Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
Why Knowing the 3 Types of BJJ Schools is Important
I got to visit a lot of schools over the last 10 years. While every school is different, I feel they all tend to fall into three categories: traditional, formal, and informal. Before I go into my criteria for these categories or why I'm even making these distinctions, I want to point out how interesting it is that the same sport—we all do the same thing, wrestle in pajamas—can produce a wide spectrum of school and teaching styles. The amount of rules and customs some schools choose to follow can be completely foreign to a student from an informal school, and a student who has known nothing but the structure of a formal school can be equally as lost at...
Ask a Panda: Dealing with the Jiu-Jitsu Blahs
Question: I am a brown belt, and I love jiu-jitsu. I am in it for the long haul—there is no question about that—but sometimes I find myself feeling ambivalent. I look at some of my teammates, particularly ones who have not been training for as long as I have, and they seem so excited. I know I used to feel that way, but nowadays it feels more like a slog. Lately I go to class, get in my reps and my rounds, and am out the door at the end while some people are still tinkering and asking questions, or even just chatting. These are all things I used to do, but no more. I do not feel enthusiastic or...
My Rules as an Instructor
Over my career as a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor, I have decided on a set of self-imposed rules for how I run classes and how I manage my relationship with students. If you’re not an instructor, you might slowly become one unofficially as you rise through the ranks. Sure, you might not have your own class, but you will probably mentor a few white belts in your time, and these rules can help you too. Here are the top 6: 1. Students are free to train wherever they want with whoever they want All of my students are free to seek out the best instruction and training available to them. I don’t believe in the old school “creonte” culture. I do...
The "L Word" of BJJ - How I Started Training for Longevity
I am getting close to my 10 year anniversary with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Over the last year, I finally changed my mindset of how I look at my training, and started to think about longevity. I remember being a twenty-year-old white belt, training like a madman, often tapping too late, or barely getting out of submissions I should have tapped to. Older guys in the room would just shake their heads at me and tell me do it while you can. Of course I thought it wouldn’t happen to me. Then I turned 28, and suddenly all those little injuries from hard training and competing suddenly would not go away. It's a completely different game once you turn 30. My knees, specifically...
Redefining Respectful Rolling: It Takes Two to Train
Several years ago, I was warming up at an open mat. I was a black belt at the time, and the person nearest me was a large male blue belt, maybe 220lbs. I asked him if he would like to pair up, and he responded by looking back at me with what could only be described as discomfort and saying, “Uh, sure.” Not sure what he was concerned about, I smiled and cracked a joke to try to put him at ease. We slapped hands, squared off, and started training.Or, I started. My partner did very little, lying mostly still while I climbed around him trying to get a reaction. He was paying attention, keeping his elbows tight and his...
The Best White Belt Wednesday Videos (So Far)
Last year, Nelson, Hillary and I started filming videos to reply to questions on reddit's weekly White Belt Wednesday discussion. Since then, we have filmed 80 videos, and we are set to break 100 in no time. Here are some of the most popular videos in case you missed them: #1 - Passing guard vs a bigger opponent Hillary rarely gets to train with someone her own size, so she has developed the skills to get around the guard of bigger opponents. Here she explains her favorite method for passing guard when at a size disadvantage. #2 - Dealing with wrestlers as a white belt This is a problem most white belts run into when they did not wrestle before starting BJJ. There...
Should We Nerf the Berimbolo Metagame?
We need to talk about the berimbolo metagame, and we can look at how other competitions handle balance and metagame for some ideas of how to introduce more variety of grappling styles into competition.Street fighter II debuted 26 years ago. I have memories from the early 90’sof asking my mom for change so my sister and I could go down the street and play at this little arcade next to the corner store. It only had 4 or 5 machines, but the only one that mattered was Street Fighter. I got many blisters trying to master the hadouken, and this was before strategy guides or widespread internet access for that matter. When you discovered a special move, it was your...
Before You Start Your BJJ Business…
I’m not a giant in the jiu-jitsu industry, but I’ve been writing about and working in the sport for as long as I’ve been training—over 10 years now. I’ve written books with big names. I’ve traveled to cover events, both MMA and jiu-jitsu. I opened and ran a satellite jiu-jitsu gym (and closed it too when it failed). I run Artechoke Media, a jiu-jitsu publishing house, and my business partner Matt Kirtley and I help jiu-jitsu brands with their marketing.I tell you all of this in the hopes that you take my thoughts on starting a jiu-jitsu business more seriously because I’ve heard lines like this too often (and these are as close to direct quotes as my memory will...
Confessions of a Jiu-Jitsu Instructor
At the beginning of my jiu-jitsu journey, I thought my instructors were flawless. I had enough difficulty trying to execute technique, and they could not only execute but also teach, down to the finest details. They answered questions I did not even know needed to be asked, and they had a commanding presence I would never have been able to muster. Of course, as time went on, my technique and my ability to explain both improved, and I also became better able to allow my instructors to be the complex, talented, flawed human beings they were.Now that I am a black belt and an instructor, I hope other people do not view me the way I viewed my instructors in...
Wherever You Roll, There You Are
(The following is a guest post by Joe Hannan from Princeton BJJ.) I’m deep into hour two of training, and my back is a lightning storm of stinging pain as my gi sandpapers away another layer of skin. I’ve established a serviceable spider guard. Tension from the fingers-in sleeve grips radiates through the sinewy tissue of my fingers and into the sturdier muscle fibers of my forearms. There is music playing, but it’s sweeping over the mat like a sonic shadow, only vaguely recognizable. I roll my weight to the left, kicking upward and outward, pushing my partner’s left arm into a marionette pose -- just like Val had showed me. I see my opening, and snap the triangle in...