Introducing Myself

[pknox]

Hello all:

I just wanted to take the time to introduce myself. My name is Pete Knox and I live in Edison, NJ. I have previously studied Shaolin Kempo, freestyle grappling (a mix of wrestling, bjj, and judo), Shukokai Karate and TKD. I am not actively training now, as I am getting ready to begin Graduate School (Environmental Policy and Economics) in the fall at Rutgers. I am planning on starting TKD again in the next few months, as soon as my schedule is set. I look forward to learning from all of you, and hope to be able to add some value to the discussions when possible.

Pete Knox

[jubaji]

Can you give some more info on this "freestyle grappling (a mix of wrestling, bjj, and judo)" ?

[pknox]

Can you give some more info on this "freestyle grappling (a mix of wrestling, bjj, and judo)" ?

Absolutely. I studied at a Jeet Kune Do academy that offered grappling classes as well. The takedowns were taken from both wrestling (mostly Greco-Roman) and Judo, which is also where most of the throws came from. Once on the ground, we used BJJ's strategies (most notably attempting to obtain a favorable position before ending the conflict), as well as some of it's finishing holds. Some leg-based takedowns (i.e. trapping the opponent's legs with my own, like a "scissor" type takedown) were taken from Silat as well. While some of the arts definitely have a "sporting aspect" to them, we trained more for self-defense as opposed to sport (there were quite a few law enforcement types in the class). I also studied Judo for a time, and informally trained with some BJJ folks, so this helped bring some of these things together for me (to me, all grappling styles have some similarities, but being able to compare and contrast them, as well as see how they fit together, was most educational).

We never called it "submission grappling", but seeing some of the submission grappling schools around me today, what they are doing seems very similar.

It offered an excellent workout, and was a great deal of fun. As I had trained prior to this mostly in striking arts, I found it fills in the gaps quite nicely.