Get Up Grappling

 The "Grappling Gap" is what I call a problem that martial arts consumers have been facing for as long as martial arts training has been available to consumers in the USA. Where can a martial arts consumer go to learn the ground grappling that they REALLY need? Let's look first at what they do NOT need:

1. Most martial arts consumers don't need choke holds. In a real life emergency situation they are just about as likely to kill someone on accident by applying one of these as they are to successfully resolve a violent confrontation with one. Chokes are more curse than blessing.
2. Most martial arts consumers don't need submission holds. The average attacker on the street isn't going to know that they should tap once  you have them in a submission. The submission may or may not do enough damage to stop them, and most submission holds leave you on the ground in a compromised position.

What ground grappling every martial artist needs to understand is how to get off the ground when someone is trying to hold them down on the ground. 

This obviously means that they then need to learn to hold others down on the ground, which can be handy in some self defense situations when police are expected and the person you are holding on the ground is someone the police are looking for. This then means American Folkstyle wrestling right? NO. American Folkstyle covers much more than this, much of which is highly injurious to the martial arts consumer. If it's too injurious practice it is of no value at all. Picking someone up off the ground and throwing them back down while falling on top of them as hard as you can with all of your body weight is an extremely dangerous thing to do. 

Though Judo is more common for Adults, it's NOT recommended for casual self defense training for the same reason as American Folkstyle wrestling. Also Judo does NOT have the same focus on escaping to their feet that American Folkstyle has. So then we must want a more traditional grappling art like Glima, Bokh, Sumo or Tai Chi, where the focus is getting the opponent on the ground while remaining on your feet, right?

That's what I call the Internal Skill, and it's much more useful for self defense than going to the ground with your opponent.  But the Internal Skill does not fill the Grappling Gap! The Grappling Gap is: what do you need to get back on  your feet when you are on the ground? Even though this is practiced in Combat Glima, still most of the focus of that training isn't getting up from the ground as much as it is on the Internal Skill.

The most popular grappling alternative to Judo or Wrestling is Brazillian Jujitsu (BJJ.)  BJJ doesn't want to get up to their feet, and BJJ is completely focused on 1 and 2 above which can do more harm than good for self defense. Also for long term lower back health and speed of learning, it's best to avoid BJJ's main strategy for being on the bottom, which is to pull the attacker into your "guard" (between your legs.)

So far the only way I have personally addressed the grappling gap is through one-on-one instruction from MMA fighters. Though I love MMA and Muay Thai, finding coaches that will take you seriously as a student when you yourself specifically intend to never compete (as getting into a public fight intentionally is the opposite of self defense,) is easier said than done. However, it is interesting to me that when the Karate Nerd resorted to the same remedy that I did (seeking one-on-one instruction from an MMA fighter,) the Karate Nerd ended up learning exactly the same techniques I did:

Hypothetically what then we need now is a new type of focused sparring to learn this kind of grappling, which I have been calling "Get Up Grappling." It should NOT start on your feet, because we all have answers for what to be doing when you are on your feet. Get Up Grappling should start on the ground: 

1. They should start in side control with the "attacker" on top and the "defender" on the bottom. 
2. The attacker should then try to choke the defender. 
3. The defender should try to get to their feet. 
4. Once the attacker gets lands a choke, or once the defender gets to their feet, they switch roles and start over.

Here's an example of the kind of technique this type of practice may result in: