BJJ instructor, Ritchie Yip, explains that “tapping” or “tapping out” is simply a way to keep everyone safe when they are practicing BJJ.
Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is an art that is about choking and arm breaking. In order to train these inherently dangerous techniques, all BJJ students need to fully understand what tapping is.
Yes, BJJ is a great way to stay in shape and is a fantastic vehicle for self betterment. BJJ is also a team oriented activity so that means that BJJ is wonderful way to make new friends and enhance your social circle.
If you boil it all down, BJJ is a technology- a proven method to attain consistent results- based on choking people unconscious and breaking peoples arms.
o how does one go about training and practicing BJJ when it is inherently a life or limb threatening activity?
That’s where tapping comes in.
I tell my students at my vancouver academy that your can tap (slap your hand on your training partner two or three times, much like how you would play a hand drum) for any reason.
Because you have to sneeze.
Because you have to get up to go to the bathroom.
Or because your arm is about to break or because you are about to go to sleep do to a choke.
Tapping keeps everyone safe and it is how BJJ is passed on from one practitioner to another.
The more you tap the more you learn.
