This morning, I watched this rather interesting video from Youtube celebrity Chewjitsu. In recent history, he’s become something of a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu counselor and e-therapist. He’s definitely good at what he does, and I think that’s partially because he answers questions while at the same time pointing his listeners in the direction of more important […]

In my last blog entry, I discussed the art of teaching Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to young children, although I really only dealt with the tip of the iceberg. Yes, there’s a balance between discipline and play, and achieving it is critical to keep children coming back for more than one class. Discipline for the sake of […]

I have great respect for parents who regularly bring their young children in to our academy to train Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. As a teacher of children’s martial arts, I’ve learned to be constantly aware of what type of instruction is right for what child at what point in time. In my early years of teaching, I […]

One day, while hanging out with some training partners, I found myself in a debate about what the most fun Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu belt-rank is. Even the no-gi men and women got in on this. Some purple belts said that they imagined the black belt to be the most fun. That’s ideally when you become the […]

I’ve had the pleasure of training with lots of police officers at NJ United MMA. One common theme that many of them have repeated is their dissatisfaction with the lack of or quality of self-defense training in police training academies. In recent history, this has led many officers to seek formal self-defense training at specialized […]

Slight caveat – I don’t consider age 39 to be “late in life.” But hey, by the standards of some hip, young, early-20s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu competitors, I guess that even age 29 could be regarded thus! In any case, today I was happy to discover this short article about 39 year-old Rubens Charles Cobrinha, one […]

Have you ever had to teach or ‘coach’ someone to do a task? Maybe it was a new coworker who didn’t quite know how your computer system works. Maybe it was a friend who needed help with a maintenance job around the house, or even a younger family member who needed your help with some […]

I always feel sad when I see people working out while simultaneously keeping track of time or the “outside world.” They check the wall-clock, check their phones, get pulled-into social media on their phones, and that adds to the high drop-out rate that traditional gyms often have. However, one incredible benefit of training martial arts […]

I love Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu testimonials because each of them rings true to me in a different sense. Check out this recent video testimonial from our student Jay Hernandez here. I’ve been training with Jay for about a year now, and I can 100% vouch for what he’s saying. Here are two ideas from Jay’s testimonial […]

In order to reach the rank of Black Belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu one must first develop a solid foundation of the basics. One of the most important positions in BJJ is the closed guard, and understanding how to defeat the closed guard is the start of developing a good guard passing game. Check out […]