Once you have achieved a dominant ground position there are two basic ways of controlling your opponent – tight or loose. Tight control can be thought of as ‘pinning’. There is an attempt to essentially immobilize your opponent by applying mount, cross side, or an equivalent top position. It emphasizes heaviness, stability, and tends Read More …
This is one for the coaches in the audience. Before everyone but black belts quit reading this, understand that you really begin coaching at blue belt. You may not own a school or even teach your own class, but you will have coaching responsibilities. Typically the road to becoming a coach begins with in-class Read More …
BJJ, Judo, and Submission wrestling allow you to apply chokeholds to your opponent either using your arms, legs, or the gi. Occasionally this results in temporary unconsciousness. The time it takes to render an opponent unconscious depends on how well the technique is applied and various physiological factors. There has never been a death Read More …
At Valhalla Academy we do quite a bit of positional drilling and sparring. We start from well-defined positions and both people have well-defined goals. For instance, during a closed guard pass drill the instructions for the top man might be to break and pass guard or get a quick in guard submission. The bottom Read More …
The Valhalla Academy philosophy stays very true to the original Team Carlson Gracie roots. We emphasize getting the takedown, getting and staying on top, a crushing pass game, and an active, attacking guard. This is a philosophy of activity versus passivity, action versus reaction, and initiative versus waiting. In a previous the previous post Read More …
Several months ago I put together some positional flow charts for our competition team. They describe which positional transitions score points in the typical Brazilian jiu-jitsu tournament. This provides a roadmap of where to go next in order to build up a score and play the submission game while you are ahead on points. Read More …
Several years ago my friend Aaron Little of Performance Edge (www.truthincombat.com) and I put together a DVD on the application of common judo throws for jiu-jitsu practitioners. The DVD is still available for sale at his site, but has made the rounds, both in part and whole, onto the internet. This is one portion Read More …
The third Western principle of war is that of mass. The idea is that “overwhelming combat power” results from the concentration of all forces and effects at the decisive place and time. Through this principle a smaller, less trained opponent can defeat a larger, more technically skilled one by playing his strongest hand at just Read More …
Grappling in general, and Brazilian jiu-jitsu in particular, is an excellent nucleus for solid defensive tactics, combatives, and self-defense. Certainly striking is a large component of a complete approach but the fundamental control of balance and position can help see you through most situations. The main difference between sport and street martial arts is Read More …
Strength and conditioning is a fundamental supplement to any athletic activity including judo, jiu-jitsu, and other grappling arts. Check out this article I wrote for www.mixedmartialworld.com on an effective strength training program for the hard-training grappling athlete. The key to effective programming for grapplers is to realize that the volume of resistance training must Read More …
Here is another great closed guard sweep from GFT competitor Dentinho from his visit to Valhalla. He is a great guy and excellent instructor. I highly recommend bringing him to your school for a seminar or attending one if it comes nearby. Brian Jones, PhD
A few months back, we at Valhalla Academy were honored to have GFT team member Dentinho teach a class for us. He showed several very simple but effective techniques. I will post these over time. Many thanks to Josh Johnson from Elizabethtown, KY for helping set this up. Brian Jones, PhD
The second principle of Western combat is Offense. To ensure victory one must stay on the attack, he must maintain the initiative. Rather than wait passively for ‘an opening’, a grappler or warrior of the Western mindset forces an opening. As the modern US army combatives program describes it, “the defining characteristic of a Read More …
The first principle guiding the Western way of martial arts is that of objective. All activity must be goal oriented and that goal must be clearly defined by the coach or the athlete. The goal will depend on several factors (ex. training vs. competition or drilling vs. sparring) but it is pointless to operate Read More …
Much has been written about bushido and warrior philosophy in the martial arts. However, due to the Western penchant for things foreign almost everyone looks to the East for wisdom on these matters. Judo and its offshoot art Brazilian jiu-jitsu have their roots in Japan. Since then they have migrated to a worldwide audience and Read More …
Complete Combat Seminar Last weekend I had the pleasure of team teaching a defensive tactics course in Louisville with Core Combat Sports owner Rolando Haddad. The four hour seminar covered practical techniques from all three ranges (standup, clinch, and ground) as they apply to self-defense rather than sport. We had an excellent turnout (30 people) Read More …
by Brian Jones Leglocks are sort of like the ‘Dark Side’ of jiu-jitsu and submission grappling. They represent a sort of esoteric art even within submission grappling and can often provoke a fear response in those not trained to deal with them. It seems like nothing bothers an experienced grappler more than to know he Read More …
The Gi vs. No-gi Debate and the Philosophy of Use Gi vs no-gi, at times, a hotly debated question in the grappling world. There are many traditionalists that can list the advantages of training with the gi on, Marcelo Garcia among them. There are many “detractors” who point to the realism of no-gi, Eddie Bravo probably Read More …
Ask what it takes to realize a goal and you will typically receive a response similar to this: motivation, a strong desire, willpower, etc… You may be surprised to learn however, that when it comes to reaching goals, traits such as these are not strongly correlated with success. In fact, an improper understanding of Read More …
This last weekend was a busy one. It started with me teaching a short seminar at Bluegrass Budokai on strength and conditioning work for martial artists. The host Craig Caudill was very gracious and the turnout was excellent. I chose to focus on bodyweight training rather than barbells or dumbbells for two reasons. First, Read More …