When Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu started up, all the practitioners wore the traditional Judo-style uniform known as a gi. This made sense, as Judo is where the new art grew from.
The new art spread, and aged. Eventually, an offshoot arose that questioned how realistic the gi was for training.
The reasoning was, nobody in the real world wears martial arts uniforms, so it would be much better to train without them.
Personally, I like training in a gi, but certainly understand the argument.
So, the rebels switched to training without wearing the gi. Over time, they settled on a standardized nogi style of dress.
You would think that they would have analyzed what people typically wore in the real world and adopted that to sync with their argument that the gi was too unrealistic. The strange thing is that they didn’t.
They chose clothing that is fun to grapple in. Almost all wear knee-length slippery nylon shorts. On their top halves they almost universally wear skin-tight, slippery rashguards.
If they were practising some sort of striking art, this wouldn’t matter, but in grappling it does. Grips are even more difficult than they are on bare skin. Participants slide around over top of one another in a truly remarkable fashion. It’s as if they are not only fighting naked, but also coated in a layer of vegetable oil.
Somehow I don’t consider learning to defend myself against naked, oily assailants a priority.
So just what would be realistic? The closest I’ve ever found have been the high-school students that I used to help train in wrestling.
They were all very body conscious, and would all practice wearing baggy sweat pants and sweat shirts. Some would get too hot, removing their sweatshirts, and make do with tshirts. Everything that they practiced in was exactly what people really wear. Heck, they even wore a form of running shoe.
Of course, they were’t training for real fighting, but were the best I’ve ever seen in dressing for the part.
Why does it matter? If you only practice in a gi, you will get far too used to doing things like collar chokes against people only dressed in exactly the same fashion. If you only practice in typical nogi fashion, you won’t be learning how to use clothing as a weapon at all.
Here are two fun, and interesting videos related to street technique related to clothing.
Now, I’m not saying if I think gi or nogi is more realistic. Both have strengths and weaknesses in that regard. What I am saying is that everybody should just shut up about it. What I’m saying is that it doesn’t matter.
Train in gi to learn how to use clothing as a weapon, and train nogi so you can fight without using clothing. Neither is better, or worse, but they are certainly different. If you don’t train both, then you are voluntarily allowing a gap to exist in your game.
I train both, but don’t enjoy nogi nights anywhere near as much.
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