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With all of the news that has come out in the Jiu-Jitsu community this last week. Thing that keeps coming up in my mind is that WE need to do better. MEN in the Jiu-Jitsu community need to do better at calling out this sort of behavior and stepping in to stop it. MEN need to take responsibility for their actions and the actions of other MEN that make this sport less safe. We need to do better about barring these people from our community. People do so much harm, make a non-ap

Getting SMASHED sucks especially in Jiu-jitsu. A common thing that happens with newer practitioners is that it also introduces a panic response. This response can make you struggle to escape from the bottom in ways that leave you vulnerable to many submissions. Learning to be calm under pressure is an essential skill in Jiu-jitsu. Dealing with the claustrophobic effect of being on the bottom can be very difficult. For many practitioners it can be a large block to their succes

Have you ever been stuck under someone in side control? It sucks, a lot especially if that person is like me and is a high calorie grappler. Having the proper tools to get out from under someone is an essential part of jiu-jitsu because no one wants to spend 6 minutes pinned under someone slowly losing hope that they will get another full breath. First things first is your body positioning, if you are flat on your back then it is going to be much harder to escape than not. I

Have you ever created a Mind Map? It is something I learned about in school and it can be a useful tool to process thoughts and organize ideas. However, how do we utilize this for Jiu-jitsu? In my experience this can be a very difficult task. When I first started trying to map things out on paper my mind map just ended up looking like a bunch of scribbles on paper like a caffeine-addicted spider making a web. What did I do to adapt mind mapping into a useful tool? Limitation.

Listen I am not a fucking doctor I cannot give you medical advice. I can however give you colloquial advice and you can choose if you take it or not. There are a lot of long running jokes about Jiu-jitsu people just dealing with pain or just ignoring injuries and not stopping their training. In my years of training I have been the embodiment of this joke or stereotype. I have ignored injuries and kept training pushing through the pain. For me this is compounded since I deal w

Pressure! It’s one of the aspects of Jiu-jitsu I excel at, and not just because I am an ultra-heavyweight. One of the common misconceptions is that pressure comes from your size when it is more about angles, connections, and when and where to place your weight. Some of the best pressure grapplers I have rolled with are smaller than I am. Mostly what I am going to be talking about is from side control but I also utilize modified versions of these concepts from other positions.

A black belt in Brazilian Jiu-jitsu is a difficult thing to achieve. It generally takes on average 10 years, unless of course you happen to be a "Financial Influencer”. It took me 15 years to get my black belt, I like to say I took the scenic route. Once you become a black belt, well what then? What do you do after you are a black belt? As a black belt, for most people, your role in the gym will become different. Even if you are not the head instructor or if you don’t even te

Lots of people like to talk about how competition is the objective standard of BJJ. However this isn’t true. There are thousands of BJJ practitioners that do not compete for various reasons. However one of the biggest reasons someone is going to be successful in Jiu-jitsu is Privilege. I had a conversation with someone earlier this week who was adamant competition should be the indicator of skill and “If you don’t compete, and want to declare a skill level, it’s up to whoever

Everyone likes to pass the guard on the outside with these flashy big movement passes. But here I am going to be an old man yelling at a cloud; and talk about how controlled and measured guard passing is effective and a good strategy. First things first, I just want to say, I can pass on the outside if I want to, it just isn’t my preferred method of passing the guard. Despite the fact that I am a pretty big Ultra Heavyweight grappler, I still like to throw out a cartwheel pas

Jiu-jitsu as a sport or martial art is incredibly widely varied. For example within 2 miles of my house there are 4 different Jiu-jitsu gyms all on the same road. They are at most one mile apart from each other. These gyms are all widely varied in culture, technique, and level of instruction. This is largely due to the somewhat “wild west” nature of Jiu-jitsu and the fact that it has no individual governing body to create more cohesion. Almost every other sport has an interna

As the year 2026 dawns upon all of us I took a minute to look back at the fact that this year will be my 25th year of Jiu-jitsu. Yes, that means I started Jiu-jitsu in 2001 as a teenager. It seems weird to think about the fact that I have been training for a quarter century and at this point the majority of my life, also to contrast that with the fact that I have shared the mats with people who got their black belt before I was born. Despite the fact that I have trained for t

Ego has killed more BJJ careers than injuries. Ego is a tough thing to deal with in Jiu-jitsu, it has always been a tough thing to deal with and we as humans are not great at dealing with it in the first place. The thing with Jiu-jitsu is it is a very difficult sport, not just because it is mechanically complex but because it places you in direct conflict albeit controlled conflict with other people almost every single day. As much as we want to talk about how much it doesn’t

Leglocks, they’re so hot right now. There are literally hundreds of leglock tutorials available for purchase from practically every big name competitor from the last 15 years. The thing is though leglocks are not some magic bullet that are better than any other technique. They actually are all fairly similar mechanically and if you can master a few principles you can become a strong leglocker and save yourself a dollar or two on instructionals. I accidentally became the go to

Hygiene! The most important thing you can do for your training partners. If you do not have good hygiene, I don’t really want to grapple with you. Hygiene does not just involve washing your gear so you don’t stink, but all sorts of cleaning to ensure your partners want to keep training with you. To get the big thing off the table, if you do not keep yourself clean you can contract a myriad of pretty nasty skin diseases from the mildly annoying ringworm to the potentially fata

Grip fighting is one of the most under rated skills for Jiu-jitsu in both Gi and No-Gi grappling. It also happens to be one that Jiu-jitsu practitioners ignore more than most other grapplers. Grip fighting can be the reason between victory and defeat as the person who gets their preferred grips first can act first. When I am grip fighting I focus on a few little things that help me gain position and control of my opponent as I advance my position. These skills have helped me

Blue belt, widely recognized as the belt that most people quit Jiu-jitsu. The joke about blue belts disappearing has been going on for at least 22 years. Because I can remember someone telling me not to disappear right after I got my blue belt that long ago. How is it that we can get more people to stick it out in Jiu-jitsu and move past blue belt? One of the biggest barriers for people when getting their blue belt are plateaus. When you are a white belt you are constantly le

The Mat Enforcer we have all heard of it and some of us have probably been it at some point in our lives. A grappler, usually an upper belt that comes in to “regulate” anyone (usually an outsider or drop in) not treating the lower belts correctly. However, the Mat Enforcer is really not a good way to handle that and is not a responsible way to create a training environment that is safe, beneficial, and welcoming to everyone. Instead of regulating after the fact and punishing

Arm bars are one of the most recognizable and versatile attacks in Jiu-jitsu. The arm bar is usually one of the first submissions you learn as a new white belt. This means that almost everyone in Jiu-jitsu knows this move and is on the lookout to defend against the arm bar. Because of this fact the arm bar can be one of the most difficult moves to master. I used to be really bad at the arm bar, even as a black belt I barely finished the arm bar when trying it and often lost p

I spend a decent amount of time visiting other academies here in my area and I always try and drop in at places when I travel to get some mat time and experience with people I do not normally grapple with. Visiting other academies can be a very beneficial way to improve your grappling and point out areas where you may be deficient. Every Jiu-jitsu school has their own unique style of grappling, this is largely influenced by the head instructor and their preferred style. That

Accountability is a difficult thing. It is something that is both external and internal. Something that we struggle with as people but something that is essential to a high trust functional society. As a country has failed as a society to hold people accountable. America, for better or worse, sees itself collectively as a shining beacon on a hill, however it is hard to remain illustriously shining if no one is accountable for polishing. Many people come into martial arts, mys