 Hi everyone. Today we're going to talk about the risks of jiu-jitsu. What are some of the common risks that you're likely to encounter? Well, you risk gaining flexibility, added mobility, you risk understanding movement, losing weight, learning how to defend yourself, and you actually risk the knowledge of learning how to bend an opponent into a pretzel if you need to. But in all seriousness we are talking about a method of training that involves putting your hands on another person and bending, twisting, unlocking their body into different positions. So there are obvious risks and health hazards that come with that. But if we all practice safely and we understand some of these risks, then we can limit those possibilities and keep everyone at the top of their game. The first thing a lot of people have to tackle is the fear of getting into it. If you have not trained before or if you're looking to put your child into a program and you go to a school and you see people getting tossed and thrown and choked out, that can be a scary thing if you're not familiar with it. So part of it is understanding the safety. How safe are these arts? There's also the question of am I too old? I've met a lot of people who wanted to start judo but they're in their 50s and 60s and you can kind of see their apprehension that they're a little nervous to start. I get that. Taking impacts of being thrown at an older age might not necessarily be the best idea. But on that note, I do recommend Brazilian Jiu Jitsu definitely for older practitioners because it's still a great way to get your body moving. It's very low impact. You're going to only increase your flexibility and mobility. So if you are of an older age and you want to learn grappling because you don't want to be thrown or tossed, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is a great way to go about. So first, we're going to cover some ideas if you're just starting the grappling arts or if you're looking to get into it and afterwards, we'll start covering some more topics if you're the more seasoned practitioner. Now, I will be the first person to highly recommend learning some sort of grappling art. My background is Kempo. So I am a striker as we're called. But I do appreciate grappling because I think it's a very important part of your training. And whether it be judo or Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, I think there's a lot to learn there and I definitely encourage anyone to try it if you haven't learned it already. One, it's great for self defense. I mean, you will learn how the body works. You're going to learn how joints and what the limits are and how to submit somebody if you're in danger. It's also a great sport. I mean, we watched you see all the time and just learning and understanding how the body can move and learn sensibility all around Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the grappling arts are a fantastic method of training. But like we said before, this is a literal hands-on training where you are grabbing a person's body. So there is risk for injury. So let's examine some of the most common injuries and how we can best avoid them. First thing and this is kind of an obvious one is make sure you are stretched out and warmed up. You do not want to start a workout or a martial arts class of any kind without any sort of preparation. You know, there's a reason we do calisthenics and there's a reason we do stretches and that is to prevent injury. You get your body warmed up. If you just start cold, you're likely to hurt yourself, pop a muscle, pull a muscle, make sure you are properly warmed up and that you are stretched out thoroughly. Also, be sure to let your teacher and your classmates know of any injuries you might already have. You know, they might not know what to take it easy on and you might not know your limits yet either. So if you have any concerns whatsoever, at least with your teacher, let them know up front if you have any pre-existing conditions. So one of the first things you're most likely to learn in any grappling art is how to be a stuntman. Because before you can be thrown or have these techniques applied to you, you really need to learn how to fall and react properly. And this is kind of basically you learn to be the uke first. Falling properly is extremely important because you are being tossed by another person. You know, you've got to know where to place your hand so you don't break any wrists or certain elbows. You have to know how to absorb your impact on the ground. You have to know how to turn a certain way so you don't hit your head or your back. So learning to fall is usually the first lesson they teach you. And if you go to school and they don't teach you that, you really might want to reconsider the school because that is how you're going to mitigate a lot of injuries right there is learning how to fall properly and how to receive the techniques properly. And this includes learning how to roll properly. And I don't mean roll as in randori and sparring. I mean rolling as in literally rolling and getting back to your feet. Now, I've met people who try to roll as, you know, as an offensive move, you know, try to be fancy. That's not what I'm talking about here. I feel that rolling is very beneficial in defense and recovery. And we learned this in Kempo. I've seen a lot of other martial arts schools teach it. It's definitely in Judo and Jiu Jitsu. Rolling is a great way to use your balance or if you stumble or if you get knocked back or whatever to get right back on your feet. For example, like so we did extensive rolling in my training and even one time many years ago we were at a paintball trip and we're walking off the field. I had my arms were full of my gear. I had my helmet. I had my paintball marker and as I was walking my foot actually caught and divot in the ground and I stumbled and lurched forward and I couldn't regain my balance. I realized I'm not going to get my balance. I'm going to face plant so I just kind of instinctively without thinking about it. I launched forward, went to a roll, got right back up onto my feet. It was just total reaction because we done it in class so much and I feel that that might have, you know, prevented the possible injury because there was no way I could have, I had an arm full of gear. I could have easily hurt myself. Learning how to fall, learning how to roll is probably the most important thing that you're going to learn first. Take the hits, take the impacts. Once you have that down, you've already limited a lot of possible injuries as long as you're safe and smart about that. You're going to see a lot of stuff in class. You see a lot of footage of like jujitsu classes and jujitsu classes where they do the wrist turn and the person jumps in the air and flips. There's a reason for that. It's not to show off, be like, oh look how cool this is and the likelihood in the streets. If you were to do a wrist turn on somebody, they're not going to fly up in the air and flip over. The reason we do that is actually to prevent injuries yourself. A wrist lock, they're designed to actually break the wrist and fracture the bones in your arm. We want to prevent that kind of injury in class. One thing is you learn how to turn your body properly. You learn how to roll with it and how to actually follow it. The body, when it feels pain, it tends to want to go towards the pain. You want to learn how to adjust to that, modify your stance, your body, how to take the impact so that way your partner can have the experience of doing the technique properly and you have the experience of how to take it properly so you both are safe and you're both learning technique. It's not about showing off or looking good, it's about preventing injury to yourself. And I know it might sound easier than it actually has to do it if you're just starting out. I experienced that, but you just got to relax. You got to kind of go with the technique. If you fight the technique, if you feel nervous about being picked up and thrown, you tense up and you tighten, you're more likely to actually hurt yourself that way than to protect yourself. And when I started judo, we'll talk about a year and a half going on two years ago now, when I first started taking these classes, that was a foreign feeling to me. I am not used to being picked up and thrown. I mean, I'm a larger person and it's something that we've trained before, so that was a very foreign experience and I had to learn to be comfortable with it and I'm much much better with it now. I'm more relaxed when it happens, but there was one incident when I wasn't so comfortable at the beginning. You know, I was being thrown and I was being thrown by a person I hadn't worked with that well yet or that much yet. And just the way I felt in the air, I was nervous and I thought I was further from the ground than what I was. I kind of went to go turn to try to break my fall and I was actually too early on the turn and I actually landed on my shoulder wrong and I jarred it pretty badly. For a second, I thought I actually tore something. Thankfully, it was just a minor sprain and I was fine in about a week or so, but that resulted in me trying to fight it and trying to be tense up and nervous. You got to relax. Trust your instructor, trust your classmates. Again, once you learn how to do it smooth, go slow, go smooth. Once you have that, then you can actually pick up the pace a little bit at your comfort, but be relaxed. Go with it. If you fight the technique, you're more likely to hurt yourself. The same thing applies to if you are doing the technique yourself. If you're working with another person, if you're the one doing the throwing, same thing. Learn slow, learn smooth, because when you're picking up a person, there's so many different little ways you can hurt them or you can hurt yourself if you don't do it right, that you want to make sure you have the technique down. So build up that confidence and once you have that confidence, follow through with your technique. If you start a technique at full speed and you stop halfway through and you kind of hesitate, again, you're more likely to hurt yourself. You're more likely to hurt them. You can drop that person. You drop that person. You've got a great chance of hurting them or you might be getting dropped if you're fighting the technique. So you've got to build up that confidence. That confidence is so important to get to the point where you're comfortable with what you're doing and when you do it, don't be tentative about it. Follow through. Do it smoothly. Commit to the technique. It might seem counter productive, but like the faster harder you throw a person, but you do it correctly, you're more likely to keep them safe and if you hesitate and you kind of pause or and you doubt yourself. So get that confidence built up and make sure you follow through properly with your techniques. And speaking of dropping, I'm going to drop a little Patreon reminder here. So we know as you know, we do have a Patreon account. We are always adding new features to it. There's exclusive content on there, but basically the thing is, you know, we want to do this channel full-time for you guys. We're getting such tremendous support. We have a lot of growth. There's a lot we want to do. You guys have been amazing, but the truth of the matter is the YouTube algorithm is unpredictable. It's changing almost daily, it seems. And there's, we want this channel to be able to support itself. You know, we're doing this on our own. This is almost a full-time job on the top of two other full-time jobs. So we really don't want to sell mattresses to you guys or dollar shaves or whatever other sponsored product. We really want to avoid doing that. So any help you guys can provide to support this channel, you know, we thank you those who have already started. But please check out our Patreon. There's a lot of exclusive content there, a lot of benefits that we offer. So please be sure to go check that out. So when it comes to grappling, it's usually technique over power. And if you're just starting, this is something you're going to learn as you get into your training. But if you've come from another art such as Muay Thai or karate, anything that's power-based, this might be something that you might not think about as much as you should. And it's something I encountered. Again, when I first started training Judo and Jiu Jitsu, I come from a striking background where you actually grab and you pull and you try to damage joints and body parts. When we were doing throws, I was learning that, you know, safely and slowly like we mentioned. But when the person was on the ground, we put them into like, we flip them over, we do like a wrist twist, flip them over, put them into an arm lock. And I would do that and, you know, the person was turning, the person was turning. But after a while, my instructor said, look, you kind of slowed down. And he started to refine my technique because what I was doing actually was more pulling and wrenching the arm versus actually getting the nuances of the technique down. So that was part of my learning at the beginning was I don't have to overpower, I don't have to grab and gank because actually that too will hurt your partner. And my poor partner wasn't saying anything. Speak up. If someone's hurting you, speak up. I really wish you would have said something earlier. Now let's kind of cover some of the more common injuries that occur, especially when you're first learning, either having them apply to you or if you're applying technique on somebody else incorrectly and these are possible injuries that you can inflict on them. One, elbows. Elbows are very, very susceptible to injuries when you're first starting if you're not careful. We do a lot of elbow traps, we do a lot of elbow locks. When you do shoulder throws, when you kind of grab the wrist and go under the arm, it's very easy to let your arm slip down and put pressure on the elbow. If you try to throw somebody bracing against your elbow, there's a very good chance that you could break it or at least hypersend it. So you have to be very cautious about that. Also, we do a lot of body strikes against elbows and in our class, when we do that, you know, we take the proper measures. So for the Uke, we take a specific step so that when the body hits, it's more on the bicep area and not on the elbow itself. So that's when we can apply a little pressure and then without actually hurting our partner. So you've got to be careful. Anything you're working on elbow breaks or elbow lock techniques, you have to take extreme caution because it's very, very easy to hurt somebody using elbow, especially and that's that takes a long time to recover from as well. Shoulder injuries, as we've talked about, you know, you land on your shoulder, you break your shoulder, you injure your rotator cuff, your tear ligament, these are long-term injuries. So when any time you're doing a throw, like I said, you want to make sure you learn a technique smooth and proper and how to take the fall proper because I said, I had that scare, I rotated wrong way, I didn't trust my partner and I paid for it. It could have been a lot worse. So shoulder injuries are also extremely common. If you are applying a technique on someone, like I mentioned earlier, if you're doing wrist locks or a technique that's going to involve the person flipping over before you just go and you rip that technique, make sure they are aligned. Make sure that you're part of your responsibility, especially as an experienced student, is making sure that your partner is in a safe alignment for themselves. So if you go to do the technique and you realize that they're not in the right position or you feel that tension, don't just crank that technique anyway. That's going to hurt them. That's when you stop and instruct them and maybe that's your chance to impart some wisdom on them. Make sure they are in the proper position. Make sure you are in a proper position because you might not have a partner that does that either. So always pay attention. Keep your head in the game. If it's a technique where you've got to turn your body a certain way to eliminate pressure on your own body part, make sure you do that and practice that. Wrist turns can be very, very, very damaging if you do not practice them safely. Also one that might slip people's minds, but it's definitely there because I've felt it a few times, dropping knees. A lot of techniques where you do the shoulder throw, get the person on the ground and you kind of either brace down on them or the person might stumble. There's been a few times where you know my partner has stumbled or dropped out and their knees have hit my ribs and there's been a few times that I've felt that, you know, that tendency too. So you've got to watch out for that, especially if you're applying a technique on a person and you lose your balance, you just got to watch out with those knees on those ribs because the ribs are going to give before the knee will. Also reckless experimentation and this is more common with beginning students who start to get a little bit more confident they should be at this particular point in their training. I've seen students who they'll do the base technique, we're running the drill, we're learning that maybe a combination for the first time and we do a wrist turn and they throw the person over but then they're like oh they try to go into some sort of arm lock on the ground, they try to use some sort of roll that they saw once before but they hadn't really learned it properly but they want to try it now and I've seen some pretty close situations where injuries almost occurred and maybe some strains have happened, especially again with the younger students but if you have not properly learned a technique don't just go try on a person without getting the proper instruction on it because you are definitely more likely to hurt somebody that way. So reckless experimentation, don't do it. Okay now we get the part of actual sparring or rolling or randori when you're now actually going to compete with another opponent. The intensity picks up a little bit here, speed picks up, your awareness has to pick up too. We've already talked about the joint damage that can happen, elbow, shoulders been falling, that's a little bit tenfold here now because now you're going to go to the faster speed against the resisting opponent. So again technique, technique, technique over power. You also have neck and back injuries that go along with that. Now you're talking about again a resisting opponent, careful about grabbing necks, dropping a person, twist them because that whole spinal system now is of the greater risk than if you're just practicing in class. So take great care when working with someone's neck and do a great care to protect your neck. You know, don't, don't, if someone's got you in a choke and they legitimately have the choke, tap out because if you fight it you're risking more and more injury. You don't, you don't want to play with neck and back injuries because those will never heal properly. Also everyone knows this one who's grappled, fingers and toes, you know they're the smallest little joints. Easiest to get caught in geese, you fall on them, you bend them, you twist them. You know something to forget how delicate our fingers and toes are and we definitely forget how important they are until they're injured and in that that's an alarm in your head every time you try to use it. So take great care, tape them up if you need to especially toes if you need to take in whatever precautions you have to take just take care of your joints. So you're now fighting a person who is resisting, understand what those body parts can take and what I mean by that is there comes a point where if you're trying to over muscle someone and you guys are on lockdown be careful because the more pressure you guys put in something's going to give eventually. All you have to do is google arm wrestling, arm breaks and you'll know what I'm talking about. So some horrific injuries. Our bodies are not invincible even when we do the proper technique just understand the limits. If you are locked in no self-defense in a real life situation it's a different story you do what you have to do but if you're training in class with someone and you guys are in locked position and you feel that muscle is getting harder and harder know your limit when you feel that you should kind of maybe pull back a little bit because the last thing you want to do is hurt yourself because you're being stubborn and that goes along with tap out, tap out, tap out. If your opponent gets you tap out they've earned it. So many people want to fight that they're stuck in an arm bar they want to fight it because they don't want to get caught it can go from just a little bit of pressure just a little bit of pressure to a full break faster than you realize it if you don't let the person know they have you. If you really feel like you can get out of it then fine again know your limits but if you have got your lock and it's starting to hurt tap out at that point you can always reset and start again don't risk that injury same thing for chokes any lock any submission if they legitimately have you if you feel any pain tap out learn what you did wrong try to prevent it the next time and if you find yourself at the point where you are going to tap out or you're in a lock with somebody they're trying to get you into Kamoro or an American or some sort of an arm bar and and you're fighting that pressure and they're trying to apply more and more pressure and you're at the point you're like you know what they got me i'm going to get hurt i'm going to tap out don't just release don't just let go of your body part don't just relax tell that person tap and slowly let go because if that person's in the mindset think of it in your point of view you're you're you're resting with someone and you've got them in that you almost have them in that lock and you're just applying more pressure and you're playing more pressure you're playing more pressure and they don't communicate with you and all of a sudden they let the arm go limp or they release what's going to happen you're going to wrench forward you're going to snap you're going to break you're going to hurt them or they're going to hurt you so when you're ready to tap out tap first communicate and then slowly release don't just let go because if you just let go there's a good chance you know that pressure is going to catch up with you okay so now if you're an experienced student and you've been in the martial arts for quite some time when you're experienced a grappler there's still some things you can keep in mind to keep you and your partner safe one and this should be an obvious one don't show off especially don't show off to like new students coming in because one that makes you look like a dick and two that's how people get hurt by goofing around so if someone's coming to your school and they're new in your experience they're going to look at you they're going to know your experience you don't have to show off and prove anything to them so don't risk hurting anybody just because you want to be macho and back to like when I mentioned if you're a beginner let people know if you have any injuries same thing if you're experienced and you work with a new partner ask them because they might not know what to tell you ask them if they've got any injuries if you are an experienced grappler there's a great opportunity here to compare and mix martial arts together and I'm very very privileged and I feel very honored to be at the school that I am with my jujitsu school my shihan actually encourages a lot of a lot of outside ideas and we have a lot of people with different backgrounds we've got Hapkido we've got Kempo we've got karate we've got judo we've got boxing it's all kind of in the mix and we will kind of share techniques to see how we can blend them together grappling goes so well with most of their martial arts that you'd be surprised how fun it can be to actually kind of experiment and see what blends also keep in mind your regulation of power especially if you're an advanced student it's easy to get caught up in what you're doing sometimes it's easy to forget that the person you're working with might not be used to that kind of intensity if you are the experienced student if you're the senior student regulate your power to the appropriate level of the practitioner you're working with you don't want anybody getting hurt just because you were overzealous you just got caught up in the moment that looks bad on you that's the failure in your part not theirs do not ignore any long-term pain if you've been grappling for a while there's a good chance you know your techniques know what you're doing but if you have a nagging injury if your if your elbow's been hurting for a few weeks and you notice that every time you get out of class it's getting a little bit worse a little bit worse there's something there have it looked at maybe you maybe there's a small adjustment you can make or maybe you've got a more serious injury that's just starting to come to light don't ignore any discomfort or long-term pain that's been there for a while if you're good at clashing you're sore that's one thing and especially if you feel better the next day that that's fine but if you notice that over time something is lingering go have it checked out because that could be a sign of a bigger problem or a risk for a serious injury in the near future so if you have any doubts any discomfort any pain take it seriously and get it checked out body aging is a thing and you will feel it when you're grappling as I mentioned before Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a fantastic art especially if you're an older practitioner but as you age you will feel differences especially if you're doing the throwing even if you've been doing it 10, 20, 30 years as you age you're going to start feeling limitations you're going to start feeling bindings, tightness you're not going to feel the same at 50s to the 20 you're not going to be as flexible you're not going to be able to take the same impacts listen to your body don't just try to tough it out because you want to deny the aging process you're going to have to adapt to it try to find a way around it or you might have to come in terms that maybe your body can't move that way anymore and it's not worth serious injury by pushing it just because you want to tough it out listen to your body and if you're training at school to actually teach yourself defense then there's a good chance that you're going to learn the classroom version of techniques and then the street version of techniques which are supposed to be more damaging in class we learn to roll with the person we learn to take care of a partner we learn to throw a person and kind of brace them and protect them from a serious impact but in a real life self-defense situation the goal is to protect yourself so you know there's less concern on gliding them down slowly versus slamming them to the ground if you're an advanced student likelihood is you're going to learn different versions of different techniques you have the responsibility of keeping in your concentration of when to do which technique appropriately because you don't want to use street technique in the classroom and really hurt somebody and I've known people who tried to show off and had that attitudes that tried to apply street version of a technique don't be that person even though you might be super experienced the tap out rule still applies to you I don't care if it's a wipe out that got you in the lock if it hurts tap out congratulate them learn how they did it don't want to do it again but don't be watch about it the tap out rule applies to everybody doesn't regardless of your experience level so in a nutshell we are learning to manipulate bodies in extreme ways you know apply pressure on joints you know jokes other submissions so learn how to fall properly learn how to take techniques how to align yourself to prevent injury as well as respect the material if you can do that then jujitsu is going to be an incredibly rewarding experience and you're going to develop some fantastic fighting skills and of course I open up the floor to all you guys out there any grapplers I would love to hear from you maybe there's some other injuries that we're not aware of or if you've got any tips or advice for avoiding injuries I would love to hear them please put them in the comments and share them below alright everyone thank you so much for watching I hope you guys got a lot out of this one you know we want to practice safe and you know we try to do an open discussion here so let's share some ideas so thank you so much for watching please like subscribe join us on patreon so we don't please don't make me sell mattresses to you and we'll see you next time