What is the difference between training with or without the gi?

The difference is that with the gi, the submission game is much more technical. When you wear the gi, you have many more chances to catch your opponent. You have a chance to use the gi to your advantage. You have much better control for your opening moves. You can tighten up different points on your opponent’s body which sets him up for the move to follow. A proper submission, whether it is an arm lock, knee bar, or whatever, is all a result of a proper opening and that is where the gi is most helpful. When you don't have the gi, you have to use a lot of speed and strength. It is not so much a technical match as it is a physical match - many of the techniques are either limited or completely eliminated. The number of chokes you can attempt are greatly reduced; arm locks are harder to get, because you lose so much leverage that you have to get much closer to your opponent. So there are negatives to not having a gi. However, depending on your strategy, there are also potential advantages to both.

I believe today that it is very important to train both with and without a gi. The way I train is the way I like to teach. I have trained with the gi most of my life. But I like sometimes to challenge myself by adapting the techniques I learned with the gi to grappling without the gi. In this way, I keep myself from getting too comfortable with one way of training - because then you stop learning.

But don't most top no-holds-barred fighters train exclusively without the gi?

Yes, that's true I suppose. But in my academy, for example, I have 200 students, but maybe only 10 percent of them want to go into professional fighting. The rest, 90 percent, want to learn jiu-jitsu for fun, for fitness, for self-defense, or to compete in sport tournaments. That's why the sport rules were invented - it's a way to give the students goals for their training. Tournaments are something to shoot for that aren't as violent or intense as professional fighting. And the gi is better for tournaments because it creates more options for the students who are competing in them.

Do you use different grips when you're using or not using the gi?

Sure. With the gi, sometimes you can do a lot of different set-ups in order to expose your opponent to a submission. You can keep a comfortable distance from your opponent, stay loose, and still grab the lapel, or the material around the elbow, or even the gi at the hip or the knee, and still control him. But with no gi, the game is much different, you can't control your opponent from a distance and still set him up for a finishing hold. Because a grip that would work with a gi, will be quickly broken without one. There is no lapel to grab, for example, and if you try to hold the neck, the opponent just has to turn his head a little and you slip off. So instead of grabbing for specific points on the body, you have to think about controlling entire regions of the body. For example, instead of controlling the lapel from a distance, you have to get close and control his entire upper body by circling your arms around his body, or by trapping his arm under your arm.

But in either situation, you have to think like a grappler. You have to change your approaches to a move, but you should still be trying to hit the move. In other words, don't let the fact that you have or don't have a gi throw you off your grappling strategy - don't let it take you out of your game. Control the situation rather than letting the situation control you. You must adapt the details, but keep the big picture the same. Use all the same tools, just in different ways.

So chokes are easier to apply with the gi?

Actually, it really depends on the situation. For example, to do the basic rear naked choke, or the back choke, is much easier without the gi, because your arms get real slippery in a match because of the sweat, and you can slide your arm in much easier and get deeper penetration with less effort. When you have the gi it is sometimes more difficult because the material adds a lot of friction and the arm won't slide in as easily. The gi actually stops the back choke many times. With the gi, when you have the back, I think the collar choke is a much better technique to use. So you have to adapt your entry while keeping the ultimate goal the same - to give your opponent a little nap. It's just with the gi, there are more options.

So you learn more techniques with the gi?

There are more techniques because there are more options for each move. For example, with practicing take-downs, you have a chance to try a judo throw or to use the gi to block when someone tries to sweep you, or to open someone up for you to sweep them. But when you take away the gi, you pretty much take away all the judo throws - or at the very least they are severely limited. It's much easier for you to slip in, go low, and shoot for the legs with a freestyle wrestling technique than it is to try a judo hip throw. So right there you've eliminated the option of the judo throw.

But this is a very relative thing, and it goes both ways depending on what art you've been practicing. When you put a wrestler in a gi, for example, they can easily get lost because they have no idea what to do when someone grabs them by the clothes instead of the body. So a jiu-jitsu man can use that to his advantage. The guard is another example where I use the gi to keep him close to me. Without the gi, a wrestler will have a lot more room to operate. But with the gi I can control him by controlling the gi with my arms, without having to clinch. I can keep him from going to the side more effectively, or in the mount I can keep him from escaping from the bottom. There is much less chance to slip away.

So when I train with the gi, I practice those types of moves that would be to my advantage, and then training without the gi I also focus on those things that will help me the most. However, the key thing to remember is that the angles are always the same. The only thing that changes is the grip - the way you control your opponent for the entry. But everything else is the same.

Why don't you see a lot of leg locks in jiu-jitsu tournaments? Does Brazilian jiu-jitsu have many leg locks?

That is a good question. For a long time you didn't see a lot of leg locks because of the rules. In the tournaments in Brazil, 10 or 20 years ago, those things were not allowed. Now, though, they are legal and you see a lot more knee bars, heel hooks, and foot locks. The heel hook, though, which puts so much pressure on the knee and the hip, and can cause very serious damage, is the one that jiu-jitsu schools in general, I think, don't like to see in day-to-day training. No one wants to get their ligaments torn up and their knee destroyed. A lot of people just do jiu-jitsu for fun or self-defense, so I think not letting students use that move is a way of protecting them and keeping the training safe. That's the big advantage of jiu-jitsu, after all, over other martial arts - you can train really, really hard and not get hurt. So I think that jiu-jitsu teachers want to preserve that concept.

But little-by-little you see more different types of leg locks added to the jiu-jitsu arsenal. Jiu-jitsu has four different belt levels: blue, purple, brown, and black. People at the brown and the black belt level are those that have started to use more leg techniques. And that is spreading to the lower belts now.

I believe jiu-jitsu grows a little every day. The real purpose of grappling, in the Brazilian jiu-jitsu way, is to be able to apply the moves in a real situation. So you have to use moves that can cause damage. But you don't have to damage other students to practice them. So even non-leg-lock moves, such as neck cranks, are not things that I like to see students use on each other. If I see someone doing excessively dangerous moves to other students then I will tell them to stop. If they continue, then I will ask them to leave the school before anyone gets hurt.

What is your overall philosophy of training?

You can train a martial art, or a martial sport, such as jiu-jitsu, which is both, for sportive uses. But while you're doing this you always have to think about reality. You have to train the sportive methods, but then always keep adapting them and yourself to be able to use them in real situations. You can't lose sight of that or you lose sight of jiu-jitsu itself. That is the base idea of Brazilian jiu-jitsu - practice for sport, but be able to apply it for real.