Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Jiu-Jitsu Advice
Building a Healthy Jiu-Jitsu Team
In many sports, the idea of a team is a clean-cut concept of shared success and responsibility. If you are on a soccer team, every player has to work together to win a game. That means communication, support, and collaboration. Each player is a part of a whole, and if a team loses a game, some breakdown in teamwork is often to blame.For sports where athletes compete as individuals, such as wrestling, the idea of a team is still present, though its application is different. The individual competes alone. She can’t pass the ball to another player or blame the fullbacks for being out of position if the game goes wrong. Instead, the role of the team is to help...
6 Years at Black Belt
Matt hit the six year milestone as a black belt this year. What has changed over that time?
How to Guest Instruct
As you climb the ranks of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, your chances of having to fill in for an instructor go up as well. Under the best circumstances, your temporary upgrade from student to teacher will be shared with you beforehand, but veteran belts will likely grow accustomed to sometimes being the highest belt on the mat when the scheduled instructor simply does not show up to teach. By default, you run the class when this happens. The guest instructor format is equally freeing and restricting for the same reason: You get one class to teach. That means you will not be able to cover a grand curriculum that explores every depth and nuance of your favorite position, but then again, you...
Prescience and OODA Loops: Navigating the Chaos of Grappling
In the sci-fi masterpiece Dune, the protagonist Paul Atreides gains the power of prescience, the supernatural ability to see the future. In his prescience, he does not see a single vision of one future, but many potential futures -- where the most probable ones are clearly defined, and outliers are hazy or occluded. As the story’s main character and, ultimately, the God-Emperor of a galaxy-spanning civilization, his mission is to navigate all the conflicts and betrayals around him to steer humanity towards its best future. Prescience may be fantasy, but in it is a useful way of thinking about how we make decisions as in grappling, and help us dispel some myths, like the common belief that black belts are...
How to be a Better BJJ Student
New for the Panda Nation blog: Marshal explores the process of learning how to learn jiu-jitsu to accelerate your progress.
On the Problem of Sexual Harassment and Coercion in BJJ: Five Ways to Be Part of the Solution
This is a difficult topic, but for our sport to grow, we need to keep working to make our communities healthier and safer. Val has more.
When Your Wife Asks You to Quit BJJ
What happened when Marshal’s wife asked him to quit jiu-jitsu? Quite the story.
What to Do When Your Progress Stalls Out
As you advance in your study of jiu-jitsu, you can expect to hit a slump in those middle belts. Life as a white belt is tough in many ways, since you’re on the receiving end of so many beatings, but the path forward is also clearly laid out: just keep coming to class, pay attention to your instructor’s teachings, and keep learning and trying to apply the techniques. Often, around the end of blue belt, and more so in purple and even brown belt, it is common to feel like the old routine is not working like it used to, that you are not getting as much out of class as you used to, and you are left feeling directionless...
A Guide to Opponent Analysis
How do you analyze an opponent’s game as you enter fight camp? Marshal breaks down his process (with a real-life example) in this post.
Catching the Snitch Hidden in Crystal Lake
In his new blog post, Marshal talks about how a technique you learned five years ago can suddenly become relevant today.