Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Content from Nelson
A Peek at the Future of Inverted Gear
As we move into our 6th year in business, read what's in store for the future of Inverted Gear in Nelson's latest blog post!
Fuerza Mexico - Support Mexican Earthquake Relief
In our latest blog post, Nelson shares how his experiences at a Mexican BJJ camp lead to the new Fuerza Mexico rashguard. Read his story today and help send aid to Mexico's earthquake survivors.
A Reflection on 10 Years of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
In October, I passed the ten-year mark for my BJJ career. As cliche as it sounds, I feel like I was a white belt yesterday, but as I look around, the friends I came up with are mostly black belts now or stopped training altogether...
A year in review
The end of the year is here, and it has been a wild one for Inverted Gear, so I thought we could look back at some of the highlights of 2017. We continued to grow and broke our sales record for the fifth year in a row. We sponsored tournaments all over the world, our sponsored team competed at every major IBJJF tournament, we branched out and sponsored the US combat wrestling team, and we continued our partnerships with Tap Cancer Out, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Globetrotters, Show the Art, and Rdojo. After visiting our friends in Guam in 2016, we were excited to work with them and sponsor the Marianas open, one of the most underrated tournaments out there. Once a year,...
How ADCC Shaped the World of Grappling
By the time this blog post goes up I will be on my way to JFK airport on our way towards Finland for this year's ADCC tournament. This trip is very special to me for a few reasons. I am coming up on my ten year BJJ anniversary, and if it wasn’t for the 2007 ADCC held in NJ, I probably wouldn’t be training today.Back then I had a very limited idea what submission grappling looked like, much less gi BJJ. But then I started hearing about this tournament that just took place, in Trenton of all places, so I started googling ADCC. One name kept popping up, and a few youtube searches later I came across this videoI have...
2 Critical Habits for Your Training
“Champions don’t do extraordinary things. They do ordinary things, but they do them without thinking, too fast for the other team to react. They follow the habits they’ve learned.” - Tony Dungi I came across this Tony Dungi quote recently. Tony was an NFL head coach and was notorious for turning around some pretty bad teams—first the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and then the Indianapolis Colts. He came close with the Bucs and then won the superbowl with the Colts in 2007. Like anything else in my life, as soon as I heard this quote, I started thinking how this correlates to grappling. Then it hit me. I remembered being dead tired, exhausted from a grueling practice back in my wrestling...
My New Instructional: From Chile with Love
About a year ago, I started to work on an instructional with the crew over at Artechoke Media. It has been an amazing experience. After nearly ten years of grappling, I felt I had a unique take on certain positions that I felt could benefit some grapplers, so breaking them down and diving deep into them was a fascinating process. The product has been out for a bit, and It’s gotten positive reviews from people I really look up to. If you haven’t checked it out yet, maybe you will be interested by end of this blog.The book starts with takedown section, my takedown game has been deeply influenced by time cross-training and competing in wrestling, judo, and sambo. I...
Get a gi to give a gi
A year ago, my friend Sean contacted me to tell me about a school club a few of his teammates from Main Line United were helping out with. The Workshop School is a project-based charter school that takes an innovative approach to teacher and learning. Sean and his teammates were pitching in to help by incorporating a jiu-jitsu program into the school’s offerings. When I saw that the students were using "jawn" -- a Philadelphia catch-all colloquialism -- for an ornament project, we had to get involved. In case you don't know, "jawn" is an all-purpose pronoun that's unique to Eastern Pennsylvania, mainly Philadelphia, that can refer to any person, place, or thing, such as "pass me that jawn" or "see you down...
6 Submissions Every White Belt Needs to Master
These 6 submissions are what I believe every white belt needs to develop as the fundamental attacks. Each submission was picked because it develops skills and movements that later techniques are built on, and because despite their simplicity, they are still high percentage finishes at the highest levels of the sport. Armbar from closed guard You need move like you a boxer needs a right hook. This is one of the most fundamental submissions that should be in everyone’s arsenal because it allows you to dictate how your opponent behaves inside your guard. The moment he overextends, you can take his arm off. Triangle from closed guard Just like the armbar, the threat of the triangle lets you dictate how your opponent behaves...
Acroyoga for Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu
A few months ago my friend Stephen Goyne was at a camp in Chicago we were teaching at. After one of our training sessions, he started showing us acroyoga poses, emphasizing three he recommended for post-training recovery. We lucked out because in addition to being a BJJ black belt, Stephan is also an experienced acroyoga instructor.I had seen videos of acroyoga floating around the internet, and it always look interesting, but I never had the chance to try it. After some instruction from Stephen, we started doing acroyoga at the end of our training sessions. My hamstrings have never been more flexible, and it has helped Hillary's back and shoulder issues.The main poses we worked on are here are folded...