From the Archives

I didn’t forget about you. I just find it difficult to write pages when I’m out of the gym. Most of my words are insights into my classes, more than curriculum itself. So I’m taking pause while my hip heals. I’m now one week post op and feeling pretty good. The pain is manageable during…

This week we are taking another look at guard passing with a few new scenarios to play out. Monday: On Monday our focus was on a very simple concept. Pinning the chest with our chest and out pummeling the legs. To drive in this concept we worked with the knee cut pass. Our class began…

Above all else I want to make sure the pace of this curriculum is entertaining and effective. So this means we can’t spend enough time on a specific topic to become proficient, but we also need to spend enough time that the students have a basic grasp of the concepts. My goal was always to…

This year has been intentionally slow for me. After 5 years of intense traveling I needed to take a step back to make home and health my priority. I’m still waiting on a hip replacement, without it travel becomes no fun at all. So my focus has been on my students at Metagame. I realized…

Last night I wanted to build on the ideas from Monday, primarily in strengthening our ability to off balance our opponent. For 26 weeks we have talked about feet on the hips. For a beginner this is the safest place to keep our feet from the guard. If our feet are on our opponents hips,…

A week in sunny Croatia gave me lots of time to think about which direction I wanted the curriculum to move towards. Context is everything in Jiu jitsu. So the order in which we learn matters immensely. I want my white belts to master staying on top and I need them to understand guard passing…

Attacking from the guard has always been complicated. We learn lengthy techniques for submissions and sweeps only to have them fail time after time in training. They work, the foundations are sound, but they are just too overwhelming for a beginner to accomplish in a live roll. So we have to break things down to…

Sounds easy right? Just do everything from last week but in reverse. Ready go! Game 1: Guard player is the active player and they will remain in for three 1 minute periods. Their goal is very simple; stand up or be the person on top. Top player looks to remain on top and safely behind…

Last night really highlighted the need to focus on one topic for long periods of time. Monday was difficult for most of the students simply because it was a new idea. We typically go into a match with offense in mind, from both grapplers. When we focus on being defensive while maintaining a safe position…

21 weeks of learning how to Jiu jitsu, with very little time spent on not getting Jiu jitsu’d. It’s a funny concept. We often practice defense, reversals, or recoveries, but we rarely work on something as simple as shutting down offense. So for this block I’m asking something very simple, but very difficult. Can we…

These defensive classes are so hard to blog about. Techniques are definitely easy to teach with photos and video, but luckily this is our last week before returning to a more eco style format. So I’ll do my best to recap what we covered. Introduction: Kimura defense really comes down to two big important concepts.…

Only one day of class this week for me, so I was forced to cram 2 days of defense into one day. Luckily, the goal was to give the students a broad overview with one defining concept. In almost every choking situation, the offensive player is looking to compress their opponent. Conversely, a defender always…

Defense vs escape, something I talk about often. We have a bad habit of thinking these are the same things. When we talk about armbar defense the goal is to position ourselves in a way that the armbar is no longer a threat. The goal being, our opponent opts to move to a secondary attack.…

Monday kicked off our defense block, which is scheduled for 8 weeks. Defense can be a difficult topic to teach to beginners. I always want the new students to tap often and early. This is the only way they will stay on the mats, but I also need them to start understanding the difference between…

A funny thing happened the other day. The heat wave here in Germany meant I had to restructure my wrestling class. Typically the class is sparring based with very little instruction. I run it as a practice, with a very high pace, but the heat forced me to slow things down. I thought this was…

Last night was our final day of this block. We’ve spent 6 weeks with a focus on the back so this class should be mostly review. My main talking points were: Understanding the priority order of the position, defining the possible escape routes, and managing expectations. The class started with EBI OT rounds. We worked…

Monday, and a hot one. Last night we opted for NoGi simply because it was way too warm to cuddle in the Gi. Luckily, my plan was to show some back control details that didn’t depend on Gi grips. So it worked out perfectly. Jumping right into things, I took the opportunity to introduce the…

This week we change things up a bit and jumping right into positional sparring. Not with our usual pods but in pairs. The goal here was to do 18 two minute rounds starting from the back, with very minimal intervention by me. The class started with a quick reminder and explanation. I wanted to make…

It’s been really nice to slow things down and teach techniques for a change. While I’ll still maintain games are the secret to truly understanding how to grapple; the technical side of things, once we have context, is an important piece of the puzzle. So last night we began class repeating the warmup drill from…

Being away from the gym for three weeks has helped me to assess the progress of the students and reshape the curriculum quite a bit. I will always go into the year with an outline of tasks, but that outline is meant to be shifted and shaped to fit the needs of the program. Right…

Another technique based class, with our focus on reviewing the techniques from day 1 and adding in another fun transition. While I wouldn’t consider these classes to be completely fundamentals, I do believe there is a great benefit in showing fun techniques that are a little bit of a brain puzzle for the students. There…

Attacking the back brings the class back to a more traditional structure. I always try to avoid making submissions into games. Mostly because I want to reduce the risk of injury, but also because I want the students to understand that when they have a position secured there is a step by step process to…

Our second day of taking the back and I’m definitely feeling the pressure of these short blocks. Moving from position to position at this pace feels like I can never take the time to fully dive into anything. After this block we have covered all of the main positions in Jiu jitsu, so it will…

This will be our first class taught by Lea. So I won’t have first hand accounts of what happened. This means these next few pages will be the topics how I would present them and with the important details that I would have highlighted if I were on the mats with the team. Most of…

Our second day of mount escapes will mirror day one in most ways. I started class with a brief introduction to half guard as a means to recover. I wanted the students to understand that getting to a butterfly guard or full guard position was the long term goal, but sometimes the pathway to a…

One challenge that will continue to present itself is new students. I have to keep the classes progressing towards a blue belt while also making them easy enough for a day one student to understand. Last night was a reminder of that, as we had 2 new students. With mount escapes this can be fairly…