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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

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… Continue reading

This has been a hard year for me, for a number of reasons, but losing the ability to roll has had a massive impact on my mental health. For the first time in 12 years, I can’t roll. I’ve never… Continue reading

I think my favorite part about this class structure is how quickly we are able to move into the action. The students are actively rolling within the first 5 minutes of class. When we have new students joining us their… Continue reading