With Tobey Maguire doing the podcast rounds for his new movie Pawn Sacrifice, Bobby Fischer is reentering the public conversation. Well, maybe not the general public conversation. Chess isn’t the sexy Cold War sport that it used to be, but a few of us probably remember winding our way through the dusty stacks of a public library to find a hidden backroom where dozens of young children quietly hunched over chessboards. Bobby Fischer was something of a hero at the time (and that legacy has been tarnished by his mental unhinging). Searching for Bobby Fischer, a film about child chess prodigy Josh Waitzkin—now a Marcelo Garcia black belt—was just hitting VHS and my brothers and I were giddy with chess...

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I have been competing for a long time. I actually signed up for my first tournament before I started training. Yes, you read that correctly. That, in itself, is a story worth reading if you haven’t heard it yet already. Go here to get caught up. My most recent competition was Dec. 6 of 2014, making this weekend a full year since I last stepped onto the competition. I’m not sure what I had expected from stepping away from competition after doing it intensely for 7 years, competing an average of 8 times a year, but it’s been weird. When the New York Open and No-Gi Pans and trips to California become a regular part of your calendar, leaving them...

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I have been running a turkey roll since my first teaching gig as a purple belt—all the way back in 2011. The original school I taught at was a whopping 3 blocks from my parents’ house. Talk about an easy commute, so sneaking in an extra training session before stuffing myself with turkey was a no brainer. And even though my life is dramatically different 4 years later, I am still thankful for it. As I look back, I never thought this simple open mat would come to mean so much to me. I started a tradition at the school, and my friend Dave, who is now the head instructor, has continued it. While it’s true that we use most...

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I have a confession: I was obsessed with Sherlock Holmes growing up. I told my Mom that I wanted to be a detective when I grew up, and I trotted around the house with a magnifying glass looking for mysteries to solve. It turned out there wasn’t much work for a six year-old Chilean Sherlock Holmes, so I never got to pull the trigger on living the full Sherlock Holmes experience, roaming around England, living exciting and mysterious adventures. Until Reilly Bodycomb came along. I first met Reilly at a seminar at 50/50 a few months earlier. A mutual interest in both grappling and Magic: the Gathering (a trading card game) led us to becoming friends very quickly. When Polaris...

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I have spent countless hours packed in a car with my friends Dave, Andrew, Greg, and Will. We drove to seminars, tournaments, and open mats. These trips forged our friendship and were the start of more than a few adventures. As often happens when three grapplers unite around their obsession with jiu-jitsu, we sometimes didn’t make the wisest decisions.One of our greatest hits: We drove to Boston to compete in the Boston Open right before Hurricane Irene hit.This epic adventure took place in August of 2011. I was a purple belt. Dave, Andrew, and Greg were blue belts. We were all living and training in New Jersey at the time. As the tournament grew near, Irene coverage took up more...

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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....

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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...

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