Grappling Rashguard - BJJ Rash Guard

Since the first UFC every dojo and martial arts school in the world has rushed to add grappling to their curriculum.

In their quest to keep up with the latest trend and in an effort to "cover all bases" in the true "Jack of All Trades, Master of None" fashion that is modern martial arts , clueless instructors have taken one step close to diluting their already useless and misapplied systems and sealing the fate of their massively misguided students.

The Gracies proved one thing in the UFC: popular martial artists of the time had no clue, confidence and even less skill. UFC 1 saw martial arts from a variety of styles get submitted by Royce Gracie. Fortunately for Royce, wrestlers and Judo players were too busy trying to win Olympic Gold instead of getting there faces split open for a chance at $50,000.

Now everyone and their mother became a grappler and MMA became a professional sport. Now here's the rub. Professional fighters train for a specific contest.

All things being equal,sagainst a pure striking or pure wrestling contest against a wrestler training the same amount of time, the MMA fighter wouldn't stand a chance. This holds true for the boxer or the wrestler going against an MMA fighter of the same caliber.

So what happened in the dojos? While you came to class twice a week and studied one style you now split your time trying to learn two styles. Even under the best conditions with the best possible instructor you are only going to get average. In order for your sport fighting technique to be reliable in a street fight, you're going to have to put a lot of time in, time you really don't have. If you're going to play by the rules and they're not (I know what you're thinking, you can fight dirty too).

Unfortunately you train how you fight and they techniques you are designed those conditions. Let's look at it this way, how long does it take to get "average". Do you know how much a professional fighter trains? When he's not getting tattoos and preparing for a fight he is spending at least 4 to 6 hours a day, 6 days a week training.

Each work out day varies, but you get the idea, it's a full time job. Between skill building and conditioning you're looking at 15 hours with a job to 40 hours without a job each week for 5 weeks prior to fight, the week before is more conditioning, no sparring and healing. Do you know how long it takes to develop OK grappling skills? In my 30 years of wrestling it takes the average high school student 3 seasons to know their ass from their elbow.

Let's break it down like this: Wrestling starts on Thanksgiving and in High School ends in February if you're awful and the middle of March if you're really good. Since you're starting, you're going to suck. 12 weeks of 6 days a week, 2 hours a day minimum = 144 hours of training. 3 years until your not getting beaten by everybody in the league = 432 hours of training. 432 hours to become average. You go to grappling class 1 time a week for an hour, heck let's make it 2 hours per week.

Provided you never miss class, take a vacation of get sick, it will take you more than 4 years to get proficient under the right coaching and competition. Because let's face it, you're only as "good as the room."

You're training partners and your coaches. An attending a seminar doesn't make you a coach. To maximize SPORTS you need good hands on coaching and good training partners. You can say the same about striking and submissions that's another 864 hours of training. For mixed martial arts you're looking at 1236 hours just to be AVERAGE. That's 6 years of training 4 hours per week, never missing a week, never getting injured orsick.

And now you will be AVERAGE at grappling, striking and submissions. Hitting a heavy bag doesn't mean you can box with a boxer. Knowing a submission doesn't mean you know BJJ. At the end of the day you are better off knowing one thing and that's it. If you want to go grapple, take a few years and just do that. If you want to kick box, go do that. There are not enough hours in YOUR day to become OK at everything no matter what your shirt says.

You're not a professional fighter, no matter what your shirt says. And if you want to train is self defense, then go do that. It all depends on what you want and how much time you have in your day. If you like the idea of doing a little of this and a little of that, great, but don't kid yourself, you're not getting good at anything.

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