I've heard the same thing about judo for years: it takes a long time to learn, the learning curve is steep, and you should expect to spend years working on the basics before you can make much of it work against someone who is actually resisting you. There's truth to those statements. Judo is a difficult martial art, and becoming proficient at throwing another person who doesn't want to be thrown is a serious undertaking. But I think there's a question worth asking: "How much

I've been thinking about a question that I don't have a completely satisfying answer to yet. If you don't want to compete, why train combat sports? I don't mean why would someone enjoy it. I understand that part. I love training. I've spent most of my life wrestling, doing boxing, BJJ and MMA. I understand the satisfaction of learning a difficult skill, the camaraderie that comes from training with good people, and the feeling of doing something physically demanding that most

My father is a farmer. He also taught me how to box. One of the expressions I heard from him growing up was, “Make hay while the sun is shining.” It is good advice for a farmer because there are things you simply cannot do whenever you feel like doing them. When the weather is right and the hay is ready, you have a window. If you spend that window waiting for a better opportunity, you may not get another one. Eventually the weather changes, the field changes, and the opportun

I've been thinking about how martial artists talk about risk. There is a lot of discussion these days about concussions, CTE, injuries, hard sparring, training partners, getting older and whether combat sports are worth the physical cost. I understand why. If you're going to spend years participating in something that involves physical conflict, you should understand what you're getting yourself into. But I think we sometimes ask the wrong question. We ask, "How can I make co

I've been doing martial arts for a long time, and one thing I've noticed about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is that the culture surrounding it has become almost as interesting as the art itself. Sometimes that's a good thing. BJJ has developed an incredible community, and there are a lot of genuinely good people involved in it. But every once in a while I look at something happening in modern BJJ culture and have the same reaction: "Jesus Christ, that's cringey." I don't mean that BJJ

“Let's roll light.” Five minutes later, somebody is fighting for their life over a half guard underhook. I've seen this happen more times than I can count. Two people agree before the round that they're going to take it easy. Maybe they're both tired. Maybe they're trying to get some technical work in. Maybe one of them is coming back from an injury. Maybe the coach specifically told the class that the goal of the round is to work rather than compete. Everybody agrees that t

Someone recently asked me whether wrestling against the cage is an advanced MMA tactic that isn't really as applicable to amateurs, or whether it should be learned right alongside the basics of grappling. To me, the answer is pretty clearly the second one. I don't think fence wrestling is some advanced skill that you learn after you've mastered wrestling, BJJ and striking. I think it's one of the fundamental skills of MMA. That doesn't mean I think a brand-new student needs t

I've spent a lot of time teaching both grappling and striking, and there is something I've come to appreciate more as a coach: Grappling is easier to teach. That doesn't mean grappling is easier to learn. It certainly doesn't mean grappling is easier to become good at. It means that the nature of grappling gives a coach more control over the learning environment. Striking doesn't give you that luxury. And I think that difference explains a lot about why striking can be so dif

I don't know how wrestling for BJJ should be taught. I can tell you how I teach it. I'm a former Division I collegiate wrestler and a judo black belt, so it probably isn't surprising that I teach a lot of takedowns. In fact, nearly half of what I teach in grappling is takedown-oriented, and I teach both gi and no-gi. But the longer I've coached, the more I've changed how I teach wrestling to BJJ students. The biggest change has been realizing that teaching takedowns to a new

I've always loved looking at the different wrestling traditions around the world because they show us just how much the rules and equipment can shape a grappling style. Change the uniform. Change the grips. Change the rules. Take away one set of grips and give them another. Somehow, people keep finding ways to throw, trip, control and take each other to the ground. You can almost think about them by looking at what the wrestler is wearing. Collars, sleeves, pants — Judo. Coll

I've always liked the way judo handles rank promotion. I trained judo for years, and one thing that always stood out to me was the way the promotion system recognized that there are different ways to demonstrate development in the art. There was a pathway for competitors and a pathway for non-competitors. The competitor could use competition as part of the evidence that he had developed, while the non-competitor had a different set of requirements, including more time in grad

The longer I coach, the more I learn about coaching. That probably sounds obvious, but it has changed the way I think about what we do. When I first started coaching, I thought good coaching was mostly about knowing the techniques, being able to demonstrate them, and having enough experience to help someone fix their mistakes. Over the years, that idea has become much more complicated. I've studied different approaches to learning. I've learned about deliberate practice, spac

I've spent more than forty years grappling. I wrestled Division I. I've trained and competed in judo, BJJ and MMA. I've spent enough time in different grappling rooms to realize that every style has things it does exceptionally well, and every style has things that it doesn't spend nearly as much time solving. That has led to one of my favorite grappling mantras: "Judo the wrestlers. Wrestle the judoka." It's not meant to be clever. It's a reminder to look for the gap. When y

There is a piece of advice you'll hear from a lot of martial arts gyms that I've never been completely comfortable with: “It doesn't matter what shape you're in. Just come in and we'll get you in shape.” I understand why gyms say it. Nobody wants to make a new student feel unwelcome, and obviously you don't need to be an athlete to start learning a martial art. The average person who walks into an MMA gym isn't going to be in incredible shape, and that's perfectly fine. You'r

I've spent a lot of years building martial arts curricula. My first real attempt was back in 2007, and since then I've written, rewritten, expanded, condensed, reorganized and completely rebuilt programs more times than I can remember. For a long time, I thought the hardest part was figuring out what people needed to learn and putting it in the right order. What techniques should come first? What positions should follow? When should we introduce submissions? How much should w

There's a question in online discussions about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu that gets argued about constantly: "Is BJJ a fight?" I think the answer depends on what we're actually talking about. If someone attacks me on the street and I take them down, establish an armbar and break their arm because they won't stop attacking me, that's obviously a fight. I'm using physical force against another person to stop a violent confrontation. There is no referee, no agreed competition rules and

There are martial artists you admire because of what they accomplished, and then there are martial artists whose approach to the arts resonates with the way you have come to think about your own training. Donn F. Draeger has always been one of those people for me. I never knew Donn Draeger personally, and I'm certainly not going to pretend that my experience in martial arts is comparable to his. His life and accomplishments were on another level. He was a Marine officer, judo

I've written a lot about how people get better at martial arts. I've written about fundamentals, deliberate practice, drilling, consistency, discipline, training partners, decision-making, fight IQ, physical preparation and all of the other things I've come to believe matter in developing a fighter. And I believe in all of it. In fact, I probably believe in it more now than I did when I was younger. The longer I coach, the more I appreciate how much improvement comes from doi

“Fight IQ” is one of those terms we throw around in MMA all the time. We say a fighter has great fight IQ when they seem to make good decisions, adapt to their opponent and consistently find the right answers. But I think the term is often misunderstood. People sometimes equate fight IQ with being creative, unpredictable or having a huge technical vocabulary. I don't think that's what it really is. To me, fight IQ is the ability to recognize what is happening, understand what

MMA might have the biggest technical menu of any combat sport. You can punch, kick, knee, elbow, wrestle, clinch, throw, trip, sweep, submit, scramble, fight against the cage, fight off the cage, attack from the bottom, attack from the top, strike on the ground and transition between all of those phases. And within each of those areas are hundreds of techniques, variations, counters, combinations and positions. You could spend a lifetime learning MMA techniques and still have