We just opened our first stand alone location, and I had a brown belt walk in that trains somewhere else, but my spot is close to his house, so he wanted to come check it out in case he wanted to train, but couldn’t make the drive to his regular place. What he said after we got done training got me thinking. He said that a reason he didn’t want his own school, was you never know what will walk in the door, that it took “balls” to have some rando walk in off the street and just say yes to training with them. I never really thought about it until then, because that was always the example. When someone walked in the door, we always rolled with them. I remember watching a 165lb purple belt be a consistent training partner of a 320lb purple belt former college offensive lineman. That was the example that was set for me. Somebody’s going to take the beating, why not you? You’ll only improve from there.

With the recent epidemic of BJJ athletes obtaining viruses or infections, it seems appropriate to talk about keeping clean.
-shower as soon as you can after training
-keep your nails short
-wash your gear
-if you’re sick don’t train
-check your skin for stuff out of the ordinary
-wear shoes when you go to the bathroom at the academy
-overall be clean, if not for yourself, do it for your training partners. It’s the right thing to do.

How do you develop sustainable BJJ? The kind of Jiu-Jitsu that allows you to train into old age? I’m only in the masters one bracket, but I’ve been doing BJJ over half my life. There are two ways that seem very effective in allowing you to keep training your whole life. One I will call the Professor Doug/Harold approach. This approach is the approach of shutting down offense and swiftly countering with great efficiency. The other is the Joe/Al approach where you play extreme defense looking for opportunities. I have seen both styles implemented in older grapplers, so I suppose like most things in BJJ it is a matter of personal preference

There’s a lot of individuality in BJJ. Even though you may see elements of someone’s coach in their game, they still have a mostly independent style. Nobody that I made it to black belt with has the same style I do even though we’ve learned from the same people. If you look at Buchecha and Renato Canuto, guys who have similar lineages, their styles are pretty different. Part of BJJ is finding what you personally gravitate towards and building a game from there. Part of what your instructor does is clean up the game you like and make it more effective. There are no absolutes in Jiu-Jitsu, so if it works, keep it and improve upon it. Be responsible for your success in BJJ.

A big argument in the BJJ community is what is the proper rule set to optimize Jiu-Jitsu effectiveness. From the perspective of figuring out who is most capable of submitting an adversary, no time limit submission only is the pinnacle. However, there are issues in mass appeal to 3 hour grappling matches. Submission only with a time limit is nice, but I also believe that points have an effective place in maintaining focus on safe positions for life outside the mat. From a spectator perspective, I believe A combination of Kasai with EBI overtime would be really interesting. I am all about no draws and no referees decisions. That’s my two cents, but what I know for sure, is whatever rule set you compete under be responsible for understanding the rules for yourself.

One of the easiest ways to control someone is to give them a twist. If the lower half and the upper half are going different directions, people’s movement is severely limited. Whether playing guard, passing guard, or holding a top position misaligning the spine is an important part of keeping control of a match. It’s a concept that gets talked about a lot, but how often are you consciously executing or practicing this concept? How often are you analyzing where you could use this concept better? It might be something to look at if you are not performing the way you’d like.

Athletic diversity is important for children. Most of the best athletes come from a multi sport background. So why limit a child to just one sport? If your child likes BJJ that’s great, but there’s no reason for it to be their whole life. There’s not enough money in cage fighting or professional jiu jitsu, and nobody’s offering full ride college scholarships for this sport yet. One of the greatest things about BJJ is you can compete your whole life, so it’s always going to be there, most other sports can’t say the same. If kids want to train a light schedule so they can focus on some other passion, let them. It might lead to something extraordinary.

What you tell yourself is important, they always say “if you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right”. So are you telling yourself the things you need to be successful? The mental aspect of success is incredibly important. Many athletes border on delusional belief in their abilities for this reason. Confidence in your skill combined with hard work can carry you very far. Make sure your mind is not defeating you before you’ve gotten a chance to show your abilities.