When I started training jiujitsu it was at a gi school. It was a fairly traditional school and the curriculum, too, was pretty traditional. On the ground we learned some pretty conventional stuff and on the feet we learned some kind of bastardization of judo and wrestling. These traditional gi schools had a heavy emphasis on newaza (especially guard) and they really lacked the same depth of knowledge in the standing position. This Brazilian version of a Japanese martial art managed to retain some of the original judo techniques and so I remember learning some basics like osotogari and o goshi. But because we spent so little time going live standing, it was pretty rare to find someone truly competent on the feet unless they had prior competitive experience in judo or, more commonly, wrestling. So from my experience the stereotypes were true; jiujitsu players are generally terrible at takedowns. 

So while we would learn and practice standing techniques from time to time, the only technique I could reliably execute back then was tani otoshi from a rear body lock. This technique has a pretty notorious reputation among more experienced grapplers as it’s often referred to by them as a “shit technique”. We often executed it with our hips hitting the mat first and while having no means of preventing a hip heist of the opponent. So while it was very reliable at a beginner level because of its simplicity, it stops working pretty quickly as you go up in skill. As soon as I started training wrestling and MMA it was made apparent to me in live rounds and verbally by my coaches how “shit” of a technique it could be. They much preferred me to either use a cowboy trip so that my hips would never hit the mat or to only perform the tani otoshi if I had two-on-one wrist control to control their rotation once we hit the mat. 

But this is a Judo technique. How could something so impotent still be in their curriculum? Judo, after all, has a very high rate of participation around the world, has a very deep pool of talent, and is competed in at the highest level at the Olympics. You would think they would have gotten rid of anything that doesn’t work. So while it had been years since I thought about or tried to execute a tani otoshi, once I started training Judo, it immediately became useful again. And it became useful exactly because the rules are different from jiujitsu and wrestling. When you throw someone with tani otoshi and their back hits the mat, the match is over. You don’t have to worry about what happens next on the ground. For a long time I thought it was just some antiquated technique that somehow still existed because of dumb tradition. And while such a realization might not seem so interesting on the surface, it got me thinking more about rulesets and how they dictate what techniques are useful and what aren’t. 

And this brings me to modern day no-gi. Its rise in popularity has elicited a greater emphasis on the standing position and from what I’ve observed over the past several years this manifested itself as a focus on high-percentage wrestling techniques of go-behinds, singles, doubles, and high-crotches. These techniques are undoubtedly useful in the sport of wrestling. But are they the best for us? Many no-gi jiujitsu rulesets have adopted ADCC’s criteria for a takedown which require you to take your opponent down and control them with their butt or back to the mat for a count of 3. So this automatically eliminates the scoring potential of a go-behind and reduces the effectiveness of leg grabs because it’s so easy to turn and turtle belly down within 3 seconds of hitting the mat. So what should we use instead? Is there a system of takedowns that emphasizes taking your opponent down to their back? Say it with me…judo. And so what I’ve observed more recently is a growing preference for throws, trips, and foot sweeps. And while these techniques have the benefit of landing our opponent on their back, I don't think that's what motivated their use. 

It’s much harder to maintain a low wrestling stance in a ten minute continuous match than it is for three two-minute periods. There is also a much greater risk to attempt lower body takedowns because of the danger of submissions. You can choke someone, you can dive on legs, or you can sprawl and take someone’s back on an unsuccessful shot. The risks are far fewer when attempting throws, trips, and footsweeps and they also allow you to attempt them from an upright stance. Both the neutral stance and the takedown attempts require far less energy than wrestling leg grabs. I think  when we all started working on our takedowns by wrestling we got tired of it both physically and mentally; constantly throwing hard collar ties and snaps, enduring hard snaps, maintaining a low stance, doing the hard work to get to a leg and then having to spend twice as much energy to finish the takedown once we were there. Judo, on the other hand, emphasizes "maximum efficiency and minimum effort" while wrestling emphasizes being effective,  at whatever the cost of energy is required. Wrestling was exhausting as fuck so we decided to stand up and clinch instead. And now what I’m seeing more of is some version of greco upper-body control with judo lower body techniques and I expect to see a lot more of it in the future as long as the ADCC takedown criteria remain the standard in our sport. This is yet another example of the rules of the sport dictating the direction of the art and that is something that we should care about. Rules will decide what version of jiujitsu we end up watching and they decide what version of jiujitsu we end up practicing. And while it certainly seems unintentionally, the rules have brought us back to that Japanese martial art done in a gi.

A few days ago I received my black belt in jiujitsu and because it was truly unexpected I didn’t really have time to gather any coherent thoughts or reflect on what that milestone meant at the moment. This is a good place to do it long-form but I have to resist speaking about it with a sense of finality. Because it’s the highest rank you can receive, there’s an illusion that it’s the ultimate goal in jiujitsu. But I know this isn’t anywhere near the end for me. I have much more to learn and to experience and that attitude that I had before getting promoted should certainly persist after because our aspirations should be independent of rank. But with that preface out of the way here are some thoughts and reflections on my experiences so far. 

My first exposure to jiujitsu, like most other people, was from watching MMA. Up until then my impressions of fighting were based on what I saw in movies and mainstream martial arts/combat sports such as taekwondo and boxing. In my mind, fighting was just striking and I never considered something like wrestling to have much usefulness in fighting. But as MMA became more mainstream and I could watch the UFC on cable just as easily as a basketball game, I started to see how grappling could be, not just useful, but dominant in fighting. I remember really liking guys with strong wrestling such as Matt Hughes, Cain Velasquez, and Frankie Edgar, but the thing that stood out to me the most was when people would win fights via submission. It fascinated me immediately. It was almost the antithesis to fighting. Instead of hurting someone, you could control them and give them the opportunity to voluntarily give up. And I thought to myself, “Wow, you don’t have to fight to end a fight. What a beautiful thing.” Guys like BJ Penn and Demian Maia immediately became favorites of mine due to their propensity for submissions. But with that seed planted in my mind when I was 17, I wouldn’t start training until 10 years later. 

It was 2016 and I was 27. Like most people at that age I was still trying to find myself through exploring a number of potential hobbies and career paths. Coincidentally I kind of found both at the same time. With a more stable job I had both more free time and the financial capability to explore different things that I enjoyed and a friend of mine who was a blue belt at the time suggested that I try a class at his gym. After that first class, I signed up for a six month membership and that seed could finally start to grow. I often wished that I had started earlier but honestly I’m not certain that I would have had the maturity to stick with it as a teenager or in my early 20’s. This is a discipline where you’re completely responsible for yourself and that first year is very difficult. You have no idea what’s going on, every position makes no sense, it’s extremely difficult to connect all these disjoint ideas and techniques cause you just don’t have the perspective yet, and everyone is submitting your ass. But luckily for me it was 2016, Reddit was peaking, and r/bjj was able to share people’s experiences and advice for someone who was just getting started. I primed myself for failure and frustration and I knew it would be difficult. I didn’t have any kind of athletic background or martial arts pedigree. I was just some software developer trying out a new hobby. But there’s a saying that is something to the extent of, “People often overestimate what they can accomplish in six months, but they also greatly underestimate what they can accomplish in six years.” Nothing worthwhile comes from immediate gratification.

I spent white to blue at Rillion Gracie Academy under GFTeam black belt Luiz “Dentinho” Rosa. He had the classic GFTeam style of implementing a tortuous top game and a fundamental guard. It was a pretty old-school gym and we trained almost exclusively in the gi. I focused a lot on closed guard and half-guard passing. While it ultimately was not the place for me long-term, I’m grateful for my start there. They cared a lot about fundamentals and had separate classes for white belts so it was kind of the perfect place for me to get started. I began to compete at white belt and saw enough success to keep me interested. I was never thinking about achieving the rank of black belt one day. That possibility seemed so far and unreachable to me at the time. I don’t specifically remember what some of my goals were but I do remember thinking that if I someday and somehow make it to purple belt, I wanted to be deserving of the rank. Purple belts were absolute monsters to me at the time. They had a grasp of jiujitsu well beyond what I could comprehend and I thought that eventually I’d want to be at least that competent. So throughout white and blue I competed regularly (another lucky thing for me; my company was paying for my tournament fees) and just focused on growing my technical knowledge and competency, never really thinking about rank. 

Shortly after getting promoted to blue belt I started to become more interested in combat disciplines outside of jiujitsu. I had a friend from high school who coached middle school wrestling and I would occasionally go over to the school to sit in on his practices to pick up anything I could. The typical jiujitsu curriculum is severely lacking when it comes to properly teaching tachi-waza (standing technique) like in wrestling or judo so this was something that I wanted to learn to compliment the disproportionate amount of ne-waza (ground technique) that I was focused on. At the same time I found a Groupon for some boxing classes at a place called Paradigm Training Center. So I was still training in the gi at RGA while occasionally taking boxing classes at Paradigm and as serendipity would have it, this gym had all those other things that I was looking for: no-gi five days a week (which I already had started to prefer), wrestling practices, striking classes, and an MMA program with active competitors. All that and a jiujitsu coach who they had hired about a year earlier to revive their jiujitsu program. I had already heard about him before, Marcus “Boquinha” Bello, a co-founder of GFTeam and a true OG of the sport. He had the same strong top game that was a signature of GFTeam at the time and was also a judo black belt to pair with that. I ran into him after a boxing class and had a short conversation with him about jiujitsu. He didn’t speak much English (he still doesn’t), but I had some kind of sense of his legitimacy. I broke up with my gym and spent the next six years at Paradigm. The idea of a “creonte” was still somewhat indoctrinated in my head so this was actually kind of an uncomfortable thing to do. 

While at Paradigm I continued to compete in sport jiujitsu while training in other disciplines as well. Mostly boxing and wrestling but occasionally some muay thai and MMA. I still really hadn’t entertained fighting as a realistic possibility but I enjoyed training all the disciplines just for the sake of being a more complete martial artist. I began to really appreciate the sport of wrestling and discovered that it was so much more than just what happens in neutral. I wanted to learn wrestling to augment my jiujitsu and while that’s how I initially approached it, I eventually started to enjoy it as just wrestling itself. I loved all the wrestling that would occur on the mat, the scrambles where it could be anyone who would end up scoring 2, and I really enjoyed learning how to ride someone to maintain top position. I also learned to appreciate the sport and science of boxing. The importance of balance and defensive responsibility are at the core of boxing and can be translated to any other striking discipline. I developed very basic but applicable hands. At some point I earned my first promotion from Marcus and that was to the rank of purple belt. I don’t think he knew how long I had been at blue belt so I technically received it a little early and I was initially not allowed to compete as a purple belt by the IBJJF. But that stuff is pretty trivial; I was happy to be recognized for my hard work and happy that it came unexpectedly and not exactly according to some timeline or curriculum when I’d know exactly when the promotion would come. I was able to just focus on training, competing, and growing and still was never really thinking about rank. My jiujitsu also began to be influenced by these other combat disciplines. Wrestling made me favor top position and MMA made me emphasize top control over passing and submissions. I also never really spent time developing a sport style guard such as the seated open guard. If someone disengaged me to loose pass from distance I simply stood up or knew that I could kick them in the face if it were a fight. I only cared about close range jiujitsu; pressure passing from top and guards like knee-shield half-guard and butterfly from bottom where the top player was actively engaged with the person on bottom. I had a couple of MMA smokers at blue and purple and kind of without really being conscious of it was starting to build a skillset and grappling style for MMA. 

I wrote about this more in-depth in another blog post but the idea of fighting MMA eventually grew in my mind but I was always scared of that first step of taking a real fight. I never saw myself as a fighter and the people around me didn’t exactly have the confidence in me either as being mentally ready for such a thing. A traumatic event in my life would eventually change all that and I simply cared much less about the possibility of failure, embarrassment, or even danger. I got my brown belt from Marcus at some point and started fighting MMA. I had a very short and pretty mediocre stint as a fighter but I’m really proud of that time in my life. I still thought of myself as just some regular guy and I never thought I’d go in the cage to fight people. I fought with discipline and heart, which were two things I never would have discovered a level of until the danger of a fight brought it out of me. I experienced a ton of mental growth from having to prepare and focus on something that I was so afraid of all while being very depressed about the death of a loved one and other things occurring in my personal life. I emerged from those experiences very much a different person. Truly difficult things truly change you, and while I hated the suffering that I was going through and would not wish it upon anyone else, I’ll always be grateful for the person it made me become. I felt like for the first time in my life, I truly found myself; in what I truly cared about and who I truly cared about. 

For a couple of years I was very involved with my gym. I had developed close relationships with many of my coaches having worked with them for many years and eventually began to coach myself. I started as just some blue belt but eventually everyone higher than you in the hierarchy will quit or start doing other things while you are ascending at the same time. I was so willingly giving back because I was so thankful for what I was able to get out of the gym and wanted to share that with other people. I was coaching a few classes a week as a brown belt and all our pro MMA fighters had retired so, as an amateur with just a few fights, I somehow became one of the more experienced people at the gym and unwillingly had to serve as a good example for those aspiring to fight. Certainly, when preparing to fight you have to do things the right way and other people will hopefully be able to observe that but when I was outside of camp I kind of wanted to just fuck around sometimes and just enjoy training. Eventually that became a little exhausting for me; I didn’t want to be a leader, I didn’t want to be a role model, and I just wanted to focus on myself again and just enjoy training. I wanted to feel like a white belt again and experience that wonder of unknown possibilities. So in September of this year I moved to Austin, TX to explore its no-gi scene and be closer to my mom who lives there. At that point I left the coaches that had known me for so long and was starting fresh in a new environment where no one knew me. I was certain I would have to build new close relationships and it would be several more years before someone new would be comfortable enough to promote me to black belt. And so not having the burden of worrying about rank or promotion was something I really enjoyed. I was just another hobbyist at B-Team and I was really enjoying training again; learning from and following others who had so much to share with me. I wanted to be anonymous and I really felt like a white belt again. I was learning new things almost every day, had no responsibility for anyone other than myself, and was surrounded by high-level practitioners. 

Three days ago I headed back to Houston because I heard my friend Levi was going to get promoted to black belt by Marcus. He was one of my favorite training partners at Paradigm and I always admired the way he carried himself. It would be a big moment for him so I wanted to be there. At the end of the 6:30 gi class, Marcus whipped out a new black belt from under his gi and promoted Levi. I was really happy for him as a friend and really felt like no one else deserved it like he did. I took some photos, congratulated him, and walked off the mat to catch up with some people at the gym. At 7:30 the no-gi class started and Marcus called me over. In the moment I assumed he would be using me as an uke as he often did in the past so I was a little confused but I saw he was carrying another new black belt. That day I would also be promoted to black belt by my long time coach Marcus Bello and alongside my long time training partner Levi Gutierrez. 

With a little time to let it sink in and think about it, I can say I’m really happy to have gotten promoted by Marcus; someone who I had spent so many years training under. He taught me so much jiujitsu, was in my corner for so many of my competitions, and was someone who I began a partnership with in sharing jiujitsu as I ascended the belt ranks. The black belt truly isn’t as important as who gives you your black belt. He’s someone who really cares about the growth of the sport and really cares about sharing the art with the world. GFTeam, from its roots in Universidade Gama Filho to the modern day, has upheld the ideal that jiujitsu should be shared with everyone regardless of class or any such categorical barrier. All the way back up the coaching lineage, Luiz Franca was someone whose gym doors were open to poor Brazlians  at a time when the Gracie lineage was solely focused on those with enough wealth to afford it. I’m pretty sure most legitimate coaches and gyms believe in and uphold these principles now but I’m happy to have a history of it behind me. I’m also happy to, again, have been promoted without anticipating it, so that I could just focus on training and not be distracted by things like rank. I’m happy that, again, Marcus didn’t strictly follow a timeline or specific requirements for promotion. For most people, he heavily considers things like attendance in the gi and a belt test where a predetermined list of techniques must be demonstrated for promotion. I definitely did neither of those things and it means a lot to me that he saw everything else I was doing and saw the same vision that I had for myself. It means he understands what I’m giving and what I want. The effort that I’ve put into wrestling and judo to become a more complete grappler, the time spent fighting MMA to carry the jiujitsu flag into the cage, and the care I’ve given to others on the team to help them achieve their goals are things I’m sure he took into consideration for promotion. So for everyone the path to black belt is different. The requirements are not the same, the experience up until that point is not the same, and obviously the abilities are not the same. I’m proud to metaphorically (because I don’t train gi anymore) wear the belt around my waist because it represents progress and a milestone in the things that I care about. I didn’t train in the gi just to get promoted. I didn’t ride anyone’s dick just to get promoted. I focused on myself and did things that were meaningful to me without consideration for rank. Your aspirations should go beyond just achieving rank and so, this was kind of just something that happened along the way for me. It’s a cliché but many people say that jiujitsu truly starts at black belt and I think that’s because it’s the time when people finally don't have to focus on rank and promotion cause it’s the last belt. They can finally fully focus on jiujitsu because there’s no other rank to achieve. But for me, I can honestly say that it was just about doing something I truly enjoyed. That kept me going and will keep me going for many years.

Depending on where you learn jiujitsu or whether or not you train in the gi at all, you might have had some exposure to judo. Like many other jiujitsu practitioners I learned some basic judo techniques early on; o goshi, osoto gari, and seoi nagi are probably the common ones. It's important to be somewhat familiar with some judo both as an homage to the roots of jiujitsu but also to have some actual ability to start from the standing position and take our opponent to the mat if they don't do so willingly. But while there's been an accelerated injection of wrestling techniques into no-gi, particularly in the last few years because of the popularity of ADCC, I think that the level at which we study and practice judo is superficial at best. To be clear I don't say this to say that judo is undervalued because I think the basics of wrestling (singles and doubles) are more practical and effective (even in the gi) but there is still a place for throws and foot sweeps so we all end up attempting to learn some judo at some point. So even though it's a small part of our overall practice of jiujitsu, we should try to do it the right way.

But it is what it is; most of us don't have access to proper judo instruction in the United States. Jiujitsu and wrestling instruction is much more widely available. At my own gym we have several jiujitsu black belts with competitive experience coaching jiujitsu and a number of college wrestlers coaching wrestling but only one judo black belt who used to teach a class once a week. It isn't already built into American culture like wrestling so people don't learn it growing up and it's way harder on the body than jiujitsu so so people tend not to want to pick it up as a hobby when they grow older. But it's much more popular in Europe and East Asia where there is a huge depth of competitive talent and among those "who know" it is highly revered as a sport and martial art. 

I got to train judo at the Kodokan Judo Institute recently and while my experience with Judo is obviously limited, I got a very positive impression from it. There are some cultural differences between judo and jiujitsu that are immediately obvious. Judo is much more rigid in its traditions and practice. The goals and traditions of judo, after all, have been explicitly codified by its founder Jigoro Kano and in many ways judo traditions have served as a model for many other martial arts in this way. The gis, the belt ranking, the bowing etc. Jiujitsu doesn't really have the same kind of rigidity and formality. It's undergone the most development in Brazil and the U.S. so it's much less formal. Knowing when to bow and the order in which to carry out certain actions before and after entering the mat, drilling, and going live was the biggest thing that tripped me up. But I'm familiar with some judo terminology and technique so once we got started I could get going. 

The biggest impression that was made on me though was the sharpness of technique. Perhaps this is because judo has a smaller number of techniques and has a more limited ruleset so you just have to be sharper with a smaller number of tools. It's hard for me to say whether this is something particular to judo or something unique to my experience since it was at the Kodokan Institute and the vast majority of people on the mat were black belts but everyone I went with was particularly sharp in the way that they drilled. We spent a lot of time doing uchikomi which is a form of drilling where you do all the movements of a technique right up until the point of the throw without finishing the throw. It's not uncommon to see jiujitsu practitioners doing this type of drilling but from what I've felt it's completely different. Most non-judo practitioners execute uchikomi by just repetitively moving their own body into position (tsukuri). What I felt from the judoka is that they move their own bodies but with the goal of creating kazushi which is the off-balancing of the drilling partner. They all excelled at this. Through every repetition I felt as if I were on the verge of falling. I would either just be barely on one foot or my center of mass would be way out of place. When you're that out of position the throw or sweep itself is so much easier. It seems like they have a much better understanding of this and what we non-judoka focus too much on is the throwing motion itself. I believe "judo" translates to "the gentle way" and it's easy to feel the embodiment of that philosophy in their execution of technique. The goal seems to be to require minimal effort when actually finishing the takedown and that only comes from a depth of understanding in setting up takedowns. Really beautiful stuff and I would love to explore the sport more in the future.

What makes jiujitsu unique from the other martial arts, or at least what it emphasizes more than any other martial art, is the submission. We idealize it as the ultimate form of victory because it represents a physical, intellectual, and spiritual defeat of an opponent. You have to physically impose your technique, cleverly set it up to hide your intentions and prevent any countermeasures, and truly be willing and able to finish so that it is ultimately your opponent's choice to continue to engage with you. I personally believe that submission is king and achieving it in matches and fights should be our ultimate goal. However I think for many practitioners, solely focusing on it has lead to jiujitsu that is lacking nuance and balance. 

Taken to the extreme if you don't acknowledge any form of defeat outside of submission, your game is going to lack many positional fundamentals and in a ruleset that is submission-only there will be a complete lack of many positional battles. But if both practitioners only care about submissions, why should that matter? It's because when combined, positional advancement and submissions attempts serve as complimentary attacks to one another. Forcing your opponent to be occupied with defending one opens opportunities to attempt the other (some might call this creating dilemmas). The classic example that everyone learns early on is the hip-bump triangle. Threaten the sweep to mount, your opponent must defend by posting their hand, and then there is an opportunity to shoot a triangle. And this can only happen when there is a consequence for losing position. In points rulesets you would go down huge on points and in MMA you would end up  in an extremely inferior position. Thus, the competitors are highly motivated to defend the sweep in these formats. It works the other way around too. Threaten a leg lock, the opponent defends by turning or sitting, and an opportunity to take top position or the back presents itself. These are simple examples but there are many more that you can observe by watching high level IBJJF and ADCC matches as well as MMA. The interaction between takedowns, sweeps, passes etc. and submissions attacks isn't just an important part of our art; it is the art. ADCC understands this and has built it into their rules by having strict criteria for scoring takedowns and sweeps and not scoring the turtle position. This leads to many competitors turtling or quad-podding to defend takedowns and sweeps which has lead to many more back-takes and consequently RNC's in competition. 

There is no strict definition for what jiujitsu is. We came from judo but we are culturally very different from their rigid forms and traditions which has allowed for so much individual expression, creativity, and evolution. Jiujitsu can be whatever you want it to be and you are allowed to express yourself in whatever way you want. To me, we're limiting the creativity and possibilities of techniques and sequences if we ignore the importance of position. Points rulesets certainly have their problems but I think they can be improved and for now they are the most appropriate ruleset for the development of jiujitsu. 

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who grew up in Hawaii and he was describing to me one of his hobbies which was freediving. Apparently among very serious participants it isn’t uncommon to lose consciousness on the way back up. This would obviously mean death if they didn’t have a partner to dive with who, in such a situation, ensures that the diver make their way back up to the surface and that they keep their head above water until they regain consciousness. I know, absolutely insane. But when you are pushing yourself beyond your limits it can become difficult to tell when a mental barrier is actually a physical one (like not having enough oxygen to maintain consciousness). Michael Jordan said in his HOF speech that “limits, like fears, are often an illusion” and any athlete aspiring to perform at even a moderately high level must constantly push past limits that their minds create. 

For fighters these barriers come in many forms. They can manifest themselves anywhere from the large scale of the goals they set for themselves to the actual micro tasks that are required to get there. Fighters have to have a certain level of belief in themselves to even set out to fight and also especially during the fight they have to push past many moments when they could give up. Because there are so many of these moments during a fight (absorbing soul-sucking body shots, having their brains rattled from head shots, being exhausted after an extended grappling exchange, or when they've just been generally losing the fight) they have to be prepared to encounter and deal with these moments. Entering the fight, they must to rid their minds of any kinds of doubts or semblances of weakness that could lead to failure during these difficult moments and it is for that reason fighters are generally not prioritizing their own health during the fight. They cannot remove themselves from the moment and think about the long-term effects of every little exchange and decision that they make. All the pain, all the exhaustion, all the fear; these are things that they have to train themselves to push past in order to win tough fights. And when you’re pushing yourself to the limit like this, it’s difficult to discern what's just a mental barrier and what will actually fuck you up. 

Corners and referees have to be responsible for the fighters in this regard. They are the partners that ensure that their heads stay above water. I don’t know if this is talked about enough or well understood but the corner cannot be as emotionally invested and caught up in the moment as their fighters are during the fight. You hear fighters say things like “I’m willing to die in there” because they have to be prepared to perform even when it feels like they’re about to die; it’s combat. But corners have to make sure they don’t actually die, or at least take unnecessary damage or continue past a point that would have a significant impact on their long term health. 

I was glad to recently see Derek Brunson’s corner throw in the towel between rounds when he clearly had nothing left to give at the end of the round and was just eating shots from the bottom position. If a fighter wants to be a “warrior” and “go out on his shield” I don’t take exception to it. They have to have that attitude. But in a sport like this, someone else needs to be responsible for them. It's not actually a fight to the death. The stoppages and other safety measures ensure that it's only a close approximation or a simulation of a death match. 

Obvious american bias here but I really dislike the international rules of freestyle (and greco). Yea the takedowns are scored a little differently but it’s really the rules on the ground that severely limit what I would call mat wrestling. I’ll try to give a quick summary if you aren’t aware of the differences between folkstyle and freestyle wrestling and then explain why I prefer folkstyle in these instances. 

 Freestyle is the style and ruleset that the world competes under internationally in competitions such as the Olympics. Folkstyle is the form that only people in the U.S. compete in at the scholastic and collegiate level. While they have a lot in common on the feet as far as what constitutes a takedown, there are huge differences in what the rules are on the ground. In folkstyle, the person who got taken down remains in that inferior position until they are able to get back to their feet on their own and conversely the person who originally scored the takedown tries to keep that opponent down on the ground in order to make attempts at exposing their opponent’s back to the mat as well as accumulate “ride time”. In freestyle, the person who got taken down remains in the inferior position until the referee decides there is a stalemate in the action while the person on top tries to turn their opponent so that their back is exposed to the mat to score points. The rules for back exposure differ greatly as well. It’s kind of complicated but basically in folkstyle you have to display control over your opponent when their back is exposed to the mat in order to score points whereas in freestyle many other situations score exposure points even if you don’t have control. The rules on the feet are much more similar but freestyle has a pushout rule and certain types of takedowns score more points while all takedowns in folkstyle score the same number of points. 

So why do I prefer folkstyle? Let's start with takedowns. In folkstyle all takedowns are worth two points. This generally encourages an economy of technique because it doesn’t matter how you get your opponent to the ground, you just need to get them there. This outcome based scoring is similar to sports like soccer and hockey. It doesn’t matter how a goal happened or how far away it was shot, the same number of points are scored. Freestyle on the other hand cares how a takedown occurred and rewards risk taking by scoring takedowns with a bigger amplitudes higher. I guess the equivalent to this in another sport might be basketball with the three point line. The ball is going into the basket either way but by encouraging shots from further away by scoring them more, it leads to a different style of play and one that is arguably more entertaining. And the same can be said about freestyle. Having huge throws score more points is more entertaining. More points being scored is generally more entertaining as well. So this kind of begs the question: which do you think is more important? Obviously for viewership having something more aesthetic, more exciting, or more entertaining is more important. But as someone who leans towards being a purist and a martial artist I don’t really care about that; a takedown is a takedown. Being effective is the most important thing. How sick it looked is down the list. Even from an artistic standpoint you could argue that the scoring in freestyle restricts the way someone wants to express themself because it encourages certain takedowns over others rather than giving equal weight to all of them and letting the competitor purely choose on their own what techniques they wish to employ. 

So what about after a takedown? In folkstyle the person on bottom has to actually try to get back up to their feet or reverse the position. And so the person on top must at the same time work to keep their opponent down on the ground. And while in freestyle there is a lot of skill required to stall out your opponent from bottom long enough for the referee to reset the two in the standing position, it is ultimately a stalling tactic. There are reversals in freestyle but they’re only worth 1 point whereas they are worth 2 in folkstyle, which is the same as a takedown. The implication again being that it doesn’t matter how you got on top of someone, as long as you did, we’ll reward the same number of points. Freestyle, again, seems to prefer entertainment value. You can score points by turning someone while you’re on top of them but ultimately ending up in the same position. If nothing happens, the referee just resets the two contestants on their feet. I’m sorry but I see absolutely no point to gut wrenches or leg laces other than they are a thing that can happen and they’ll score points. They don’t look cool and they don’t positionally advance a wrestler any closer to a pin since they end up in the same position upon completion. You might as well score something like throwing hooks as points since they also have nothing to do with getting a pin. But with folkstyle, ride time just inherently makes sense; you take someone down, they try to get back up. Folkstyle obviously has a greater emphasis on control after the takedown but to someone who doesn’t understand what’s going on it just looks like one person on top of the other hugging really hard for a long time and accomplishing nothing (ironically also what jiujitsu looks like to the uninitiated). So yea, maybe less entertaining but the competitors are doing something more meaningful in my opinion. 

Last is the most frustrating and most difficult to explain difference which is the rules for back exposure. In international wrestling (freestyle and greco) the rules are much more strict for back exposure. You simply cannot take risks by orienting your back towards the mat at any time because your opponent will most likely automatically score points by you doing that. Even if they didn’t initiate the position and even if they’re not controlling the position. In freestyle, if you are at risk of being pinned, your opponent is getting points, in folkstyle, your opponent must be controlling the position to score points. I have two gripes with this. The first is that scoring back exposure without control limits the creativity of how takedowns can be achieved on the mat. Because in folkstyle you can put your back on the mat as long as your opponent isn’t putting you there, there are a lot of weird ways you can score takedowns. Modern funk wrestling has taken full advantage of this and we regularly see guys diving for legs to counter, rolling onto their backs, and taking unorthodox angles in collegiate wrestling because they’re not really at risk since they're the ones controlling the position. International rules would say they are at risk but positional advantage to me means you both have a superior position and you have control of it. The second problem I have with how strict the exposure rules are in freestyle is that so many things score points which don’t have anything to do with advancing towards  takedown or a pin (see the Greco match below for an example).

Obviously wrestling is a sport first. And a governing body can make up whatever rules it wants in order to achieve whatever goals it wants for that sport. Greater parity, faster pace, higher scoring, whatever. But I have to look at wrestling through the lens of it being a skillset and an art. The skill and art of taking someone to the ground and holding them there against their will. That is wrestling in my mind and that is, to me, what should motivate the sport. The same argument has been made for jiujitsu but it sounds a little more reasonable because jiujitsu is seen as a martial art first and a sport second. The art should motivate the ruleset, not the other way around. And so if we can narrowly define the purpose of the art, we can start to design rules that motivate the players to master its effectiveness. 

It’s almost like a trope in sports; an athlete experiences tragedy and responds with an inspired performance as if they had been reborn a new person. Randy Johnson having his break out season following the off-season his father passed away, Khabib Nurmagomedov absolutely dismantling his “most dangerous opponent” in Justin Gaethje in his final fight dedicated to his late father, Chris Paul scoring 61 points, one point for every year of life, in honor of his grandfather who was murdered the day before, Isaiah Thomas scoring 53 in the playoffs on what would have been his sister’s 23 birthday after she died in a car accident, Dan Gable using the tragedy of his sister’s murder to focus and train at an even higher level of determination throughout his wrestling career. So many examples. And while it isn’t the only way people can respond to tragedy it’s one that I find very remarkable, and something that I can comment a little about. 

I’m not a high level athlete, I haven’t had any transcendent performances, but I can speak from experience what might be going on in someone’s head after they lose someone they love. Often you’ll hear these performances described as the athlete taking the energy from the pain of loss and directly transforming it into otherworldly performances. But what actually happens is that the pain persists. You still feel it constantly looming over you, while at the same time there is a new sense of clarity and many of the mental barriers that previously existed are toppled. The fear of failure, the fear of people’s judgment, the need to conform to some kind of narrative, things that prevent people from taking action suddenly disappear. You stop thinking things like, “I shouldn’t try this, the embarrassment of failure is too risky”, “I shouldn’t commit so much of myself to this, there are so many easier things I could do”, or “I don’t belong here, what am I doing?”.  Those things seem so silly after you experience real loss. You gain perspective on what really matters and you simply stop giving a fuck about what doesn’t. For many years it had been a dream of mine to fight MMA; to test my skills in an environment where the rules are the least limiting and where the consequences are truly dangerous, but I turned down fights because I didn't believe I was ready or because people who didn’t believe in me talked me out of it. Or maybe it was because I was scared. I lived my life with that mentality until I experienced real loss. Less than three weeks after I lost someone I truly loved, a family member and a lifelong friend, I took my first fight on 11 days notice. It wasn’t remotely a difficult decision to make at the time. I accepted as many fights as I could that year and won the two that actually ended up happening. 

Obviously I don’t say this to brag. I’m just hoping I can provide some wisdom and perspective to the reader without them having to experience tragedy. Unfortunately that’s life though, you aren’t born with all the lessons and the wisdom that you need, and you have to learn it along the way. And what I’ve learned is that you can’t let trivial shit prevent you from being the truest version of yourself. You have to stop giving a fuck. Experience life at its highest highs and its lowest lows and lean into all of these experiences. It’s ok to feel miserable at times. It’s ok to find joy in whatever you want to find joy in. I’m not saying success is guaranteed but you have to give it your most honest shot and you’ll be able to live with the results. Jordan quit basketball and pursued baseball after his father was murdered. A lot of people would consider this a misstep, squandered years of potential. But I doubt he cared what people thought. It was an earnest pursuit rooted in a dream his father once had for him. That was Jordan’s decision to make. He might have robbed people of two years of “His Airness” but who cares what people think. There are more important things in life than pleasing people who ultimately just thought of him as a means of entertainment. And it’s the same for us. There are very few people in our lives that truly care about our well-being and success. Do it for them, do it for yourself. "You do you boo" and your success and happiness will ensue. 

The smaller weight classes are generally regarded as more technical. I’m not claiming that I myself am highly technical but in a gym setting where there is a normal distribution of weights, big people will more often train with people smaller than them, and small people will more often train with people bigger than them. And training under such conditions over time necessitates that those smaller people rely on technique since they cannot as often utilize their physicality. But this really isn’t the whole story. 

There are of course big guys who are cognizant of their strength and weight advantages and they make deliberate efforts not to fully impose their physicality on people. But you rarely see lighter guys training with the same kind of self awareness. Smaller guys are generally quicker, more flexible, and have better cardio. They can fit frames and limbs into smaller spaces allowing for easier guard retention and wedging. I don’t need much space to recover my guard and I also don’t need much space to throw a hook between someone’s knee and elbow when taking their back. There are many situations like this in jiujitsu that people don’t often consider but you’ll rarely these advantages intentionally being throttled. Maybe we could benefit from taking a page out of the “big guy” book and not relying on our size so much when training. Maybe it would help us become more technical. 

But I would argue the more interesting thing to consider is that though lighter people might have to rely on more technique in training, they don’t have to rely on it as much in actual competition because they’ll be going against people their size. We’ve all seen small dudes throwing each other around like bags of potatoes at a relentless pace but not so much at the heavier weight classes. It’s because they have a greater strength to weight ratio. Just look at Olympic weightlifting and powerlifting. Lighter people are objectively capable of generating force at a greater ratio to their weight. The relationship between strength and size is not linear. Weight is directly related to an individual’s volume and strength is directly related to the cross-sectional area of their muscles. And so when an object’s size increases, its surface area increase is proportional to the square of a multiplier and its volume increase is proportional to the cube of that multiplier. Cubing something is bigger than squaring something. Basically, humans get bigger faster than they can become stronger. So lighter people have a greater potential to utilize their strength against each other in competition. Being bigger also means a greater energy requirement which is proportional to weight. But Kleiber’s law states that energy expenditure only scales to the ¾ power of its mass. Bigger people need more energy to move their muscles but they are less capable of spending that amount of energy. Lighter people are better suited for volume of movement and cardio, I shouldn’t need to convince you of this. Consequently, pace can be weaponized in place of technique just like strength can. If it doesn’t make you tired, just keep spamming shit until it works. More attempts means an eventual greater chance of success. If I make 40 attempts at passing your guard during an allotted amount of time as opposed to 30 times…you get it. 

I’ve gone through so much math and science I've almost forgotten what my original point was. Oh yea, outright strength is not the only physical advantage in jiujitsu. Being a smaller or lighter human has it's own physical advantages and those people need to try to be aware of how it can shape their training and how they can best take advantage of it in competition. Just like the big guys. 

About three months ago I made a commitment to practice Vietnamese and/or Spanish everyday. I chose these two languages since I already know a little bit of both and I also already have people with whom I can practice speaking with. The early stages of the journey towards fluency are painful but I can say that I’ve made a lot of progress and I’m capable of forming baby sentences already. And so while I’m more competent now than I was three months ago and I am far more competent than someone who only speaks English, it’s obvious that I’m far from fluent. You don’t measure your ability to speak a language by how much more you know than someone who doesn’t speak the language. You measure it by your ability to actually converse with a fluent speaker, someone who is at the level you’re trying to achieve.

This is obvious in the case of language but so many people miss it in the case of jiujitsu. Very few people who start their journey in jiujitsu eventually become fluent because they mistake arbitrary milestones like belt rank or their ability to submit lower belts with actual competency. I think it’s an incredibly mediocre mindset for someone to measure their ability by comparing themself to people who are terrible. It sounds stupid but I honestly think this is what a lot of people do and they get trapped in complacency and don’t progress because of it. Instead, we should be comparing ourselves to those who are fluent in the language of jiujitsu. And belt rank doesn’t determine that. We can all determine for ourselves who's actually legit and that level is what we should strive for. How does our knowledge and ability compare to theirs? Are we capable of rolling with them without feeling lost? Jiujitsu is a rich language and we can't possibly learn it by practicing it a few times a week for a few years. But all the time we still see people doing things like quitting at blue belt, not making efforts to expand their game beyond what they’re already effective at, not doing anything outside of class to bolster their knowledge, not willing to compete to truly measure their progress, showing up with the intention of getting promoted instead of the intention of getting better etc. I think that our art is something very beautiful but it only has value if it's effective. And so the primary motivating factor behind training should be acquiring the ability to implement one's jiujitsu against as many different people and in as many different situations as possible. 

I understand that there are time constraints in people’s lives. None of us are capable of putting in all the time we really want to. But we should just keep trying to chip away. Every day that we can and with every opportunity that we can find. Fluency requires a breadth of vocabulary, an ease and fluidity of use, and a command of the complexity of the language. And many of us, myself included, have only just begun to be able to form cohesive sentences. Far from fluency but on our way.

Wherever you live stray animals are probably an issue. These animals are ultimately on the street because of unmitigated breeding. Animals are gonna fuck if you don’t do anything about it, and if your parents ever had that talk with you, you should know that’s how babies are made. This wouldn’t be an issue if there were a pipeline for these animals to find homes but they’re also being abandoned as adults. Additionally strays give birth to strays and little can be done to regulate that. And so there’s this huge problem of stray animals. Dogs aren’t wolves. They’re domesticated and aren’t suited for a wild environment, or rather, their urban environment. A feral cat is more suited for survival but so much so that they’ve become an invasive species in some areas. 

But as a hypothetical prospective pet owner, is it my responsibility to contribute to the solution and help right these wrongs? I think at a minimum it’s responsible to spay or neuter your pet if you don't plan on breeding or appropriately allocating the litter. But is there a moral obligation to adopt as opposed to shopping from breeders? 

If you’re getting a pet from a reputable breeder there is more peace of mind in knowing what you’re getting. You know not only its personal history but its lineage. This mitigates risks such as behavioral issues from trauma or health problems that come from getting a pet whose past is unknown. I can certainly see the benefit of that. Someone might also be looking for particular characteristics of a breed. While seeking out physical/aesthetic characteristics isn't important to me I could see how looking for certain behavioral characteristics would be desirable, especially in the case where a dog is not just a pet but a working animal or if there are some other kind of unique requirements by the prospective owners. 

There are clearly advantages to getting an animal from a breeder but in many cases I can’t help but view it as a missed opportunity to help another animal in need. If someone’s a “dog-lover” should they care about the welfare of all dogs or is simply liking the way your dog makes you feel enough to say that? Adopting is certainly the more charitable choice but I’m not sure there is a clear civic duty or obligation to do that. It’s the choice I made with my animals and the one I’ll continue to make in the future because I think that “it’s not my fault I shouldn’t have to deal with it” is generally a shitty attitude. The world doesn’t become a better place when there are more problem creators than problem solvers. But like I said earlier, at the very least we shouldn’t be contributors to the problem. Spay or neuter your animals if you don’t plan on breeding them or have a real plan on what to do with the offspring if you do. Almost every day I see a stray and can’t help but think about their fates in life but also that these are just the ones who have survived long enough for me to see. For every one I see there are many more that needlessly suffered throughout their lifetime. 

Just some thoughts. Like most things, my opinions are not firm on the issue.