I’ve often heard the advice that in the event of an injury, you should keep going to class anyway. The thinking goes that staying in the routine of regularly attending class is important, and even if you can’t drill or roll, you can still learn from the instruction. It’s nothing like actually training, but it must count for something.That advice never worked for me.When I’m injured, going anywhere near a jiu-jitsu mat is intensely emotionally painful. And even when I try to avoid it while I heal up, I still end up on or near the mat out of respect for my instructors. For example, I was once asked to referee a jiu-jitsu a week after a knee surgery while...

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  I borrowed the title for this blog post from a video game podcast that faded into inactivity far too soon. Growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, I often encountered a pervasive cultural idea of video games being a waste of time, and that all of his kids playing Nintendo and Sega Genesis would eventually have to put aside childish things and grow up. Oddly enough, I’ve encountered similar reactions to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. When my injuries started to pile up, my family assumed that I would be stepping away from the sport for good. I had relationships—romantic and otherwise—where the person on the other end also assumed that there would be an ending point for my weird pajama...

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I was going back through the Inverted Gear blog archives looking at some of the more popular posts, and I came across Nelson’s “Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu goals that do not involve becoming a world champion.” I think part of why this article resonates with so many people is that it speaks to an unspoken fear in a sport that heaps admiration onto competitors: By not competing (or not competing well) we are somehow not doing “it” right.Competition is an important facet of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, but it’s not the only facet. There is nothing wrong with being a hobbyist, but I can understand how the intensity and prowess of fulltime competitors can leave your own jiu-jitsu journey feeling unimpressive and inconsequential. I...

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  Injuries big and small have been a consistent theme in my jiu-jitsu writing because for some reason I am a lot like Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Unbreakable—minus the acts of mass terrorism (spoiler alert). As frustrating and as depressing injuries can be, they can also benefit your training. Granted, these benefits probably are not as good as the benefits of just staying healthy in the first place, but there are a few upsides that might make you feel just a wee little bit better about that injury. An injury can force you to do two primary things: Get your jiu-jitsu game up to speed after a layoff and adapt your game to work around a vulnerable body part....

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Many jiu-jitsu schools have a motto—sometimes unwritten but often scrawled on the wall as well—that goes “Leave your ego at the door.” The sentiment is sincere, and the intention seems to be one of encouraging students to be humble and to have an open mind. Almost anyone would agree that these are valuable traits to have in your gym culture, but the idea that anyone, anyone at all, is leaving their ego at the door is naïve. As much as we want to believe that jiu-jitsu is a great equalizer and that our sport is overflowing with positivity, we should be honest with ourselves about our very human shortcomings. Instead of acting like everyone on the mat is leaving their...

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In even a single year of jiu-jitsu, a student will see a wide range of techniques. At two classes a week with an average of two techniques shown per class, a student will “learn” 208 techniques. Then factor in the odd private lessons, a seminar or two, instructional material, and the casual exchange of tips and tricks that happens at any generic open mat, and you quickly end up with a volume of material that’s just not practical to learn all at once.The result is that a lot of techniques are left to the wayside, and even the newest jiu-jiteiros adopt a pattern of looking for the moves that they “need.” They naturally want a technique that solves a problem...

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Early in our jiu-jitsu careers, we tend to have a problem and solution mindset, and this view of jiu-jitsu is actually pretty narrow. For example, you might get stuck in a headlock a lot, so you ask your instructors (or YouTube) for the solution. This thinking continues as you encounter new positions. What do I do when his legs are like this and my arms like this? Boom, another solution.And then something weird happens. You run into someone that uses a different solution to solve the exact same problem.When I was teaching three or four times a week, this got to be problematic because I was not a black belt, and right after teaching a move I’d sometimes hear, “Well...

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As a character trait, being stubborn is usually considered negative. Someone who is stubborn insists on a path no matter what, sometimes in the face of overwhelming opposition. They grit their teeth and refuse to be swayed.In jiu-jitsu—and in sports in general—a certain kind of stubbornness is mandatory to achieve success. If you are not willing to fail repeatedly until you get it right, you will likely find it difficult to progress, especially as your competition gets tougher and tougher. To learn, and to grow, you have to be willing to believe that a technique or a move can work for you and hold that belief over a long stretch of training and through countless screw ups.Here’s an example: Christian...

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The Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world likes to throw around the word “lifestyle.” Live the jiu-jitsu lifestyle, man. Wear flip flops everywhere. Eat some acai. Wear some jiu-jitsu t-shirts that no one but fellow jiu-jiteiros understand. Maybe hit up a camp or two. And that’s about where our thinking about the jiu-jitsu lifestyle tends to stop.Here’s the thing: We assume that jiu-jitsu will be a lifelong pursuit. That’s the nature of the art, but very few people talk about how your jiu-jitsu lifestyle will need to evolve and adapt to the rest of your life as you add year after year of training. A lot can happen in a year—You could get a new job, you could start a family, you could...

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Around 2010 or so, the training fad of the day was “mind maps,” which were essentially decision trees for jiu-jitsu positions in part popularized by the flowchart in Eddie Bravo’s Mastering the Rubber Guard and championed by a few dozen BJJ bloggers. The instructional value of seeing a gameplan mapped out with “if this then that” logic was clear. It makes the progression of positions and counters easier to follow by condensing dozens of techniques and tactical decisions into a singular diagram. The mind map champions took this idea and applied it to their own games. By creating a flowchart of your preferred options—what you do when someone postures with grip A versus grip B and on and on—you give...

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