[serious] What type of knowledge do you think training in the gi gives a grappler?

[Jack Hanley]

You are a super nice guy!

First (and obviously last) time I ever wore that shirt too.

[Nick Paul]

I think the only reason the kid's Gi division is so big is because the "Martial Arts Uniform" makes it more appealing and fun for them. My gym is no-gi but in the kids class they wear the gi. That's the reasoning my coach gave me anyway

[Aiseop]

At ATT, at my school at least, if you want to fight MMA, you train no gi. You train striking. You mix the two. Many jiu-jitsu techniques are shed. Guard passing becomes secondary to elbows and hammer fists. Work on your takedowns and defenses. In other words, if you are thinking of MMA, stop doing jiu-jitsu, and do MMA. Simple as that.

As per self-defense and or street fighting, the best thing you can train in is parkour. Learn to run, learn to vault over obstacles. Live. To speculate about possible self-defense scenarios is a fool's errand. We can speak to our own street/school fight and self-defense experience. As an adult, I was attacked once, and, in fact, I used one of the self-defense techniques I learned at my first jiu-jitsu schools, Relson Gracie in New York. It was late October, he was wearing clothes, grabbing him actually helped.

I am educated enough to know that in a no-rules scenario, personal experience only carries theory so far. MMA has specific rules and so one can theorize properly because we have matches we can analyze.

It's devastatingly unintelligent for us to do a gi vs no-gi argument based on self-defense. One side will say, I saw a video where a dude did a perfect morote seoi nage (two hand shoulder throw) grabbing solely a t-shirt; while the other will say, I saw a t-shirt rip quickly.

The truth is we are not training for the streets. We are doing a martial art, but it is not, in any way, a dress rehearsal. Our art teaches us to think on the spot of being attacked, to be creative, to know how to control, where we need to be in relation to our opponent. Bare-hand, any jiu-jitsu trained martial artists wins (gi, nogi, mixed gi, pants only, turkish oil wrestling, no matter, wins).

Add a knife to the attack or a group of his friends, then you do parkour. At that stage, it would be more beneficial to have trained the "FLIGHT" response. Run. Live. Add a gun, pray, cower, face death stoically, whatever. Or pack your own heat, which then means, your jiu-jitsu training is really not for self-defense because you are carrying a permitted weapon all the time.

My initial impetus in starting this post, as I said, was not to do the gi vs nogi thing. It was to actually inquire as to what things training in a gi gives people that nogi folk see as advantageous. It wasn't meant to bash any one style. And I did not do that.

In other words, I was really inquiring how 10th Planet folk see Ronins like me, who have no school near us, 6 hours at a minimum, but are nonetheless appreciative of Eddie Bravo's brilliant and revolutionary contribution to jiu-jitsu. I hope you understand we Ronins are not flawed BJJers in your eyes because we spend part of our time in gi. As a Ronin, I admire you all, am even a little envious; but I am also level-headed enough to understand that jiu-jitsu is its own thing for its own sake, much like other sports are. That, we enjoy doing all forms of jiu-jitsu as a sport, gi and nogi, that has arbitrary rules like any other sports, which include the type of attire one is allowed to wear and what one is allowed to do with said attire. (In football, you cannot grab a face mask, etc.)

I caution the quick "analogical" move we make with jiu-jitsu sometimes, whereby the value of it somehow exits outside of it, in a hypothetical encounter in the street, or in an encounter in the cage, where it becomes another sport, with it's own arbitrary rules and attire, disallowing the grabbing of clothing and gloves, and where the ground game is discouraged and given lesser value in the judges scorecard than the striking portion of the MMA match.

Jiu-jitsu does not need MMA; nor does it need the street to be valuable. It is valuable on its own, a beautiful sport that we fall in love and addiction with, and in which the grand, very grand majority of us, will never be able to translate it onto the pavement or the MMA canvas.

Be well, and thank you for being an incredibly open-minded forum. I know this group gets unnecessary and undeserved grief many times from other BJJers, and your founder, Eddie, has endured way more than any of us would be able to for the sake of our art. But it is in this, in Eddie's vision, his willingness to share it and publicly test it, and welcome all, that 10th Planet's vision will be fulfilled. Things like this take time, and you all are lucky to be at your schools, but you should know many of us who were silent advocates and allies are now openly defending and advocating the 10th Planet revolution in the world of jiu-jitsu.

We just wear the gi, partly because we have to, and partly because we like grappling in it.

[Neil Kiernan]

Very similar to what Big Nog said on the subject:

He is a seriously cool guy. He was perhaps my favorite coach on TUF other then GSP. I REALLY hope he forms his own training camp. His coaching skills were so good.

[Neil Kiernan]

I think the only reason the kid's Gi division is so big is because the "Martial Arts Uniform" makes it more appealing and fun for them. My gym is no-gi but in the kids class they wear the gi. That's the reasoning my coach gave me anyway

My kids hate the gi, but they came from a wrestling background. My own feelings on the matter is that the more I roll around in my Judo Gi and the more I watch my kids trying to tie and re-tie their belts the more I wonder who ever designed such a garment with rolling around and wrestling for position in mind.

[Neil Kiernan]

At ATT, at my school at least, if you want to fight MMA, you train no gi. You train striking. You mix the two. Many jiu-jitsu techniques are shed. Guard passing becomes secondary to elbows and hammer fists. Work on your takedowns and defenses. In other words, if you are thinking of MMA, stop doing jiu-jitsu, and do MMA. Simple as that.

This actually refers back to a thread I have been wanting to start for some time. I have just been trying to collect my thoughts on it. As Eddie pointed out, submissions are on the decline. And I have noticed a trend that fighting on your back in the guard is a great way to lose MMA fights. There are exceptions, but even the biggest exception I can think of in recent memory is Chael Sonnen beating the holy shit out of Anderson Silva for four out of five rounds until he finally managed to squeak out a triangle.

Chael Sonnen, Randy Coture and many others don't even have ranks in BJJ and were still able to beat black belts in BJJ in MMA with just solid submission defense, takedowns and ground and pound. Trying to get submissions on sweaty shirtless guys (or gals in the tops MMA fighters wear) seems to be going the way of the do-do.

[TaylorWolf]

Trying to get submissions on sweaty shirtless guys (or gals in the tops MMA fighters wear) seems to be going the way of the do-do.

Dude that is depressing.

I guess you just gotta be an ASSASIN and grab that shit in the first round lol

[Aiseop]

This actually refers back to a thread I have been wanting to start for some time. I have just been trying to collect my thoughts on it. As Eddie pointed out, submissions are on the decline. And I have noticed a trend that fighting on your back in the guard is a great way to lose MMA fights. There are exceptions, but even the biggest exception I can think of in recent memory is Chael Sonnen beating the holy shit out of Anderson Silva for four out of five rounds until he finally managed to squeak out a triangle.

It's the ruleset. Not allowing the bottom person to kick the top is a ridiculously pro-stand up rule. Heel kicks to the kidneys are no joke and, as the video Eddie shared a week or so ago, from the rubber guard you can viciously attack the temple with the heels while the guy is entangled helplessly.

So, MMA should not be the reason of jiu-jitsu. Especially because those that control MMA don't have jiu-jitsu's interest at heart. Jiu-jitsu for it's own sake, is how it should be.

[Jack Hanley]

It's the ruleset. Not allowing the bottom person to kick the top is a ridiculously pro-stand up rule. Heel kicks to the kidneys are no joke and, as the video Eddie shared a week or so ago, from the rubber guard you can viciously attack the temple with the heels while the guy is entangled helplessly.

So, MMA should not be the reason of jiu-jitsu. Especially because those that control MMA don't have jiu-jitsu's interest at heart. Jiu-jitsu for it's own sake, is how it should be.

Yep, the Fertittas and Dana are all old boxing fans. Under their ownership (and more accurately under the Unified Rules), MMA has become increasingly a striking-centric game punctuated by an occasional takedown.

I also agree that street fights are not the real reason anyone keeps training any grappling sport for years and years.

We do it because it's "fun" in a broad sense of that word.

Matt Thornton gave an awesome lecture in Iceland once where he asked people in the seminar why they train. A lot of people said "self-defense". He disposed of that rationale by pointing out there was zero crime in Iceland. Eventually he told them that he believed people train because grappling sports are like a really powerful form of yoga in that the real purpose of yoga is to make you concentrate on one difficult thing so much that you empty your mind of all the other nagging details of life (at least for an hour or two) and this has a beneficial effect on you. This empty mindedness has various names. But whatever you call it, I think it is actually a big component of the "fun" my students are talking about when they describe why they train in grappling.

[Aiseop]

Wow, excellent. I wish I was at that lecture. Thanks. Excellent way of putting that "flow" of jiu-jitsu.