The Jiu Jitsu basics

I am fairly new to Jiu Jitsu, let me make that clear from the start, but I am going to try to explain a few basic (but crucial) techniques..

Before you start you should always do a warm up and stretches. The warm up could be “shrimping” movements. To do this you need a partner. You then lie on you back with your knees bent and have your partner stand over you. You then flatten one of your legs to the mat by straightening it and then roll your body onto the side of that leg so that you are leaning on the shoulder of that side. The simultaneously push against your partners leg while “shrimping” out, which means shooting your hips out in the opposite direction away from your opponent. The action should be explosive. This is the fundamental movement used in performing a hip escape so it is imperative to practice it a lot in drills like this.

One of the principle technique I am going to be explaining is how to escape from side control. So if you are starting in full guard with your feet pressed your opponents hips, getting ready to push him off you but he throws your ankles to one side and pounces into side control. The first thing to do is to make sure your arm of the side he comes from grabs his opposite arm’s bicep. So if he comes from the left you grab his right bicep with your left arm and vice versa. This is so he can’s get control of your head in a neck crank (because if he did you would be in a world of trouble from strikes or submissions). Keep your opposite arm around your stomach will become evident later.

So from this position there are two basic ways of getting out.

The first is to push your hips towards him and then explode in the opposite direction with a shrimping hip escape. This may create enough distance between you and your opponent to reclaim full guard with either a closed guard or a butterfly guard.

If that doesn’t work there is another way. With the arm across your stomach, use that to get an underhook on your opponent so you can control him a bit. Then slide down so that your ear is at his armpit and then use a hip escape to sprawl out so that your stomach is face down on the mat with you on your knees. From this position you can drive him over to earn side control top.

About the Author:

Morgan Mcleary is a 19 year old journalism student from Glasgow, Scotland. He currently trains in Jiu-Jitsu at Possil Park Gym and is a member of GripHouse MMA. He is one of the growing number of British MMA fans. As well as writing about MMA he also has his own blog which is updated weekly and is working on a podcast. http://themorganmclearyblog.wordpress.com/

The Co-Evolution of Brazilian Jui Jitsu and Mixed Martial Arts

Looking back on the history of mixed martial arts as we know it today, it’s hard to differentiate the evolution of the sport with the evolution of Brazilian Jiu Jistu as well. The late Helio Gracie, the Godfather of modern day Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, or BJJ, as we know it, took the ancient Japanese martial art of Jiu Jitsu and modified the techniques and philosophies so that a much smaller person can overcome the strength of a bigger, stronger opponent. The current level of elite competitors in MMA are all versed to one extent or another in the disciplines of BJJ as well as a combination of other techniques borrowed from a growing number of martial arts.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship was not the first mixed martial arts competition to pit two fighters against each other under the premise of using strikes, joint locks, chokes and positioning to determine a winner. In Brazil and Japan there had been organized and un-organized levels of fighting competitions for decades before the UFC came about. What revolutionized MMA and subsequently the UFC in hindsight was the integration of BJJ into the minds of the world, specifically Americans as one of the most effective fighting styles against virtually any opponent.  The Gracie Family, which pioneered BJJ, was extremely successful in the early days of the UFC as we saw Royce Gracie dominate the 8-man tournament submitting each of his opponents in UFC 1.

While Royce and many of the Gracies moved on to become legends in both BJJ and MMA, the evolution of both sports began to leave the traditional style of Gracie Jiu Jitsu seeming dated and less effective. BJJ was seen as the perfect fighting style as millions of people across the world repeatedly watched boxers, karate masters, judokas and wrestlers get tapped out from painful joint locks or go unconscious from a varied assault of chokes. But, this aura of BJJ being the only effective fighting style wore off once cross trained athletes started competing in MMA.

Probably some of the most successful athletes in the sport of MMA besides BJJ experts were wrestlers who simply knew how to defend against chokes and joint locks. Their highly trained bodies and minds were capable of bringing a fight to the floor and pounding on anyone who lay beneath them so long as they knew when a submission was being applied soon enough to get out of it.

Elite wrestlers that come to mind for different reasons are Mark Coleman and Randy Couture. Both were Olympic level wrestlers and have a storied career in NCAA college wrestling. Coleman is known for putting some savage beatings on BJJ experts, but also having submissions slapped on him at will. Couture on the other hand is a wrestler who learned how to strike and grapple for submission styling, even going as far as competing in an exhibition match with a modern BJJ legend in Ronald “Jacare” Souza.

Along comes MMA’s modern day stars; Fedor Emelianenko, Lyoto Machida, Anderson Silva, Georges St. Pierre, BJ Penn and Miguel Torres. Every one of these fighters has at least one, if not many dazzling submissions on their resume and is also capable of dynamically knocking out and out-lasting other fighters. These are the crème of the crop, elite, cross trained fighters of modern day MMA. Each of them comes from a different background, some focused on striking, some focused on grappling, but each has an extensive knowledge of the ground game and BJJ beyond just defending submissions.

The Gracies can mostly be attributed and thanked for the development of MMA as we know it through their unique brand of Jiu Jitsu that has expanded from Brazil throughout the world. The discipline alone does not excel in modern day Mixed Martial Arts competition alone, but in order to ever compete at a high level, BJJ is undisputedly a foundational building block for any complete fighter.

Check out a jui jitsu mount here

How It All Began

Martial arts have been running through many civilizations with a unique characteristic of moves and names adopted by each part of the world. What started as just a skill to enhance self protection, became a sport with leagues and competitions being organized in various parts of the world to enable participation of martial experts to showcase their talents and spread their fame. Some of the examples are Aikido, Judo etc (Japanese Martial Arts) which have exclusive moves and which narrowed down the members taking part to be among the same kind of martial art. This requirement was then eradicated by the introduction of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

MMA is a concoction of many martial arts mixed together founded by Jeff Blatnick. Mr. Blatnick was a Greco-Roman wrestler who was also an Olympic gold medalist, which then became eminent after the naissance of Ultimate Fighting Championship in 1993. MMA enabled unarmed full contact combat which let the artists to grapple and strike with nominal rules when the opponent was standing and on the ground. The modern martial arts took a real toll in the early 1900s throughout the Euro-Asian continent. Some of the competitions can be traced through Brazil, Japan (from 1900 till now).

Inspired by history, traces of different forms of MMA dated back to Greek Pankration which found a home in the Olympic Games in 648 B.C. Further the brutal Etruscan (a sport which was encouraged in the Roman Empire). Pankratiasts were well esteemed and statues were erected throughout the empire to honor them.