Tag: kogen dojo

• John Danaher on Teaching Positional Dominance and Strangles Before Joint Locks in BJJ

  Brazilian jiu-jitsu instructor John Danaher on teaching BJJ to beginners (excerpted and transcribed from the UFC Unfiltered podcast with Matt Serra and Jim Norton, episode 40):

  “If I ran a beginners class, I would not only disallow leglock activities for the first year of training, I would probably even disallow arm locks. I would have students only focus on positional work and strangleholds.

  

  I do believe strangleholds are the most effective submission in the sport. They give you the most versatility and the highest percentage of controlling people. They are the most useful in actual fighting, as opposed to just a sport situation and I believe that when you ban everything except strangleholds, beginners are forced to develop a strong positional game because the only way you can get to someone’s neck is by first getting past their legs and controlling them, and pinning them.

  So, for the first year of training, I would have my students only do positional work and strangles. Only when they had gotten through that, would I bring in joint locks of any kind, whether leg or arm locks. Then, they would go into the advanced class and they would change.

  There are really two jiu-jitsu‘s that I would teach. I would teach them an even more traditional Brazilian jiu-jitsu than the standard method for the first year, so they become positionally strong and they develop the ability to get to and follow the back for strangleholds, the most important kinds of submissions. Then, joint locks would be introduced in the second year of training and they would work from there.”

  Holistic Budo: As it is in budo, so too it is in life. As it is in life, so too it is in budo.

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  August 14, 2019

  armlocks, basics, beginners, bjj, brazilian jiu-jitsu, chokes, danaher death squad, fundamentals, gracie jiu-jitsu, john danaher, kogen dojo, leglocks, position before submission, strangles

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• Learning Self-Defense For Others

  The Gracie jiu-jitsu self-defense curriculum is not for you.

  

  Brazilian jiu-jitsu practitioners often talk disparagingly about the Gracie self-defense curriculum. They say things like: “I don’t care about that. I just do BJJ for fun. I can defend myself. I don’t need that stuff.” The people who say things like this are usually capable, fit, adult men who have enough skill and physicality that they can most likely defend themselves, especially with a little bit of BJJ or Muay Thai added to their skillset. They are missing the point.

  The self-defense curriculum is not for them. The self-defense techniques taught in Gracie jiu-jitsu are for smaller, weaker people who may never train long enough in BJJ (or whatever) to get good enough to defend themselves with BJJ skills. They are for the average person to learn how to deal with the most common attacks they are likely to encounter in everyday life. They are not meant to teach fighting. They teach survival.

  The techniques in the self-defense curriculum teach a child how to deal with and control a bully when conflict is inevitable. They teach a woman how to get out of and get away from unwanted grabs and restraints. They teach a man who is shoved or punched at how to close the distance or create space so as to stay safe. They teach a person how to both take the fight to the ground and how to get up off the ground safely. A BJJ or Muay Thai practitioner may not need these skills. It is not about them.

  There is a lot of talk in BJJ about leaving your ego at the door. For a BJJ practitioner, especially for BJJ instructors, learning the self-defense curriculum is a selfless act. It should be learned so that it can be taught to the person or people who need it. Learning and teaching self-defense, especially when you do not need it yourself, is an act of charity. It is not about you. It never was.

  “As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  August 9, 2019

  altruism, bjj, brazilian jiu-jitsu, bully, bullying, charity, children’s self-defense, giving back, gracie jiu-jitsu, jiu-jitsu, kogen dojo, Martial Arts, self defense, selfishness, selflessness, women’s self-defense

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• Start By Not Losing

  “If they can’t submit you, they will start to respect you.”

  —Anonymous

  

  For a long time, I was one of the only white belts at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) school full of blue, purple, and brown belts, as well as the black belt who owned the school. Every roll was hard and I was getting smashed. I was getting frustrated, even if mainly with myself. The frustration fueled me to keep showing up, but some days were more difficult than others.

  A few months into training, seeing that I was struggling, a blue belt (now brown belt) gave me one of the most generous and useful pieces of advice I have ever received on the mats. We had just finished rolling. He had tapped me, probably several times in the same round. Before the next round started, he pulled me aside and said, “Hey. If they can’t submit you, they will start to respect you.” He then grabbed a new partner, as did I, and we continued to train.

  His point was that my approach to rolling was all wrong. I had been trying to win, to beat blue, purple, brown, and black belts with white belt jiu-jitsu. Even if I got lucky, I would never get good by using this approach. Every time I see or hear about a new student getting frustrated because he or she is not winning, I am always reminded of this comment.

  “As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  August 2, 2019

  adversity, bjj, brazilian jiu-jitsu, budo, difficulty, frustration, gracie jiu-jitsu, kogen dojo, life, losing, Martial Arts, persevering, persistence, submission grappling, winning

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• Cutting Through Closed Guard

  Accepting even an expert’s opinion as fact, without testing and retesting it in different contexts, can be detrimental to growth and progress.

  

  When I first started cross-training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ), I accepted the opinion that closed guard is better than open guard for self defense. It seemed logical. There is more postural control in closed guard than in open guard by way of using the legs to control an opponent’s hips and using the arms to control his shoulders and spine, making it easier to both defend against punches and to set up submissions. My mistake was in assuming that this truth was universal in all contexts.

  In classical Japanese martial arts, however, it is always assumed that at least one person has a bladed weapon and that the battle is for survival, not submissions. For a technique to be considered valuable to our Taikyoku Budo training group, we test it within this context. This does NOT meant that we believe that an unarmed person has much of a chance against an armed attacker, simply that we train with the awareness that an attacker is likely to be armed.

  In our newaza (ground technique) practice, we have experimented with closed guard in a variety of ways, trying different breaks, passes, and sweeps where one person or the other has a knife. In this context, we have discovered that closed guard is useful to a point, but it has some issues depending on who has the weapon.

  If the person on his back has the knife, closed guard is valuable if he can break the other person’s posture and angle himself toward the back (crooked guard). Simply breaking posture without proper angling brings the opponent closer to the weapon, risking a battle for control. If the upright person has the knife, closed guard should be aborted in favor of shin guard or knee shield, always with the goal of sweeping or getting back to the feet as quickly as possible. Pulling someone who has a bladed weapon in close is a sure way to get stabbed or cut.

  Context matters.

  “As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body, Severna Park’s Holistic Chamber of Commerce, and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  July 31, 2019

  assumptions, bjj, bladed weapons, brazilian jiu-jitsu, budo, gracie jiu-jitsu, grappling, japanese martial arts, knife, kogen dojo, Martial Arts, newaza, opinions, submission grappling, submissions, survival, taikyoku budo

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• Learning From Failure

  Allow the bad positions you find yourself in to be your teachers.

  

  Not much is really learned from doing well aside from learning that we should not take any risks that might jeopardize our success. The problem with this is that success does not teach us how to deal with failure. Success gives us tunnel vision, causing us to have a false sense of security and invulnerability. When what we are doing is working for us, we tend to assume that it will continue to work indefinitely, that is, until we face an unforeseen challenge, a problem that success did not equip us to overcome.

  It seems counterintuitive to intentionally put ourselves into bad positions or circumstances simply as a way of learning how to overcome them. In fact, this can have dangerous to our health and finances. Unfortunately, it is only through struggle and hardship that we learn who we really are and how we can and will deal with difficulty or even tragedy in our lives. We need a way to test ourselves under pressure so that we can exercise our troubleshooting muscles under stress.

  One of the many benefits of Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ) is that it allows us the opportunity to repeatedly, even intentionally, find ourselves into bad positions that we must think and work our way out of. It teaches us to remain calm under pressure, to find a way to breathe, to survive in the face of difficulty and even pain, and to make micro-adjustments that enable us to not only escape danger, but to actually reverse our bad position, putting us back on top. It is not always up to us whether or not we end up in a bad position in BJJ. Quite often it is the result of having a more skilled opponent. What is in our control, however, is how we deal with these negative circumstances and whether or not we learn from them.

  “As in life, so too it is in budo. As in budo, so too it is in life.”

  -Robert Van Valkenburgh is co-founder of Taikyoku Mind & Body and Kogen Dojo where he teaches Taikyoku Budo and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu

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  July 28, 2019

  bad positions, bjj, brazilian jiu-jitsu, consequences, difficulites, failure, gracie jiu-jitsu, kogen dojo, learning, life, life lessons, Martial Arts, problems, success

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