In this series, we shine light on the many members of the Panda Nation. Last episode we spoke to David Phimsipasom of Maximum Athletics. Now, we focus on black belt Matt ‘Aesopian’ Kirtley: computer wizard, walking BJJ encyclopedia, and unabashed Magic: The Gathering-aficionado. Back when he was a blue belt, Matt Kirtley (32) almost broke the internet with one of the first great BJJ blogs: Aesopian BJJ, a groundbreaking resource of free online BJJ-tutorials. Ever since then, he’s been known as a highly technical and analytical instructor – who’s embraced his inner nerd. Did you practice other martial arts before you found jiu-jitsu? Matt Kitley: Nope. I roughhoused as a kid, but I never got any formal training. My only...

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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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In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, a few major countries occupy the spotlight. Brazil, of course, tops the list, but the U.S. receives a lot of attention as well. Japan is often in the conversation for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t get nearly as much attention as the first two. And recently, we’ve started to see a little bit more love for Russia’s contributions to grappling, but that is still relatively small. For the rest of the world? Well, they often become footnotes in the culture of BJJ. Designers and gym owners are quick to reference the major BJJ countries in artwork and in products, but the smaller scenes, where jiu-jitsu has just recently started to blossom and make a difference in the...

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As we continue our series Meet the Pandas, we focus on the many awesome people that make up the Panda Nation. Last episode was devoted to Phil Mento of Paramount BJJ. Now we introduce David Phimsipasom: black belt instructor at Maximum Athletics (Dunellen, NJ), human energizer bunny, tennis pro, and Tour de France-enthusiast. If it weren’t for David Phimsipasom (29), Inverted Gear wouldn’t exist. David got his childhood friend Nelson Puentes to join the wrestling team, and a few years later they started their BJJ journey together. The rest is history. Being a supercharged and hyperactive person, David used jiu-jitsu to calm himself down and develop a sense of patience in life. Are you the world’s only instructor teaching Brazilian...

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Years ago, I read an article about video game development at Valve Software, the makers of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, that changed how I value the feedback I get as an instructor. In the interview, Valve game developers talked about how they changed how they do playtesting. Initially, a Valve employee would sit down with a playtester and have them give live commentary as they played the game. This lead to a lot of animated and exaggerated reactions by the player and lively interactions with the observer. The Valve observer would finish the session feeling like it was productive, but the data collected was often too superficial and did not reflect how a player would play the game on...

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My first grappling love was wrestling. Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and Judo soon followed, and in the last few years I have added Sambo. I watch most jiu-jitsu PPVs (can’t wait for Polaris 5) and most major IBJJF tournaments. I live in North Eastern Pennsylvania, so we get to see great wrestling at Lehigh University and at local high schools. On the Sambo front, I watch my friend Reilly Bodycomb compete, and a year ago I was in Paraguay as the unofficial translator for the U.S. team for the Pan American games. For Judo, I still follow the career of a few of my old training partners from my time at Cranford Judo, both of which are national team members. So you...

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Due to an injury to one of my friends, I have found myself pitching in covering the fundamentals classes at his academy. Even though at one point I would teach about 4 fundamental classes a week, it’s been a long time since I taught a class of mostly fresh white belts. Most of my time teaching has been the odd advanced class at my home gym or mixed groups at camps or seminars. Thinking about what is best to teach raw beginners is a welcome change of pace. I went back and thought through what my favorite moves were at lower belts and also recalled what approaches worked best when I had my own beginner’s program. I created a list...

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After I had been teaching jiu-jitsu for a while, a twenty-something man started coming to my classes. He had never trained before, but he had somehow decided he knew a lot already—shades of the Dunning-Kruger effect plus, I’m guessing, YouTube. From the get-go, he had a habit of telling his training partners how to do techniques (usually incorrectly) and asking questions that seemed less about clarification and more about proving what he knew and what I did not. I tried to be patient with him, letting him know I was happy to work with him but asking him to stop being disruptive in class. He would either laugh or stare at me, and then during the next class he would...

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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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Recently I was invited to create a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructional. This was actually the second time I got the invitation. The first was probably about two years ago, and my response to that first invitation was, “What do I possibly have to share that hasn’t already been shared countless times?” I reasoned that everything I had learned had been taught to me by teachers who knew the movements better than I did and had more experience teaching. Why not ask them?When it comes to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, I have a chronic case of Impostor Syndrome. (Who am I fooling? I have Impostor Syndrome in most areas of my life.) I assume everybody at my level knows much more than I do...

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