Submission Grappling and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training advice, product reviews, and recommendations for the working professional.
I like White Collar JJ since it’s very much targeted toward regular dudes who happen to train. A lot of the content that exists in our ecosystem are plastered with blood splatter, skulls, and EXTREME!! lifestyle references. My belief has always been that a large majority of the BJJ/MMA crowd are normal, educated people, and White Collar takes a similar approach.
Why We Not Hit Hard wants to be the sort of place you can stop in for a few minutes and look around to find articles on things that should make your game more effective and fun. There are a lot of great sites that cover techniques and etc., so we’ll be focusing on the practical things that will be a great help to beginners and something that more experienced people either forget or generally don’t give much thought to.
Why We Not Hit Hard looks like a great resource for a general learning of the martial arts. There are practical guides to choosing schools, tutorials on various techniques, and analyis the chess game of combat. It’s written well, and is self-admittedly focused on MMA, Savate, Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
This journal came together after I had started creating a ton of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tutorials as a hobby and figured I should bring them all together in one place.
At first I sort of raised an eyebrow to the “totally awesome” part of Aesopian’s blog name, but as it turns out it’s pretty much right on. He’s got a grip of very good BJJ instructional videos. When you train at one school long enough, you begin to adapt your game to the style of your classmates. For me, it’s always refreshing to see some different styles whether it be from visiting a new academy, rolling with visitors to your home school, or watching videos like Aesopians’.
Here’s a video that made me chuckle. The narration says “… pull his hair and finish the situation”. Now I’m curious to see how this situation is finished. Does he let go, apologize, and then they go on their way? Do they look at each other awkwardly for a while then laugh about the hair pulling?
It’s already been up for a few months now, but I thought it would be worth mentioning. BJ Penn is posting daily video of his classes on his website in what essentially amounts to free instruction from one of the best fighters in the world. Granted it’s difficult to learn without doing, but for those of you who have a rudimentary knowledge of MMA this is a great place to pick up additional grappling knowledge and bring it to wherever you train.
This is pretty much unprecendented in the world of martial arts. BJ is a dude who just really loves the science and art of fighting, so much so that he’s willing to basically give away his knowledge to everyone whose got internet access just so the collective fighting community can be better as a whole. Of course he’s probably making some good money off ad impressions but heck, the guy’s got bills to pay.
It seems like BJ isn’t the type who is afraid of finding the truth about his techniques. If it doesn’t work, forget it, if it works, use it. Straight up Bruce Lee JKD style. Seriously, this transcends MMA, BJJ, UFC, all of it. I know it sounds super cheesy, but this is BJ Penn opening the floodgates of best-of-breed fighting knowledge onto the world.
Anyone who has gone through sports competition will agree that when physically all things are equal, the deciding factor that brings a dubya is mental. I’ve been reading a book called Competitive Fire by Michael Clarkson. In it, Clarkson shares his research on the mental/physical connection that elite athletes have mastered. He talks about the different mind/body states that athletes can achieve. Most of these are caused by different chemicals that the mind triggers to enter the bloodstream consequently giving the athlete boosted speed, strength, and mental focus. This isn’t the first blog entry I’ve posted on this subject, but I find it completely fascinating and worth further investigation.
