Originally Posted by
Amir Allam
I'm glad everyone is being civil on here, because this is pretty badly biased. Of course, I can't blame R&R at all; if I had a superhero uncle who competed and was outclassed, I couldn't appear nearly as unbiased as they do. So I don't mind if they mildly discredit the vaporizer with their ignorance of the move's intricacies, or if they imply that Eddie was stalling by staying in that position (he clearly goes apeshit trying to finish).
No, what really bothers me is this talk of filters. The idea expresses precisely what is wrong with the dogmatic closed-mindedness of far too many traditional jiujitsu schools. While it is true that we can never fully remove our subjective bias from any of our value judgments, our 'filter' can be more or less restrictive. Based on the video, if I walk into a Gracie school as a new student, they'll tell me not to use the deep half and to ignore the way other people use it. In contrast, I can't tell you how many times Eddie has said, "I suck at this and I never use it, but we are going to drill heel-hooks/kneebars/berimbolo/single-legs/etc because it will be awesome for some of you and I've seen other people make it work." The filter that they (R&R) employ is so restrictive that they're even throwing out techniques which would be useful within their own paradigm, i.e., for self-defense on the street. In contrast, our (10th Planet's) filter is informed only by individual abilities, imagination, and the amount of time in a day. I can't speak for everyone, but I have never heard "<TECHNIQUE NAME> doesn't work" in a 10th Planet gym. To me, that is a very salient difference.
