If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will have by now noticed a common thread in most of my posts. You should be familiar with phrases like “respect the punch” and “the self defense philosophy”. All these things point to what I see as the key aspect of Gracie Jiu Jitsu; that of self defence first.

For me, jiu jitsu is about defending myself. If I can’t defend myself against an attacker, then I am wasting my time. It is all well and good competing and testing myself against live opponents in a controlled environment but when my back is against the wall I want to be sure that I have skills that will prevent me from being taken out. The key to this is in the way I train. Am I aware of what techniques work and don’t work in a street fight situation? Am I able to determine what my attacker would typically do and be able to “convince” him to react to me the way I want him to?

This become really clear to me recently when I had the oppurtunity to spar (in a fight sim class) with a blue belt from outside our academy whose training is (what I consider to be) competition based jiu jitsu. As is normal in these fight sim classes, my aim as the agressor was to attempt to punch my opponent (specifically in the face) while he used jiu jitsu to defend himself. As our session progressed I found that, contrary to anyone else trained at our academy, I was easily able to land (light) punches to his head and face, specifically those areas that would lead to knockout blow at full pace.

To me this was almost unfathomable! That someone who had a similar (if not longer) period of jiu jitsu training under his (pardon the pun) belt would have such holes in his defense! It was as if even his built in survival instinct had been replaced with the desire to get a technical submission, above all else. I realised that there would be white belts in our academy who would have better self defense skills.

So this leads me back to the question that crops up from time to time. Look at your training. Are you training for a real situation, or three five minute rounds? Are you training with the constant threat of punches, kicks or worse being thrown at you or are you just training for the next competition?

Are you keeping it real? Because it you aren’t, on the day that it becomes real, you may have to find out the hard way…