The debate over modern sport Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu moving away from its Gracie-era fighting and self-defense roots seems to come up about once a month. The old-school crowd argues that BJJ has become too focused on points, guard pulling, specialized positions, and winning a particular kind of grappling competition. The newer generation points out that sport BJJ has developed an enormous amount of technical sophistication and that the competitive environment has produced some in

How do you become a great fighter? There are obviously a lot of answers to that question. You need good coaching, you need to train consistently, you need physical attributes, you need the ability to deal with pressure, and you need the experience that only comes from spending years on the mat and in the cage. But if I had to break the actual fighting ability down into three fundamental pillars, I would start with three things: an excellent skillset, an excellent game plan or

I've been working fighter's corners since 2005. Over the years, I've had the opportunity to corner fighters in a lot of different situations, and I've learned that working the corner is a skill of its own. It might look simple from the outside. The fighter comes back to the corner, sits down, gets some water, and the coaches tell him what to do in the next round. In reality, you have about 60 seconds to help an exhausted athlete recover, process what just happened, and make t

Years ago, I wrote a message to many of the top coaches and trainers I had met throughout my time in combat sports. I wanted to know what they believed separated champions from everyone else. I wasn't looking for a particular technique or training method. I wanted to know what behaviors they saw consistently in the people who eventually became exceptional. I received a lot of different answers. After going through those responses and thinking about my own experiences in comba

“Learn the rules like a Pro, so you can break them like an Artist.”— Pablo Picasso I've always liked this quote, and I think it applies surprisingly well to MMA. At first glance, it might seem like the quote is encouraging you to ignore conventional technique. Do whatever you want. Be unpredictable. Don't worry about fundamentals. Find your own style. I think that's the exact opposite of what it means. In MMA, you need to understand the rules before you can intelligently brea

If you are a young MMA fighter and you feel like you are getting tired too quickly during training, there is a good chance someone has told you to start running sprints. “Do some hill sprints.” “Run 10 × 100 meters.” “Sprint until you can't sprint anymore.” It sounds like good advice. MMA is explosive, right? You need to be able to explode into takedowns, throw hard combinations, scramble, wrestle, and attack submissions. So it seems logical that running as hard as possible w

If you're a young amateur MMA fighter, getting your first sponsor can seem almost impossible. You see professional fighters walking into the cage with sponsors on their shorts, shirts, banners, and social media pages, and it is easy to assume that you need a huge following or a professional record before anyone will want to support you. You don't. What you do need to understand is that sponsorship is a relationship between a fighter and a business. A business isn't simply giv

If you are new to MMA, you have probably searched for a strength and conditioning program online. Maybe you asked ChatGPT to make one for you. You may have ended up with a six-day Push/Pull/Legs program, a long list of exercises, several different types of conditioning, and enough ab work to make you wonder when you're actually supposed to train MMA. The problem isn't that any of those exercises are necessarily bad. The problem is that a long workout is not the same thing as

David Epstein's book Range makes an argument that I think is particularly relevant to MMA: in many complex and unpredictable environments, developing a broad range of skills and experiences before specializing can be an advantage rather than a disadvantage. That might sound strange in a world where athletes are constantly told to specialize as early as possible. Pick one sport. Pick one position. Pick one style. Get really good at it. The idea is that the earlier you speciali

Why nutrition should be developed progressively—not treated as an all-or-nothing skill If you spend much time on Reddit or other online fitness communities, you've probably seen this happen. Someone asks a relatively simple question about nutrition. Maybe they want to lose some body fat, gain muscle, improve their energy, or simply start eating better. They are looking for somewhere to begin. The answers often go much further than that. Before long, they're being told to calc

There is a strange idea in strength and conditioning that seems to show up everywhere, especially when people start taking their athletic development seriously. Someone decides they want to become stronger, faster, more explosive, and better conditioned for MMA, so they start looking at what high-level fighters are doing. They see heavy strength training, Olympic lifts, jumps and throws, sprinting, aerobic conditioning, intervals, mobility work, recovery strategies, testing,

Taking your first MMA fight is a big deal. You are going to do something you have never done before, against someone you have never fought, in an environment that is very different from your normal training. There is going to be adrenaline, nerves, an audience, officials, a time limit, a corner, and an opponent who is actively trying to impose their game on you. You can't eliminate all of the uncertainty. That's part of competition. What you can do is eliminate as many unnece

About fifteen years ago, I wrote a three-part series about MMA sparring. https://fairfaxmma.blogspot.com/2011/02/introduction-to-mma-sparring-part-1.html https://fairfaxmma.blogspot.com/2011/04/an-introduction-to-mma-sparring-part-2.html https://fairfaxmma.blogspot.com/2011/07/introduction-to-mma-sparring-closing.html At the time, I was coaching in Virginia as Fairfax Jiu-Jitsu, and trying to put into words what I was learning about teaching MMA. I was still relatively early

There is a limit to what a coach can do for you. A good coach can make an enormous difference in your development. They can teach you techniques that might take you years to discover on your own. They can explain concepts, demonstrate movements, identify mistakes, give you feedback and design training that puts you in the situations you need to experience. Good coaching can make learning faster and more productive. But there is one thing a coach can't do. They can't give you

A lot of people have goals that are bigger than the amount of free time they have. Maybe you want to earn a black belt. Maybe you want to compete. Maybe you want to become really good at MMA or BJJ. Maybe you're 20 years old and genuinely believe you could become a professional fighter someday. But you also have a job. You have bills to pay. You have school. You have a family. You have relationships and responsibilities that don't care how badly you want to train. For most pe

When people talk about mental toughness in MMA, they usually mean someone who doesn't quit. That's certainly part of it, but I think mental toughness is much more than being willing to suffer. MMA is going to make you uncomfortable. You're going to get tired. You're going to get hit. You're going to get taken down. You're going to get stuck underneath someone who is stronger than you. You're going to make mistakes. Sometimes you're going to be nervous before you train or comp

In my last article, I talked about the difference between training BJJ and practicing BJJ. You can spend years on the mat, attend hundreds of classes, and roll thousands of rounds without getting nearly as much better as you could have. That isn't because rolling isn't valuable. It absolutely is. The problem is that simply doing more BJJ doesn't necessarily mean you're deliberately working to improve your BJJ. So if simply training isn't enough, what does deliberate practice

You can train BJJ for years without getting significantly better at BJJ. That probably sounds strange. After all, if you spend years on the mat, drilling techniques and rolling with your teammates, shouldn't you automatically improve? Not necessarily. There's a difference between training BJJ and practicing BJJ. Most people start the same way. You learn some basic techniques, practice them with a partner, and eventually start using them during live rolling. Over time, things

Every MMA gym has heard it. “I want to be a fighter.” There is nothing wrong with wanting to fight. In fact, you have to want it. Fighting is hard, and if you don't genuinely want to do it, you're probably not going to last very long. But saying you want to be a fighter and actually becoming one are two very different things. Wanting the identity is easy. Doing the work is not. Being a fighter means showing up when you don't feel like showing up. It means being willing to get

There's something fundamentally different about combat sports. In most sports, the person you're competing against isn't the actual objective. You're trying to score more points, put the ball in the basket, hit the ball, or cross the finish line faster. In MMA, the person standing across from you is the objective. That's what makes combat sports different. And it's also why I think we need to be careful about how we train them. There is a tendency in some MMA gyms to believe