BJJ

Rickson Gracie using concepts found in Chinese martial arts – notably, jin

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Here’s a seminar clip I came across recently of the legendary Rickson Gracie teaching in Tokyo, Japan this year. He’s going over concepts that should be familiar to Tai Chi people, or in fact anybody who has a deep understanding of Chinese martial arts. It’s the concept called “jin” – often translated as refined force. It’s using the power of the ground, transmitted through a relaxed (“sung”) body to produce an unusual strength that isn’t reliant on excessive muscle use (“li”).

Jin is talked about all the time in the Tai Chi Classics, most notably on the issuing of force with the famous phrase:

The jin should be
rooted in the feet,
generated from the legs,
controlled by the waist,
and expressed through the fingers. 

What’s interesting to me is why it’s only really Rickson Gracie (and his students) who talks about and demonstrates this stuff in BJJ? Did he find it elsewhere and integrate it, or was it always there if you had eyes to see it?

Anyway, here’s his workshop:

The legend, BJ Penn

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bj-penns-last-stand-just-one-more-once-more

Really nice article by Jack Slack on MMA and Jiujitsu legend BJ Penn.

There have been few falls from grace as ugly and lengthy as that of BJ Penn. Nobody who knows the game is hung up on his 16-10 record, he has nothing to prove to anyone who knows their onions in that regard. It is simply that Penn spent so many years being in many ways remarkable, in a few ways wanting, and continued to drag out his attempts to find the mythical ‘motivated BJ Penn’ rather than addressing the actual issues in his game.

5 BJJ techniques a Kung Fu or Tai Chi student should know

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Jiu-Jitsu training

While BJJ is known for its ground techniques, each match starts standing up, and there are a few interesting throws and submissions that you can pick up from the art that work well for a Kung Fu practitioner.

I wrote this article for Jetli.com so long ago I’d forgotten about it, but now it’s just been published, so here it is – 5 BJJ techniques a Kung Fu or Tai Chi student should know.

If you like that one you might also like another article I wrote recently there about the throwing techniques that made Ronda Rousey famous in the UFC and also this post on starting in Tai Chi and then taking up BJJ