Hi Tony,

I have been thinking about the street effective grappling seminar that Matt Evans gave at FFMA recently which was awsome. It is so good to have martial artists like Matt to come along and show us wee students their experience and expertise.
It had many of the movements of BJJ but Matt adapted them for street effectiveness, is there such a significant difference between sport applied BJJ and street effective grappling or is it down to the individual ability and experience to make BJJ work?

Look forward to receiving your reply.

Helen XX

Hi Helen,

I am glad you enjoyed and valued Matty’s lesson as he is simply brilliant. You did well at this early stage of your martial arts training to see that Matty adapts BJJ moves to be street effective.

Basically in martial arts there exists a martial form/movements/set of techniques all of which originally come from the traditional arts (nothing is really new). The very original techniques before they were adapted for competition or/and diluted to make them less dangerous were in fact in most cases the most effective methods for real combat (they were specifically developed for real combat). Over time with the growth of martial arts competition (sport) the very dangerous (most effective) moves have been removed and or modified. The end result is that everyone can to a degree enjoy a level of martial combat and survive to live another day. This does not mean that some of the sport based moves cannot do serious damage, in fact they can but not to the level that non sport based martial arts can. This is where guys like Matty who have been trained by teachers like Geoff Thompson really excel. Matty has tested his martial arts on the street and modified them to work under real pressure. In doing so he finds ways to negate some of the traditional wrestling/BJJ moves.

Here are a few examples in a real situation if your life or well being is under real threat - (1) if you are on your back with some one mounted on your chest you will soon get their attention if you rip and ear off, poke an eye or pull their lip/mouth to one side (this is called a fish hook). (2) you will have seen that when Matty did the guillotine choke (unfortunately on me) he created a clamp by putting the arm doing the choking over the other arm which was locked onto the top of my shoulder. This gives your opponent no space for movement and a lot of pain.

Being taught by guys like Matty will increase your ability to see things for yourself in terms of martial arts as it teaches to look for ways to test techniques. More importantly you will have seen 2 other great assets by Matty; (1) huge intent, you saw what he was like when he switched on – and (2) how humble, patient and actually non violent he is. These are the attributes of a top class martial artist.

Keep up the good work at training.

Tony. T