Find a Reality-Check Friend: How to Avoid the Trap of Believing Our Own Hype
There is a scene in the underrated film Pop Star: Never Stop Never Stopping in which beleaguered former boy bander and current solo star Conner4Real starts to question the motives of the people around him. He worries he is surrounded by yes-men, and to find out whom he can truly trust, he constructs a delicious little test. (Note there are some NSFW language and situations in this clip.) He learns his childhood friend Owen is the only person around him whom he can trust to tell him the truth. Everyone else is just guessing what he wants to hear so they can stay in his good graces and keep their spot on the gravy train. The Conner4Real dynamic happens everywhere,...
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?
Meet the Pandas – A Dark Horse in the Arms Race – Jon Calestine
Choo choo! The Jon Calestine hype train continues to run strong with this exclusive interview from Panda Nation’s Daniel Bertina.
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.
Finger, Wrist, and Elbow Self-Care for Grip Fighters and Keyboard Warriors
They tell me jiu-jitsu is the gentle art, but the jiu-jiteiros I talk to are always complaining about something hurting. Perhaps the most common problems are grip-related issues, like jammed fingers, pinchy wrists, and tweaked elbows. Today, we’re going to learn what we can do to counteract that.This is not a grip training guide and I will not be giving finger taping tips. Instead, we’re going to learn to take care of our fingers, wrists, and elbows using stretches and mobility exercises.We can also consider this an extension to my ongoing series of articles on Functional Range Conditioning. We will be assuming you are familiar with FRC and some of its terms from previous articles. (You can read parts one,...
When Your Wife Asks You to Quit BJJ
What happened when Marshal’s wife asked him to quit jiu-jitsu? Quite the story.