CHILDREN’S BRAZILIAN JIU JITSU LESSON

Mike Martin, Owner of Strong Heart Academy, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Phoenix Arizona, and third-degree black belt, narrates various grips, holds, and more. Demonstration for children’s BJJ and adult BJJ.

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Transcript - Kids BJJ Demonstration

Footwork and Cross Stepping

All right, drop Sandia. I'm gonna show with some shoes, some footwork you can do cross stepping and then your other leg is gonna try to stay within your partner's, uh, legs. You don't want to go too far outward outside of the legs. Now, if they're smaller, you can go a little bit. It's not as bad, but try to stay within and then, uh, squat or drop to your knees. Uh, we tend to teach dropping to our knees. It's a little safer, some more footwork gripping at the elbow, lifting the elbow and cross stepping. Lifting at the elbow, allows the other leg, the other arm and grip to come inside.

Making Room for Grip

You're making room for your other grip. Now I'm gonna show cross gripping the various grips we can use, um, lifting form or, uh, form goes inside. So form goes inside the armpit and my other foot is gonna step behind. So cross step form goes inside and squat. Now you could do the full San AGI from standing or the drop sayNo. We tend to do the drop. San AGI just is a little safer for everyone. Now, this is just a self defense, uh, practicing of gripping. If they're overhand, I'm showing 'em like, if you had something in your hand, like a hammer or whatever, stick, it doesn't matter. It just open Palm out as a stop. And then you're gonna reach in traditional gripping underneath.

Body Positioning: BJJ

So it's easier to practice if you partner a square, meaning both feet are equal. Open the elbow cross step. Now opposite arm comes in. It's the same grip. You wanna make sure you get high in the armpit and not in the middle of the bicep. Pull the hand down. So it's hard to finish you head down and follow through leading him forward. Before you drop will help get him on his toes. And the throw is much easier to finish lifting the hand with the sleeve grip and dropping. You need to get underneath the arm, uh, armpit, and you need to get lower. So if you're a taller person in your opponent, you have to squat lower than your opponent. This is the traditional grip, but his arm is straight so that he cannot curl and go for rear naked, choke and jujitsu. They're gonna try to choke you and put hooks in. So you also, another reason I like to draw it to my knees. It's harder to get the hooks in, to follow through.

Armbar from the Guard

All right, armbar from the guard, gonna pull the arm underneath, pull it across. Same foot will go on the hip cross grip on his shoulder arm that you're attacking. That foot goes on. The hip. Other foot goes high and turning him high on his back high. As you can almost touch your knee, he possibly can push the face, hand slides to the wrist. I step over pinching my knees and curling my legs. Lifting hips. Wrist must stay on your chest to finish this time. When I do the arm bar, I come underneath, I pull the arm across, I step foot on the hip. We step over like a normal arm bar, but they're going to pull their arm out. When they pull their arm out, I'm going to drop my left knee towards the mat. As I hip escape, I hip escape, dropping my knee, clear the arm to the far side, and now I'm tacking the other arm, lifting my hips to step over the head heel to toes.

Securing Wrist and Finishing Armbar

Make sure you secure the wrist to the chest. Finishing the armbar. This last one is a Kyle armbar, which I call Kyle armbar. He has control of my lapels. I'm going to break his grip. We've worked earlier videos on breaking his grips. I lift the sky, switch my grip over the wrist and grab his tricep material at the seam with four fingers Palm up. I'm gonna maintain that hand on the tricep. Do not let go of that. Just like a normal armbar, changing the angle. We're gonna go over his shoulder with my thigh pinching my knees. Many times I can lift up. Do not take your hand off his tricep lift finish even better. Step over. Keep your hand on the tricep and lift your hips for the finish.

Starting with Grips from Half Guard

I'm gonna start with grips from half guard, thumb in his neck, gripping his wrist shin in his chest knee towards my hand. So there's an angle there. Here's the other side, my feet. I like to keep in tucked. You need to hook his bottom knee. So he does not knee cut slice. You, you have to hook your inside leg cannot be on the ground. So kicking him off of an angle and then hand follows my knee. As I kick forward to do like a sit up, my ear goes on his belly button or as low as I can. The lower, the better makes it hard for him to re underhook you. I have the under hook. We need to maintain the under hook coming up to my knee and getting ready to sh him to take his back is the first option. If they do not wizard. Now, the easiest thing to do is to get back to close guard. Now, many people wanna play half guard. This is fine, but you should always understand, pull their hand out and then lay comes out. You couldn't turn this into a scissor sweep as well, but we're just gonna turn my hips, relock my guard, go back to clothes guard.

Strong Heart Principle | SERVICE

View all 8 principles here.

So the first one is service and the way we talk about this is service to others. You know, I try to encourage the kids to, do community service and, and understand that you are part of a community as humans and helping the people around you.

So we give pins out, awards out for 10 hours, community service. And the goal is just to get you in the service mindset. And I know for myself, all the service things that I do, I mean, they hugely impact my own life. Not the people that I help. Like obviously they help the, the people that I help, but I get something out of it. There's something about being a human and helping others. And, what it does for yourself. Like you have a sense of gratitude, for the things that you have that maybe others don't. And, it sets a community, you know, when you're working with others. So we highly encourage service. I encourage this with adults too. And you know, my, we, we even say that, you know, I allow for these community hours of community service, some of 'em don't like, what, what can I do as a kid?

I'm like, you could pick up trash in a neighborhood. Sometimes we think if it has to be like this complicated thing, it really doesn't, you know, you can go at school, you could pick up trash around the playground afterwards, just ask for a bag. I guarantee you, the teachers will say, absolutely, I'll give you a trash bag. You go out there, wash your hands afterwards. And, and, and thank you. So these are just things that we, we try to encourage, encourage, encourage, you know, be a part of the community, help your community, help people around you. And I think that's something that we're missing right now in, in society is everyone's very me, me, me, me, and you're encroaching on me. And, and it's like, how about us? You know, us? And the other thing I encourage kids is to help their grandparents.

You know, America has a, a very strange relationship with grandparents. Um, you know, they're separated like a lot of countries in the world, grandparents live with you. Okay, now, now grandparents live separately. Either they have their own place or they're maybe at a, a nursing home. So I encourage, you know, helping your grandparents, wash their car, pick up dog poop at their house, help them with their laundry pick weeds. Um, there's many things that kids even young as four can do and get these, this, this helping your grandparents out. And, um, you should be, and your grandparents will love it because you're hanging out with them. Um, it's kind of the way I believe that things should be okay.

Thank you.