10 posts shown.
Rarely do I actually find myself agreeing with what Gerald Smith76 has to say.
The "dirty" Jiu-Jitsu stuff is legit, everything else is just choreographed nonsense.
At least this shows how much garbage they used to teach in the military back in the day...
Just figured this out recently, might be useful for some of you.
1) install Mozilla Firefox
2) go to Tools>Extensions and get more Extensions 3
3) search for Videodownloader and just click to install it
4) in Firefox, go to View>Toolbars>Customize
5) drag the Videodownloader icon onto your navigation bar
6) boom, done!
When you want to grab something from YouTube, just open the page, hit play, and click that Videodownloader icon on your toolbar.
The clips need to be in .flv format, so use an flvPlayer (you can snag one online for free).
If I'm late to the party and you guys already knew this, my bad. If not, buy me a drink next time I'm in town.
Later.
Jamie Fowler2 said:Can you explain?
DOMINANCE — basically peaking right when it counts (like during the Super Bowl, an SP, or chasing a title). You go all out, crush everyone in your path, and take what's yours.
KAIZEN — constant improvement. It’s that concept about never stopping the grind to get better at everything you do. You see it everywhere in American business culture. When something new hits the scene, you check if it fits your long-term goals. If it does, you pivot completely and overhaul your whole setup:
1) you decide if it's worth the hassle, and if it is, you scrap the old way and start fresh
2) if the payoff isn't huge, you just stick to your guns and maybe cherry-pick a few useful bits from the new method.
That's pretty much it in a nutshell.
Later
The question is straightforward, but I feel like there's a gap here.
1) Yeah
2) Nah
3) Not really
Is there a middle ground?
Like, maybe I'm happy with my workout routine, but I hate my actual technique?
Or:
I'm not totally satisfied, so I'm gonna pick up something else to train alongside this.
Or even:
I'm good with it, but some parts just don't sit right with me, so I'll try doing them my own way.
Personally, I'm all about that last one. Constant tweaking, leveling up, questioning everything. Kaizen over dominance. Happy to dive deeper if needed.
Later
Hey everyone.
Glad this didn't turn into a "who's better" ego trip. That’s usually how these things go.
I see people comparing different styles based on how they work on the street. Maybe I'm off base, but this is a self-defense forum. Nobody asks a pro football player 🙂 how much his corner kick technique translates to a street fight.
Funny enough, we had a similar debate at a recent coaching seminar. After talking it out for ages, we landed on a few points:
- "People training any kind of self-defense have a slightly better shot than those who don't. But anyone can get blindsided by a bottle to the head from behind."
- "Athletes are actually at a disadvantage compared to non-athletes in their specific discipline." This is because they subconsciously pull their punches or focus too much on the opponent due to sports rules.
- "Those of us working security (myself included until recently) know the best weapon in a brawl is having more people on your side." One-on-one fights aren't really reality anymore.
There are plenty of other things you can figure out through discussion, and it doesn't always have to be about fighting.
JFK: Some of you might know Matt Thornton, who does JFK. Honestly, he's a better grappler than half the masters I know or have watched. In his video series (7 DVDs, highly recommend!), he often mentions the massive gap between amateur athletes and Olympic-level ones. Basically, an Olympic-level Judo guy or wrestler will handle BJJ guys or UFC fighters without breaking a sweat. It brings us back to: "The man or the skill?"
So, I'd say watch yourself when attacking traditional martial arts. They aren't as bad as the typical UFC fighter thinks. Not everyone in self-defense needs to prove themselves in a ring. Let people do what they love.
And UFC is a sport. That's a good thing.
Afrofeet said:maybe it's unrealistic, but it's way closer than "skills."
It's not far off, you just gotta define what reality looks like for different people. For those guys doing Shotokan Karate, reality is hitting competitions every single weekend and stacking up medals.
For some, reality is fighting in Pride FC.
For others, it's just hanging with the crew and grabbing a beer after.
Around here, Jujutsu basically ditched the Judo ground game to adopt the BJJ style because it actually works better. That's just how it is—skills evolve over time as you learn from your mistakes.
Later
Eric Jackson43 said:I honestly think it’s just a waterproof marker rather than a tattoo. 😉
Look, everything needs funding, including the growth of UFC. I don't see that as a downside for the sport; we just live in a certain kind of world. The quality of UFC depends on how widespread it gets, and in a capitalist system, you need cash for that. It's the same deal in other sports—where people actually lose their lives sometimes, which isn't really the case in UFC. At the end of the day, UFC is a sport, but it's also incredibly close to being a pure skill set, probably closer than most skills nowadays.
Obviously it's a marker. 🙂 And besides, that sponsor is only for one fight, right?
I mentioned before that UFC fighters are insanely dedicated and do it out of passion, just like people train Aikido out of love. But you can only grind in UFC while you're physically peaked (maybe you teach later, whatever), whereas you can do Aikido your whole life. Aikido practitioners don't burn themselves out, so they can basically live forever like turtles. 🙂
You can look at this through short-term vs. long-term goals. 🙂
Even UFC, which is supposed to be an open system, is getting boxed into specific skill sets today. We're seeing "21st-century skills" emerging from 20th-century ones (which came from even older stuff): Shooto, Krav Maga, Gracie Jiu-Jitsu...
It’s mostly driven by money. That’s why Machado Jiu-Jitsu isn't the same thing as Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and Shooto isn't the same as full contact plus wrestling. Try telling some BJJ guy that it all started from Judo (since Helio learned directly from Judo practitioners) and he'll probably take your head off...
I do both and it works for me.
nakmuay said:Based on what swiftsurfer80 wrote, does that mean since I train Muay Thai—which is a competitive sport—I'm practicing low kicks just to score points rather than to actually break someone's leg or take them out of the fight? Do you seriously think when I'm drilling a technique I plan to use, I'm thinking about point totals instead of how to wreck someone with it?
The whole point of drilling a strike, a takedown, a block, or a combo isn't about points. It's about making sure that when it happens in a fight, the technique lands harder, more precise, with better timing, and ultimately deals the most damage possible.
NOPE. That’s not how it works. Muay Thai was around way before the UFC era, right? It’s a traditional martial art/sport in its own right. If you add Gracie Jiu-Jitsu to the mix, then you're talking about MMA...
And why would you assume a Judo practitioner can't slam someone on their head and keep them down? Or that a karate fighter can't land a clean shot to end a fight?
You hit the nail on the head though—the goal is maximum damage. It's the same deal with boxing, kickboxing, or any combat system built on striking. You aren't counting points or thinking about them in the heat of it. The only difference is the rules stop you from, say, biting the other guy.
Robin Palmer3 said:swiftsurfer80, your takes are so naive they aren't even worth a response... You're way too obsessed with Japanese arts to have a real conversation!
It might not come off that way in my posts, but I’m not some Japanophile...
I just think people should call things what they actually are. Even if it's Egyptian. The way people talk now, you'd think the whole world starts and ends with UFC, but that’s just not true.
The showbiz industry used to be all about Bruce Lee, now it's all about Fedor Emelianenko, Mirko Cro Cop, and Kazushi Sakuraba.
Back in the day, you had to hit the theater to see a show; nowadays, you just hop on a website or catch ESPN on a Thursday at 11 PM.
You see these guys fighting until they're exhausted, sporting a gambling site logo tattooed right on their shaved chests... And then everyone wants to lecture me about "reality." Real life is sponsored by McBet.
Don't get me wrong.
Later.
I was scrolling through this other forum where they were debating how UFC came to be, basically weighing its pros and cons against those old-school traditional systems like Judo, Aikido, or Karate.
Take Judo, for example. Nothing truly new has happened there in fifty years. If anything changed, it was just shuffling the order of moves or certain techniques getting more hype during Olympic cycles. Honestly, the Olympics is the reason Judo turned out the way it did—most modern practitioners are just athletes, not even close to being actual martial artists. If they actually knew the skill, they’d be using strikes too and would be much more dangerous fighters.
BJJ basically exploited that gap by branding itself as this totally revolutionary thing through massive commercialization. In reality, they’re just selling the exact same Judo moves but giving them exotic names like "Lion Claw" or "Anaconda Constriction." The gear companies made a killing off this, launching big brands you see everywhere now. Competition fighters look like they’re dressed for a Formula 1 race. Regardless, BJJ isn't going to be an Olympic sport anytime soon, and frankly, it doesn't need to be.
Aikido was never meant to be a sport. They don't compete because their goal is different—though half the time, that "goal" is just a convenient excuse for why their techniques don't work when things get real. It's easier to claim peace is the point when you can't actually fight. But let’s not forget that M. Ueshiba created Aikido techniques specifically as an Odgvor to Judo attacks. Back then, Kano and Ueshiba used to swap students and actually spar!!! You can still find a few old-school masters who trained under M. U. and can tell you his sessions were intense!!! Can you even imagine that compared to the soft stuff people call Aikido today?
And believe it or not, the Jujutsu we train today is only a few years old. I'm talking about modern sporting Jujutsu, not the stuff police and military used to run with. Since it's gone mainstream as a sport, it’s facing the same death sentence as other combat arts that went pro. People will only practice what scores points in a tournament, so it’s headed straight for the same fate as Karate.
Karate is the perfect example of how you take a lethal skill and kill it by turning it into a sport. Then the Korean lobby swoops in and pushes Taekwondo(!!!) into the Olympics. 🙂
It was inevitable that something would emerge to fix the holes in those old systems. That response hit fast with the UFC and the whole MMA concept. MMA was marketed as a "learning system"—an evolution in training that didn't need the rigid, outdated constraints of the old schools. Once everything became available online, everyone started mixing styles together.
Now, you can train something that isn't even a real style—just a mashup of 40% kickboxing, 40% BJJ, and 20% whatever a master decides to throw in (maybe some Wing Tsun or Judo if that's their background). The percentages change depending on the "style."
On forums like this, I always get guys trying to convince me that BJJ has nothing to do with Judo, or that striking in the UFC isn't related to Karate. I don't think they're being malicious; it's just a defensive reaction. Everyone wants to protect what they love!
But for the sake of martial arts history, you have to know where things come from. Like how a Judo guy broke Helio Gracie's arm in their first match...
There's also this huge misconception that UFC fighters are just uneducated, wild, or problematic thugs. My experience has been the complete opposite. Toxic people don't last long in MMA any more than they do in any other sport. At the end of the day, MMA is a sport...
Love your own stuff, respect someone else's.
Later.