23 year-old Tom Coda is one of our most consistent and dedicated BJJ students, and his hard work paid off exponentially last Sunday at the 2019 IBJJF NY Spring Open tournament in New York, NY. He straight-up won his blue belt no-gi division, and he took silver in his gi division, coming up short in […]

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 […]

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 […]

When I was in college, I remember my favorite professor describing the creative writing process: “It’s hard to be simple, but it doesn’t have to be.” I think that’s true of any walk of life. Over-complicating things seems to come natural to us, and the first things we forget are the basics. That’s a lesson […]

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 […]

I used to hate nutritional advice articles. But then again, that was when I was in my early 20’s and I was worried about the fat-content of peanuts and walnuts. In other words, I was a white belt in basic nutrition because I considered it a hassle to deal with (i.e. why should I “fix” […]

  Over the past couple days, one of the little, viral stories that began circulating through the internet was that of a man being assaulted by a mountain lion and then using a headlock to break the animal’s neck. Here, KSBY News reported that former NCAA wrestler Robin Olson had been hiking outside of a […]

In the early 2000’s, before beginning any martial arts training, I was a fan of Toughman boxing contests on TV. The draw of these bouts was their human-interest factor: two non-professional fighters would don headgear and 16oz gloves, meet in the ring, and slug it out for three one-minute rounds. This premise was ridiculous but […]