Misunderstandings: Quite often I get questions that make me believe there is a misunderstanding as to what my vision of good jiu jitsu is. Many people appear to believe that I favor leg lock attacks over other forms of submissions. This is a natural mistake to make, as the most distinctive and obvious feature of my students work in grappling competition, and that which most obviously makes them stand apart from other competitors, is the use of a new approach to leg locking. In fact this is not the case. One of my major goals as a coach was to correct what I saw as a long standing weakness in traditional jiu jitsu, a lack of effective submissions systems to the lower body. Correcting this weakness has been a major part of my work – however, this correctional work and coaching goals must be distinguished from my notion of what constitutes the ideal of jiu jitsu. My ideal is simple to state – I believe that jiu jitsu players should be able to attack the whole body with submissions with equal efficacy. This (mostly) means legs, arms and neck. If I show any bias in submissions, it is in favor of strangleholds (shime waza) over joint locks (kansetsu waza). But my ideal is a player who can attack the whole body with great and equal effect. Visitors to our training sessions are often surprised to be caught in volleys of leg locks arm locks and strangles. Afterwards they say they expected the leg locks, but were surprised by the arm locks and strangles. This is the ideal we must strive for. If you limit your attacks to one part of the body, they become easy to defend, but defending the whole body against determined and skillful attacks is a difficult task indeed. Here Garry Tonon shows his attacking versatility with a strong strangle attempt on Ralek Gracie, progressing towards an armlock, and ultimately finishing his opponent with a leg lock – a fine expression of our style in action photo by Jeff Chu
