I’d Just Punch Him In The Face

“That would never work, I’d just punch him in the face”

-Wisdom from the internet

Recently, unexpectedly, and with no real idea why some of my BJJ technique videos wherein I demonstrate how to modify gripping for T shirts and “normal clothes” suddenly got shared by some higher popularity pages on social media. Dear lord the comments.. I need to bleach my eyes.

I mean, I know its out there. The idiocy, the uniformed opinions held so strong by anyone with a internet connection, the rampant tough guy proclamations from people not even using real names who know they will never meet you. I know its there, but damn.

Maybe its cause my blog here, my social media accounts, and my general online presence is so limited in scope and so small that I get shielded from the great unwashed masses most of the time. I mean really, you guys are a niche in a niche in a subset. People that even train, shooting or combat sports, are already a small market. People that do both, or more? People that care enough about it to read my posts, to delve into the truly complex intersections of a variety of disciplines? Rare is an understatement.

So let me be expressly clear dear reader. In this video what I’m demoing is a modification to a well established Brazillian Jiu Jitsu strangulation using our opponents clothing. The reason for the exercise is to teach about grip modification. It is presented as just that devoid of context or compounding considerations. I’m not clear whats so hard to understand about that.

Lets look at some analogous situations across disciplines:

Activity: Shooting a one hole group with your pistol slow fire at 3 yards.        Uneducated comment: If someone is that close you should be shooting faster into their chest not trying for pinpoint accuracy! That will never work on da streetz!

Activity: Back squatting your bodyweight for reps.                                                          Uneducated comment: You gotta have functional fitness! I’d run with a person over my shoulder and then do 50 burpees for time!

Activity: Boxing pad work.                                                                                                Uneducated comment: On Da Streetz theres gonna be like 20 attackers you gotta train for multiples!

Activity: Practicing a kimono (gi) based cloth strangle off ones back.                            Uneducated comment: Hellbows! (seriously this was a comment)

You see where I’m going here?

Now, for the target audience here who has real questions or is newer to this type of training some educated information:

• You may not get to choose if your fighting off your back. Comments of “just don’t go to the ground” are less that useful. Seriously if it was my choice I wouldn’t be in a fight at all. If I had to fight I’d prefer to be somewhere far away and have this conversation ballistically.   I should learn to fight off my back not because I want to, but because I may have to, and the only thing worse than being on my back in the wrong situation is being there not knowing what to do.
• Closed guard (on ones back with an opponent inside their closed legs) is a great position to control weapons access from as your hips and legs are wrapped around your opponent at or above the waist line. If you train here and couple that with good hand control, posture breaking, and off balancing you can be quite formidable.
• When doing the above it is quite hard to strike with any real power unless you are able to break grips, posture up, and get torque on the strikes. If you dont train Jiu Jitsu you should start, if you do train and haven’t rolled with striking try it. Seriously, it isn’t difficult to experience this safely. Give a training partner some gloves, put in a mouth piece, work from a variety of positions under appropriate levels of pressure. You’ll learn most of what you need to know in short order.
• On this particular attack if your opponent brings hands in to defend you can open your guard and kick his base out, you can put hooks in to sweep, you can transtion to other attacks. Fighting isn’t a sedentary proposition even if we practice some elements in isolation

One of my dear friends and training partners Adam messaged me about some of these comments “These people either don’t do Jiu Jistu or don’t know why they do Jiu Jitsu.” I think that hits the nail on the head. Profound in its simplicity.

Here’s a video, get ya kilt in da streetz:

There’s a whole set of variations on the facebook page, this one is pretty quick as I filmed it for the gram so thats why it gets all the views from the low attention span crew.

Shawn Lupka