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MMA Training: Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed by Eddie Bravo

Cover of Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed by Eddie Bravo (for MMA training)

Jiu-Jitsu Unleashed: A Comprehensive Guide To The World’s Hottest Martial Arts Discipline is authored of course, by Eddie Bravo, BJJ black belt and cannabis enthusiast, and Eric Krauss. Joe Rogan is his training dummy in a few sections. This was published about 3 years ago. It is in paperback format and contains black and white photographs which will be described later.

Bravo gives credit to some mma training techniques he got from other competitors such as Ken Shamrock (for a toe hold) and Nino Schembri (gogo plata).

Mma training techniques include sections on the half guard, butterfly guard, twister side control and mount. (Twister side control is a variant of side control wherein the person on top is facing his opponent’s feet in a reversed kesa gatame.) These are all described well enough though due to space limitations, one might feel that there are not enough techniques per section. In fact, I recall there being only 5 guard passes taught in here.

Upon closer scrutiny of Eddie Bravo’s explanations for his techniques, it is clear that either the instructions in text are missing details, there are not enough photographs or both. (In fact Eddie Bravo admits to this in his next submission wrestling/ mma training book, Mastering the Rubber Guard.) For example some hand positions need alternate viewing angles and there is a lack of exposition on his leg movement for some sweeps such as the Old School.

Despite these negative aspects however, Unleashed is still a good book for training mma or BJJ. In fact this author suddenly understood more about the half guard from Unleashed alone. I was doing underhooks, staying on my side and continuously performing the Old School or Plan B sweeps.

Due to the black and white photos, this training book is less expensive than Mastering the Rubber Guard. This makes it accessible to more people, particularly those who are merely curious about the rubber guard and are not sure if they intend to incorporate it into their mma/ bjj training routine. Anyhow, the limited illustration of Bravo’s techniques can be circumvented by doing the moves oneself and adding in their own details by checking out what works (e.g. hand placement, weight shifting, timing). Or one can opt to buy his more expensive, $30 follow-up in the previous review.