The Ninja Blog

Competing is a different skill set from jiu-jitsu. Do you know someone who is really good at rolling but not very good at competing? This person usually dominates open mats by developing a high level of training skills, but has not yet developed their competition skills. In fact they may hate competing because they don’t like losing and find competition too stressful. These 5 tips are for both types of grapplers...........

One of the most difficult, and almost inevitable, experiences in jiu-jitsu is injury. To make matters even worse, many people get into a vicious cycle that follows something like this:

1. Get hurt 
2. Stop training completely
3. Come back ready to go hardcore
4. Get re-injured
5. Repeat.

One of my training partners was recently complaining that he felt slow.

He said that usually he would be faster to avoid getting swept or submitted. He would post faster. Find his base faster. He would be better.

Now this guy is fast.This particular training partners is known to be one of the fastest guys at the gym.  Physically he is very fast. Much faster than me. Let’s call him Gonzales. But the reason Gonzales felt he was being slow wasn’t because his physical speed wasn’t up to snuff...

One of the great things about jiu-jitsu is that different people can enjoy it different ways. I really enjoy playing closed guard. I like the submissions, setting traps, and switching between attacks. When I started working on my guard passing I had to learn to love a different part of jiu-jitsu. The grinding, pressure, and wearing down an opponent to win.

There is no single correct way to enjoy jiu-jitsu and there is no single way to train jiu-jitsu. Can you get better without Grapple.Ninja? Yes. But just like many other activities taking advantage of quantitative data can improve and speed up the process. Who is going to save more money, the person with a budget or the person who just tracks it in their head? Which weightlifter is going to make faster gains, the one who tracks his lifts and notes his progress or the one who just comes in and works hard? Obviously, someone working hard without Grapple.Ninja will beat someone who uses Grapple.Ninja and doesn’t work hard. But, if both people work hard, the person with the extra tools will have an edge.

Grapple.Ninja can help you focus and reflect which will give you the edge on the mats. It will help you start building healthy habits and motivate you to keep pushing as you see tangible results visually! Feel free to discuss in the comments below.