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Is Sport BJJ Bad for Self Defense? • Ft. Matt Thornton

Many people question whether sport bjj can actually hurt your understanding or performance in a self defense situation. Join me as I talk to BJJ legend Matt Thornton about this question. What do you think? Does sport bjj enhance or hurt self defense skills? What do you think is the best self defense method? Do you think BJJ is good for self defense in general? For more BJJ videos click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqbvRinQyHs&list=PL4FJXg8RNp-nZZpUCKJSnuV0CbOUIoC5T For more interviews with Matt Thornton and other self defense and bjj experts click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuvgeP04TMI&list=PL4FJXg8RNp-mAIhP8otJ6AewRBH5f8WfJ For more self defense videos click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53LCw00QDrA&list=PL4FJXg8RNp-kAy_8F6S-PUXyuwUr4hunq

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Martial Arts Journey says:

This is one of the last segments of the talk with Matt Thornton. Next one will be the last part and then I'll release the full talk both as a video and as a podcast. Enjoy!

Lord L says:

Also stephan has never been in a real fight so its funny hes in this

Lord L says:

Depends on what you apply to self defense. If you try to gain points and end up in holds you're gonna die when the enemy blinds you. He'll been trying to kill. You can use what you learn but you got understand movement and technique

Curt Holzendorf says:

I thought that this was a good article on how to decide on which BJJ techniques to choose for your particular BJJ journey.
https://
http://www.invertedgear.com/blogs/inverted-gear-blog/117628549-the-four-corners-of-brazilian-jiu-jitsu

None says:

BJJ isn't just bad for self defense. It's suicidally fatal. It flat out ignores the realities of violence and puts the user in positions of extreme vulnerability to overwhelmingly likely scenarios.

It has the following fatal flaws:

It is actually effective in its bailiwick giving a false sense of competence to the user. Yet BJJ itself is a canard. It relies primarily on an unwittingly untrained (in floor fighting) opponent who essentially becomes helpless when you bring the fight to the ground. A criminal will do the exact same to you, moving the interaction into areas you have not trained for. He will essentially punk you.

You must never bring a fight to the ground. If you do, five guys will jump in and start kicking you in the face if not hitting you with bricks, steel bars or whatever is handy. Unlike you, your opponent will probably respond by killing you by smashing your head against the hard floor, something you are not taught to do in BJJ, lol.

You must never grapple with an attacker. Real violence always involves weapons. The two most common weapons are a knife and hammer or hatchet. Our politically controlled news media is too busy trying to trick people into giving up handguns (overwhelmingly the weapon of choice in self defense for the law abiding citizen) to bother mentioning that guns are not the main criminal weapon…..knives and hammers are. You absolutely cannot handle either hand to hand. If you think so, might as well dig a hole now and jump in. That powerful looking Mike Tyson clone is going to scream like a little girl when a hammer simply snaps his arm in half. Again, if you go to the ground, it will be his friends stabbing you.

This is all assuming you know something is going on. The most common form of violence is the "assassination". You are somewhere you should not be, listening to music on your earbuds. Suddenly you feel a punch in your back and wet. A few seconds later you fall unconscious (and don't wake up again). So, what magical BJJ technique did you learn to counter that.

Self defense is about awareness, preparation and force multipliers….NOT about who can do what better in a sport. Except for the physical conditioning, almost zero of the skillset trained transfers over to the other situation, no more so than say in golf, basketball or horseshoes. The difference is, the experts at golf, basketball and horseshoes do no think they know anything about violence. They don't have that dangerous conceit. Michael Jordan doesn't think he could be some badass in prison. Mike Tyson did. And the result was regular prison rapes to the point the poor man is obviously insane now.

Your Biological Daddy says:

there are two types of competition bjj. the bjj competitions and the bjj used in mma. mma bjj is the best for self defense

A Toubaji says:

but sport jj still develops some bad habits to do in a street fights which can be dangerous some times but usually the skill gap will give the bjj practitioner a big advantage

Peter Bate says:

I really liked your video man, got one more subscriber 😉 and btw, given some stories I shared earlier, I say this, that I am a man of peace. If some guy wants to fight me for some silly ego-driven, alcohol-courage fueled fool, I use words and posture to stop a fight before he tries to punch me. Fighting is not cool, only in situations that truly require it is it something one should utilize, imo. Fighting only in defense of my own person and loved ones, and maybe helping out someone who is clearly DONE but still being hit – then I try to tell the attackers/winners, whatever, that, man, it is enough, he is done done, he will end up needed real hospitalization and you will end up in a legal mess,,,,etc.

Peace and love ya'll 😉

ToTheStarsS2 says:

I saw someone talking about this on the latest ultimate fighter. He said sport fighting is not real fighting. And the other kid said if I can dunk on you on a basketball court then I could also dunk on you on the street.
But street fights are very fast, they have to be, you have to win them very fast.
And a one bare knuckle punch can easily hospitalize you or someone else. Street BJJ would look very different than the normal type, where they would focus on quickly getting a choke. Because grappling someone is way too slow and unpractical in a street fight “ though it could and does still work” it’s not the best option.
Also street arts are designed vs. normal thuggish or crazy people with little to no training. MMA is vs MMA fighters and by elite athletic MMA fighters.
To me chokes are the real aikido, because they are so very effective, and never seriously hurt the opponent.
Also vs untrained opponents you do not need to grapple them. Even advanced aikido throws could be effective “ though not practical “
No specifically focused art like bjj boxing etc. is a great self defense system.
For me I love MMA as a proven amazing base, then build more advanced techniques, and street focused arts on top of it. Just cover someone’s mouth and nose with your hand, after they fall, while they try to peel it off so they can breathe, beat the piss out of them with hammer hands. When they peel your hand off push down with your fore knuckles or fingers into their trachea. Then the hole under the trachea ram your two fingers into there. Then pull their ears, lips, hair etc, all while hammer handing them. If they still are not done try palm striking air into their ear drums. Because mounting them would be pointless, they couldn’t defend basic attacks well. Another one I used to like was just dropping all my weight down on my knee striking against the side of their chin after they fell, it’s hurts badly and applies a small neck lock at the same time. That’s way faster and simpler than taking them down getting a mount and a submission. The fight would get broken up before you even had a submission maybe…

Leinil Francis Yu says:

I don't think the miyao or the mendes brothers will have a problem defending themselves on the streets.

TheJaranggigi says:

Whether you want to fight on the ground or not you'll at least want to be able to get off it. BJJ is necessary just for that, so you know how to get from the bottom to a dominant position if (really more like when) you get brought to the floor. From there you can knock the guy out or, in the extremely rare multi- attacker scenario, stand up and run your ass out of there.

Anthony Allen says:

Hello my brother I have another jewel( knowledge ) to drop too you from my 2 year mma journey. I often hear the question can you use a traditional art in MMA ? I always say yes and no. I can explain There are good things to learn from traditional and self defense combatives. But the catch is it will be difficult to use it by itself even if you mix it with 2 non functional arts against a modern MMA practitioner . This is what you have to do. You have to learn basics from MMA stand up, clinch, and ground first. Then you will be able to use different styles later. But the question is how much can be used? Well what people dont understand if your using a style that dont have a solid entry or it doesn't have a grappling base with resistance, dont have a clinch game then you will be unable to fight with skill so it sounds like you need the MMA foundation just like what I said from the beginning. Lets break down Akido you know from your experience it doesn't have an effective entry and it doesn't work well in the clinch. But if you train your bjj for about 2 years then go back and use wrist locks from Akido while on the ground. The one thing grappling does is give a person the ability to neutralize the arms and hands because of the gravity being on the ground versus in stand up or clinch range where a person hands has a lot of play and its more difficult to wrist grab from that range. How do I know this? when you become functional and stand up , clinch and ground you know what works because your doing the progressive restiance. I hope this help my brother dont listen to anyone that want to change your mind to go back to dead training IT DON'T WORK. Always remember deception makes money but truth hurts feelings and make you look at yourself in th mirror you have to make the choice. If I were to have my partners from my JKD days whom trained 2 days a week versus a MMA athlete whom train 2 days a week and they both train for a year and match them against each other. The MMA athlete would destroy that non functional JKD student it would like a beating versus seeing skill against skill. When you see styles of arts have all these drills, theories, and weird technical strategies that only work with some one whom is asked to just throw a telegraphed punch and leave it out while the person do all these to dangerous to spar techniques do not train with them. They will sell you a theory that only works against unskilled people in weird scenario training that you will never see a skilled athlete use dont mess with it. Truth in combat must come first over deception for money so they can learn quick and easy classes with a certificate then become this combat commando expert that can not even show you escapes from bottom mount with resistance . If you decide to train with someone from the fantasy styles ask then to go beyond the introduction of the technique and show you how it works with full resistance and see the body language they give you.

big quillie says:

Yes, there's a huge difference between sport BJJ and BJJ for self-defense. I have a lot of experience with this. I started training BJJ because I'm a law enforcement officer I wanted to be more effective at making arrests without injuring myself or others. I found a lot of the sport techniques do not work and can even get you hurt out on the street.

nohn clift says:

if the self defence fight is one on one, then it could work, multiple (which is really what self defence would probably be) opponents, then it would fail.Like all arts its dependent on the person, area and attacker /attackers.

DimitriLeeBX says:

The biggest issue with some BJJ is the lack of strikes in training which leads to bad habits like Matt said and some of the techniques are taught with a gi and no one wears a gi outside of a dojo

Anthony Allen says:

This is my take my brother I was a person as well that was from JKD concept and yes normally people like me at that time want only the self defense and a quick class and be a weekend master. On the other hand you can not defend what you dont know . Train the bjj with strikes but the person or curriculum needs to have rolling included. Now hear me closely. People that came from my back round deep down dont want to learn mma or bjj because when they see it they know instantly that its not a quick 2 day course and get a certificate and picture then become this Guro that opens some money making scam filled with patty cake drills tactics that only work on unskilled people . What they noticed is what I seen once a part of time is MMA, BJJ you have to develop skill to make the techniques work and that takes timeeee and its harddddd. That's the real reason why people from my back round despise skill based combat. So they take quick courses that looks like grappling but you notice they use these wierd drills and they dont use resistance while they on the ground. If they do they know they will be unable to sell there product to a soccer mom who want to pay big money for a quick fix. So its pros and cons to the self defense market. I say again and again you should learn from combat sports first then go back and modify your training for self defense because then you will know what works with pressure. What people from my old back round tries to do is use the Bruce Lee philosophy with out having the strong foundation from MMA so they are mixing arts together and it look like trash. They deceive people by using these rehearsed complicated drills . But the days are better now you can try Burton Richardson MMA for the Street because he has the self-defense and MMA training methods which allow you to make things work. Sorry for the long story but people must not be tricked like I was. You cant just train for unskilled you need to train to fight anyone in any range but beat them with the self defense tactics and mma skill that's the real Buce Lee aproach. You must be honest with yourself with out lying to yourself in order to know what works you have to train with someone fighting back.

Cody Cannon says:

So long as they practice takedowns (not pulling guard), takedown defense, and add striking…then yes.

If they don't do the last one, then the likelihood of it working is much more slim. Akin to training any Traditional Martial Art, and never sparring. Your body will ALWAYS DO WHAT IT IS TAUGHT, aka muscle memory. If you pull back your blows in practice, you will in demonstration. If you worry too much about a good position for BJJ competition rules, but it is likly a bad position for someone who punches, you will get hurt.

Σπυρος Δρογγιτης says:

if you fight one person and not many bjj is the best but if you have many opponents striking arts like boxing is the best … the problem why many people do sports and not self defence its because self defence have a lot of loopholes and a lot of bulshido out there and prefer mma because you know that if this thing work in a trained fighter works in any person … on the other hand judo is very good because is a martial arts that use the clothes of the opponent and this is very good thing in a self defence situation …. the only problem with the sport oriented martial art is that luck in the weapon skills and this is problematic because its a lot of crazy people out there and a lot of weapons in small size that can be deadly

Triz ENY says:

Self defense can easily be translated to competition especially a real self defense not like aikido. You will learn in your journey of just simply learning to fight and defend yourself.
See I'm giving you a chance and watched a video since most have been comical I stopped watching but I'm giving you a shot and hope you give REAL informative and quality content and not useless crap of an adult who likes martial arts but doesn't know it and is now.

CraigAB69 says:

There is an old saying "You will fight the way you train."

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