About Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Self Defense

About Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Self Defense

The application of Brazilian jitsu in the context of self-defense is subject to many debates and points of view, we share ours here and it is what we transmit and expect from our students.

First of all, we consider that Brazilian jiu jitsu is a personal defense system for situations of aggression by an attacker without weapons.

We think that bjj  should always be applied as a defense and not as a form of aggression.

The fundamental objective will always be to defend ourselves and control an attacker, producing the least injuries.

For this reason, we will avoid punches, kicks and joint locks as much as possible, and we will seek to obtain positions of absolute control of the attacker so that he cannot attack us by hitting, kicking or other means.

We must avoid dangerous projections that can cause serious injuries and even death to the attacker and look for takedowns that allow us to fall on top of the opponent, preferably in the mount, gaining absolute control of their arms.

As we said before, if we have to apply a submission we must look more for strangulation techniques such as Mataleon and Kata gatame that will remove the opponent from the fight in a more effective and less harmful way than joint locks.

Finally, we must remember that we will never use Brazilian jiu jitsu against armed aggressors.

We recognize the limitations of our discipline for those situations and believe that attempting to apply our techniques in that situation can lead to fatal consequences.

Although many teachers and schools teach techniques for these situations, the current debate about unrealistic training for these aggressions shows that they are not effective in real life.

However, in our case we are working to incorporate systems and techniques from other disciplines and specific training that allow our students to develop skills for these extreme situations.