🥋 Burning Your Black Belt Is Wild Huh!?

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This week's newsletter partner is Steve with Gear Guard. 💪

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QUESTION TIME

What Keeps You Up At 2 am?

Respect and loyalty have always been the big pillars of the BJJ world.

Bowing to the mats, tying your belt correctly, and demonstrating unwavering loyalty to your club by dojo-storming your rivals have been the staple values that the Gracies instilled in the sport all those years ago. 😎

And the respect and loyalty of this era wasn’t just earned by being an excellent coach with a top-tier facility either - it was commanded. If you trained somewhere else for a bit or were caught sharing training tips and tactics with your friends across town - you were out! God forbid you’d ever dream of switching gyms. 😳

Nowadays, many still believe you should stick with one gym and one gym only; however, for many of us, switching gyms ain’t no thing.

Maybe you’ve moved across town, or maybe you’ve moved towns entirely? Hell, maybe you haven’t moved anywhere, and you just want to mix it up and train somewhere else? 🤷‍♂️ Well, you can probably do so without the fear of a bitter ex-coach tracking you down and repossessing your jiu-jitsu. Probably.

So, this week, we want to know if you’ve ever switched gyms? Or are you a one-and-done lifer? 📝

This week’s big question ⬇️

The last poll’s results:

Last time we asked you - “Have You Ever Competed In BJJ?”

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ✅ - Yep, I compete as often as I can

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 ☝️ - Yeh, I have from time to time

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 😎 - Not yet, but I'm keen to!

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🚫 - Nah, it's not why I train

Most of us have thrown our hat in the ring 🤠 and competed at some point on our BJJ journey. It’s a great way to test your skills and see how you perform with an adrenaline dump coursing through your system, but as we mentioned, it's definitely not the only way to get good and progress in jiu-jitsu.

It’s awesome to hear that some of you are competing as often as possible, and just as good to see that others know it’s not worth the added injury risk for them. Especially against those jacked and juiced-up Masters cats! 🐅 

WHATS HAPPENING?

This Weeks Tap’s ✋, Nap’s 🥱 & Snap’s

We hear you. Time is money 💰 - you want your BJJ news, but you’ve got sh*t to do 📝 … those training partners won’t tap themselves. Let’s get it 👇

1.) GRACIE UNIVERSITY IS COPPING SOME HEAT 🔥: from one of their former instructors, Evandro Nunes, who has completely cut ties with GU, thrown his medlas in the bin, denounced jiu-jitsu entirely and even gone as far as burning his black belt^TM.🙄 He’s come out and publicly stated, “Rener Gracie is a spineless rat. Ryron Gracie is actually worse”, and claimed that they ‘prioritized profit over people’.

While we can’t be sure if it’s all profit over people - between slinging blue belts online, pitching hoodie backpacks on Shark Tank and giving professional BJJ advice for million-dollar court cases - profit is surely part of their game.💰

Nunes has well and truly stirred the pot here, with the jiu-jitsu community taking firm sides and chiming in from all angles. However, in true Gracie University style - Evandro is now selling a course and e-book on how you too, can burn your belt. 🤣 

Turns out you can take the man out of Gracie University, but you can never take Gracie University out of the man … → more here.

2.) THE RUOTOLO’S HAVE THEIR OWN PLATFORM 💻: where you can study their technique, take instructional courses, watch sparring footage and get breakdowns from them.

With many widely loved and respected platforms like BJJ Fanatics, SubMeta & Digitsu already on the market, they’ve got stiff competition - but hey, it’s the Ruotolos - competing is their thing! 🔥

It’s early days, and there aren’t many courses there yet, but we all know that they’ve got tonnes of great high-level, competition-tested content to choose from. I'm especially looking forward to the guard passing collab feat. Levi Leary Jones 😉 … → more here.

 3.) BJJ IS CHANGING QUICKLY 😧: … and not everyone is stoked about it.

Both Relson Gracie & Rickson Gracie have hit the air in the last week or so and come out on separate podcasts, essentially claiming that modern jiu-jitsu competition is diluting the self-defence essence of BJJ. 🥋

Relson believes that with the rise in popularity of leg locks, non-standardised rulesets and too much stalling, modern jiu-jitsu has “lost its original character” and “is a mess”. He is worried about BJJ instructors who don’t know how to disarm a knife or a gun - and also asks the question, “How are you going to apply a kneebar or twist an ankle in a street fight?”

Rickson largely echos these points, saying that “the dilution is already beginning because it’s becoming a very athletic sport. You know, it doesn’t favour the weak the way it’s supposed to favour them.” Are we losing our way? Or are we evolving into more of a sport? 🤷‍♂️ → more here.

The Quick Hitters ⚾️

• There’s some solid Halloween Deals on BJJ Gear to be had 🎃

• BJ Penn has a wild UFC conspiracy theory cooking 😳

• The worrying saga of Andrew Wiltse continues 👀

• Andrew Tackett is back in action after CJI. What a card! 🤯

• And if you like your BJJ with a side of slap 🤚

BY BULLETPROOF FOR BJJ

The Weekly Fix

In the last edition, we looked at a nifty little kettlebell complex that lifted the heart rate and got our key muscle groups firing for a nice win-win type workout. 😏

This week, we focus on how you can build a bulletproof core so you can stay safe, strong and invert with the best or em’. 😎

Build A Bulletproof Core For BJJ:

If you’ve ever spent a few minutes in open guard trying to track a fast-moving opponent - you’d have realised just how much core strength BJJ requires. 😮‍💨

Aside from being able to keep up with the more agile grapplers, having a solid core is required to generate power, protect your back and get yourself moving and rolling like an athlete! 🤼

The video above shows some advanced toe-to-bar style core-building routines, so be warned, this should be a test for even the most hard-core among you #pundefinitelyintended.

If you’re digging The Weekly Fix - sign up for your 7-day free trial with Bulletproof For BJJ and take the app for a spin! 👇

WHAT’S SO FUNNY?

The Meme Open Mat:

Election Shmemection. Slap and bump baby! 🔥…

LET’S GET TECHNICAL

The Good Option:

Jason Rau is a bit of a sleeper in the BJJ world. But he’s probably your favourite grappler’s favourite grappler.

While he might not be the biggest name winning all the major competitions - he is widely known as a brilliant and innovative jiu-jitsu mind, with many of the top players often training with him and adapting his techniques.

In the clip below, Shawn Melanson gives some great details on a staple from Jason’s passing system that everyone seems to want to use lately - The Rau Drag. Is it simple? ✅ Is it effective? ✅ Then lessgo! 

Grab a cuppa ☕️ and notepad 📝 👇

The Not-So-Good Option:

The Not-So-Good Option this week is trusting your friends when they have a history of setting up some nasty pranks. 🤦

Following on from his wildly successful ‘fake white belt’ prank video, Jordan Presinger has put together a Round 2 inception-style prank where his black belt friend comes in and pretends to be a white belt, but unbeknownst to him, all the other ‘white belts’ are actually black belts too.

It’s all in good fun, but it’s pretty funny watching this poor guy question everything he knows as the white belts start taking him out. Check it out.👇

YOU WIN, WE WIN!

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All we ask for is that you share our newsletter with some of the other BJJ savages in your circle - we will even give you heaps of cool stuff to say thanks! ⬇️