A theory and an experiment

[JordanT]

One of the issues that puzzles me is the death of the small circle arts. You'd be hard pressed to find honest to god taiji, hapkido, small circle jujitsu, etc. in open competion. You come across it every now and then, but its certainly fallen out of favor. Now, one area where this is still prevalent is self defense, many instructors warning of the dangers of extended ground fighting on the streets. This is true even in BJJ circles. It is unfortunate, given the skill of your average student when it comes to wrist locks, standing armbars and the like.

What happened? I would submit that these arts never progressed, not because they became technically irrelevant, but because of the transition from JUDO to BJJ. The takedown reigning in Judo, its only logical that the Gracies would expand on the basic takedown to control strategy. What would have happened had they observed not judo, but BJJ?

[JordanT]

In my opinion, the old styles are technically sound and lack only modern training methods to bring them back up to speed with the modern world. I will therefore be using the older locks and positions in competion, starting this year.

[Lindz]

Subscribe. Let us know how that goes.

[Phrost]

The extent of my knowledge of "small circle" styles is that it largely involves a lot of finger/etc attacks; ie. break the pinky or something.

I think I've got a book on it somewhere on my shelves.

[2groggy]

In my opinion, the old styles are technically sound and lack only modern training methods to bring them back up to speed with the modern world. I will therefore be using the older locks and positions in competion, starting this year.

If you mean small joint manipulations, aren't those locks banned from most of the competition rulesets? It would be cool to pressure test those techniques in randori with agreeable partners, though.

[jnp]

The takedown reigning in Judo, its only logical that the Gracies would expand on the basic takedown to control strategy. What would have happened had they observed not judo, but BJJ?

I'm sorry, but your sentence fragment lost me. What the hell are you trying to say?

[Kickapoo]

I'm sorry, but your sentence fragment lost me. What the hell are you trying to say?

I read it as him implying some sort of weird alternate timeline where instead of adapting judo to BJJ, they adapted BJJ to...something else?

I don't know man.

[BKR]

One of the issues that puzzles me is the death of the small circle arts. You'd be hard pressed to find honest to god taiji, hapkido, small circle jujitsu, etc. in open competion. You come across it every now and then, but its certainly fallen out of favor. Now, one area where this is still prevalent is self defense, many instructors warning of the dangers of extended ground fighting on the streets. This is true even in BJJ circles. It is unfortunate, given the skill of your average student when it comes to wrist locks, standing armbars and the like.

What happened? I would submit that these arts never progressed, not because they became technically irrelevant, but because of the transition from JUDO to BJJ. The takedown reigning in Judo, its only logical that the Gracies would expand on the basic takedown to control strategy. What would have happened had they observed not judo, but BJJ?

A decent hypothesis needs some sort of sensible premise. I can't figure out what you are getting at.

[BKR]

In my opinion, the old styles are technically sound and lack only modern training methods to bring them back up to speed with the modern world. I will therefore be using the older locks and positions in competion, starting this year.

And your experience with "old styles" is exactly what? Which "old styles"?

Ben

[Kickapoo]

Also, if your argument is the 'old styles' (I keep thinking of Old Gods when I write that) are no longer relevant because Judo spawned BJJ, I would like to point out that Judo is still very large. I don't follow your premise.

[JordanT]

Let me simplify. Someone's getting wrist locked.

[Ignorami]

As an Aikido man primarily interested in effectiveness (Yes, I know!), I'm definitely interested. Not just in the results, but also in how you go about applying modern training methods to it. Particularly if it's class-safe and still useful

[gregaquaman]

I did JJJ as a youngster and we did a lot of focus on small circle. I can pull a small cirlcle on a spazzy newb but I cannot pull one on an experienced grappler. The defences they use to stop those large High percentage body weight submissions are also effective for the bent wrist stuff. And the wrist stuff is lower percentage.

Although I also bounce and when doing restraints on people have a bit of success with the small joint moves. Which I do because dropping people on their head to get them out of a pub is frowned apon

[JordanT]

To elaborate, my books on tai chi, jujitsu, hwa rang do and shaolin are all the same book. My sambo overview, which is unfortunately in Russian, is the same. I can take pages from one and insert them into another without issue. These are also the same locks I learned in hapkido, sanuces ryu, FMA seminars, and various self defense classes. Joint locking is joint locking.

That being said, if you go to a grappling tournament, the odds of you getting, to borrow the hwa rang do term, z locked, are slim to none. I'm saying that this is not due to lack of technical merit, but simply because other aspects of grappling were developed instead.

To find out whether the old joint locks (ie. send the buddha to heaven) actually work today, I will be using them.

I'm not sure whats unclear here.

As far as my experience goes, I'm a brown belt in BJJ. This means that I study joint locking and can absoutely pull off "kingliness holds tower" or "kneel and beg for mercy".

[Ignorami]

Also, can we get a quick description of what the OP means by small circle/big circle, just so we're all talking about the same thing?

EDIT: and good luck with the experiment by the way!