Understanding the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Style Deeply

Today, there exists a number of Jiu Jitsu styles that are played worldwide, such as Japanese style, American style, and Brazilian style. All styles are famous and are accepted worldwide. People love to watch and train BJJ. But the most famous style of Jiu Jitsu is the Brazilian style, and there are millions of fans around the world who train in the style of Brazil to get the benefits this ultimate art gives. If you are a beginner or thinking of joining Jiu Jitsu training, you must be confused about selecting the right martial art style for you. Before making any decision, it is essential to understand the Brazilian style in depth, the similarities between the Jiu Jitsu styles, and what distinguishes them.

• Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a martial art that was developed by the Gracies with the purpose of enabling weaker fighters to win over the stronger fighters based on the technique and strategy. This art focuses on the technique a lot more than other arts. Its basic principle is that the technique can defeat the strength.

• So people should focus more on the technique as compared to the strength to make them able to win against any fighter, whether stronger or weaker. It has two main components, i.e., grappling and ground fighting. Grappling means to fight with your opponent within a very small distance, and ground fighting, as the name indicates, fighting on the ground. In grappling, your body is attached to the body of your opponent.

Jigoro Kano modified Jiu Jitsu in Japan. He made many changes in an attempt to eliminate the illegal or useless moves from the art, and also added some moves that are very useful and can give certain advantages over the opponents. He also developed a new martial art, which he named Judoka, which later became Judo. The martial art of Jigoro has become famous worldwide, and now it is practiced across the world. After the development of the new martial art, he started to spread his art across his country. For this, he taught many students about his new martial art, Judo.

One of Kano’s students was Mitsuo Maeda, who played a key role in the development of yet another martial art, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. He came to Brazil, and after a few days, he had an interaction with Gastão Gracie. Soon they both became good friends. Gastão had a son named Carlos Gracie. After seeing Mitsuo’s skills, Gastao thought that Carlos should learn from Mitsuo. So Carlos became his student, and Mitsu started teaching Carlos. This was the start of greatness.

Carlos remained a student of Mitsuo for many years. He had a basic focus on the learning of ground fighting techniques and strategies. After many years of learning Judo, the focus was shifted to teaching and training his brother, Helio Gracie.

But Helio was not a student who could grab all the techniques of ground fighting and takedowns easily. Also, he was not able to perform the techniques easily. So, there was a need for a change in the system of Judo martial arts, which can enable weaker fighters to learn the techniques. In other words, these techniques should be modified to execute the technique to perform the same function. It was also an option that new techniques should be added, which can be learnt easily by anyone, whether they are mentally stronger or weaker.

• Helio had two weaknesses as compared to his brother Carlos, who learnt all the techniques of ground fighting and takedowns very easily. One weakness Helio had was his short height, and another one was his physical weakness, i.e., lack of strength.

• Helio, for countering such weakness instead of just quitting, decided to bring a change into the system to make it accessible for everyone. He thought that it would be a complete injustice to all weaker and shorter fighters that they could not learn martial arts just because they don't have a good height.

• This thought motivated Helio to introduce many changes into the system. All of these changes had a purpose to make short individuals and those who are weak able to learn the ground fighting techniques and takedowns for defending themselves and countering the bigger, stronger opponents. In this way, a new system of martial arts was introduced, which is known as Brazilian Jiu Jitsu.

• But the innovation of a new system of martial arts was not the end for the Gracie family. Soon after, many members of the family started learning the innovative martial art. To make the art even better, a Gracie family member started taking part in the competitions. In these competitions, the opponents were practitioners of other martial arts. So basically, they were not competing themselves.

• The idea was to check if their own martial art system had the ability to beat other martial art systems. So they started testing BJJ. At the start, there were mixed responses. In some matches they won and in others they lost. But as they were doing that for test purposes, they started analyzing what the strengths and weaknesses of BJJ are. When they found any weakness, they started searching for a solution to make their art better against that weakness. They continued doing this.

• They found many weaknesses, but they replaced them with strengths. So, ideally, they were evolving Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in an attempt to make it better than all other martial arts in the world. A martial art that can be learnt by anyone, whether they are stronger, weaker, shorter, or taller. A martial art that does not discriminate against anyone on the basis of strength and weakness. The art that only prioritizes technique and strategy. So this is how Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was born and evolved.

The following are some of the most important aspects of the Brazilian style of Jiu Jitsu, which makes it dominant and famous as compared to other styles in the world.

One of the most important aspects of the Brazilian style of Jiu Jitsu is its dynamic nature. In most martial arts, if you fail to execute a technique against your opponent, there is a high chance that your opponent will dominate you immediately, and you will be at a loss. But the case is completely opposite in BJJ. In this dynamic martial art, if you fail to execute any technique, you can end up using another technique, which will also be effective against your opponent. So you are not at any loss. With this art, you know how to come up with ideas. You know how you can make the techniques you failed to execute. You can have takedowns, submissions, and you can also be in a guard. Also, you can easily transform from one position or technique to another.

BJJ players enjoy amazing stand-up skills. People who have no idea how BJJ works have a belief that you cannot have good standing skills if you are a BJJ player. They think that the people who train in wrestling have better stand-up skills. But this is completely false. With years of experience, BJJ players learn how to fight both on the ground and by standing effectively. You will observe they have even better stand-up skills than the wrestlers or Judo players.

Since the start of the journey, BJJ players have been taught how they can yield or execute effective submissions. They learn a variety of submission techniques and how they can execute them against their opponents. They are also taught that no matter which position they are in, they should know how they can take their opponent to the submission. So, BJJ learners can learn quick and effective submissions from anywhere in the game, and they are all good at that.

BJJ players have a much better guard game. They often use a guard many times in their professional match. This gives them an advantage, whoever is using them well. A guard can be used for various purposes. If you want to defend yourself, you can execute a guard. If you want to do a sweep or escape from any submission position, depending on the situation, you can do a guard. If you want to attack, you can make a guard to make it easy for you. If you want to do a mount of any type, you can also use a guard as an assistant for yourself. So, a guard is helpful for you in many situations, and this is what BJJ players are best at.

One of the most important aspects of the Jiu Jitsu game is the ability to scramble. It means the ability to move from one point to another to escape from bad situations or to create bad situations for your opponents. BJJ practitioners learn a lot in their training about how they can move effectively to make a path for themselves to make a quick submission over their opponents.

There are many martial arts that are very similar to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. The following are the arts with which BJJ shares some similarities:

• The first martial art is Judo. BJJ was developed after modifications to the Judo techniques in an attempt to make it better.

• Another one is Japanese Jiu Jitsu. This is the first martial art that is the root for many other martial arts. It is similar to a great extent to BJJ.

• American Jiu Jitsu is the American version of BJJ.

• 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu

• Aikido

• Sambo

• Haikido

• Sambo

  
  

The following is the difference between the two most common Jiu Jitsu styles:

In the majority of martial arts in the world, they focus only on strength and power. Whoever is stronger and taller will dominate their opponents. This demotivates the ones who are shorter and weaker. They don't focus on learning martial arts because they do not see any benefit in it. So there needs to be a system that enables the shorter and weaker individuals to compete and defend against the taller, stronger opponents. This is what Brazilian Jiu Jitsu provides us. Introduced by the Gracie brothers, the motive behind this was only to eliminate this discrimination, and everyone, irrespective of their strength and height, can easily defend themselves by learning the techniques and fighting strategies taught in the art.

BJJ is widely recognized as one of the best martial arts in the world. According to the majority of people, it is the truest form of martial art. It has a lot of benefits that you can get from training it. You can improve your mental and physical health. Moreover, you get to learn many techniques and skills that are helpful for you in defending yourself against dangerous situations.