Jiu-Jitsu, Yin Yang and BJJ’s Place On The Martial Arts Spectrum
“The softest thing in the world overcomes the hardest thing in the world. Everyone knows this, but few can put it into practice.” — Tao Te Ching
To understand Jiu-Jitsu, you have to understand martial arts. But that is a big topic. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of arts, each with their own unique approach, techniques and strategies.
What we need is an overarching framework — a spectrum onto which we can place Jiu-Jitsu.
The ancient mental model, yin/yang offers an easy way to differentiate between different arts. Dividing the world into two opposing, complimentary parts — hard and soft, big and small, light and dark, etc — yin represents softness/darkness and yang represents hardness/brightness. This model enables us to categorize every art as one type or another.
Punching and kicking are aggressive, violent, impactful. Using force and power, you try to move into/through the space the opponent occupies.
Grappling arts soft, focused on grabbing, throwing and controlling — moving into the space around the opponent.
Just as with the symbol however, within yang, lies yin and within yin, yang.
Among the hard arts, the punching and kicking arts, there are softer and harder arts. Likewise, within grappling, the softer types of arts, there are harder and softer arts.
Muay Thai kickboxing, for example, is often taught on the philosophy of taking a punch (or kick, elbow or knee) from the opponent and giving it back twice as hard — a hard hard art. Conversely, in Karate, one is looking to dart in and out, hitting hard and fast, but evading any counter-offence — a soft hard art.
Wrestling, a grappling art, is gruelling. It teaches to blast through defences and throw, tackle, drop and trip an opponent to the ground — a hard soft art. Aikido, by extreme contrast, is a very soft art, looking almost exclusively at defence, receiving and redirecting an opponent’s attacks.
Literally translated, jiu-jitsu means gentle art or art of softness. In philosophy, technique and accessibility, BJJ lives up to its name. But don’t mistake this softness for impotence or ineffectiveness — over the last hundred years, BJJ has proven itself to be the world’s most effective martial art for solving the primary problem of all martial arts: defending oneself against and overcoming a bigger, stronger, faster opponent.
If you would like to learn and really understand Jiu-Jitsu, I have created two video courses — the Beginner’s Guide to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and The BJJ Blue Belt Curriculum. You can pick them both up at BJJ101.tv.
