When you first start BJJ, most of your progress comes from simply showing up to class and doing what you’re told to do. While you never get away from that basic formula, as you rise up that ranks, it is common to feel like you’re not making as much progress by just showing up. Purple belts in particular can feel like they are just going through the motions, but not really being driven in any particular direction any more. If you feel this way, then these 5 tips are for you. 1. Don’t waste time while you wait for class to start What do you do while waiting for class to start? Is it awkwardly standing around and pretending to...

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Over the last year, I have become obsessed with language learning and have been studying and reading about language learning science as much as possible. I’ve brushed up on my Portuguese, picked up quite a bit of Italian for our stay in Sardinia, and some basic Japanese for our current trip through Japan. I’m a jiu-jiteiro at heart though, so it wasn’t long before I started drawing parallels between learning a language and learning Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.Learning jiu-jitsu is quite a bit like learning a language. At first you build your basic vocabulary. These are the moves you picked up in fundamentals class: upa escapes, armbars from closed guard, cross choke from mount, etc. Then you start learning common phrases. In...

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Hitting a training rut is one of the inevitabilities of jiu-jitsu. If you stay on the mat long enough, you will eventually hit a plateau, and the worst of plateaus will make you feel like you are moving backward. You won’t know why. You’ll be training as hard as usual. You’ll be at every class. And you’ll just feel lackluster. After a few weeks, you see your training partners start to outmatch you at every turn.Training ruts can become like quicksand, dragging you and your morale to a dark and frustrating place.Whether you’re in a rut now or are prepping for when the day will come, here are the steps you need to take (based on my 10 years in...

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Val Worthington is taking questions about jiu-jitsu and life. Submit yours here and it could be featured in the next installment! Question: Hey! I'm a blue belt from New Jersey. Is it better to fully recover from injuries or to scale down my training? Oh, the injury question. When things go our way during training, we may feel practically invincible. Then we land wrong. Tap too slowly. Get a limb tangled in a gi. We get injured. This, along with death and taxes, is a certainty in the life of a jiu-jiteiro: If we stick with training long enough, we will at some point be sidelined by an injury. The very first thing I want to do in responding to...

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After my post about how to fully develop your grappling gameplan, people asked for help with the nuts and bolts of how to draw their gameplans. This a follow-up visual guide to explain that. I’m going to talk about the building blocks of a gameplan, how to think about combos, and how to look at the big picture. Let’s start with two types of combos. Linear Combos A linear combination progresses as you succeed at points along your way towards a goal. At a beginner level, the progression may be broadly defined, without any special connection existing between each step except that one follows the other. Example: takedown → pass the guard → side control → mount → armbar As...

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I am a fortunate person with a lot to be grateful for. Even so, for as long as I can remember, I have also experienced anxiety and depression. When I was 4 or 5, I worried that the Earth could run out of oxygen. I remember hoping it would happen when I was asleep so I would not have to experience suffocation. I never told my parents my worries because I did not know other kids thought any different. (This was before I learned about photosynthesis, and now, while I like plants, I do not like that there will always be a power differential.) As I got older, these kinds of thoughts stuck with me and changed as my experiences...

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We want to introduce the world to our sponsored competition team and share the stories that inspired us to support these up and coming grapplers. Last time, we shared the story of Jose Mazariegos, a Princeton student balancing a full course load with a full-time commitment to training. In this installment, we talk to Eric Sian, Guam’s first world champion grappler. Eric ‘Chambolo’ Sian (25) never expected to be any good at jiu-jitsu. As an obese, uncoordinated and insecure kid, he was bullied in school. But under the guidance of his professors Stephen Roberto and Terence Aflague of Purebred Guam, he became Guam’s first homegrown world champion – winning the gold medal in a stacked adult division, while competing as...

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Raf Esparza, one of the hosts of Verbal Tap Cast, reached out to me the other day with a question. He said, “You’re a BJJ Historian (of sorts).” That sort of half-compliment is on par with our usual banter, but I digress. He continued, “Have you ever seen s*** talking like this?”Esparza was referring to the apparent increase in trash talk between jiu-jitsu athletes. We have Gordon Ryan doing the jiu-jitsu equivalent of a “send all” email for issuing challenge matches. We had AJ Agazarm takeover the Metamoris Instagram account earlier this year. We had Saulo Ribeiro replying to one of John Danaher’s Instagram novels, questioning his authority on BJJ competition. And of course Garry Tonon jumped in the fray...

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At this point the term “creonte” is almost exclusively the property of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Whether we like it or not, it is now a permanent part of BJJ culture. The term has become synonymous with a traitor, someone that changes allegiances. Creonte was coined by Carlson Gracie Jr. after a character in a soap opera he used to enjoy. This is not a post about loyalty or jiu-jitsu politics.Instead, I want to do more to flesh out this jiu-jitsu term. Have you ever wondered what was the name of the telenovela that Carlson liked so much? Perhaps more important, what did the original Creonte looke like? A few weeks ago I was chatting with my friend Matt Kirtley about the...

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There is never a shortage of things to argue about in the grappling community. It seems like whenever we aren’t rolling on the mats, we’re taking sides on one debate or another. One of the most recent and heated discussions has been about rule sets, specifically pitting the concept of submission-only competition against rule sets that award points. Avoiding taking sides is difficult, but I am going to attempt to avoid feeding into the dichotomous nature of the larger argument. To put it plainly, I think both point and submission only rule sets are worth having.Submission-only events have gained a great deal of traction in recent years, largely for the action they provide and the finality a submission offers to...

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