The Risk of Grappling

 

This one is sure to cause some controversy, it shouldn't though, please read on and you hopefully see why.... 

In today's MMA/UFC you see a lot of grappling being employed, very succesfully too at times!

It is also clear that grappling can be a very effective skill to have.  It is for these reasons that a lot of (budding) martial artists are seeking out grappling arts, most commonly Brazilian Jiu Jitsu (BJJ). 

However there's a time and place for everything, and the one place that grappling definitely doesn't belong is on the street!

The illustration (thank you sifu Richard Torres for sharing this), illustrates this to a degree.  The danger is that whilst you are on the ground wrestling with your opponent, there's others ready to jump you when you least expect it.  Grappling is very much a one on one art! The problem is that you lose your situational awareness very quickly, you have lost your mobility (so you can't evade, move, run away etc) and so you have severely handicapped yourself in the process.  I haven't even mentioned the surface you'd be grappling on, which can be concrete, wooden floors, gravel, sand, tarmac etc. In any case non of it is going to be very comfortable, to say the least. As such it further enhances the risk of injuries! Bumping your head or grazing your skin is a very real risk here. And lastly, because of that loss of situational awareness, you also won't notice that your opponent might just reach into a pocket and take out a knife or worse...you won't see it, you might not even feel it due to the adrenaline pumping, but you very soon will get a little giddy and lose consiousness when you realise (much too late) that you've just been mortally stabbed , multiple times....

Sadly, I see in many places that people are really into grappling, it being the end all to everything, totally engrossed by it because they see it all the time, on TV, in the ring/octagon, and at their local gym! At the time of writing ,MMA is probably the most popular martial art /combat sport people are taking up, but please don't forget it is a sport! It has rules, and rules mean limitation.   

Let me give you a wake up call, on the street there is NO referee, no one that will stop the fight, and there are NO RULES! 

Don't get me wrong, I wrote in the beginning that grappling can be a succesful tool, but approach it from the point of learning just enough about it, to be able to recognise an impending grappling attack or when you are finding yourself on the ground, how to get out of it as quickly as possible, get back on your feet, regain that mobility and situational awareness. Train anti grappling moves, but don't spend too much of your valuable time on it. Some argue that 70% of the fights end up on the ground. I argue that 100% of the fight start on your feet!  The chances are that any fight you end up in on the street, won't include a high level proffesional grappler, but someone who's seen a few moves on the TV, a complete amateur with at best a bit of basic knowledge, more likely non at all... So learn to deal with the grappler, without grappling taking up too much of your valuable time. (unless you are preparing to step inside an MMA octagon). For the street, you are much better off to train for the common opponent, particularly if you can't spend 24 hours a day on training, because life... etc...  

Train wisely, don't get caught up in the hype, stay alive.

Walk On!