Inverted Gear Blog
Tag: Nelson Puentes
Adventures in MMA
I cleaned out my garage last week, and while that was an adventure in itself, I happened to stumble across an old pair of MMA gloves. Talk about memories. Wow. Just about 6 years ago—in 2009—I had my one and only MMA fight, a pro rules amateur bout. I won by toehold of all things. I have been an MMA fan for a long time, and I was a fan before I even started training. I always had a goal of doing one fight at some point, check it off my athletic bucket list so to speak. A few of my training partners were fighting on the same card, and somehow they convinced me to join them. Six weeks before...
From Humble Beginnings
I started Inverted Gear in 2012. I never thought in my wildest dreams Inverted Gear would be as successful as it is today. I am still amazed that I can travel to remote places and find people wearing our gis or scroll to my Facebook feed and spot pandas in the background during technique videos filmed as far away as Japan. I still remember working on the website, hosted on BigCartel back then, and having a presale of our first batch of gis—50 blue and 50 white. I remember how nervous I was. I thought, “Did I just throw all my savings down the drain?” and “How many people are going to want to wear gis with a silly upside...
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu goals that do not involve becoming a world champion
Becoming a black belt world champion may be the loftiest goal one can shoot for in our sport. However, this goal is not for everyone. If this is your current goal, I don’t want to shoot down your dream. This article is not for you. If you are busy with work and can only train a few nights a week, are a BJJ hobbyist, busy mom that loves training, or like me, a mat rat (or panda) that has no interest in becoming a world champion this article is for you.My BJJ instructor/role model/life coach Kevin Sheridan used to sit us down once a year, usually in January after Sunday class, and we would spend an hour on goal setting....
Is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Becoming OSS (Open Source Software)?
Have you heard about open source software? Its core promise is that its source code is freely available to anyone to use or modify. Let’s think about Brazilian jiu-jitsu as software. As I write this article, there is an amazing wealth of information at my finger tips. I can go on Google and chances are I can find an instructional for any sub, sweep or pass I can think off. This was not always the case! Before Youtube soared to popularity and the advent of paid membership BJJ websites, our access to this kind of information was very limited. For the early American pioneers of BJJ, the only access they had was going to Torrance, CA and learning from the Gracies. Can you imagine being...
How Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Changed My Life
It has been eight years since the time I took my first Brazilian jiu-jitsu class. Deciding to train Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and sticking to it, has been one of the most fascinating and life-changing experiences of my life. My life would be radically different now if I never tied that white belt around my waist. Not only would I be lacking super sweet ninja moves, and not only would my circle of friends and career path be different, but I would never have met my wife. Eight years later I cannot imagine what my life would look like if I didn’t train. I wasn’t much into sports growing up. I grew up in Chile and during my childhood the only sport...
What I learned my first year as a Black Belt.
It's been a year since I was promoted to Black Belt by Fabio Clemente and Kevin Sheridan. As cliche as it sounds I’ve learn more in the last year than I did in years prior to the big promotion. I moved to the North Philadelphia area shortly after being promoted, and for the first time since I was purple belt, I got to be a student again. Big thank you to Jared Weiner, Emily Kwok, Phil Migliarese,Jason Frawley and Alex Britto for letting me and my wife Hillary to train at your schools. We really appreciate it. Here are the biggest things that I’ve learned over the last year. I think a lot of the applied to many BJJ players...