Some BJJ questions

[whitepotatoe]

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1. By 'real life encounter' do you mean a street fight? If so, my answer is never. BJJ is not a streetfighting system. Trying to win a streetfight by taking someone down and trying to apply a triangle/whatever is a recipe for disaster. For streetfight defense, just use your best judgement and stay out of trouble and this will work alot better than anything short of getting conceal carry. If you still want something useful, try Thai Boxing. That will help alot more than BJJ.

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I know from experience that bjj works well in street fights, although probably not as good as some other techniques like muay thai, and a weapon used correctly is obviousy best. But saying that bjj is not for street fights is totally wrong.

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Also, my friend, who just got his brown belt and competes told me to take BJJ with Gi, at least at first. It will force you to focus on fundamentals.

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So you are saying that this brown belt only using his bjj skills couldn't break some non-trained guys arms in less than 30 seconds? If not, he shouldn't be a brown belt.

[dc_publius]

I may be a bit too pessimistic on bjj as self defense discipline, but there are other issues at play here also.

One needs to account for the amount of effort and time needed to get good. To get a brown belt in bjj takes a few years of quality practice and training. Other arts like Thai Boxing would be easier to pick up with a more useful learing curve.

[BCPVP]

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One needs to account for the amount of effort and time needed to get good. To get a brown belt in bjj takes a few years of quality practice and training.

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While this is true, even the lower belt ranks in bjj are pretty good and can usually apply them.

I don't know if anyone else feels this way, but my take on higher belt ranks is that once you get to a certain point, you should be able to do a technique to almost anyone in the population and beyond that many of the moves are really to counter what others taking your art do. Is it really necessary to learn the helicopter armbar in order to be proficient at defending yourself? Probably not.