Every generation has its golden age
Spend enough time around Jiu Jitsu and you begin to notice a familiar conversation. It happens in changing rooms, after class, and over coffee following seminars. Someone reflects on how the art has changed, usually with a hint of disappointment, before concluding that things were somehow better in the past.
The details change from one decade to the next, but the sentiment rarely does.
Older practitioners speak fondly of a time when self-defence was at the heart of training. Others remember the rise of sport Jiu Jitsu and argue that competition sharpened the art rather than diluted it. More recently, debates have centred on inverted guards, leg locks, wrestling, and the influence of no-gi competition.
Listen carefully and you begin to realise that every generation tells the same story. The only difference is where they choose to begin.
The self-defence years
Those who trained during the earlier years often remember an art built around practical application. Lessons focused on posture, distance, escapes, and controlling an opponent under pressure. The assumption was that Jiu Jitsu existed to solve real problems outside the academy.
As sport competition became more popular, some felt that this purpose was being lost. Training became increasingly shaped by tournament rules, and techniques that worked brilliantly under those rules sometimes looked less convincing elsewhere.
To many of those practitioners, the art had drifted away from its original purpose.
Then sport became the benchmark
For the generation that followed, competition represented progress rather than decline.
Regular tournaments forced practitioners to test their skills against unfamiliar opponents. Techniques had to work against resistance. Teaching evolved quickly because ineffective ideas were exposed.
Many who entered the sport during this period look back on it as a golden age. They remember hard training, simple positions, relentless pressure passing, and a focus on fundamentals. Ask them when Jiu Jitsu was at its best, and many will point to the period when they themselves came through the ranks.
That should perhaps tell us something.
Along came the berimbolo
Few techniques have divided opinion quite like the berimbolo.
To some, it represented everything that had gone wrong with modern Jiu Jitsu. It appeared overly complicated, disconnected from self-defence, and increasingly focused on winning under specific rules.
Others saw something entirely different.
Here was a generation taking existing principles and exploring them in ways nobody had considered before. Timing, balance, precision, and control were all still present. The movements looked unfamiliar, but the underlying principles remained recognisably Jiu Jitsu.
The technique became a symbol, not because of what it was, but because of what people believed it represented.
The leg lock revolution
History repeated itself when modern leg lock systems became widely adopted.
There were warnings that the art was becoming dangerous. Some argued that the focus on lower body attacks would encourage poor positional habits or distract students from more traditional fundamentals.
Yet many of the athletes driving this evolution possessed exceptional positional understanding. They had not abandoned the fundamentals. They had simply expanded them.
As knowledge spread, leg locks gradually became another accepted part of the wider game. What had once seemed radical slowly became ordinary.
That pattern should sound familiar.
Wrestling finds its place
More recently, wrestling has become increasingly influential, particularly in no-gi.
Some welcome this as a return to complete grappling. Others question whether Jiu Jitsu risks becoming something else entirely. The discussion itself is nothing new.
Throughout its history, Jiu Jitsu has absorbed ideas from elsewhere. Its own origins lie in adaptation. The founders were not afraid to modify what they inherited, and each generation since has continued that process.
If anything, borrowing useful ideas has always been one of the art's greatest strengths.
The problem with nostalgia
Nostalgia has a habit of smoothing away rough edges.
We remember the training partners who inspired us and forget the poor instruction, the gaps in knowledge, and the techniques that have long since disappeared for good reason.
We remember the excitement of discovering something new, but often mistake that feeling for proof that the era itself was better.
In reality, we are often remembering our own journey rather than the state of the art.
The Jiu Jitsu that feels most authentic is usually the version that shaped us.
Change is not the enemy
None of this means every new development is an improvement.
Some ideas will prove to be passing fashions. Others will quietly disappear because they simply do not stand up to pressure. That has always happened, and it always will.
The important point is that change itself is not evidence of decline. Healthy martial arts evolve. They borrow. They experiment. They discard what does not work. They refine what does.
Jiu Jitsu has been doing exactly that for more than a century.
Looking back without standing still
Perhaps the healthiest approach is to appreciate every period for what it contributed.
The self-defence era reminded us why control matters. Sport competition drove technical standards to extraordinary levels. The berimbolo era expanded positional understanding. The leg lock revolution forced practitioners to reconsider old assumptions. Wrestling has reminded many of us that grappling does not begin on the ground.
Each period has left the art richer than it found it.
Final reflections
If there is one lesson that years on the mat have taught me, it is that Jiu Jitsu refuses to stand still.
Every generation worries that the next one is taking the art in the wrong direction. Every generation believes something important has been lost. Yet history suggests something rather different. The art has never stopped changing, and many of the ideas that were once criticised have eventually become accepted parts of everyday training. Perhaps that is exactly how it should be.
After all, an art that never changes eventually stops growing. Jiu Jitsu has endured not because it resisted change, but because each generation cared enough to question it, test it, and leave something behind for those who followed.
About the author
Terry Sutherland is a long-time grappler with a black belt in judo and a brown belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. Having spent decades on the mats, he writes about the value of strong stand-up skills and the lessons learned from a lifetime of training.
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