Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Marshal D. Carper
Separating Knowledge from Physical Gifts
A meniscus (cartilage in the knee) repair, partial removal, or total removal may increase one’s risk of osteoarthritis and therefore likelihood of needing a total knee replacement. The number of patient who will experience permanent, chronic pain after a hernia repair (using medical mesh) is at least 4% by the most conservative estimates and as high as 45% according to some studies. These are my two largest health issues, one hernia repair and four meniscus surgeries later. In addition to the standard assortment of jiu-jiteiro nagging injuries—turf toe, occasional rib issues, sore knuckles, and a strained lower back—my health plays a huge factor in how I train. At 30-years-old, I am young by most standards, but I was not gifted...
Distilling Technique Down to Concepts
All triangle choke entries involve one of two mechanics: You either pin the arm close to the body to enter the triangle position, or you extend the arm away from the body so that you can thread your leg out of the gap and over the shoulder. For the hundreds of possible triangle choke entries, that’s it. You pin the arm, or you stretch it out wide.Yes, there are mountains of details that will go into any potential entry, but my point is not to oversimplify. Instead, if you can see what every entry has in common, you can start to unite all of the muscle memory and troubleshooting you learned for various positions into one bucket. This way, you...
Mastering the “When” of Technique
When I was new to jiu-jitsu, a wide-eyed and bushy-tailed white belt, I struggled to grasp the idea of when to use a particular technique. I thought that if I mastered the series of steps that made up executing a move, then I would be able to use that move effectively when I rolled. In practical application, being able to do the move—as in the physical coordination and finesse required to move from the start to end of a technique—is only the most basic prerequisite of making the technique work in a live situation.You have to master the when, or the timing of the technique. In the flurry of a roll, that’s not always easy, so let’s break it...
Chasing the Good Ol’ Days Magic
10 years ago, the jiu-jitsu scene in Pittsburgh was radically different. Where most cities—like New York or San Diego or Seattle—had attracted multiple black belts and sprouted thriving jiu-jitsu cultures, Pittsburgh was still clawing its way to relevancy. When I started, there were no black belt instructors available, and it would be several years before there was more than one gym within driving distance to choose from. In those days, with so few training options available, many of us pooled our resources and our knowledge to make the most of our training time and to learn as much as we could. Back then, my blue belt was a hot commodity. A local professional fighter invited me to join him and...
Pros and Cons of Gym Hopping
Over the course of the last ten years, jiu-jitsu schools and individual jiu-jiteiros have largely accepted that cross-training is a good thing. An instructor who salts the earth for students who dare visit a neighboring academy is typically viewed as unreasonable and perhaps even toxic. Thus, the pendulum has swung away from Creonte culture and into a new jiu-jitsu world where students with time and resources train at multiple gyms in a single week.In the denser cities where academies are plentiful, I have met grapplers who will teach at one school, drop in to two other schools, and then meet up with a bunch of friends for an open mat (or a varying blend of those options). This level of...
The Bully Factor
These days, a good bit of my professional life is spent off the mat. I go to client meetings with construction contractors, lawyers, designers, and so on. And it seems like 1 out of 5 meetings involve someone striking a Karate pose when they hear that I train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.“I won’t mess with you!”Or“Do you think you could take me?”Recently, though, while waiting for a meeting to begin, someone asked me why I had started training in the first place. They were surprised to hear that I was bullied growing up and that training was a way for me to come to terms with those experiences. After all, I am no longer the scrawny kid with a bowl cut, lugging...
A Jiu-Jitsu Journey Without Gold Medals
Many jiu-jiteiros begin training with aspirations of being a world champion, and I was no exception. So many of our heroes in the sport have incredible competition stories, and perhaps since we aspire to someday acquire their mythic abilities on the mat, we too begin to dream of gold medals and towering podiums. The reality, however, is ruthless. The vast majority of grapplers will never be world champions, and the numbers don’t even look that great for being the best grappler at your gym.That can be hard to accept, and it’s certainly been difficult for me. In my case, the interest in being the best is less about who I can beat and more about how good I can become.I...
This Technique Doesn’t Work
Usually—and I have been guilty of this myself—this thinking is rooted in frustration. After many attempts to learn and apply a technique and failing, you give up on a move. Unfortunately, many fundamental techniques get this treatment. I was inspired to write this article in the first place because the scissor sweep is one of these misunderstood techniques, yet we recently saw Ricardo Evangelista hit one on Leandro Lo. Other techniques that get this treatment include Americanas, sit-up sweeps, and even the mount position as a whole. Side note: mount often frustrates students to the point that they don’t bother taking it in pure grappling matches, opting instead to work from side control and north-south. Side side note: I too...
Coping with Contradictory Instruction
When you teach jiu-jitsu, you will routinely encounter uncomfortable situations. You might have to discretely tell someone that they need to trim their toenails. You might have to explain why pressing one’s chin into a training partner’s eye socket is in fact not a good idea. And you might have to field any number of questions about jiu-jitsu and about technique, from the benign to the bizarre.For all the weirdness, one of the most difficult scenarios for me to navigate—both as an instructor and as a student myself—is the contradictory instruction problem. One instructor shows the technique one way, and another instructor shows it another. In isolation, the problem is less pronounced, but isolation is a rarity in jiu-jitsu.I’ve had...
Enhance Your Privates
In my early days of training, I was a broke college student. I convinced a few friends to start training around the time that I did, and the four of us would carpool for the hour drive from campus to the closest gym, pooling together what would have otherwise been beer money to pay for gas, tolls, and the occasional post-roll pizza. Since it was a drive and money was tight, we used up our two-class-a-week plan in a single Saturday. To train during the week, we removed the only set of mats on campus—ratty gross green ones—from the dance studio under the cover of darkness after an understanding school administrator “accidently” dropped her keys.I didn’t get to take many...