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.
Watch the video below:
Mike BJJ Kid’s Demonstration Video
Transcript: Kids BJJ
Footwork
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.
Cross Gripping
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.
Form
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 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.
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 flat and then posturing up. So now he's gonna show me, he grabs his elbow tied to his chest balls speeds so that my head goes to the mat, then rolls over towards the side that he blocks arm and I'm showing him to put his hands on my stomach. So it doesn't get CommEd. And push me back down from the guard. Then he'll work to pass the guard and we'll show this full speed or actually faster.
Thank you.
Strong Heart Principles | Diligence and Consistency
View all 8 Strong Principles here.
DILIGENCE
So, so, um, the next one would be diligence. And this is, I think out of, on the list of kids, for kids, this is the one I want to teach them the most. And if, and if they don't get any of these other things on here, I feel like diligence is the most important, uh, it's important for success.
CONSISTENCY
Okay. Consistency kind of, I almost wanted to put diligence, diligence slash consistency. And when people join jiu jitsu, what's one of the first things I tell them, like, there's no secret sauce.
The secret is to show up, okay. And be diligent. And you know, when you're getting setbacks, diligence pushes you through the setbacks it's in, you know, people say quitting is not an option. Quitting is the easiest option. So, you know, this is for me too. I'm, I'm trying to work on my mandolin. Uh, I've been doing it for about a year. And, um, you know, I try to be consistent and be diligent with my practice every day, and then try to push myself things that I don't understand. Um, things that are difficult. I try to do the difficult things and be diligent with, with my, with myself and the same thing with kids, with their work, their schoolwork is being diligent, you know, like set this time, which is also balance, um, to set a time, to get, get your homework done. Okay, get your studying done.
You have a test. You gotta get on it. Understanding the, the subject. You could be very frustrated. Sometimes you're not understanding, but diligence. You have to keep pressing at it. You know, the grand canyon was built by water just to, you know, the, the Colorado river cut that thing down. If you've ever seen the grand canyon in person. Uh, and if you haven't, you know, you should work to do that. I promise you it's a seven wonder of a world is I look at it and, and it's wondered it's beauty, but I also see the diligence of a river can cut a canyon and, you know, water can cut anything. It can dissolve literally anything. So, um, it's and then, and in that process of thinking is like the diligence of it. It's just continually, continually, even it takes a millions and millions of years.
It still did it. And we don't have that much time on our life. But if you are consistent and have diligence, and when things get tough, you press through, it's only going to help you. Okay. The next one is respect. And the respect is kind of similar to, uh, loyalty in the fact that, uh, you give respect where respect is, is, is, um, earned. And I also try to respect people that I don't know now, respect. I try to give instant respect and then tell it's lost. So I'm gonna assume that you, as someone I don't know, deserves respect, and then the way that you treat me or the other people around you that I also see is gonna determine how much respect I'm giving you. Okay. So it's like same thing, gas tank, uh, analogy, uh, a hundred percent respect. And then I say, oh, you do this.
Oh, I do that. Oh, you do that. And then you get less and less respect or you maintain, or you get more. I'm like, oh my gosh, this person is, deserve so much respect. And, and, um, and right now, you know, and living in a big city, it's easy to not give people the respect, cuz there's so many people and um, respecting people's space, faith beliefs, you know, right now everyone wants to fight beliefs, right. Left, you know, like, ah, you're right. Ah, you're left. I can't, I can't respect you. It's um, a dangerous game of dividing everybody. And um, so again, if you say you are left, you know, and something that I, you do that I lose respect and I'm gonna lose respect. If you say that you're the, on the right side and that's fine. But then maybe certain things that they, that the person on the right does that might lose respect.
That's just the way it is. You know, I don't, but I, it's not an immediate thing for me. It's not like, oh, you're a right wing. I can't respect you. Oh, you're left wing. Oh, I can't respect you. It's your actions. Uh, okay. So I try not to categorize you right away. You, you know, the content of your, of your character, you know, uh, uh, Martin Luther king said, you know, don't judge by color of skin, but the contact of character, it's not just color of skin though. It's contact of everyone's character. You know, you can categorize, you know, he was talking, dealing with civil rights, with, you know, unjust to people of color, but there's unjustice of everything. Um, not just that. And I'm not Blitt that at all, but like, um, you know, how do you treat others? You know, you say you're a man of faith and then you, you, you belittle people, you know, you, you, you put people down, you know, I will lose respect for you.
You know, you say you're a man of faith, but then you, you, you, you choose to the tenants of this faith and you, um, you know, you, you give to charity, you help others. You try to help people with their problems. The, the, then I just get more respect for you, you know, but you just try to put people down and then degrade people and you're unwilling to help people, you know, and you're living in an ivory tower and then people, you know, are, are, are starving and in poverty and you, you're not willing to, you're not helping them out. You're driving, you know, fancy cars, but yet you, you, you, you look down on people below you. I, I lose respect. Okay. So respect is get is for me, it's instant. And then it's something to be lost. Okay. Um, and I also try to give respect, even if someone says something about someone, I try to meet them first, you know, and give them the benefit of the doubt, prove, prove me, right, please.
Um, that, that you should be respected. Okay. And then that, that's how I go for it. And, and that's another thing that I don't think people should give me right away. And when I first, um, came up with a black belt and I got my first degree, you know, the first degree you're supposed to be called a professor. And I was like, really weird about that. Some people used to call me sensei too, or coach, uh, coach is a little bit easier for me for whatever reason. But professor was like, I felt like, I don't know. And, and I remember Kyle told me like, Mike, you, you need to ask people to call your professor because it's a sign of respect. Okay. And this is true. Like whoever's teaching the class should get respect. And, um, but I also feel like I should be earning that respect.
And, you know, one way I earned it is 22 years of jiu jitsu. But, and, and my knowledge, you know, that you could respect me because I, I know what I'm talking about. I teach, well, you know, that's a sign of you should, you could respect that if I start showing up late, if I'm not giving my best, if I'm not teaching well anymore, if I'm being losing all my patients, you know, it's easy to lose patients here and there, but, you know, if I'm just not patient with kids that don't understand it, or adults respect can be lost, you know, even as a professor and sometimes, uh, black belts, they think they just need per, you know, they don't wanna roll with others. You know, it's very common. Um, I don't do that in my school, but like, you can't ask a black belt unless you're a black belt to roll.
I don't really care about that, um, at my school. But I understand that that many schools traditionally, you can't do that. You know, you have to, they have to ask you. Um, and, but I, I feel like respect is earned there's purple belts that could beat black belts, you know, you could mess up and you're outta shape. You're old, whatever. And, and young guy's a blue belt catches you in. Something happens, you know? Um, it, it, I respect all people and my opponents as well. Same thing when I'm rolling with a blue belt, I'm like, mm, I try not to get too lazy. Okay. Uh, because I'll catch you.
