One thing the instructors did everyday after lunch was have us watch and discuss passed UFC fights. This gave us some time for our lunch to digest and watch something interesting. After watching a few of Royce Gracie fight and a few others, we then discussed how Royce Gracie was able to dominate his opponents at this time.
Royce Gracie was able to dominate his opponents because he was more prepared for these kinds of fights, meaning his opponents had no ground game, and as soon as he took a stand up fighter to the ground he was able to finish them.
So, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu proved to be a very effective martial art in fighting other fighters who only had a standard stand up game. However, as years went by other fighters began to noticed that they needed to add some grappling and submissions to their arsenal of fighting skills.
The instructors were sharing this with us to show us that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is very effective, however, it is not the best martial art in the world. Nowadays, MMA fighters need to have multiple skills in a variety of martial arts, such as Muay Thai, Wrestling, Boxing, etc, to compete and be an all around fighter.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is just one of the many martial arts that are taught in the US Army Combatives program. Since grappling is relatively easiest to learn in a short amount of time, and is effective for ground fighting, it is the Combatives technical base, and what is taught first in the program.
By the end of the course, we were doing open hand slaps to the face and punches to the body. This was different for me since I never trained for this type of fighting. I was able to protect myself and come away unscathed, but it did open my eyes to a whole new arena that I need to train in. Since coming back from Combatives Level 1 course, I have taken up boxing. This will prepare me for Level 2, which I hope to attend by the end of the year.
Overall, my instructors where bad ass, and all of them train in MMA on the civilian side. I am actually going to keep in touch with them and find out when they are teaching the Level 2 course. Level 1 was an awesome course and it is awesome to have this kind of training available to all soldiers.
