Did you ever wish that you could train full time with no job responsibilities under a world class Brazilian Jiu Jitsu instructor for six months? Think what you could learn with all of your energies devoted to just learning and training. That is exactly what Doug Smith did. Doug sold his Corvette to finance the training, and moved to California to train full time at Rickson Gracie's Academy, which included private lessons nearly every day.
Doug was a very successful student, earning his blue belt in only 6 months. At the end of his tenure at Rickson's, he won the LA Brazilian Jiu Jitsu Championship in his division. Over the next two years, Doug compiled and refined what he had learned in a systematic fashion by instructing dozens of beginners and Judo players, with the assistance of Michael Carter, who is a six time Southeastern Judo Champion, a two time state wrestling runner up, and a PhD in educational psychology. Additional assistance including development, filming, and marketing was supplied by Rick Sparks, who is a black belt in 4 Martial Arts, a two time BJJ Campeonato Internacional de Master e Senior (Masters Worlds) Champion, and an engineering PhD.
The Practical Grappler is a 6 hour video introduction to grappling from a beginner's perspective, carefully organized to start someone with no knowledge of grappling, and create a solid foundation with simple and effective techniques. There are approximately 200 techniques on this 6 hour video production. It was created totally with the beginner's learning process in mind, and the techniques are taught STARTING FROM THE BEGINNING and leading you through a step by step process, each step building on the one before, until your grappling foundation is complete. The techniques presented in the Practical Grappler are performed without the gi. Of course, most no-gi techniques also work with the gi. The seven video phases are described below.
1) Overview of Principles: The first step in this process is to explain the "Essentials for Success", which paints a general picture of what you will be learning, and important concepts to keep in mind while you are progressing.
2) Common movements: This phase teaches the common movements that you will need to train your body to accomplish in order to practice fundamentally sound grappling.
3) Position Protection: When you first start grappling, you will constantly be submitted due to fundamental errors in positioning. This phase teaches the basic things you should do when in the various grappling positions to avoid giving up the easy submission to your training partners.
4) Escape and Transition: This phase shows you how to escape from pins and pass the guard, and how to then transition into advantageous positions, along with some basic submissions from inferior positions (That is, escape by submission of your opponent)
5) Submission Defenses: This phase teaches how to defend and escape from your opponent's submission attempts.
6) Pinning and Transition: This phase shows you how to maintain the dominant positions, and how to prepare to submit your opponent.
7) Submissions: This phase shows you submissions from all of the basic positions.