What 27 Years of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Taught Me About the Difference Between Fighting and Self-Defense
I am a Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt.
I’ve been training BJJ for approximately 27 years. Before that, I was a wrestler. Wrestling was my first love and one of the defining passions of my youth. Grappling, in one form or another, has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
I’ve also been extraordinarily fortunate in the people I’ve learned from.
My first BJJ instructor, Jon McMakin, was an early MMA pioneer in South Carolina who became one of my best friends. When I moved to New York City, I trained under Rigan Machado black belt Marcos Santos, who taught me that Jiu Jitsu was about far more than submissions and positions. He taught me about camaraderie, friendship and the culture of the art.
As New York became one of the epicenters of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I had the opportunity to train with some of the finest practitioners in the world, including Marcelo Garcia, Henrique Costa, Bernardo Faria, Paul Schreiner and Thomas Lisboa. I also trained with and became friends with 11-time world champion Lucas Lepri, widely considered one of the greatest lightweight BJJ competitors of all time. Lucas ultimately awarded me my black belt—one of the greatest honors of my life.
Later, in Colorado, I trained with Xande Ribeiro black belt and two-time Masters World Champion Matt Jubera.
My training hasn’t been limited to grappling. Today, at 54 years old, I train Muay Thai at Little Giant Muay Thai under the legendary Kru Chon, who I consider the best coach and trainer I’ve ever had. I’ve also had the opportunity to train with Kru Addy Singpayak, who had more than 250 professional fights during his career, Kru Roger, who had approximately 200 professional fights, as well as Marcos Vasquez and Nate Bennett.
Training Muay Thai at that level has been both eye-opening and humbling. After a lifetime in martial arts, I’m still learning, still being challenged and still discovering how much there is to know.
I don’t share any of this to impress you. I share it because what I’m about to say might otherwise be easy to dismiss:
After nearly three decades of training, I have come to believe that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is not self-defense.
I love Jiu Jitsu. I have enormous respect for the art, the people who practice it and the skills it develops. But Jiu Jitsu is a combat sport, and sport necessarily creates an environment fundamentally different from the environment in which actual violence occurs.
It took a real confrontation for me to fully understand that difference.
I Had Trained My Entire Life for the Wrong Problem
Several years ago, a man confronted me aggressively.
Looking back, my first failure occurred before anything became physical. Could better situational awareness have allowed me to recognize what was developing earlier? Could I have created distance or avoided the situation entirely?
My second failure was de-escalation. The man pulled up in his truck, got out and began yelling as he approached me aggressively. I stood up and walked toward him saying, “Hey man, chill out. Chill out.”
In my mind, I was de-escalating. In reality, my words were communicating one thing while my movement communicated another. I was closing distance and matching his aggression.
Then the confrontation became physical, and nearly a lifetime of training took over.
For years, I had told people not to shoot underneath someone for a takedown in a street confrontation. Don’t assume he’s unarmed. Don’t assume he’s alone. Don’t voluntarily put yourself underneath an attacker when you don’t understand the problem in front of you.
I knew all of this intellectually.
So what did I do?
I shot a double leg.
Of course I did. I had probably practiced that movement more than ten thousand times.
I took him down, established dominant position, transitioned to his back and controlled him. From a grappling perspective, it worked almost perfectly. If another grappler had watched the encounter, he might have looked at what happened and said, “His training worked.”
Then the man told me to stop.
So I stopped.
I didn’t adequately check him for a weapon. I didn’t account for whether there might be another threat. I allowed him to get back to his feet.
Then I discovered he was armed.
That changed the way I thought about everything I had spent decades training.
My Training Worked Perfectly
This is the part that matters most.
My training didn’t fail. It worked exactly as designed.
I was a grappler. I encountered physical aggression. Under pressure, I grappled.
We often hear that under pressure we don’t rise to the occasion; we fall to the level of our training. I had heard that expression countless times. Now I understood it.
I didn’t consciously evaluate every variable and decide a double leg was the best tactical response. Ten thousand repetitions made that decision for me.
And technically, it worked.
I took him down. I controlled him. I wasn’t injured. He wasn’t seriously injured. Through the lens of wrestling or Jiu Jitsu, I had won the encounter.
Through the lens of self-defense, however, I saw something entirely different.
I had failed to recognize the developing problem early enough. I had failed to effectively de-escalate it. I had gone to the ground without knowing whether my attacker was armed. I failed to adequately account for weapons, and then I allowed an armed man I had just physically controlled to get back to his feet.
That’s when I began asking myself an uncomfortable question:
What exactly had I been training for?
Jiu Jitsu Has Rules. Violence Doesn’t.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is extraordinarily sophisticated at solving the problem it was designed to solve.
But Jiu Jitsu and self-defense aren’t solving the same problem.
Jiu Jitsu operates within rules. There are permitted techniques and prohibited techniques. There are weight classes, referees, rounds, boundaries and defined starting and stopping points. Most importantly, the two people involved have agreed to participate.
Violence makes none of those promises.
An attacker hasn’t agreed to protect you. He isn’t required to be alone or unarmed. There may be a knife or a gun. The surface underneath you may be concrete instead of a mat. You may be protecting your wife or your child. Someone else may attack you while you’re controlling the first person.
And nobody is required to respect the tap.
That’s led me to a conclusion I never expected to reach after nearly three decades in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu:
In some important ways, sport Jiu Jitsu can condition behaviors that are antithetical to self-defense.
Not because Jiu Jitsu doesn’t work.
It works extraordinarily well at what it was designed to do.
The problem is that self-defense is solving a different problem.
Self-Defense Begins Before the Fight
Jiu Jitsu trains us to engage and solve a physical problem. Self-defense begins much earlier.
Can I recognize the problem before it becomes physical? Can I avoid it? Can I create distance? Can I de-escalate it? Can I position myself more intelligently? Can I get the people I’m responsible for out of danger?
And if violence becomes unavoidable, the objective still isn’t to win a contest. The objective is to survive the problem and get home.
Sometimes that requires fighting. But sometimes it means disengaging rather than dominating. Sometimes it means staying on your feet rather than going to the ground. Sometimes it means recognizing that the hands you’re fighting with may be reaching for a weapon.
The objective changes everything.
That realization eventually led me to Krav Maga.
Then I Found Krav Maga
Over the past year, I’ve had the opportunity to meet, train with and become friends with CJ Kirk. Through CJ, I began looking seriously at Krav Maga—not as another martial art to add to my collection, but as someone who had spent almost his entire life training and was now asking very different questions about violence.
Something clicked.
Krav Maga isn’t attempting to be a better combat sport.
It isn’t a sport at all.
There is no ring. There are no points or medals. There is no ritualized contest between two consenting athletes. There is a problem, there is a threat, and there is a desired outcome:
Get home.
Krav Maga begins where actual self-defense begins—not with fighting, but with the environment. Awareness, recognition, avoidance, de-escalation, positioning and distance are part of the problem.
If those things fail and violence becomes unavoidable, the physical response has to account for the realities of violence rather than the rules of competition. Weapons matter. Multiple attackers matter. The surface you’re standing on matters. The people you’re responsible for protecting matter. Escape matters.
Context matters.
This is the distinction that has become so clear to me.
Jiu Jitsu taught me how to become a very capable grappler.
Krav Maga is teaching me self-defense.
Jiu Jitsu Still Has a Place
I am not walking away from Jiu Jitsu. Quite the opposite. I love it, and I remain enormously grateful for the instructors, training partners and friends who have shaped my life through the art.
What has changed is where I place Jiu Jitsu within my preparation.
I no longer see Jiu Jitsu as the architecture of my self-defense. I see it as an incredibly valuable capability that can exist within a larger self-defense framework. Wrestling can fit inside that framework. Physical conditioning can fit inside it. Other capabilities can be layered into it.
For me, Krav Maga now provides the architecture because it begins with the actual problem: violence is unpredictable, unfair and uncontrolled.
Someone recently asked me what martial art I would recommend if their primary objective was self-defense. Years ago, my answer probably would have been different.
Today, I would tell them to train self-defense.
Learn awareness and avoidance. Learn de-escalation. Learn how violence develops and how to recognize danger before it becomes physical. Learn how weapons change a confrontation. Learn how to protect someone besides yourself. Learn when to fight, when to disengage and how to escape.
Then build other capabilities around that foundation.
My own confrontation ended without serious injury, and from the outside it probably looked like my training had worked.
In one sense, it had.
I executed the takedown. I established control. I dominated the physical encounter.
But I had controlled an armed man without knowing he was armed.
That is the lesson I can’t get away from.
For nearly three decades, Jiu Jitsu taught me how to become a better grappler. I am profoundly grateful for that training and always will be.
But self-defense is a different problem.
Today, that’s the problem I’m training to solve.
No rings. No rules. No rituals.
That’s Krav Maga.
