Image from BishopsBJJ.com
Pan American BJJ Statistics… Finally? (And the 2012 Worlds)
Statistics are used and leveraged in a million fields and domains, from baseball to football to poker to chess to business to weather predictions to … etc … etc …
Why not Jiu Jitsu?
My guess involves two primary reasons:
- With a few exceptions, BJJ isn’t necessarily a field where the people involved in it are pumped up about studying numbers and stats (in their BJJ businesses, nevermind at competitions)
- Most importantly, there’s no MONEY in it
Yeah, the New England Patriots keeps track of stats (on everything from likelihoods of punt returns, best play stategies, etc..), because between TV, merchandise, athletes, etc…, each game moves (potentially) millions of dollars. That’s a big deal.
Yeah, the Kellogg corporation keeps track of stats (on everything from product launch sales to employee retention rates), because Kellogg employs thousands of people and moves millions of dollars and so is a “big deal” with regard to the raw necessity to keep everything on LOCK.
The Bishops BJJ Blog
Though the science and an evidence based approach are grossly missing in the BJJ world, Tyler and Jena Bishop are aiming to bring it into the light – with some amazing research on the 2012 Pan Ams – and a much anticipated analysis of the upcoming 2012 BJJ World Championships.
In my last interview with Tyler, he mentioned that his site received 12,000 hits almost immediately after he put up the post about the Pan Ams analysis – which tells me 2 things:
First, the Jiu Jitsu world is hungry for this kind of knowledge. Second, they’re excited to share this info with the rest of the BJJ community. The second insight being a very good thing (insularity in wisdom is no good for the progress of the field).
On their BishopsBJJ Blog, they have a ton of “Money Technique” posts, all about videos, stats, and articles about what works in ream BJJ competition – here’s a killer example of one of their videos.
I won’t lie, this stuff is addicting :).
What They’re Up To
At the time of this writing Tyler and Jena are prepping for the 2012 BJJ World Championships, shooting a documentary on Jena (who they expect to win gold), and preparing for an in-depth breakdown of all of the World Championship matches this year.
Best of luck guys – I’ll be eagerly anticipating the Worlds breakdown – and I’m sure the other Science of Skill readers will be, too!
-Daniel Faggella
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