You can get hit a little more with an open palm than you could with let's say an elbow. There's going to be less urgency. If I have a guy in my closed guard, I'm going to be aware that he can slap me. I don't want to get slapped but it's not like “holy shit, this guy can elbow me” and if he's really good at doing that, you can't take many of those before you have to abandon position. That's the only thing, if you start getting teed off on you have to you have to abandon [position]. You have to open your guard put feet on the hips, get knee shield or something, whereas in sport jiu-jitsu, I can lay there on my back all day long waiting for you to make a mistake with my head resting on the mat and waiting for you try to stand up so I can sweep you or go after a leg. But it's completely different even when you only have open hand strikes.

GAM: So, let's say you had your own school or you were teaching a student privately and they don't necessarily want to compete or become a world champion. They don't necessarily want to become an MMA fighter, but would you, and I think you've answered this, but it'd be interesting to hear your thoughts on would you regularly have them trained with open hand strikes. I mean, not necessarily teeing off, but little taps let them know what's-what. Do you think that would be helpful for your average Joe, middle-of-the-road fitness jiu-jitsu practitioner and what do you think that gives them? What do you think that instills in the training?

WIDDOES: Yeah, I mean, I think it's reality. Jiu-jitsu was created with fighting in mind, so it's important to preserve that especially at the lower belt levels. Now, with a new guy you're not going to bring him in the gym on day one and start slapping him in the face. You're going to gradually show him positions. Here's the mount, here's the back, here’s side control, here's the closed guard, here are the concepts, here's why this position is good and why this position is bad. Once they actually get a feel for what jiu-jitsu is and what the basic positions and movements are, then you can start to incorporate.

“Okay, if we were here, here's why this is important to not let me posture because I can slap you or I can hit you from here so be careful. You don't want to be too lazy in this position because your head's exposed.”

I think that's lacking in most schools. I mean I see white belts … I know white belts that are better at berimbolo than me because I just don't really train berimbolo. If you go to a lot of these schools, a lot of these white belts are berimboloing people but have no idea how to shoot a solid double leg or body lock and trip someone and they've never been punched hard in the face especially, not while rolling, so they don't really know, ‘Hey, will this work?’ I'm not going to be able to sit down and berimbolo somebody inside of a bar. If I get sucker-punched inside of a bar, what are my instincts going to be? Am I going to look to body lock this guy and choke him and take him down or am I so used to going upside down that I'm going to be completely lost. So, I think it's important, especially for the lower belt levels to keep the self-defense aspect in mind and then as they get good at that ... once you get to be a good blue belt you're like, “Okay, I'm pretty good in most self-defense scenarios” against the average Joe. Most people on the planet don't know any jiu-jitsu better than ... only a fraction of a percent of people on the planet know jiu-jitsu. So, once you get to be a decent blue belt you're probably okay in most situations.

GAM: I've been told that training past blue belt level is pretty much training to fight other grapplers.

WIDDOES: Yeah, exactly, that's a good point and it goes back to my point earlier about high-level jiu-jitsu guys being fine on the street but once you get into a caging and someone who knows a little bit, it's different. [It’s] completely different, but I think it's important to keep the lower belts honest. Let them know this is why we're doing this and then as you get into purple and brown then you can get creative with your game, start playing around and know that you can always revert back to the self defense because you know it now.