A guy teaching combatives with zero experience is absurd. Like many Gracies he leverages his family name to sell garbage. Every time you question his qualifications though, Gracie Stan’s try to tell you otherwise
Rener has a great deal of experience.
Also, the Gracie Academy (Rener / Ryron) have a significant distance and separation from the IBJJF.
For that matter, so does Royce, and his group.
Royce does not move his pen for his black belts to register with the IBJJF.
And both of those groups emphasize training jiu-jitsu in striking environments, as well as situations where there may not be mats, and/or to be cognizant of opponents who may not be following civilized rules.
Rener has combatives experience? How? What was his biggest op?
It depends what you mean by combatives.
If you are talking about fighting, part of the reason Rener stopped competing as an adult,
Was his father used to put him to fight full grown adults as a teen ager, and in his twenties, on a regular basis, every time some yahoo walked in the academy, and wanted to have an actual fight to test themselves.
And again, as a teen ager, and in his twenties, his father had him do the old school bit of having him grapple everyone in the room every time they did a seminar, including with the military folks, and LEOs.
That kind of thing results in people with a good collection of injuries, when people hit their thirties and forties.
Most (all) of Helio’s sons are also avid shooters, and cross train extensively with some of best force on force and shooting instructors from the military and law enforcement.
Some of them, like Royce, have also been deputized, or gotten an LEO badge.
Fighting is different from the angle he’s taking on the combatives course. If I’m being provided instruction for teh streets, I’m looking not just for your analytical skills, but also your experience. Experience informs both your emotions and your technique. In fact, I’d rather hear from a guy who bombed his last op hard than a guy who’s been on none, cause at least he can reflect on his failure.
I think what Rener does is kinda scammy.
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A weird thing I have noticed even good capable guys can turn into weird RBSD automitons when the street is brought up.
It is like all the processes that made them a good martial artists go out the window when applied to self defence.
One of the things that impressed me when I first started encountering high level street fighters, which was during the pandemic, was how off the wall the tactics were. The actual hand to hand mattered very little and the creative aspect really was what drove battles, even when you had multiple martial artists in play. For example, what are bike cops for? Well, it can be easy to assume that they ride up and get them jump off the to fight you or something. When I hit the streets I realized that they’re mobile barricades. Essentially the bike is a rolling shield. I can train BJJ all day til I’m literally blue in the face and not realize that. But when you step outside and run ops, you learn these things. Let’s say an LEO is injured and you need to get him to safety. How? Do you have a police barricade? That’s a stretcher now. That’s something I learned in the field too. Someone died for me to learn that one. That’s where experience really comes into play in these situations and dueling on the mats, even if it’s vale tudo, doesn’t get you those real world tips and tricks.
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Yeah. I have a bunch of stuff like that. Like kasegetami stops my knees from getting all scratched up.
Talking about interesting street fighting tactics, in the case of armed belligerents, the Somali militia system is an interesting one. Everyone at every level from individual to team to squad to company to battalion follows the same 5 rules (basically maintain an extended line abreast, maintain visual contact but not too close, terrain depending, move towards gun fire, if you see the enemy dismount, if you come under fire react to contact) and the commander of whatever size element just kind of floats around wherever he might be needed. And often he has his own personal troops who would be used to reinforce weak areas in the line or exploit breakthroughs.
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