I can't stop being prejudiced against BJJ

MMA and Martial Arts
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I know this sounds weird but I can’t stop being prejudiced against bjj. I’m currently practicing it so of course I don’t hate it. I actually enjoy it. I think it’s a competent martial art. But I have severely prejudiced opinions about it. After BJJ class muay thai starts immediately afterwards. People tell me oh “I could never do muay thai afterwards I would be too tired.” We drill for 40 minutes and then we roll for 20 minutes. That is not hard. It’s actually very easy.

I watch these street fight videos and it shows the BJJ guy taking his attacker down. But I’m watching it and I’m like “how the fuck did he take him down with such a shitty take down.” He’s lucky the guy he’s protecting himself against has no basic understanding of wrestling or judo."

I’ll mention that I’ve done judo before and people will tell me that judo would be too hard on their body. I know this is a horrible thought but I’m thinking “you’re too much of a pussy to do judo so you do bjj?” “Is that what you’re telling me.?”

I just have these horrible very prejudiced opinons about bjj and I wish I wasn’t like that. I know it’s not good to be a nutrider either but my thoughts just bother me.

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Post one so we can pour over it.

I sympathize with you, I personally think almost every BJJ roller I’ve ever encountered tends to be very full of gas with little to no long term endurance. They all want to be Royce Gracie vs Dan Severn. But they last about 2 minutes.

Now this does not apply to my own BJJ instructors, who were world class. They made sure to make BJJ class basically just Judo class.

But there are little nuances that you notice over the years.

I’ll give you a concrete example: hands. BJJ people just cannot stop complaining about their swollen hands. These poor babies complain about their finger joints because you know, gripping gi and necks and arms is tough on your little phalanges.

Whereas all the judoka I’ve known douse their hands in Tiger Balm and liniments, like the kung fu ancients taught us.

It’s almost like they love the reputation of the sport but really do avoid the harsher elements. I think this is where the whole myth of “judo doesn’t focus on newaza” shit comes from, BJJ schools tried to steal it. They tried to convince the whole world they created something novel.

And now you have a whole culture of people who think some form of pretzel maneuver on the ground is like cold fusion. Something cave men were doing 50,000 years ago on wild animals.

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So, weighing in from a sports and injury analysis perspective on both of you, I can see why, much like i said with people not always wanting to do combat sports because they dont want to be and dont need to be injured, from a Judo perspective and grappling in general, Judo can be quite harsh on joints like shoulders and knees, two that most people in general dont want to get injured. Yeah, we can dismiss and ridicule people as ‘pussys’ but I think that’s reductive and, lets be fair here, most of us here who fight do so electively, not because we need to. We looked at our lives, weighed what we wanted to do and accepted risks. To some, those are unacceptable, so they do other things or dont do combat sports at all.

The people choosing BJJ may on average reduce the specific injury liklihood of doing judo throws etc, but they are choosing hands instead. In the same way for me if i did boxing it would be 1 year of hard work for head movement, hands only fighting and call it there to practice alone, I dont compete in boxing and never will, all reasons pointing to ‘I dont fancy risking brain damage, so I’ll do a striking art that doesnt have head punches, reducing that risk.’ Hence my new venture into Ashihara Kaiken.

From the culture side of BJJ, there is a lot of nutriding in the community over ‘BJJ owed UFC 1, gracies best’ etc because of the salesman tactics of opponent picking that a certain Paul brother is doing with his opponent picks to make sure he looks unstoppable, and it’s important people understand the strengths, weaknesses and limitations of their toolsets for combat sports.

should I be so old that I can train, dont have ruined hands from combat sports and art, my training will probably be HEMA and Ziranmen by my later years so I can maintain drawing, hopefully. Would that make me a ‘pussy’ for not keeping up with Ashihara, or would it mean my priorities in life changed?

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Talk about two ends of the spectrum.

自然門 is hardcore kung fu. It’s up there with Hung Ga Kuen. Where are you leaning it from?

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Well, I need to, but it’s definitely a choice, not a compulsion.

For me BJJ is like a maki buffet, and judo is like Sizzler.

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Depending on which art called Ziranmen we’re talking about, I’d agree, as it’s not a term unique to say Wan Laisheng’s art.

My teacher is Nassem Raufi. I was supposed to go to a seminar on the art in Leipzig in 2020 for an intensive week, but the pandemic scuppered that. Instead, we worked through the lockdown to do lessons over Zoom, and I have continued to practice and get feedback since. This will be the first time actually spending time with the fellow students in person, but I’ve maintained a relatively consistent practice over the years since, so getting the hands on time will hopefully help iron out any kinks and give me more material to work with.

Funny you mention Hung Gar, as my instructor has commented before in one of his video dissections of the style that in his view it’s akin to an opposite of Yiquan.

by Sizzler I assume you mean the pub chain and not the Mumbai originating medley dish?

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Judo is hard on the body because of the way it’s practiced, IME. You don’t have to destroy your body learn and be good at Judo. But, the hidden question is, what aspect of Judo do you want to be good at?

If you want to be a winner in the comp aspect of Judo, well, you are gonna have to train, a lot. Even then, there are better and worse ways to go about it.

Same with BJJ… how many folks who do BJJ/GJJ, actually compete at it? I’m sure that may vary from country to country, even school to school, but, when I did BJJ, the focus was not really on comp, although, it DID go more that way after I left the school, due to my body finally giving out (from 3 decades of Judo).

Yeah, I laugh at a 60 minute workout of 40 minutes of drilling and 20 of rolling, as being exhausting. Not that it could not be done that way, but for the inexperienced, not very productive, from a learning POV.

Like, I could do a 60 minute Judo workout and make it intense, but that’s because I knew how to train, and how to do all the stuff I was doing already.

Not impossible for lower level, but again, maybe not as productive.

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I never did that, LOL. Can’t put that stinky stuff on you before class, that’s for sure.

I did have to tape my fingers after a while, though, for torn callouses and fingernails. And strained/stressed finger joints.

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Naw, there were a lot of judoka who spent time on ne waza, way before BJJ was a thing. Depended on the dojo/club you belonged to.

Ground work versus standing is a long-term thing in Judo, pretty much from the founding of the Kodokan, when grappling was introduced into the colleges (think KOSEN (somewhat)), and the comps were all prep/college teams versus each other.

History is interesting, and sometimes instructive.

IMO, BJJ/GJJ is (generally) more laid-back in the US because it was from the beginning a commercial venture. Judo was not. That’s not a value judgement, on my part, either.

You can’t be damaging your students for the sake of winning comps. You have to, to some degree, cater to them, to keep them coming back, to keep them feeling interested, and accomplished.

There ARE hard core comp BJJ/GJJ places, never think there are not, or programs within larger affiliations. It’s just not for everybody.

Interestingly, when I lived in NOLA, I trained at a dojo, where a couple of professional musicians also trained. Piano players, specifically. One of them, was pretty well known (no it wasn’t Harry Connick, Jr, or Senior).

I trained with both of them (both were black belts), and we did not go hard on gripping, at their request. We’d take equal grips and go from there. So it’s all modifieable, to the individual.

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Some people just don’t have whatever personality quirk needs combat sports to further them along their path in life, either.

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I did BJJ with MMA wrestle monsters. And so my wrestling sucked. Because it was a straight up murder fest every time i stood up and grappled with anyone.

As we got older and they calmed the fuck down. My wrestling has improved.

I think the reason BJJ guys sit down is because this all or nothing aproach to stand up. And it is shit and unnecessary.

Be the sort of guy people want to stand up with. And you will have the sort of BJJ that does a bunch of stand up wrestling.

As a side note I am mostly trying my shivworks inspired almost greco wrestling at the moment. So i can add knife defence to my street focused, BJJ.

And provided i am not being dangerous. Nobody cares.

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That’s basic training protocol, out side of “survival of the fittest”. Glad you survived.

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If you shoot first. The worst they can do us sprawl on you.

If they shoot first… .

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All it really comes down to is what are you personally trying to achieve by training martial arts and are the arts you training meeting those needs?

The rest is noise and its for each induvial to decide, it really doesnt need to be more complicated than that.

The merits of each style have been hashed out thoroughly and thus different arts work better in different situations and are easier or harder for some people to train depending on many individual factors specific to whomever is training .

For example boxing has been shown to impress women and BJJ to impress other men so if you want to attract women then box if you want to attract men do BJJ.

If you are obese then perhaps dont do capoeira but instead try wing chun which is ideal for the plus sized community.

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Everyone knows if you want to get the chicks you need to practice kendo. We have the most fashionable outfits by far.

At any rate you can make almost any martial arts practice easy or hard and it usually comes down to individual dojo culture. Most people haven’t practiced much outside their own club, so their opinion on BJJ or judo writ large isn’t worth much.

FWIW my own judo club was recreational and the practices were relatively easy. I never got hurt. But I was still able to compete and take a win or two against other old guys, and come out alive against the younger ones who went hard.

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There is a very shirt of vibe for capo.

There were some chunky guys in my area though.

Here we are. Me back in the day.

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I wager those chaps were not chunky when they started training .

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I’m not posting a video of that because people can find multiple videos on the internet of what I’m talking about.

@kimjonghng an issue I mentioned is that BJJ guys don’t really train hard. They go home after class and think they accomplished something for that day. It’s not just their emphasis on injury prevention I have a problem with. This youtuber called MMA Guru or something said that when he did martial arts he hated dealing with the out of shape nerds who did bjj.

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No, Dit Da Jows are for after class.

It’s basically RICE, but with goo. That’s how you develop kung fu grip.

Although fingernails, the best advice is just keep them short, which is hard for the classical guitar crowd, but they just need to learn Travis picking.

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It is and it isn’t, Zi ran Men basically means “one’s own gate” and it’s been used by a bunch of CMA guys to describe their personal style, including Wan Laisheng’s, Du Xinwu, etc.

I’m sure you’re going to figure out fast Nassem Raufi’s value.

This is common amongst “internal” stylists that have never trained Hung Ga Kuen, and believe it is an “external” style, even though Wong Fei Hung’s school incorporates basically all of the Nei Jia philosophies, techniques, etc.

My own Taijiquan and Xingyiquan instructor, who was a badass, often made comments about Hung Ga to differentiate his own art from it. That’s kind of what these “internal” stylists do, and granted they often do have some sort of history training “external” arts, but I find it discouraging because they will turn right about and do something “external” to show off, especially with weapons like staff.

The truth is there is very little difference between internal and external schools, this is a modern contrivance created by scholars. Taijiquan, Xingyiquan, Yiquan are very similar, modern Hung Ga Kuen contains a lot of their material (because it was far better maintained since the 1800s), and has an active full contact San Shou, Lei Tai, and MMA representation, something you won’t find with many of the “internal” arts, which limit themselves to things like push hands and Kuen faat (fist sets AKA kata)

That was my bad joke about both being a buffet dinner, just one is a lot cheaper (judo)

Actually it wasn’t a bad joke.

And this is why I stick to Judo, because it’s cheap and widely available, for practicing kung fu.