Curious about the differences in judo\jjj and bjj.

[MetalBoar]

I've been thinking about this, and I guess I'll just distill this to one simple question. How can guys like @gpseymour say he sees a lot of application training with guys like @Tony Dismukes, or guys like @Tony Dismukes say he sees a lot of benefit from his training in things like ninjutsu or wing chun, or wing chun guys like @yak sao say he sees a lot of benefit from other styles.... and at the same time, be so rigid and inflexible about what can or cannot benefit training? Seems pretty inconsistent to me. To be clear, I'm not suggesting @yak sao or @Tony Dismukes have taken a rigid stance. More, I'm suggesting that you guys are already open to the idea of cross benefits, but seem to balk at the idea of less obvious carryover.

I think this is an interesting question and I'd love to hear other peoples' takes on it.

Just talking about skill acquisition below:

I'm not at all against cross training and I do believe it can have benefits for your complete martial arts package. If you want to be a well rounded martial artist then you're likely going to train in multiple arts. For the most part, outside of potential time and recovery limitations, I don't think there's much downside to cross training (at least in very different arts, say BJJ and boxing) and a lot of upsides for that goal. That's especially true for me because I want to have fun with my martial arts, get some exercise in, and get better at self defense and at this point in my life I prioritize it in about that order too. I just think that it doesn't work the way some people are claiming it does, at least for the way most people learn.

For example, I think that doing boxing and BJJ at the same time are a great way to get better at fighting in an overall sense. I do not think that doing BJJ is going to make your boxing in the ring better unless you are able to pick up skills the way only a minority of people are able to and even then I think it will be only minimally beneficial to your boxing, and vice versa. They are different enough that I doubt they'll be detrimental to each other under competition rules either.

Now if you already box and you take up Wing Chun you may also become a more well rounded fighter since you're going to get some training that boxing is completely missing in kicking at the very least. Some people, either because they are the rare-ish individual who easily learn things this way or because they work to take a piece and integrate it into what they already do (essentially make it a part of boxing), are going to find ways to use the Wing Chun to improve aspects of boxing as well. If neither of these things are true they are likely to confuse their skills and slow their progress by mixing up methods of power generation and footwork, etc.. Even if they are good at transferring motor skills between different activities they run the risk of unconsciously breaking the rules in their boxing matches if they do a lot of sparring in Wing Chun. I know that when I was studying Aikido and fencing all the time I almost threw a guy in a fencing tournament by reflex! In general I think the more you have/want to conform to a specific set of rules the less benefit you get from cross training (or at least the amount of work necessary to benefit goes up).

My own observations have taught me that cross training has a lot more challenges for most people than you'd think. I haven't taught martial arts very much but before the pandemic I owned a gym offering strictly one on one strength training instruction. We used a slow, HIT protocol that required a lot of grit but very little skill to perform well. It is much easier to learn and perform properly than pretty much anything you will learn in martial arts. I had clients that would take up some other style of weight lifting on the side, maybe because it was closer to home or they just wanted to add something else. In almost every single case it would really degrade their ability to perform our protocol properly. Sure, they could still move the weights but their speed of motion would be too fast or they'd break form and cheat to unload the weights when it got hard. The point is, they would go from having very solid form to mediocre to poor form just by adding a new type of weight lifting and that's a lot simpler than trying to integrate Tai Chi with Muay Thai. Even when people took up yoga, which is supposed to give you a better mind body connection, it screwed up their form. They usually wouldn't have too much trouble with proper form moving the weights but they'd unconsciously sync their breathing with their lifting. We used a SLOW protocol, if you sync your breathing with the movement you'll run out of breath in a hurry but even with me telling them to breath faster they wouldn't do it until it was too late.

Again, I'm not against cross training but I think that it does most people a disservice to ignore the challenges it can represent.

For what it's worth, I think when you talk about playing the trumpet and playing the french horn, I think breakdancing and BJJ are about that close. Very similar. Not quite as close as breakdancing and capoira, but close.

If you see break dancing and BJJ as being that similar I can say without a doubt you are one of the rare people who do easily apply skills that you've learned in one physical activity to another. If your brain works this way then its seems very natural that this is how things work. It doesn't work that way for most people. To them (even to me and I'm more on the "natural athlete" side of this than many) comparing break dancing to BJJ is like comparing apples to artichokes.

 

[drop bear]

If you see break dancing and BJJ as being that similar I can say without a doubt you are one of the rare people who do easily apply skills that you've learned in one physical activity to another. If your brain works this way then its seems very natural that this is how things work. It doesn't work that way for most people. To them (even to me and I'm more on the "natural athlete" side of this than many) comparing break dancing to BJJ is like comparing apples to artichokes.

It is probably more a product of training systems that use multiple concepts all time. Which allows people to problem solve a bit easier.

 

[Steve]

It is probably more a product of training systems that use multiple concepts all time. Which allows people to problem solve a bit easier.

Agreed. @MetalBoar , I think what you believe is innate is actually the product of a lot of training and practice.

When I get new employees on my team, I often have to teach them to be creative problem solvers. When I'm assessing applicant pools, I try to focus on traits and not skills. Coachability is a trait. Self awareness is a trait. Integrity, discipline, optimism, are also traits. Is someone comfortable with ambiguity and change? Traits.

If someone has these traits, they can learn pretty much any skill including how to be a creative problem solver.

Not to say you can't help someone with a trait, at least with some traits. Rather, traits are more baked in. As my grandma used to say, in time you might teach a pig to climb a tree, but it'll never climb like a squirrel.

 

[MetalBoar]

Agreed. @MetalBoar , I think what you believe is innate is actually the product of a lot of training and practice.

When I get new employees on my team, I often have to teach them to be creative problem solvers. When I'm assessing applicant pools, I try to focus on traits and not skills. Coachability is a trait. Self awareness is a trait. Integrity, discipline, optimism, are also traits. Is someone comfortable with ambiguity and change? Traits.

If someone has these traits, they can learn pretty much any skill including how to be a creative problem solver.

Not to say you can't help someone with a trait, at least with some traits. Rather, traits are more baked in. As my grandma used to say, in time you might teach a pig to climb a tree, but it'll never climb like a squirrel.

Yes, and the research indicates that being able to easily transfer things you've learned practicing one physical skill to another is baked in and for the most part is hard to change. I don't know that it is impossible, but I suspect it's difficult. Just like your tree climbing pig.

 

[Steve]

Yes, and the research indicates that being able to easily transfer things you've learned practicing one physical skill to another is baked in and for the most part is hard to change. I don't know that it is impossible, but I suspect it's difficult. Just like your tree climbing pig.

Maybe I've been lucky, but I've been teaching people to do it for over 15 years now, on my y am, and also teaching managers how to do it on their teams. My belief based on my actual success in this area is that, like you above, folks often mistake the skill for a trait.



I've written about various elements of this at length over the years. Takes a while, don't get me wrong, but if folks have the right traits, they can be taught this skill.

 

[drop bear]

Yes, and the research indicates that being able to easily transfer things you've learned practicing one physical skill to another is baked in and for the most part is hard to change. I don't know that it is impossible, but I suspect it's difficult. Just like your tree climbing pig.

What research would that be?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

That is a concept called rearranging the deck chairs on the titanic. And is a very common solution.

It mostly doesn't work. But it is very common.

Just because someone has a limited time to commit, that doesn't make their training a disaster.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

...

 

[Gerry Seymour]

I've been thinking about this, and I guess I'll just distill this to one simple question. How can guys like @gpseymour say he sees a lot of application training with guys like @Tony Dismukes, or guys like @Tony Dismukes say he sees a lot of benefit from his training in things like ninjutsu or wing chun, or wing chun guys like @yak sao say he sees a lot of benefit from other styles.... and at the same time, be so rigid and inflexible about what can or cannot benefit training? Seems pretty inconsistent to me. To be clear, I'm not suggesting @yak sao or @Tony Dismukes have taken a rigid stance. More, I'm suggesting that you guys are already open to the idea of cross benefits, but seem to balk at the idea of less obvious carryover.

You seem to have completely missed my point, Steve. If you've paid any attention to my posting over the years, you know I'm a proponent of cross-training in MA (including training multiple MA at once, for those with enough interest).

The bit you jumped into was originally about whether dividing a limited amount of training time between multiple competition formats would detract specifically from competition success in whatever the "primary" format (the one they'd train for if only training one - the other is an add-on). You made a comment about narrow view earlier - well, it started from a rather narrow topic.

For what it's worth, I think when you talk about playing the trumpet and playing the french horn, I think breakdancing and BJJ are about that close. Very similar. Not quite as close as breakdancing and capoira, but close.

Bollux. Trumpet and french horn use the same scales and much (nearly all) of the same terminology. Mouth technique is probably the same, too. They often are used in similar music. None of that is analogous to BJJ and breakdancing. They share some athletic moves and that's about it. It's more like comparing snare drum and french horn, IMO. There's certainly some carry-over.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Not to pick nits, but this depends a little on how you're applying A. Doesn't it? Not to beat a dead horse, but the horse carcass is relevant. Say you're goal is to learn to fight. Can we agree that some training does NOT help you become a better fighter, even though you are being told that it does?

In this sentence, you're actually arguing against your other arguments. You often say that training without fight application (which you narrowly define as sanctioned competition or actual fight-for-survival scenarios) has no benefit to fight skills. Yet somehow breakdancing is almost as good as BJJ training for fight skill development??

 

[drop bear]

Just because someone has a limited time to commit, that doesn't make their training a disaster.

It depends what you consider a disaster. The difference tends to be pretty massive.

And we are talking in terms of 6 months outperforming 10 years.

 

[drop bear]

Bollux. Trumpet and french horn use the same scales and much (nearly all) of the same terminology. Mouth technique is probably the same, too. They often are used in similar music. None of that is analogous to BJJ and breakdancing. They share some athletic moves and that's about it. It's more like comparing snare drum and french horn, IMO. There's certainly some carry-over.

Bjj and breakdancing are basically just a series of athletic moves though.

 

[drop bear]

In this sentence, you're actually arguing against your other arguments. You often say that training without fight application (which you narrowly define as sanctioned competition or actual fight-for-survival scenarios) has no benefit to fight skills. Yet somehow breakdancing is almost as good as BJJ training for fight skill development??

No you are the only one who says that.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

It depends what you consider a disaster. The difference tends to be pretty massive.

And we are talking in terms of 6 months outperforming 10 years.

If they are satisfied with the compromise, it's not a disaster for them. People set their own priorities, and usually they're perfectly fine with letting some things be just "okay" because it's better than not doing them at all.

 

[Gerry Seymour]

Bjj and breakdancing are basically just a series of athletic moves though.

So is table tennis. And hopscotch. Are those also basically the same thing as BJJ?

 

[Gerry Seymour]

No you are the only one who says that.

Which part of Steve's comments are you trying to attribute to me? That breakdancing is as good as BJJ for fight skill development, or that only competition or IRL use counts as application. Because I've literally never made anything that even looks like either of those claims, so either way your post is a complete falsehood.

 

[drop bear]

Which part of Steve's comments are you trying to attribute to me? That breakdancing is as good as BJJ for fight skill development, or that only competition or IRL use counts as application. Because I've literally never made anything that even looks like either of those claims, so either way your post is a complete falsehood.

Show me where you think Steve's comments match yours.

I feel you are creating a strawman here. And once you create a strawman they become your comments.

 

[drop bear]

So is table tennis. And hopscotch. Are those also basically the same thing as BJJ?

No but for completely different reasons.

 

[drop bear]

If they are satisfied with the compromise, it's not a disaster for them. People set their own priorities, and usually they're perfectly fine with letting some things be just "okay" because it's better than not doing them at all.

But then training multiple disciplines has no effect on someone who is satisfied with the compromise either.

 

[Steve]

You seem to have completely missed my point, Steve. If you've paid any attention to my posting over the years, you know I'm a proponent of cross-training in MA (including training multiple MA at once, for those with enough interest).

The bit you jumped into was originally about whether dividing a limited amount of training time between multiple competition formats would detract specifically from competition success in whatever the "primary" format (the one they'd train for if only training one - the other is an add-on). You made a comment about narrow view earlier - well, it started from a rather narrow topic.


Bollux. Trumpet and french horn use the same scales and much (nearly all) of the same terminology. Mouth technique is probably the same, too. They often are used in similar music. None of that is analogous to BJJ and breakdancing. They share some athletic moves and that's about it. It's more like comparing snare drum and french horn, IMO. There's certainly some carry-over.

I just disagree with you. It's okay. Don't take it personally or get defensive.

For what it's worth, I do know you are a proponent of cross training. Apparently, only a very specific kind, though.