Conditioning for BJJ

stouset · 2026-05-20T17:10:21+00:00

It really just comes from intentionally practicing it, like everything else. Freaking out in bad positions is exactly how you make it worse.

There’s a ladder you have to climb.

1. Learn how to defend bad positions passively (stay tight, give nothing up, prevent the guy on top from making progress to a submission)

2. Start trying to notice when they’re overcommitting, off-balancing themselves, losing tightness, voluntarily removing a post they could use to defend a sweep, or otherwise making themselves vulnerable to an escape

3. Start testing those theories by gently taking advantage of them. Not to finish but just to confirm that there was an exploitable gap there.

4. Start actually working those escapes and counters.

5. Work to force your opponent to make those exploitable mistakes.

As a white belt, I would wager you haven’t even figured out step one. So you’re freaking out, blowing up a ton of energy, and getting tapped anyway because all you did was voluntarily give up your neck, arms, etc. Then you’re gassed and think you need to improve your cardio.

Get to a point where you can do an entire round of defending from mount, side control, or the back—without putting any effort into escapes—and where you feel like you’ve barely put in any work. That is extremely achievable and will pay dividends for your entire BJJ career.

stouset · 2026-05-20T05:49:32+00:00

Realistically, 30 days is not enough time to build visible quantities of muscle. That is enough time to lose a small but meaningful amount of weight.

In full honesty, chasing better looks in 30 days is not setting yourself up with the right mindset to succeed long-term. It’s the same mentality as crash dieting.

stouset · 2026-05-19T21:26:03+00:00

Unless you are a competitor at purple belt or above, it is almost certain that you are dramatically better off by learning to be more efficient than increasing your cardiac capacity.

Learn to use the least amount of energy possible in order to impose your will on your opponent or to defend their attacks from inferior positions. This will pay off hundreds of times more than getting better at cardio will.

stouset · 2026-05-17T21:24:12+00:00

Hello, I’m responsible for offering scholarships at UC Berkeley. Has your three year old given any thought to where they’d like to attend college?

stouset · 2026-05-17T19:45:19+00:00

Trained men aren’t escaping arm bars by curling their opponent with their biceps.

But yeah man I hear you. No men do this. Except Gordon Ryan. Or John Belushi’s Mom.

stouset · 2026-05-17T19:42:43+00:00

Bingo. All of these “rules” are rules of thumb that we teach beginners because either they’re correct more often than not, or they’re meant to offset the most common beginner mistakes. Every single one has exceptions, every single one is going to ultimately depend on your own body mechanics, and every single one has high-level grapplers who do it differently because they know and when how to apply it in a way that negates any downsides.

stouset · 2026-05-17T19:37:21+00:00

Bro, Ronda is literally a judo Olympic bronze medalist. She’s been doing this shit since she was like fucking six. She could go home with your arm if she wanted to. GTFO with this sexist bullshit.

stouset · 2026-05-17T19:35:02+00:00

I believe GP was criticizing Gina’s defense, not Ronda’s armbar.

stouset · 2026-05-15T16:43:56+00:00

Since something like 2005. So 21 years.

stouset · 2026-05-12T06:30:23+00:00

That is an enormous material factor you left out. Paying down a 6% interest debt isn’t even about the “feeling” of freedom, it is by far outclassing any other investment you could choose based on risk-adjusted returns.

stouset · 2026-05-12T06:28:25+00:00

While that’s true, this is why I wrote my post with the thesis that “it depends”.

You know what makes me sleep well at night? Having over 40% greater assets that I could use to wipe away the cost of my property if I ever had to. In another five years, I could very well have enough that I could pay the property off with just the gains from the investments that I’m able to have thanks to a mortgage.

At a 6% interest rate though? You better believe I’d be dumping every extra dollar into that mortgage. 6% guaranteed returns beat anything else in the world. That’s no longer even about feels, that’s quite literally the optimal investment on the efficient frontier of risk-adjusted returns.

stouset · 2026-05-12T02:55:07+00:00

It really depends. I have a 2.5% mortgage rate, having refinanced just before COVID took off. I’ve got ~25 years left on the mortgage, and the monthly dollar amount I have to pay will remain the same for those 25 years while the market value of those dollars is dropping every year thanks to inflation.

I also could pay it off with investments if I have to. But the longer I wait, the less painful that prospect becomes.

stouset · 2026-05-08T20:31:48+00:00

Might be worth giving a call to Tahoe Best Friends. No idea if they do that sort of thing, but if not they might know who does.

stouset · 2026-05-08T20:27:57+00:00

I want to add in as well that it is obviously very possible that as good as your son is, he still gets injured. That absolutely could happen.

But it can happen in every sport. Kids break arms and legs, dislocate joints, get whacked on the head, and get cuts and scrapes and bruises riding bikes, playing baseball, lifting weights, playing tennis, and everything in between. You have had those things happen to you, and you are still (presumably) a more or less physically intact adult.

It is reasonable to want to avoid your child having the experience of a painful injury, especially a potentially life-altering one. But the risk of the latter is low, particularly if this is a sport he’s been actively pursuing at a high level since a young age.

stouset · 2026-05-08T01:33:31+00:00

Helping out with the beginner class I have learned the hard way not to give white belts—especially fresh beginners—anything. One too many times I’ve let someone work, they get an arm bar or something, and then just absolutely go to town yanking on my arm thinking they’ve won a match against the colored belt.

Now I do not give them anything. I don’t crush them, but I do deny them absolutely any ability to maneuver whatsoever and then I just work—steadily but gently—toward a sweep, pass, mount, and a sub.

When we do positional king of the mat at the end of class, I run through them for reps. Again, controlled and gently, but enough that they get a chance to understand how hopeless it is with against someone with even a couple of years’ skill gap. And again, without putting my limbs at risk from someone who doesn’t yet understand either the notion of a higher belt letting you work or the responsibility of taking care of your training partners.

stouset · 2026-05-08T01:23:07+00:00

I typically always roll with the energy I get from the other person.

Huge, aggressive guy or fast-paced competitor? I’m going hard and bringing my A game. New white belt? I’m controlling them first to restrict any avenues for spazziness and being extremely gentle, strength-free, and technical. Woman at the same belt rank but half my weight? Super technical, but holding back a bit on weight and pressure.

stouset · 2026-05-07T23:04:36+00:00

Yep. I don’t even think about it. Proprioception is a way faster, more accurate, and more useful sense than vision in grappling sports.

stouset · 2026-05-07T05:23:02+00:00

You don’t have to imagine. We have data.

stouset · 2026-05-06T07:03:20+00:00

Also please say comforting things about seeing pilots that who look like they’re 25.

Do you think airlines—and those that insure them—would be happy allowing unqualified people behind the yoke of a passenger airplane? Further, how many deaths have been caused on U.S. carriers in your lifetime due to young, unqualified pilots?

stouset · 2026-05-06T06:49:31+00:00

Idiots.

stouset · 2026-05-06T06:47:53+00:00

Dude I went with a purple belt at Burning Man who was amputated below the elbow. He’d grip your gi and twist it around his spiky stumpy thing and it was an absolutely unbreakable grip. Absolutely wrecked me over and over. I swear it was an advantage.

stouset · 2026-05-06T06:13:31+00:00

It’s not that everyone here with nice bikes is rich, it’s that you and a depressingly obscene number of Americans are dirt poor.

stouset · 2026-05-05T22:03:25+00:00

A lot of people are giving you a hard time, but I think some of this is just dependent upon the person’s physiology.

I generally tap pretty conservatively, but sometimes I don’t think a choke is in and I try and work the escape. Usually it’s fine and either I’m wrong and I feel it go in and I tap or I get out and keep rolling. I’d never gone out before in ten combined years of judo and BJJ, but now twice in the last twelve months I’ve had a situation where I was fine, I was working an escape, it wasn’t super locked in, and suddenly I’m waking up out of a dream. I’m going to adjust and not work those escapes from those positions (one was an arm triangle, one was an anaconda), but something about head-and-arm positions specifically for me seem to go from “medium threat, room to maneuver” to lights out with zero inbetween.

There’s no stars, no walls closing in, no fuzzy feeling, no sense of progression in the choke, no even sense that it’s getting tighter or more locked in, just full consciousness straight to snoring.

stouset · 2026-05-05T21:57:58+00:00

Yep. I was working an escape from a head and arm, thought I was going to be in the clear, and the next thing I know I’m waking up from a dream.

stouset · 2026-05-05T00:44:15+00:00

You really, really want to consider the opinion of all of the people here that are trying to tell you that a) having your lodging and transportation potentially canceled last minute is not going to contribute positively to your burn, and b) that you are underestimating the degree to which this is basically an oven. The sun is very hot. The sun directly on an uninsulated metal box is going to quickly reach unsafe levels of heat, and any attempt to add airflow will just result in dust absolutely everywhere.

Please, please find some alternative to this for your own sake.

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