In a cautionary tale, a long-time martial artist shares his harrowing experience with a forbidden technique in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsuthat has left him with a severe, potentially lifelong injury.
The practitioner, who has a background in Aikido, was on the “receding end of a forbidden BJJ move” during an open mat session at his local gym. He describes how a training partner executed a scissor sweep, one of the most dangerous moves in BJJ, causing a catastrophic injury.
“It turns out he applied one of the free forbidden illegal moves in BJJ and to make things even more fun, he applied the most dangerous one on me,” Rokas recounts on his channel. The result was a broken shinbone, an intra-articular fracture that reached his knee joint.
After enduring a drawn-out hospital stay, multiple postponed surgeries, and the insertion of metal plates and screws, the martial artist now faces the sobering reality that his knee may never be the same. “My leg and knee will never be the same because I will always have an increased risk of injury on it,” he laments.
The experience has led the practitioner to reevaluate his relationship with martial arts altogether. “It is still difficult to say how much I will continue doing martial arts once I recover,” he admits, acknowledging the lifelong implications of his injury.
While standing scissor sweep has long been banned because of many catastrophic injuries, the technique is allowed in pro competitions and as such has seen a rise in popularity as it’s commonly used by New Wave practitioners.
It’s certainly a devastating development for this martial artist but it’s doubtful his video confession will provoke any kind of public outrage in how the technique is dealt with in individual BJJ academies acrsos the world.
