Books and tapes? yes or no?

**Kokujin** · Posted On: 6/12/2006 7:18pm

I'm pretty much the bjj noob, but there's something that I have to ask to all of the bjjers, white belt and above.

Buying tapes and books about BJJ, is it an american thing? I ask this because, although I've been doing bjj for 6 months, I've known the bjj community in Portugal for quite some time and between portuguese, brazilian students and instructors from sveral academies, I've never seen anyone buy books on bjj.
While I was doind CMA, I bought a couple of books, that's true, but while starting to know the bjj guys trying to implant themselfs in Portugal I never saw anyone buying into books with techniques or tapes and such. The only tapes that we saw were championships in Brazil.
Do you think it's because of the higher cost of learning bjj in america that makes students learn new stuff by reading other techniques in books? Not enough cross polinization of techniques bewteen academies?
I've asked that question to several brazilian instructors and students and they all descirbe it as a way to "skin the gringos"!

When I say cross polinization I speak about students of other academies who come to train once in a while, it brings a new "game" to our gym and we learn new ways to counter it. Example: during the European champs we had students from Gracie Barra, Nova União, BTT, etc.

To end this I have to say that I don't have anything against buying books and tapes, hell, I love books, it's just me being curious and abnoxious!:icon_scra

**theraydiator** · Posted On: 6/12/2006 9:55pm

I use books and videos primarily because I don't get to roll as ofter as i'd like.

Without those training materials I wouldn't know 1/2 of my game so far, and I wouldn't have 1/2 the instruction.

-Jordan

**Method2Madness** · Posted On: 6/12/2006 10:03pm

There's no mistake that books are a big money maker for the Machados, Gracies, or any other group of people who are good at Jiujitsu. One of the main reasons why books sell in America so well, is that Americans are usually looking for the ultimate submission or ultimate escape when they buy these books.

When i first started i bought as many books as possible thinking that the more books i had the better my jiujitsu would eventually become. It wasn't until my teacher told me "Most of the techniques you see in those books are for show only about a handful are actually good for your game."

**Poop Loops** · Posted On: 6/12/2006 11:50pm

I've used some videos on here that I've "thought about" during BJJ. It wouldn't try to learn from them, but picking stuff up from them isn't a bad idea.

It's no substitue for a real class, though.

**Devil** · Posted On: 6/13/2006 7:30am

I constantly use books to improve on my training. The most common way I use them is to review the fine points of techniques that I have learned in class. I also use them to find solutions to specific problems I'm having when I roll. And occasionally, I use them to find techniques that I've never seen before.

I've had some success using Judo books to learn a few techniques I've been able to pull off in BJJ class, just because they happened to be something my BJJ training partners don't see every day, or because the Judo book showed a different variation of a technique, etc.