I don’t know how BJJ was in 1999 as I didn’t train BJJ then.
My impression from training BJJ on and off over the last few years is that:
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people are exposed to tons of techniques all over the place, there is tons of information everywhere.
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the deeper problem however BJJ has is that it has no real common system for teaching. It starts with its idea of copying moves and calling them different names and then teaching variants of moves, rather than principles. This is quite wrong IMO and leads to tons of wasted time. It also teaches things in the wrong order: ground work first, then standing. This is fundamentally flawed.
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I’ve noticed BJJ players do not drill properly and do not understand the need for special coordination exercises, etc which are a staple of competitive Judo for instance. This is a huge problem that leads to many issues. Many BJJ players can’t walk on their hands, can’t do splits, can’t explode, don’t know how to move standing, don’t know how to transition, have no real concept of grip fighting, etc.
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This leads to a very problematic issue as the body is disbalanced due to disbalanced tendon and core muscle strength in all parts of the body. For instance, the spinal muscles and lower back for most BJJ players I’ve trained with, are weak, due to lack of foundation, even though they look very muscular. This also deeply affects the explosiveness in scrambles on the ground, and standing. So as a result, they feel substantially weaker physically than competitive Judo players or wrestlers. I’d say most also do not have a good understanding of weight distribution when on top so cannot keep position well. Likely, due to not learning standing properly.