If you are one of our longtime readers, you should know by now that Brazilian jiu-jitsu is by far one of my favorite martial arts. There is, however, an excellent reason for this.
See, Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial art that is not only used as a way of teaching, but it is also one of the most effective martial arts in the world. Brazilian jiu-jitsu is a martial art used by many militaries, sport fighters, and bodyguards. To explain just how effective Brazilian jiu-jitsu is, here are our top 9 reasons why BJJ is so effective.
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ) Teaches You Discipline
One of the greatest lessons you will learn while training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu is self-discipline. Now, I bet you are wondering how this makes Brazilian jiu-jitsu so effective in MMA fights and street fights. Well, let’s take a look.
First, one of the quickest ways to lose in a fight is to become overly emotional. If you are not able to control your emotions, you could start making bad decisions. In an MMA fight, this could cost you the match. In a street fight, it can cause you not to anticipate what your opponent will do adequately, and therefore, you will not be able to defend yourself.
That is how having self-discipline can make you a better fighter in and out of the ring or octagon.
However, with all of that being said, it is essential to note that self-discipline is most effective at keeping you out of situations where you need to defend yourself. We will discuss this further in the section where we talk about confidence.
Self-discipline is also an outstanding characteristic to have. It can be beneficial for your professional and personal life. So, it is safe to say that the self-discipline taught by BJJ is effective in almost all aspects of life.
BJJ Teaches You How to Grapple
When you are in a fight, grappling can be one of the best techniques of subduing your opponent. When you can grapple with your enemy, you can restrict their movement. Once you have done this, you can bring them to the ground.
A lot of people can fight with their fists, but not everybody does ground training. When you can bring people to the ground, you hinder a lot of their skills. Everybody can train on a punching bag and become quite good at throwing punches, especially if their opponent has no training.
Not everybody does Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t be in an altercation with you if you to have studied BJJ. So, the chances of you finding someone who is just as good as you at grappling will be pretty rare unless, of course, you are in MMA or UFC, where BJJ is a common secondary discipline.
If you want to learn more about grappling, I recommend giving this recent article a read-through. In it, we discuss whether or not grappling makes you stronger.
Side note: When you do grapple training, you significantly increase your stamina which, overall, makes BJJ even more effective.
It is important to remember that we focused more on street fighting and not on MMA or UFC in this section.
BJJ Eliminates the Size Factor
In this section, we are going to discuss how Brazilian jiu-jitsu helps to eliminate the size factor. To be clear, this kind of leads off from the grappling section. So, let’s examine why size does not play such an essential role in a fight when one person knows Brazilian jiu-jitsu.
In a fight that adopts a striking combat style, shorter people can sometimes be at a disadvantage. Now, I understand that this is not always true, but in many cases, especially in untrained fights, unfortunately, it is true. It has nothing to do with strength because many people of shorter stature are often stronger than their taller counterparts.
If you are shorter than your opponent and grapple them and bring them to the ground, you eliminate the height factor. Once they are on the ground, their reach plays less of a role in determining the fight’s outcome. At this point, you can subdue the person in a street fight or use one of the many submission holds that BJJ will teach you.
If you are on the smaller side and want to know which martial arts is best for you, we have written a recent article telling you everything you need to know.
BJJ Teaches You How to Defend Yourself
Right, this is where we get into the meat of this listicle. One of the main reasons why BJJ is so effective not only in the UFC and MMA but also in a street fight is because it teaches you how to defend yourself. I could leave things right there. However, not everything is straight forward so let’s get into it.
There is a saying that says, “the best defense is a great offense”; however, this is not always true when it comes to fighting.
If you get into a fight with someone who has even just a little bit of training, going on the offense without thinking about what you will do can often cause you to lose the fight. I know that this is not a boxing article but let’s think about Floyd Mayweather.
Floyd Mayweather is often criticized as a boxer that is not very entertaining to watch because he avoids getting hit a lot of the time. While he is doing this, he analyzes every single movement that his opponent is making. When he sees his gap, he goes on the offense. To be clear, Floyd Mayweather is known as the greatest boxer in his weight division.
BJJ is not an offensive martial art by any stretch of the imagination. It is a grappling, ground, and self-defense martial art at its core.
BJJ Helps You Resolve Conflict without Hurting Anyone
Still, you can consider this section to be part of the previous one where we discussed BJJ and self-defense. Before we get into it, I want to be clear that you can use BJJ as a way to harm your opponent.
However, in my experience, the best thing about BJJ is that it allows you to subdue anyone trying to hurt you without hurting them.
Some of you may be reading this and think that doesn’t make any sense, but it is essential to remember that just because someone is trying to hurt you doesn’t mean you have to hurt them. Sometimes being the bigger man genuinely pays off.
Let’s say you have a drunk friend, and he gets a little bit argumentative and wants to fight you. In an instance like that, you don’t want to hurt your friend, especially if you are sober and they have been drinking.
Conflict resolution is a skill, and BJJ is an effective tool to have if a conflict escalates to the point of violence.
BJJ Keeps You Fit
BJJ is an excellent way for you to get in shape. It is also a great way to stay in shape. Again, you might be wondering how does this help you in a fight, especially a street fight. Well, let’s take a look.
Fighting, whether you are boxing, fighting in the MMA, or find yourself in a street fight, fighting is one of the most tiring activities that we can think of. You may find someone who can run 10 miles every day but won’t last one round in a martial arts fight or a street fight.
At the same time, you will find that a boxer will struggle to keep up with the pace in an MMA fight and vice versa. This is because different body muscles are used in different martial arts styles, boxing and street fighting.
Because BJJ keeps you fit, you stand a higher chance of outlasting your enemies, especially if you use self-defense and reactionary skills. If you are fit enough, you can literally tire your opponent out by letting them throw everything at you while you successfully defend yourself.
BJJ Helps Build Strength
BJJ can help you build body strength. We are not saying that it will give you the physical appearance of a bodybuilder, but it will make you stronger than what you are if you do no training. Again, this contributes to what makes Brazilian jiu-jitsu so effective.
If you grab someone and try and push them to the ground but are not strong enough to do so, you open yourself up to a counter-attack, and in a street fight, this can be dangerous for you.
In the next section, we will talk about technique but for now, let’s focus on strength. Having upper and lower body strength does not just help you bring your opponents down. It also helps you prevent your opponent from taking you down.
This is a fundamental concept in any martial arts or street fight. The person who takes the other person down generally has the advantage. Once you get your opponent down, you can move into the submission hold to subdue your opponent, and having strength while having your opponent in one of these holds is also beneficial.
BJJ teaches you technique
In the previous section, we spoke a lot about how strength makes BJJ effective. However, it is essential to remember that technique is the most important thing when using BJJ in a martial arts fight or a street fight.
BJJ will teach you how to position your body and how to grapple your opponent effectively. This includes everything, including where you grab your opponent.
Adding technique and strength together can help you effectively subdue anyone who’s trying to attack you. Let’s look at bodyguards, for example. Many bodyguards learn Brazilian jiu-jitsu as one of the martial arts that they use to protect the people they are hired to protect.
Before someone can inflict any harm on the people a bodyguard protects, the bodyguard will subdue that person within seconds. This is because Brazilian jiu-jitsu teaches them how to anticipate danger and the correct techniques to effectively and efficiently deal with it.
BJJ Gives You Confidence
Finally, Brazilian jiu-jitsu will give you confidence. This confidence is something that I cannot emphasize enough. It is the most underrated skill when it comes to martial arts or street fighting. In fact, the logic applies to any type of combat.
Confidence helps you in several ways, and here is a list of what we are talking about:
- Funny enough, having confidence can keep you out of trouble because when you are confident within yourself, you can walk away from a fight without feeling bad about it.
- Confidence can be very intimidating to your opponent. Sometimes, when people start an argument or a fight, they expect their opponent to be submissive, but they will pick up on this and be intimidated if you are confident.
- Having confidence means that you won’t second-guess yourself. If you are about to subdue someone and you start to second-guess yourself, all your teachings about technique will go out the window.
I always advocate that people should be more confident whether they learn it from Brazilian jiu-jitsu or not. Confidence can help you in your personal and professional life, so if you struggle with that, BJJ can be the tool that you need to get out of your shell if you are a little bit shy.
Some things are hard to explain. I guess you can break it down to your self-worth. When you start ranking up in the martial art of BJJ, you start to get a sense of accomplishment. This sense of accomplishment adds to your feeling of self-worth and upgrades your self-esteem to the point where your confidence shows but does not come across as arrogance.
Conclusion
That brings us to the end of this article. If you are considering taking up any martial arts, Brazilian jiu-jitsu could be the one for you, and hopefully, this article was that little push in the right direction. If you are interested in any other type of martial arts, feel free to look at our front page as we have many articles about most of the famous martial arts around.