#77 Can You Get Better at BJJ Without Rolling?
Is it possible to improve at Jiu-jitsu without the risk of injury that rolling can bring? If you are older and not interested in going to war with young, MMA hungry savages you can definitely develop BJJ skills but will they work?
Finding people who have a similar interest in training is key to your improvement whether they are pushing for championship glory or just want to enjoy learning cool skills. JT & Joey examine this interesting question and give guidance on how you can approach your own BJJ practice to get the best outcome.
Speaker 1: 0:00
Hey, it’s JT and I’m excited because I’ve just booked my flights and I’m coming to a city near you . I will be in Poland and Germany in July. Then I’ll be in the UK and Scotland in August. Then I’ll be making the trip over to United States and Canada for September. If you would like a Bulletproof for BJ J seminar , contact us email JT, Bulletproof for bj.com and book your seminar today
Speaker 2: 0:30
Better listen. Very careful. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready, essentially at this point, the fight is over. So you pretty much flow with the goal who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limit this power. I am ready,
Speaker 1: 0:55
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. I’m Joey. No, not I’m JT like <laugh> so guys, I’m the cool dude on the show lies . It’s all lies . And today we are answering the question. We’ve had this question. Can you get better at BJ without rolling? We need a little bit of context. The . Ask us this question, bro. No, no, no. Come on. Shout out to our boy, Ian. He was actually asking it relevant to wrestling and I actually think it’s even harder in wrestling, but he’s saying, you know, it’s tough. You want to get better, you practice, you train, but then you’ve got a bunch of young guys doing MMA and they just want to brutalize you. Is it possible to get better without doing sparring or minimizing sparing? Yeah. And look, I know I respect the question, right? Yeah , of course. For some people they’re not trying to be tournament champions. They’re not, they’re not trying to be the hardest dude in the street or anywhere in Fujis you’re like, well, I train jits . That’s my thing. Yeah. I just want to get a bit more comfortable with the take down game. Yeah. So can I just play with some wrestling? You know, like yeah. I’m not trying to engage in that as a hardcore sport as well. Sure. I’m gonna say not at all. Let me put context around that. I agree. Thanks for tuning in guys. We’ll catch you next week . Cheer . No, I think the hardest thing about that is the chaos that ensues, when you roll is the person can do anything. It’s not as simple as I hold the sleeve. I do the thing. I grab the leg. I push the it’s not like that. Someone will just flip on you. They’ll just, and then you’re like this. Isn’t what I practiced. And that is where real jujitsu and real wrestling comes in. Because what I’ve noticed about the best wrestlers is they scramble like the value in the wrestling is in being able to deal with not the normal stuff. Yeah. It’s not, it’s not that take down . No, it’s the counter linking and the like the constant, like what’s the word? Like just this refusal to give up position. Yep . And adapting, like change post move. Flip. Roll. Yeah. Come on top. hate those guys. <laugh> so hard . Shout out pav . Yeah . It’s so puff . Oh yeah. He is doing a wrestling seminar soon for BJ folk . He is up on the north shore probably will have passed by the time this happens. But if you’re on the Northern rivers of new south Wales, the north part of this state, check it out. Uh , you can look at our jungle ball there . Post they’ve posted the event, JBS ball, shout out . But here’s the thing, guys. Even, it doesn’t matter what you do. If we looked at it as a science experiment, you can study the theory. Right. You can then set up an experiment. If you do not actually run the experiment, you can’t know the results you can theorize, but it’s just not true. Cuz sometimes you don’t get the result you expected. Yeah. And you could run the same experiment like 5, 6, 10, 20 times and get slightly different results each time. But if you don’t run the experiment, you can’t actually know. And I believe rolling sparring, whatever, whatever your martial art is. That is the truth of the art in my opinion. Yeah. So I agree . I agree with that. The , um, I think the one way I can look at it is what defines like mastering something for you. So say like for us shown fools, right, right. Crush and souls for us coming through the path that we did and how we view jujitsu and how we like to engage with it. The scrap, like the fight aspect of it is very important to us. True . Being like, yeah, I went a hundred percent against that guy. And that’s what we do sometimes in training and that’s that’s jujitsu for us. Sure. But I also see that there’s an alternate kind of journey experience. Yeah. Where it’s like, that’s not a part of it. Yeah. And as much as if you’re in my world and you’re like, Hey, I wanna get good at jujitsu . I’m like, well this is part of it. This is , this is my reality for jujitsu. But I can also see for those folks who sit in that other reality where it’s like, no, I just want to , I wanna play the game. I want to get like technically better. I want to explore it. And I’m not trying to compete. I don’t train at a gym like that. Like that’s not my approach. Yeah. For that kind of person, I’m be like, well, that’s, that’s also jujitsu. Right. It’s just how they choose to engage with it. Yeah. I understand that. And look, you know, if you talk to like Hicks and Gracie, he will say jujitsu was about real fighting, real combat. So if you don’t practice, I think the same. Yeah. We , which , which none of us are doing now. Right? No, that’s not what we’re doing now. But truth be told if you’ve got a really good double leg and you can choke someone unconscious, you’re gonna do better than someone who doesn’t have those skills. Yeah. You know, so a friend of mine posted this Chris bones , uh , Chris burns is his name, but bones is his artist name. He is under Hickson. Now he trains in America. He says, if you don’t practice Juju two with like boxing, if you don’t punch, when you do jujitsu , then that’s not real jujitsu . That’s his take on it. Right? Look, we can look at this at many different levels. That was a time and a place in the same way. The jujitsu you do when you do MMA is very different to what you do when you’re in the key . And you’re , you’re doing certain rule sets . But at the end of the day, when someone gives you their full resistance, the theory can fall by the wayside. And that’s where you have to make little changes to make it work for you. And I feel that’s where the real learnings are, you know? Like you might have drilled that armbar a bunch of times. And then old mate, Sammy backy comes through with some deep half guard, ultra Hench , strong man game. And doesn’t work. Didn’t work. But it worked on everybody before then. Yeah. You’re like, dang actually happened. Actually. Joe’s he’s the first person to stop my bar side previously unstoppable armor Amber. And it makes you go. Hmm . Maybe there’s like a little change I need to make. Maybe I shouldn’t train with that guy anymore. <laugh> yeah. Maybe don’t invite him to train anymore. He’s no longer welcome . Maybe that guy. Yeah , you Sammy, if you’re listening, but, but you know, like let me to , to finish like where I was going with that. I think like, you know that question of like, can you get better at it? Well, if, if depending on what it is to you, yes, you can get better at it without going into that fire. But we would make the argument that, that , that fire and that intensity is an integral part of the journey of learning. I , I think that any real martial artist would agree yeah. That you have to go through that because that, that fire is like, that’s the really, that’s the hard. It is like, you can drill, you can play, you can flow role . You can like, Hey, let’s go 50%. But to go a hundred percent against people that are like, could potentially damage you. Yes. Where you actually have to see like, wow, this is as stressful as this game can get. Yes. And it is just a game mm-hmm <affirmative> then I , I think that that’s like a , it’s an essential part of the process. I agree. And look, I’m gonna say this right now, just out of nowhere, but this is something that’s been on my something on my mind, Joe . Oh, Carter, you know, <laugh> PO say , you. Like, if you think that like Forbes, you’re doing martial arts doing that, you are joking. I mean, yeah. Maybe a couple hundred years ago, if you didn’t have a training partner and you had really good visualization, you had to practice your movements. Maybe with weapons, it made more sense. But if you’re just doing Carters and you do Carter competitions, you are gonna get poleaxed by someone who can just do a duplex , do a good rugby tackle. Yeah . Or someone who just picks up a bar stool, like your double knife and block is not working there. Yeah . So that’s a personal grievance of mine. And this is part of why I started to fall out love with TaeKwonDo. They started doing PO to music. They call it PO say , PO , say , uh , P w O M S E PO C PO say , Carter , we have all seen it. Right. Karate, traditional martial arts, Kung Fu it looks kind of impressive. If you don’t understand anything about actual combat, once you’ve kind of been punched in the head or you’ve had to scrap with somebody, who’s actually not that technical, but just really unruly. You’re like, God , this is so hard to deal with. That just goes out the door. You know? Like same thing, you know, Mike Tyson says everyone’s got a plan to get punched in the face. Yeah. In those systems, it has a place as part of it. You’re like, yeah. Fair . Okay. There’s I’m sure there’s some benefit, but they still do it in judo. They do like set sparring. Yeah. Right ? Like part of your grading, depending what gym you train at. It’s like now the person swings their arm and you grab their arm and you drew the throw and wrist lock and. It’s like, man, try and do that on Keller lock . Sodi is not happening. He’s gonna PAX you. So here’s the thing guys. Like if you are worried about injury, you’re gonna get injured in life. It happens the better physically prepared you can be great. And if you don’t want to fight young MMA dudes, you can say, I don’t wanna roll with you, man. You , you know, that’s a whole lot of smoke. I’m not interested in try and find people who will roll to your cadence. You know? I think there’s nothing wrong with that, but you should still roll . I think it’s an essential measure as you age. Yes. Like, you know, you gotta look after yourself and you know yeah. There’s a point where you’re like, okay, I gotta be selective now. Yeah. And that’s cool. I’m not , I’m not speaking down to that. My point to add to that is , um, there’s gotta be some benefit to it, right ? Like if you are not doing any wrestling, but then you know, once a week you’re just drilling a shitload of it. Sure. It’s gonna help. Sure. You know, if you are , if you are asking the question like you you’re like, well, is it better than nothing? Absolutely. Of course. Is it gonna make you a proficient wrestler? Probably not. No. Good boy . All right . Nice. Thank you fam . Hey guys, if you want more help from us, obviously we’ve got this epic podcast, which you’re already here. So you know about that. Go to our YouTube channel. We’ve been nourishing that thing. It’s great for the last like year and a bit. We’re putting up a couple videos every week. You can watch the podcast on the channel. We do the video version , uh , but we also have like other videos where we go deep on strength and mobility and JTS, even talking about doing a hot wings challenge. He thinks he can hang with me. That’s not true on the chilly eating front. So would be , we’ll see what’s up. It’ll just be great because Joe thinks he’s like really chilly, tough. And then like , I dunno , I just, I just live the life. Oh , I’m just stoic about my approach to eating hot sauce. I don’t try and put it on anybody else. You know , but he thinks it’s a flex because everything it’s always a flex with Joe again . But what I’m saying is stay tuned because these podcasts are gonna get infinitely more interesting. <laugh> so yeah. Check it out. Thank you. Love you guys. See you next week .