Instructionals - Addendum

I've touched on this topic before, but as the years have gone by the number of people trying to profit from instructionals has really watered down a lot of technique shown online. As a passionate practitioner of BJJ, I have seen hundreds of technique videos ranging from phone quality to high production dvd's and techniques that range from "this should never been shown ever" to some of the most outstanding techniques I wish I had thought of.  The issue is I find that many well known practitioners gain some notoriety in the sport and then produce a DVD of stuff that mostly is fluff or is not how they actually perform certain techniques.  A lot of garbage is put on DVD's and sold for ridiculous prices, these big name practitioners are preying on people new to the sport and basically swindling them of quality instruction.  Now I don't blame them entirely, if I was a high level competitor, I wouldn't share my "goto" techniques in a DVD either, the last thing I would want is for my future opponents to know exactly what I do.

Not everything out there is garbage, but the fact of the matter is that most of it is garbage.  Here is a video of Vitor Shaolin showing a technique that probably won't work from a position that is not even real:


Then there's shoddy camera work and poor instruction on a solid technique from somebody I've never heard of, however this video is far superior to Shaolin's:


Then here's a video of Ari Bolden, who supposedly legitimately started training at some point, but clearly had a tremendous lack of knowledge of the basics in all of his technique videos.  Here's an armbar that may work on a soft white belt his first day:


This next video is a good one! I came across this video a few weeks ago and have used this technique several times with a lot of success.  BJJ black belt Kris Kim shares this "fly paper choke":


Not everything online is terrible, but I find that the majority of it is.  It's frustrating as an instructor when I have white and blue belt students wanting me to teach some technique they saw on YouTube that is 100% worthless.  I try to tell my students to stay away from instructional videos and to watch competition footage.  I watch everything, I have brought in techniques I've learned online before, but typically I have to sift through 50 garbage videos before I even find 1 that teaches proper technique.