There is Brazilian Jiu Jitsu for those interested

GI white belt for 8 months...wasnt promoted due to "life gets in the way" but i can share/teach concepts and fundamentals..i have also competed in various local competitions in the phils..

hi do you have job vacancy? i have practiced bjj no gi 4 2yrs under the blue belt of TBJJ and currently i am a white belt "GI" under DEFTAC PHIL.. RIBEIRO JIUJITSU..

Dear Ahmad

I am equally interested in learning this art... But definitely for self-defense purposes... And personal interests.....

I have very little time to spare except after office hrs... which usually ends at arnd 7:00 pm...

And also let me remind u that I am a novice in this art and never have acquired any such skills or trained under any individual before.... So any sort of help would be most welcome....

I will be able to enroll perhaps from next year onwards..

Do you have an earlier class for Kickboxing, as in really 10-11pm is very late?

Regards,

Vhic

Assalamu'alaikum wr wb

Hai Ahmad! My name is Rama Lawendatu. I'm Indonesian and have been living here in Doha for 2 years. I'm very interesting to join your BJJ class. May I know the location of your class?

Thank you..

Wassalamu'alaikum wr wb

Good question, when i started martial arts during the first few years i was very limited in my options of places to train or even styles, and also i was limited in my resources because before internet and so on it was impossible to know what martial art developments were around the world, i had to basically beleive what people told me and make an educated judgement, and unfortunatly people were making up alot when it came to martial arts because many look at it from a mystical/hollywood point of view where martial arts has to be about flying kicks and doing the splits and basically i spent many years just training in flying kicks and doing the splits while in other countries people were taking the game to a new level and really cutting to the essentials of what works and what doesnt.

In martial arts you get the Olympic styles, these are Karate/Taekwondo/Judo/etc which were all legit martial arts at one point in time, but their actual exposure to the mainstream through Olympic competition was their downfall as effective martial arts. The belt system became a marketing/business tool to keep students satisfied and to give them a feel of moving ahead, and the olympic tone-down to point system for sure has made them safer in competition, but in training all styles have adapted to this point-system of scoring, there is no longer the goal of martial arts, the term McDojo was created showing how nowdays anybody can train in these arts for a year or a little longer and become a black-belt and qualified to teach and open a dojo, basically one hour classes which are 30 minutes warm-up and 30minutes repeat what we did last time here's a few kicks and here's a few punches that work perfectly if your opponent was blind or if two people were holding him in place while you used these techniques. But its all demonstration! thats the key word, people want appearances, they want "demonstration", and what i try to look for in martial arts is "Application". If i show you a joint lock and i demonstrate it with the opponent who is just standing there then ofcourse its easy to do, but go home and try doing it with a friend and tell them to defend even if they never practised any fighting style in their life they will shut it down with any simple move that is different from your demonstration.

In my journey with martial arts i travelled and i read up and i experienced first hand why these styles and techniques were developed in each art. During this journey there were many stations, i can pretty much say i have covered with some depth almost all martial arts that cover hand to hand combat, and that includes wrestling and pankration which are actually the original martial arts to humans, they are the oldest documented styles of fighting from ancient greece, people are mistaken when they think martial arts were invented or only are found in Fareast Asia. The story of how the japanese art of Jiu-Jitsu was adapted by Brazil is also interesting and important in the history of martial arts.

For some people like me, martial arts will be a lifelong journey, and there are many stops you make in it which involve different styles and variations of martial arts, if you had told me about BJJ 10 years ago i would have never accepted it because there are no fancy acrobatics like the movies, and thats what my mind wanted back then, but i'm not 16 anymore, my mind wants something more sophisticated, i want a complete style which i can feel confident about, and BJJ is the only martial arts which i could call the Engineering of martial arts, it forces you to think for yourself, and it forces you to make good choices on how to handle situations. Also a main advantage is that we practise every lesson at full speed and full power and we are able to go home without a scratch and fully confident in what we learned. What other martial art or fighting style can you practise full power and full speed every lesson without getting brain damage? And without real application practise how will you ever improve or test yout skills and be confident in using them? will you wait until your in a real situation once in a lifetime and you expect to perform 100% of what you learned effectively? The first time u use it?

I did a study and I have yet to see a young child who practices olympic martial arts and doesnt get beat up by all his friends who dont! why does this happen? why does the trained kid get beatup by all the kids that never did martial arts? Because these watered-down olympic martial arts have reset your kids natural instinct to a point system which he hardly ever gets to practise in application!! and the other kid still has his natural fighting instinct which is based on randomness and intensity which is easy compared to controlled accuracy which the martial arts kid is being trained on but has never applied it, so he ends up not knowing what to do in a real situation.

I think being well rounded and discovering all martial arts is important if you want to be able to use it in competition or in real application, but i stick with the theory that BJJ is superior because it is the only style that has improved and developed with time instead of going downhill. Even when BJJ was adopted into a point system sport all the techniques are still fully applicable in any situation, it doesnt take away from its effectiveness.

It is not for everybody however, i still get people who come in and ask me what super jumping moves does BJJ have? how many multiple opponents can i defeat at one given time? do i know any death-touches? how many bricks can i break with my fingers? And those people i kindly recommend to the other classes because they arent looking for what i am offering, these guys want to feel like they can protect thmselves, they dont want to really be able to.

The real answers to the questions are: There are actually a few flying moves in BJJ but they dont involve kicks or punches, the number of multiple opponents i can defeat at one given time depends on who those opponents are, if its anemic schoolgrils then i am sure i can take quite a number out, if its four olympic wrestlers who jump me then its gonna be a long night, two anemic schoolgirls and one professional kickboxer....i guess i'll take the kickboxer out as fast as i can and persuade him to help me take out the two gilrs! If i dip my finger in liquid plague for a while i think i can give somebody a 'death touch'. I break pens with my fingers when i'm frustrated at work, theyre not bricks but they are Bic's so that close.

Do you differentiate between male/female classes? The reason I am asking is that my wife wants to take thai box lessons (I probably should start taking shooting lesson then :))

Why do you consider BJJ a superior art? Don't all martial arts have their own pros and cons?