Years ago, I read an article about video game development at Valve Software, the makers of Half-Life and Left 4 Dead, that changed how I value the feedback I get as an instructor. In the interview, Valve game developers talked about how they changed how they do playtesting. Initially, a Valve employee would sit down with a playtester and have them give live commentary as they played the game. This lead to a lot of animated and exaggerated reactions by the player and lively interactions with the observer. The Valve observer would finish the session feeling like it was productive, but the data collected was often too superficial and did not reflect how a player would play the game on...

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Starting Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu can be a bewildering and socially awkward experience. You are dropped into a new culture with all its own rules and traditions. To ease some of that tension, I have written answers to a few of the most common questions that beginners ask. Does it matter what color gi I buy? Check your school’s rules, but a white gi is always a safe bet. Blue is normally fine too. Black is probably OK but some new students worry it will draw too much attention. The reasons to check with your school first are that some require white gis or require you to buy a school gi. More liberal BJJ associations like the BJJ Globetrotters allow everyone to...

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While at the BJJ Globetrotters USA Camp in Maine this past weekend, I talked with a brown belt who was anxious about teaching at a school he was going to visit as he continued his trip through America. He had only taught a handful of classes before, so he was not sure what he would do yet. Should you find yourself in a similar predicament, here is the same advice I gave him: Stick to the basics. You do not need to impress students with how many cool or strange techniques you know. You just need to make them better at grappling. The basics will get you far. Even the advanced students who may be tired of practicing the fundamentals...

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In Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, we are in a constant struggle to balance opposites. For example, you need to train hard enough to get better, but not so hard you get burnt out and injured. We’re constantly told to leave our egos at the door (whatever that means) but we should also take pride in our progress. We each need to seek the right balance to get the most we can out of our training. Below are some of the main “opposites” I feel most of us could benefit from striking a balance between: Focus on using technique over strength… …but don’t let that be an excuse for being weak. In BJJ, we love the idea that us weaklings can defeat those...

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Over the last decade of writing about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, much of my work has been dedicated to understanding how students can learn faster and how instructors can teach better. We all only have so much time to spend on the mats and we want to make the biggest strides we can. That trend continues today because I want to talk about an idea from psychology that will help you at any stage in your BJJ journey. It is called the four stages of competence. Per this learning model, you pass through these stages as you learn a skill: Unconscious incompetence Conscious incompetence Conscious competence Unconscious competence Put another way, the stages of competence are: You do not know the skill...

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Last week was the five-year anniversary of my promotion to black belt, and next month marks my thirteenth year in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I wanted to take this opportunity to reflect on my journey through BJJ, how it has evolved, and share what training and teaching is like as a black belt. Here are the personal projects I have worked on since earning my black belt: Learning the modern leglock game. Interest in leglocks, especially heelhooks, has exploded with the popularity of events like EBI with alternative rulesets. I always liked IBJJF-legal straight ankle locks, but with Nelson’s influence, I have joined Team Reap. For the past two years, I have attended Reilly Bodycomb’s 3-day RDojo winter leglock camps. Nelson is...

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We are constantly talking about optimizing our learning. We want to squeeze out every ounce of progress from every moment on the mats. The Inverted Gear blog is full of articles about doing just that, and I have written many of them. What can be lost in that conversation is a realistic, healthy perspective on the detours and setbacks that are unavoidable (and maybe even necessary). Your progress will not be a smooth, straight line upwards. We may like to think someone who has trained twice as long is also twice as good, but that’s not how real life works. Different people learn at different speeds. The longer you train, the slower you improve. Some skills come fast, others come...

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My last post about my rules as an instructor was well received, but many of you asked for more of my ethical and moral rules, not just ones related to how I teach techniques or run warm-ups. Treat all students equally. Every student deserves equally opportunities for an instructor’s time and guidance. In reality, some students will need more attention than others, but I make an effort to spend time with every student in my class and be available to help them if needed. The point is to not play favorites or allow cliques to form. Even the clumsiest, bumbling, most clueless white belt deserves your attention. Show up to class and pay attention the entire time. This rule may...

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Grappling trends come and go, and new techniques pop up every season. When I started training, everyone was trying to figure out x-guard and arm drags. Now it is leglocks and heel hooks. Eventually, the best elements of these techniques get folded into “standard” jiu-jitsu but not before the initial rush of grapplers scrambling to learn the secrets of the new hotness. This guide will help you be one of those early adopters. Here are my 10 tips for adding new or unorthodox techniques to your game: Do your homework. Before you launch into learning that cool technique you saw in a GIF on Reddit, let’s make sure it is worth the effort. Gather up the answers to these questions:...

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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...

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