The recent UFC fight between Ben Askren and Demian Maia had that special selling-appeal of unstoppable force vs. immovable object. Askren has been on a tear with a record of 19-1, mauling his opposition with superior wrestling and positional control. Maia’s record of 27-9 doesn’t sound as impressive at first. However, when you consider who […]

If you have a minute and forty-four seconds to spare, check out this fight from UFC Fight Night 161 last Saturday. Not only is it a quick and entertaining fight, but it’s a great lesson for those among you who are interested in taking up martial arts. It’s important for you to train what I’d […]

Check out this recent security cam footage of a woman using Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu self-defense basics against an attacker with a knife! This incident occurred last month in Brazil, and it demonstrates the unpredictability and unglamorous nature of how self-defense scenarios occur. The video is interspersed with footage of a detailed breakdown of the situation by […]

I started my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu training in 2003, the same year that Quentin Tarantino’s movie Kill Bill came out. I was a lot younger then. Martial arts action movies and fighting video games held way more motivational influence over me than they do now. I saw them mainly as entertainment, but now and then, I’d […]

Recently, a Facebook friend of mine jokingly shared this National Post article entitled “Dodgeball isn’t just problematic, it’s an unethical tool of ‘oppression’” by Joseph Brean. The basic gist of Brean’s article is that competition is “unhelpful to the development of kind and gentle children,” and that the struggles of victory and defeat are not […]

Whether in a movie or a cartoon of some sort, you’ve probably seen a Rube Goldberg machine without knowing its Wikipedia definition, which is: “a machine intentionally designed to perform a simple task in an indirect and overcomplicated fashion.” A picture is worth a thousand words, so check out this guy’s hat on the right. […]

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 […]

Ask any martial artist worth his or her salt, and they’ll tell you that it’s imperative for police officers to learn and regularly practice a solid martial art. This isn’t due to bias and preference; it’s due to the simple nature of what happens when a suspect resists arrest and, quite simply, puts you in […]

Last Saturday, I coached my teammate Rubin Pushpangathan at The Good Fight’s Winter BJJ Open submissions-only tournament. He took 2nd place in white belt gi – a division I love to watch due to its elimination of avant-garde leg-lock games that are typically used to stall. Anyway, with two submission wins, a grueling back-and-forth in […]

The 16th century Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi was the Dan Gable of his day. I’d wager that he was history’s best sports psychologist as well. He relentlessly studied the parallels and symbiotic relationship between martial arts, politics, the arts, and day-to-day life. He’s also the originator of the often-reiterated “Today is victory over yourself of […]