniques as just another version of this, and one I prefer even less for most scenarios. Overall I think the whole model is flawed. Instead of just doing preset katas, I'd like to see some innovation and live training around it. But I have literally never seen that in a BJJ class. It's always the Helio way, and that's just the way.

I'm sure a couple guys out there are doing it differently, and kudos to them. But it's so rare that I can't associate it with BJJ self defense generally. BJJ self defense means Helio's mini katas, and every time so far I've heard those words, I get Helio's mini katas.

 

[Musheen]

Pedro will be at Ari's school sometime this month IIRC. I was in Victoria last month and went on the website to see if I could drop in, saw some flier for a seminar. Pedro is fully on board with this whole thing, or if he's not, he has a funny way of showing it.

He will be at Park City on the 6th, not sure about in Boise. Well, if he is ok with it, then I can see there being a ton of pissed of BBs.

 

[lechien]

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.

yeah, I introduced that exercise in my club and the inevitable outcome was that I needed to punch or at least jab in order to be able to clinch.

Because the "bad" guy was just punching and sprawling. lol.

Then it just became MMA.

 

[Musheen]

I like the fact that you have certain given responses. I just can't help but notice that most of the time, I prefer the simpler given responses I've already learned in Karate.

My Karate teacher was influenced by Ed Parker's Kenpo a lot, so we had like 50 little self defense techniques in the BJJ style. They were essentially mini katas much the same as the BJJ self defense techniques are practiced.

Some of the 50 techniques were pretty useful, and some were completely stupid like Dance of Death. Dance of Death involved slipping a punch, hitting the guy in the nuts, taking him down, stomping all over him, breaking his neck while he's down (I guess this kills him?), and then stomping all over his dead body again. I am 100% serious.

I see the BJJ techniques as just another version of this, and one I prefer even less for most scenarios. Overall I think the whole model is flawed. Instead of just doing preset katas, I'd like to see some innovation and live training around it. But I have literally never seen that in a BJJ class. It's always the Helio way, and that's just the way.

I'm sure a couple guys out there are doing it differently, and kudos to them. But it's so rare that I can't associate it with BJJ self defense generally. BJJ self defense means Helio's mini katas, and every time so far I've heard those words, I get Helio's mini katas.

Ah yes the Dance of Death! My old instructor is a 5th degree BB in some sort of karate and had talked to us about this before.

I 100% agree with you. I think there should be some live situations, because when shit goes down sometimes and you can't just whip out X response to Y scenario. But as basic self defense goes, I don't think Pedro is the worst, and I can see some value it.

If I recall, he was supposed to update the curriculum a while ago. It's wildly out of date. The BJJ is basic, and has plenty of fundamentals, but if you were to learn that and nothing else, you would get killed from someone doing modern sport BJJ.

 

[Balto]

yeah, I introduced that exercise in my club and the inevitable outcome was that I needed to punch or at least jab in order to be able to clinch.

Because the "bad" guy was just punching and sprawling. lol.

Then it just became MMA.

The last line there is why I feel the way I do though. I don't see why we need to make ourselves artificially different from MMA. We already have MMA. I think it's more realistic, and if we want to worry about the intersection of striking and grappling, we've got that.

As far as the argument that MMA is skilled vs skilled goes, first off I think training skilled vs skilled is just fine. You can't take for granted that the guy attacking you is going to suck. Lots of guys who train pick fights. In fact, most of the guys who now push the self defense mini katas were examples of trained guys who picked fights. Little frail Helio himself was in fact a trained guy who picked fights.

Plus it is not hard to attract wild noobs off the street with an MMA sign. Put up an MMA sign, and they will beat down your door to get in. I don't even know where they come from, but they come. Just spar MMA with those guys if you want to go skilled vs unskilled. But most skilled MMA guys don't bother anymore because it's an easy and predictable outcome. If you win skilled vs skilled MMA matches, you can beat up the bums who come in off the street.

 

[Balto]

Ah yes the Dance of Death! My old instructor is a 5th degree BB in some sort of karate and had talked to us about this before.

I 100% agree with you. I think there should be some live situations, because when shit goes down sometimes and you can't just whip out X response to Y scenario. But as basic self defense goes, I don't think Pedro is the worst, and I can see some value it.

If I recall, he was supposed to update the curriculum a while ago. It's wildly out of date. The BJJ is basic, and has plenty of fundamentals, but if you were to learn that and nothing else, you would get killed from someone doing modern sport BJJ.

Dance of Death is amazing.

I actually got some good self defense stuff from a Pedro BB over the summer while I was on vacation. But it was not necessarily the traditional GJJ stuff. He has trained in a lot of martial arts, and he was also a SWAT member. So he showed some of the police stuff dealing with a gun draw, and showed how you could also practice the same lock from the ground under BJJ rules so you got some live sparring with it.

I've never seen the gun defense he showed on any of the Gracie self defense videos. I think it was something he learned elsewhere.

 

[lechien]

I am not gonna teach and let people train MMA as I am not interested.

Maybe one day if you merge with a striking skills club.

I would not mind trying a shooto style club.

Mon, Wed: striking

Tue, Thu: grappling

Frid, Sat: sparring

just add 2 MMA classes and voila!

 

[Balto]

I am not gonna teach and let people train MMA as I am not interested.

Maybe one day if you merge with a striking skills club.

I would not mind trying a shooto style club.

Mon, Wed: striking

Tue, Thu: grappling

Frid, Sat: sparring

just add 2 MMA classes and voila!

I understand how some people just aren't interested. That's cool. I get that.

What I don't get is how some people just aren't interested in striking or even MMA at all, but they are EXTREMELY interested in self defense. That does not compute to me.

It's basically like "Oh, I am all about the street. I am only training for self defense. If it's not street tested, I am not messing around with it. But I don't want to learn how to punch people. I just want to learn how to not get punched, even though that is way, way harder than just learning how to punch people back."

That part I don't get at all. If you are truly interested in self defense, just take the easiest path. And the easiest path is to learn some basic striking. You don't have to be a boxing wizard to learn how to keep your hands up and throw a couple good combinations.

 

[lechien]

yeah, I can recommend good striking and mma gyms to my students.

running a striking/mma gym is a whole different ball game so to speak.

 

[A Muse of Fire]

I went to a gracie combative gym for a year and I don't recommend it.

First, the curriculum is very basic and does not have any submission defense at all

second, the higher belts beat up the lower belts and call it sparring. The lower belt can/t throw any punches back.

 

[JohnSouth]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Pedro is fake or all his affiliates are bad. Far from it. He's a great fighter and has produced some very, very good guys. It just seems like his affiliate program may not be as well policed as it could be, and as such you can't assume a school is a really good school just because it's a Sauer affiliate. It may be, just do some research.

I've seen his school in VA, he's a great guy and totally legit but I think he wants to make money from rich middle aged people.

Most important thing is don't get hurt.

They roll no more than 60%, I don't think I could even train there because people would go wtf and I'm easy compared to some people but I'm not just going to go with it.

That's why the self defense stuff is actually less effective, those schools are aimed at a certain clientelle and you'll never get hard training against the type of people who would actually attack you.

 

[JohnSouth]

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.

You are right on there, my thoughts exactly.

They keep going like Sakuraba and Matt Hughes never existed. Sakuraba didn't just out grapple, he out struck them pure and simple, the ones that didn't learn to strike had to bow out.

Once you start ignoring those results you end up like the TMA guys "this only works against untrained people...".

 

[boisefireman]

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

This is ridiculous.

 

[Gambledub]

I have no problem with that approach, though my impression is that most GC guys don't do a lot of that. What you're describing is basically combat BJJ, much like combat Sambo is Sambo with striking. I'd be down with that, but it would also entail learning enough striking so that your standup training was legit since otherwise you're just two untrained BJJ guys throwing haymakers.

To be fair I think that's the point, Gracie self defense is supposed to stop untrained individuals its not an mma class. We also have boxing and mma at my gym and the instructor always points out the difference between the techniques (eg a haymaker vs boxing hook) and his trademark seems to be "now if the guy punches like this" *demonstrates boxing hook "your probably in for a bit of a scrap".

We are encouraged to go and learn as much as we can, whether its inside or outside the gym. I think its only a problem if your told Gracie combatives is all you need.

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.

I would actually kind of agree with this. However there is a lot of nice simple techniques too. We do a decent amount of striking at our gym, such as elbow strikes off grip breaks, knee strikes in clinches, turning and pulling out of low singles followed by soccer kicks, downward elbows to the back of the head/neck when the opponent goes for a shitty tackle take down. That being said proper striking mechanics are rarely taught.

As a slight off topic but related, how many self defense classes in BJJ keep in mind the current state or I guess federal laws regarding self defense when teaching?

Well mine doesn't or at least I have never heard (or remembered) it! I would think very few would. Self defense is pretty hard to describe because of all the grey areas. Even lawyers, judges and police have trouble defining "reasonable" as its pretty context dependent. I have read people getting convictions for punching someone on the ground, where as others have soccer kicked people in the face after knocking them down with strikes and getting away with self defense.

Most of the time it comes down to what judge is ruling, who you hit and how well you can justify yourself.

I understand how some people just aren't interested. That's cool. I get that.

What I don't get is how some people just aren't interested in striking or even MMA at all, but they are EXTREMELY interested in self defense. That does not compute to me.

It's basically like "Oh, I am all about the street. I am only training for self defense. If it's not street tested, I am not messing around with it. But I don't want to learn how to punch people. I just want to learn how to not get punched, even though that is way, way harder than just learning how to punch people back."

That part I don't get at all. If you are truly interested in self defense, just take the easiest path. And the easiest path is to learn some basic striking. You don't have to be a boxing wizard to learn how to keep your hands up and throw a couple good combinations.

Agreed. However I think for many gyms it has become ingrained and become tradition. I can understand it for many of the older gyms (eg Humaita) where pre UFC 1 days it might be embarassing to the art/school if purple belts were getting their ass kicked in street fights. To a certain extent this mentality still exists in many Gracie schools, if you have a black belt it should mean you can handle yourself in a street fight. But yeah if you want to be really good in a street fight do mma. The self defense we learn is good enough, but not great a lot of it is not sparred with (no one goes for standing headlocks during rolls) and a lot of it there are better options available, and some moves could get you in trouble against someone who knows what they're doing.