So, my guy is 7 yrs old and has wrestled for 2 years now. He's a very good wrestler but there are definitely other 7 year olds that are better.
He would have placed around 8th at the OACs this year but he got injured in his 3rd match. He was beating that kid 5-0 when the injury happened and that kid took 8th. I do think the kids that took 6th and 7th were a little better than my son so I would have guessed 8th.
Anyway, with wrestling kind of dead since June (did last tournament and did a camp in June) he has since started football and is loving it. However, a friend from church runs his own Karate/Judo/Ju Jitsu dojo for adults and kids and he has been asking me if my son would want to do Judo/Ju Jitsu for quite awhile. I know my son would love it, but so far with football we haven't been able to make it.
He mentioned a kids Ju Jitsu tournament this past weekend and said I should take him to see if he likes it. Well, I said why not, so I got him a Gi and we headed down.
I spent about 15-20 minutes the night before going over the differences in rules and points to him since I had taken BJJ for a few years myself. Plus, the reason I was "ok" with it is at his age, the Ju Jitsu tournaments don't allow chokes or submission holds, its about dominant positions and "hold downs".
So, his extent of JJ experience was 15-20 minutes.
We go there and his first match is against a girl, even though girls are now in youth wrestling a lot, he had yet to have to wrestle one. However, you know how you can sometimes just "tell" if someone is any good or not by looking at them and how they walk (even though you might be wrong at times)? Well, I tried to tell my son to take it easy on her even though we had just watched a girl win the 9-10 year old bracket (she was good).
My son doesn't understand the concept of "take it easy", and his first match against the girl was:
1. He would get her on the mat with some form of takedown.
2. He would move to side control, get a reverse half with other arm under her arm, lock arms and squeeze.
3. Hold for 10 seconds to get full points.
4. Restart standing (in rules, after full points from 'dominant position' you restart standing).
5. Rinse/repeat
I think he got her down and got full dominant position points 10 times in a 2 minute match (full points is at 10 seconds).
His 2nd match was against a good kid who had been doing JJ for over a year. My boy had a much tougher time with him but still didn't allow him to score at all. I think the final was 3-0 (but translated to wrestling points it would have been about 7-0).
His 3rd match was against a kid who had been doing JJ for well over a year and was the best JJ kid at his dojo.
It was 0-0 through the match and then 2 OTs after (takedowns in JJ require more control than in wrestling), then finally in the 3rd OT he wins with a TD 1-0.
So, he had near zero JJ experience and wins his first tournament without even getting scored on. He now says he likes JJ as much or more than wrestling because you can "lock hands and you can't in wrestling on the ground". That's his sole reasoning.
Anyway, I do want to get him involved in the Judo/JJ class as I think it would make him a better overall wrestler knowing more throws and ground control techniques, as long as in the JJ class he doesn't get used to being on his back
.
Sorry for the long story, just thought it was funny, a wrestler went in and tore up all the ju jitsu kids
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