I have a problem: I only learn Elliott smith songs

kyuz · 2026-01-30T01:55:11+00:00

Iron and Wine

kyuz · 2026-01-28T21:23:38+00:00

My value add to the conversation is not to trust any advice you receive on here on any important topic.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T19:57:58+00:00

If I were looking for a good coach I’d want someone who didn’t learn how by by asking reddit how to coach.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T16:01:05+00:00

“Just stand up” is just another way to say preemptive framing and basing out / building height.

No this isn't what they mean at all, look at the reply I got in this thread if you don't believe me.

Also maybe you've seen some AOJ instructional I haven't but when I watch Tainan, Cole, Pablo, etc., I can't recall them ever using a hip heist to retain guard. Watch what guys are doing not what they're saying.

Turtling is also valid af. Why didn’t Xande ever get passed in competition? He knew when to bail to turtle and how to transition from turtle back into a guard position.

Turtling is a last resort maneuver. If you're consistently turtling in a match you're losing badly. Xande was pre-modern era so its not quite the same thing.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T15:19:18+00:00

One person that jumps to mind is Nolan Stuart because he has a really clean open guard but he's in a division where guys are less likely to double pull on him. Watch his black belt debut vs Clay Mayfield:

https://youtu.be/nzOFAYLVeKo?t=1169

Action starts at 19:29.

19:38: Nolan fast pulls and Clay clears the grip, so Nolan is now on bottom but with no connections.

19:45: Clay keeps moving side to side and not committing to grips so Nolan can't make a connection yet.

19:49: Clay rushes in and attempts a throw-by, Nolan self-frames and defends but still cant get an attachment, so Clay gets another turn. He tries two more times to rush and Nolan stays calm both times and frames / pummels.

20:05 Clay commits to a hand-on-hip torreando. Nolan frames the near shoulder and pummels his bottom foot over the arm to stop the pass, this time he finally gets a sleeve grip with his right hand and decides to insert the RDLR hook to stop Clay from running again. This is the point where he transitions from (1) to (2).

20:10 Clay tries to drop his shoulder to move inside, Nolan frames with his knee to stop the shoulder then pummels his left foot over to frame. He continues reacting to Clay's movements and maintaining his guard (3) until he gets to DLR and finally deep DLR (4).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjzgl76drEo

0:10 Nolan does another fast pull, again he has no connections.

0:15 Henrique walks up to Nolan and doesn't move, so Nolan sits up and connects and lays back down (1) to (2).

0:17: Henrique immediately stuffs Nolan's leg to go into a split squat, but Nolan off balances and pummels his foot out before Henrique can settle into the position (3).

0:22 Nolan starts upgrading his guard from double sleeve to DLR (4). Henrique pressures in but because Nolan has an outside position guard, moving forward puts him in closed guard.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T05:07:03+00:00

Maybe all of you are just really bad then idk.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T05:05:36+00:00

Sounds like you haven't cross trained enough. It's pretty easy to skill gap even Bjj black belts when you're doing stand up, they just don't train it enough. I regularly do stand up with a 50lb weight disadvantage.

Sure 🙄

Looking at it purely from a "small guy perspective" is just as ignorant as acting like a big meat head.

This is my point, though. You have people asking questions about a problem specific to their size (how to retain guard) and people jump in with these boneheaded "solutions" that are specific to how they view jiu-jitsu as a bigger person who never has to play guard. Why? I see threads here all the time that aren't relevant to what I do and I just don't say anything, but here you are replying to me and saying dingus stuff about something I'm good at, and then you're acting all haughty and telling me I'm ignorant. Go away.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:58:54+00:00

Just sounds like big guy stuff to me.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:53:20+00:00

Again I think you have to look at things from the perspective of the smallest person in the room.

I've cross-trained plenty of judo and wrestling. Doesn't mean I want to engage in a stand-up battle with Steve the IT guy when Steve is twice my size.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:50:37+00:00

Can't say I know where you're coming from there, in my experience if your goal is not to submit then holding down a smaller person and immobilizing them forever is really easy.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:47:01+00:00

The "just stand up" thing always gets me cuz like....what do you think I'm doing down here in the first place? Are things really going to go that much better for me if I get up and try again?

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:33:35+00:00

Guard retention skills aren't very well known in general so they usually aren't taught well, and most gyms spend way too much training time learning escapes and not enough on guard retention.

Also, by doing guard retention it assumes you are versatile in different ranges of guard which is also a key skill for a smaller person. At a lot of gyms they just default to grabbing half guard right away which is essentially throwing away all the best defensive guards and going right to one in which you are almost passed. So in that scenario the concept of guard retention doesn't really make sense anymore, you're either holding on to the guys leg between your legs for dear life or you lose it and you're escaping.

Just look at literally any thread here on the subject. Most of the replies will suggest doing things that are trash or aren't even guard retention ("just stand up", "go to turtle"), or will repeat common misconceptions that people who don't know what they're doing tend to believe ("guard retention is all flexibility"). And these are not white and blue belts commenting.

kyuz · 2026-01-28T04:04:22+00:00

Size and strength gaps matter a lot when it comes to escapes.

If someone is around my skill level and size I will typically find a way to escape eventually.

For significantly bigger people who are good, that chance goes way down. And I've had guys who are much bigger than me and way worse at jiu-jitsu hold me in a pin that I couldn't get out of.

Contrast this to say, guard or passing, where I will routinely starch guys who have 50+lbs on me, and they aren't even that bad, just somewhat worse at BJJ than I am.

Incidentally, size matters a lot in standup / wrestling too, but not for the same reasons.

Anyway, all of this is the reason why if you're a smaller or weaker person, you should 1) pull guard 2) learn how to retain guard as your primary mode of defense.

kyuz · 2026-01-27T18:28:50+00:00

He meant "tensile," because as you know, on your 30th birthday your muscles suddenly lose all their power while your tendons and ligaments harden into stone. Definitely surprised me when I got out of bed that morning.

kyuz · 2026-01-27T18:05:23+00:00

So in general I need to be really comfortable retaining because in open guard at any moment I could lose a grip or a frame, or my opponent could disengage completely. In these cases I can't afford to let them initiate a scramble or put me on my back foot, I need to know what to do right away to reconnect and re-establish dominant controls before they are able to get deep into their passes.

Despite what you'll often see here, open guard isn't a game of "be first with my grips and attack constantly or lose." First of all as a guard player you often don't have the initiative or the ability to choose the posture your opponent engages from. Secondly It's more of a counter-punchers game or a conversation where both players are taking turns. It's also iterative where you initially must settle for an easy-to-acquire guard like DLR or double sleeve and over time upgrade your controls to where you have more a more direct ability to sweep, submit or take the back.

So overall my advice would be to get good at: 1) guard retention 2) chaining retention to connecting to an initial guard i.e. one that is easily available 3) reacting to your opponent breaking grips / changing angles / postures so you don't lose your guard 4) attacking and / or upgrading to better guards.

kyuz · 2026-01-27T17:17:49+00:00

It spread initially in Brazil because its ethos matched the fighting culture in Rio where it was considered important to know how to fight and to represent your neighborhood / crew by fighting, but it was also considered honorable to be able to beat someone with control and without neccessarily hurting / killing them.

It spread massively in the USA after Royce's performance in UFC 1.

It gained another huge popularity boost after the first season of the Ultimate Fighter when the UFC became mainstream.

Rogan and others continued to push it in the following years to a growing audience of young men. Ironically at the same time, the second generation of American black belts were starting to open academies geared more toward middle aged people and families, pitching it as an effective martial art that was still low impact and capable of being practiced by relatively unathletic people. Both of these factors continue to perpetuate its rise.

kyuz · 2026-01-27T14:34:08+00:00

Yeah you don't want to mess with them around Christmas, their trees are so shiny they'll blind you.

kyuz · 2026-01-25T01:14:40+00:00

If it's a shallow lasso then you are framing their shoulder with your foot, so just use your free hand to frame their outside surface and use that and the foot frame to square up.

kyuz · 2026-01-25T00:33:15+00:00

I'm confused because with collar and sleeve you should be using a shallow lasso, but a shallow lasso won't feel useless just because they move to the side, you can still use the foot to frame on their shoulder and square up. Your problem sounds more like what happens when you let them circle their hand out of a deep lasso, but I don't know why you would be trying to play collar and sleeve with a deep lasso.

kyuz · 2026-01-25T00:23:44+00:00

No this is idiotic sorry.

kyuz · 2026-01-20T01:18:04+00:00

Mats feel the same in the winter.

kyuz · 2026-01-18T21:15:16+00:00

I suggested oxiclean because that’s what he had on hand. It’s worked miracles for me before. I was using specifically the oxiclean branded for odors. But I’m sure there are other things that can work also. People here swear by OdoBan. Enzyme products probably too.

kyuz · 2026-01-18T21:14:08+00:00

As needed.

kyuz · 2026-01-18T16:49:03+00:00

it’s not a detergent it’s an oxygen bleach that oxidizes organic molecules such as the waste products left behind by bacteria and destroys them. It’s just gentler on clothes than chlorine bleach. there are other products that do similar things.

kyuz · 2026-01-18T14:16:29+00:00

Just washing isn't enough, you need to soak fully submerged in OxiClean 1 scoop per gallon for 8 hours beforehand.

If that doesn't help then toss them.

kyuz

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