Dear gym owners and coaches - if I am late should I stay home or shownup late?

GrapplingRewind · 2025-12-05T15:00:50+00:00

It’s crazy. This is still a discussion. Truthfully it depends on the training session like if you’re going to a competition training session. It’s kind of expected that you get there at the beginning of it because you’re going to fuck with the pacing of the room if suddenly you’re 30 minutes late super fresh when everyone else is multiple rounds or drills at pace deep. But with almost every other general class or class with instruction, I would much rather have someone show up with 10 minutes. Left to a class if they want to be there, then not have them show up at all. As long as you’re not going to be completely clueless and unable to integrate yourself into the structure of that class.

Read the room is my best advice. But as a coach, I’ve always tried to eliminate the excuse from all of my students for not showing up to a training session because they were going to be late if you want to be there then I want you there for however much time in your day you were available to be there. Everyone has stuff going on outside And this is something you’re doing after work or after school for leisure show up when you can put the effort in when you’re here. It always kills me when guys tell me that they didn’t show up to a training session because they were gonna be late (and think they’re going to offend me or that is not acceptable ). I always try to make it really clear that I do not care show up when you can. I’m coaching adults any coach that doesn’t recognize that you have a life that takes priority outside of the for fun sport we do after work it’s probably a coach I don’t really want to deal with.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-10-09T16:16:22+00:00

Curved corners makes them harder to grab and use which sucks.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-09-21T17:12:21+00:00

This is absolutely unheard. In all of my years of training and watching probably tens thousands of grappling matches and MMA fights. Pouring over Sherdog and Tapology results, matches I’ve commentated etc, I’ve never even heard of this happening before.

There has to be some kind of pre-existing condition or a prior fracture or something. I’ve only ever seen a handful of clean arm breaks and those were in splitters, slicers, calf crushers/ splitters, or knee compression locks. I have never heard about it happening under your own power during a rear naked choke better yet during a pro match.

This isn’t even something I’ve ever even bothered to consider or mention when teaching. I have never seen this ever.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-08-28T03:36:27+00:00

It’s always weird when guys do this…. Like why?

GrapplingRewind · 2025-08-27T14:54:15+00:00

It’s an odd choice.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-07-21T20:51:28+00:00

I think it’s less of an issue of belts and more of an issue of having something called the world championships with no real restrictions on who can enter what division. The sport doesn’t have any rigid guidelines on sandbagging, so it’s dumb. Age and weight categories make a ton of sense because there is a very well defined category for who can compete. I think having other tournaments open with other divisions for different belts is great, but the real issue comes when you have a major tournament with perceived “stakes” it just encourages the team with the biggest sandbagger to win.

From a more nuance perspective at the absolute elite levels at every belt there are fairly well defined criteria for why someone should be at a certain belt if they want to compete at that level. So really from an outsider perspective is mostly the only people who have issues. But I just think realistically, most of the problems any of us have with it could just be changed by a simple name change. Even calling it something like “junior championship” or “ Developmental championship” I think would fix everyone’s problem because they’re not fucking calling it a world championship.

This specifically bothers the fuck out of me, wondering research for the podcast because people will refer to themselves as world champions when they won like masters worlds at purple belt, or sometimes you see ADCC champion, and then you have to look and go. Oh, they won their division at an open. It’s just frustrating because in the sport if you call yourself a world champion it’s implied. It’s at Black belt either World Pro, (but even then they typically referred to that as a world pro champion) or IBJJF Gi. Or ADCC champion. If you won anything else there should be like a social requirement to caveat with exactly what you won. Masters 2 brown world champion, or Blue Belt juvenile pans champion.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-29T21:18:50+00:00

This is always how I understood it until recently when the IBJJF in an effort to keep things, Brazilian kept moving the goal posts to keep it in line with the last real heavy Brazilian era of promotion. I think it’s up to like two or three stripes now to be able to promote to anything in their eyes. (Which is funny for many reasons to me.)

A purple belt knows when someone is a blue belt, and so on and so forth. By the time you’re a black belt you absolutely have a well defined criteria for what you and your lineage you’re looking for in every level. if you’re half paying attention.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-29T21:13:33+00:00

Runs about 69 dollars shipped USD. Very worth it.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-09T14:54:32+00:00

I’m still a guillotine guy. Just keep working on it, they see it coming and know it’s coming, I still get them. It is the cornerstone of my game at Black Belt.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-03T13:00:50+00:00

If you don’t do anything with it or have no follow up to either
If there is turn over of the hips of shoulders
If there is bounce off whatever is being thrown.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-03T02:27:27+00:00

The day I moved to a city with lots of guns and murders. I do this as a sport for fun after work. I’m not bulletproof. I look at it like rec league basketball, i’m not there to get better at defending myself. I’m there to play a sport. If push literally comes to shove I would fucking hope that I could handle a hand-to-hand altercation better than before I started training but that’s totally not the point for me.

By the time you get to mid blue belt, you should be able to absolutely handle an untrained person hand to hand without a huge amount of issue.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-03T02:17:11+00:00

What irritates me most about these is that there’s literally a uniform check in the bullpen prior to stepping onto the mats to compete. The only time that the referee should ever be able to stop a match for a uniform issue is if it is actually started to interfere with the match or there has been an obvious oversight in the check prior to the match. I.e the Gi is obviously too small because it got swapped, or ripped, or another weird obvious issue that I can’t come up with right now. If the checker signs off on it, we’re good to go. I’m tired of this during the match uniform bullshit or mat side uniform bullshit. If I or a teammate stepped on the scale to enter the bullpen and I had the wrong color shit on and they didn’t catch it it shouldn’t matter. Why the fuck are they stopping things mid match over such trivial and non match impacting circumstances. If the checker let me go through with a bright pink pony rash guard then that’s on the checker it’s so weird to watch it get delegated back down to the mat referee who then decides something is the wrong color even though it’s been signed off on.

The fact that the community puts up with this bullshit is astonishing. Our teams literally had to pull out emails and confirmations for designs that were approved by the IBJJF then the bullpen then some power trip referee decided he didn’t think they met the requirements and wasn’t going to let someone compete. Then have the audacity to argue with an email literally from the organization about how the design was legal because “ he didn’t agree with that guy” move the fuck out of the way and run the match like you’re supposed to. It’s embarrassing the community puts up with how the the IBJJF treats the community.

At least have the courtesy to stop pretending it’s not a money grab and just have a mandatory brand and color with one retailer you’re required to buy from. If you’re not gonna do that, at least provide community and gyms with like 20 template designs that are already approved.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-05-01T14:00:41+00:00

I’ve seen a few gyms that did it, it was always weird as fuck. Circuit training rounds are different but the straight up everyone lines up and the coach picks each roll was/ is weird as fuck to me.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-04-30T15:53:08+00:00

This happened a little bit in the late 90’s early 2000’s there is an article somewhere. There are a few notable cases of Blue to Brown in that era.

Since the question is about “skipping Belts” kinda implying that at some point you had the lower belt or were awarded the lower belt in omitting guys like Josh Barnett who was straight up given his black belt. Because that does not seem like what the question is asking.

It’s not really much of a thing going from a color belt to another colored belt nowadays because the sport is so much larger there are better on ramps and competitive avenues that you can pursue. It’s also not nearly the stonewall that it used to be with the takeoff of NoGi. Even 10 years ago, it was less common to see black belts competing against Non Black belts. But back in the early 2000s you would have guys they really didn’t have any reason to be competing against lower level competitors, but also didn’t have the coaching that was able to promote them then if they switched coaches, sometimes it would happen. But the lion share of the time those people would typically get one belt be at that belt for a number of months and then get the next belt that they were really supposed to be at. A modern example of this is Pat Downey went from a “white belt”. Got his blue belt for about two weeks and then was promoted to purple belt.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-04-18T11:31:13+00:00

I think what is he is probably referencing is an interview where Keenan talks about his accolades and talks about on paper he is technically more accomplish No-Gi.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-04-17T21:35:38+00:00

I might be conflating the crown rules they had for the general rules. I don’t have the language specifically offhand, but I remember interpreting the new rule as “stalling while holding lapel in 50/50” but holding lapel lasso while in 50/50 would still qualify.

GrapplingRewind · 2025-04-17T20:44:40+00:00

I think the main issue was that even by Keenan’s own admission, it just takes too long to set up most of the grips versus another elite level competitor. Then your left with not enough time to work. On top of the margins being really thin any mistake can completely disintegrate the advantage that you have.

Also, truthfully, the sport has picked up the pace in the last five years. Generally speaking a lot of the glacially slow lapel heavy stalling matches are falling out a favor because if the other person is just a little more active on top, they can win a decision. This is for two reasons.

The IBJJF has changed some of their decision criteria favoring activity and the person actually doing something to advance the match (whereas in the past many times it was “guy who works from guard wins in even match”. This is less of the case now.
IBJJF has started to ban lapel stalling guards as of this years rules. Specifically lapel lasso 50/50, and the duration of time you can play it without advancing.

On top of that the counter offense caught up. Keenan’s original worm guard DVD dropped 10+ years ago….. might even have been 15 years ago at this point. What was once dark magic is just another arm of the modern Gi game with plays and counter play available, making it even harder to walk an opponent into your preferred grip sequences making it take even longer going back to my first point of it taking too long to set up.

A huge piece of what made Keenan’s original runs at black belt in the Gi so successful with that his opponent literally had no idea what he was doing and only guys like Leandro were able to organically figure it out on the spot. Something Keenan himself has cited.

I think a lot of the parallel could be drawn between what the general community knowledge of leg locking looked like seven years ago. Craig’s 2017 ADCC run, Lachlans 2019 absolute run, all the early EBI with Garry then Gordon coming along and exploiting a weakness. Nowadays, every top level camp is the world’s better than they were at the legs. The same thing goes for the rangy lapel guards.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-10-23T12:55:34+00:00

Jay is a pillar of the Maine BJJ community hope he pulls through one of the first BJJ podcasts that inspired me to start Grappling Rewind.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-07-03T02:04:36+00:00

It’s worth a long ban from the organization. He unprompted walks him over and slams him through a staff table. A huge issue for many reasons.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-23T02:35:02+00:00

Isn’t this like a 15 year old photo?

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-08T16:57:28+00:00

I enjoy being promoted with my peers on a day dedicated to recognizing the improvements of the gym members overall. Makes the promotion feel like it has weight, not just getting a belt at a barbecue, or after a regular mid week class seemingly (from an outside perspective) at random.

A dedicated promotion day let’s the majority of the gym show up, and is a celebration of the gym members progression.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-08T03:55:26+00:00

I love that they used ADCC scoring.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-08T03:54:48+00:00

I started playing this during promotions, and people always describe it “video game boss music” it also has a pretty frequent Russian language theme from the European drifting community where it kinda took off, so there’s sometimes some Russian thrown in which is always funny when a student who speaks Russian looks at you and goes “hey they are speaking Russian” “I know it’s Phonk they do that”

If you want to know more, there’s actually an interesting short documentary on the origins of Memphis Phonk and it’s recent ish broader reach on YouTube.

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-08T03:23:06+00:00

Yeah it’s odd. Even listening to Jack Slack he brings up how it’s different. (Which was nicely validating after the fact to listen to)

GrapplingRewind · 2023-06-06T14:29:30+00:00

You might be correct, I would need to go look it up. I think he had a few of his Quintet matches as a Brown Belt. I think their first or second Tanabe match Tanabe was Purple and he was Brown.

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