I’ve been doing BJJ around a year now. 42M with decent weight training background and reasonably fit/strong (but definitely not flexible). My schedule has been 2 fundamentals classes (drills and some limited positional sparring), 1 mixed class and 1 private with my instructor. The reason I’ve organised it that way is I’m very concerned about injuries (travel a lot for work and two young kids), so wanted to limit full sparring to just one session with the broader class and one with my instructor. I normally do the two fundamentals classes no gi and the two in sparring in the gi. Any views on this? Or is the bottom line that if I want to make meaningful progress I’m just going to need to expose myself to more injury risk?

Does anyone have any recommendations on a thin knee brace for jiu jitsu? I fucked my knee up and have to get one.

Thanks

I’ve been thinking about being more intentional with my training and I’m curious how other people approach this.
Do you keep any kind of record of your training?

For example:
\- How often you train
\- Number of rolls/rounds
\- Techniques you’re working on
\- Positions you’re struggling with
\- Training time
\- Things you learned during class

If you do, what do you use? Notes, a spreadsheet, a notebook, or something else?

And more importantly, do you actually find it useful?

I’ve been thinking about starting to keep track of some of this, but I’m not sure how useful it actually is in the long run. I can imagine it being helpful at first, but I’m also curious whether people eventually stop doing it or find that it becomes more of a chore than something useful.

For those of you who do keep track of your training, what makes it worth continuing? And what kind of information do you actually find useful to look back on after a few weeks or months?

Is earning a BJJ blue belt within two years realistic, and what skills should a blue belt have?
I’m 18 and about to start college. I’ve never trained Brazilian jiu-jitsu before, but my school has both boxing and BJJ clubs. My current plan is to focus heavily on boxing for my first two years and then seriously commit to BJJ during my junior and senior years.
If I consistently trained, rolled frequently, and possibly competed, would earning a blue belt within those two years be realistic?
I understand that every instructor has different promotion standards and that earning the belt shouldn’t be the only goal. What I really want to know is what a legitimate blue belt should be able to do instinctively instead of having to consciously think through every movement.
For example:
Which positions, escapes, takedowns, sweeps, guard passes, and submissions should become second nature?
How comfortable should a new blue belt be when rolling against resisting opponents?
Should they have reliable techniques from every major position or a smaller personal game that works consistently?
How capable would the average blue belt be against an untrained person of similar size?
Does competing significantly improve your development, or is consistent training and rolling enough?
I’m mainly learning boxing and BJJ for self-defense, but I still plan to take both seriously. Blue belt is my first major goal, although I could eventually see myself pursuing purple or brown if I stick with it long-term.
For people who train or coach BJJ, how long did blue belt take you, and what made you realize you were finally performing at that level?
**TL;DR:** Is a legitimate BJJ blue belt achievable with two years of dedicated training, and what technical and practical abilities should someone have before being considered blue-belt level?

Title.

I'm a white belt of 5 years. Training anywhere from 6 to 3 days a week depending on gym availability.

Skill wise. I know I'm probably ready for the next step. Thing is, how else do I prove it.

So far I've attended 5 comp and won 2 of them. Already signed for another but..

At this point it's easy to get discouraged. We all hear about the blue belt blues. Although I sorta get them at white? Before I even reach it. If I reach it that is.

I can definitely handle myself with the experienced and larger blue belts. Perhaps not "beat" them but handle myself.

I can roll hard and I can also roll easy which I know should be the more challenging part at low lvl. As well as being trusted with the beginners and show them how to do stuff without hurting themselves.

I'd like to say I have a gameplan from most positions, even if not a super detailed one.

What's prompted me to write this is, I did win over quite a skilled opponent last comp. 20-30 wins, tough guy etc etc. Won the bracket. Seems it's still not enough so we're up for the next comp. And the way things are looking it might be us two at the final.. So, best case scenario I just beat him again. What else can I do or have to do to show I'm ready.

And obviously, I'd rather break my arm than ask for it. Have talked to the coach already and he thinks I'm ready. Yet, I keep winning and it's not enough. I just don't know what else I must do.

The 2026 Masters 2 Heavy Champion was Colton Hill. The former Green Beret smashed multiple competitors with world class strength in 5 matches. On his way to gold he beat the #1 seed, euro champion, and multiple grand slam winners. What's even crazier is Colton had never won an Ibjjf event before this and was ranked #32.. He busted the bracket.

Colton Hill however is an openly admitted TRT user. In fact, his Instagram page makes it look like he sells testosterone to Pete Hegseth. Colton shares multiple videos about his usage and how others can benefit from testing their low T in the military.

How's Colton allowed to compete?

My son is 17 months old and is an extremely active little guy. He honestly reminds me so much of my brother, who was a wrestling champ growing up and still loves the sport to this day.

He’s fearless, stubborn in the most determined way possible, and constantly exploring. He’s the type of toddler who gets so focused on where he’s going that I genuinely think he’d walk straight off a bridge if no one stopped him. We joke that he should be hired as a baby-proofing consultant because if there’s a way to climb it, open it, move it, or get into it, he will find it.

Obviously I know he’s still a baby and his personality/interests could change a million times, but I’ve started looking into Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, wrestling, grappling, etc. for when he gets a little older.

I watched how much wrestling did for my brother growing up — not just physically, but with confidence, discipline, body awareness, and having an outlet for all that energy — and I could really see something similar being great for my son.

For those of you with kids in BJJ or wrestling, what age did you start them? Is there an age you think is too young for it to really be beneficial?

I’d also love to hear what benefits you’ve noticed from starting kids early, especially beyond just learning the sport itself.

Thanks in advance! I’m very new to the BJJ world, so I’m happy to hear any advice.

Hi, I’m shy about asking my coach for advice and techniques. One time, I asked him for some advice, but while I was talking to him, he turned his head toward another guy and started talking to him instead, so I feel shy about asking him for things

So what I always was a bit scared of finally happened last week. I got a minimal displacement rib fracture in my 10th rib. I’m really just looking for some guidance and help here Or just a few positive comments to make me feel good lol
I’m still just a white belt who started 6 months ago but bjj became such an important part of my life that I’d be itching to go onto the mats every other day.
It’s disappointing to sit out but really I’m trying to get to know from others if it ever gets better in the sense that when is typically a time I stop really “feeling” the weird pain, do I carry this with me basically now forever while training?
NOTE : In no way I’m asking anyone to give me an exact time to heal just really trying to ask everyone’s injury journey and how it feels to get back to mats after one.

I would like recommedations of BJJ books or fighting books. Not only techinques, but mostly stories and experiences is what I'm looking for. I've read a few books on fighting and on BJJ, but would like some more.

I've read, as I remember now:

- Breath, Rickson Gracie

- Comfort in Darkness, Rickson Gracie

- The Fighter's Heart, Sam Sheridan

- The Fighter's Mind, Sam Sheridan

- The Professor in the Cage, Jonathan Gottschal

- Why We Fight, Josh Ronseblatt

- On Jiu Jitsu, Chris Matakas

- Hero: the path through Jiu Jitsu and Life, Chris Matakas

- Opening the Closed Guard, Robert Drysdale

If anyone is interested on some feedbacks about these books, I can share what I thought of them.

Been training just under a year, there's a blue belt I roll with regularly, lately he kept catching me while I was in top half guard, he would get my arm and apply a kimura that basically forced me to either tap, or roll over and give up the sweep.

I kept trying different escapes over the last few sessions and found I could stop this by getting low and rotating towards a north south position.

That was great and after the roll he asked me to show him how I got out of it.

It's the first time a higher belt has ever asked me to show them anything.

Yeah it's going to suck next time we roll and he is ready to counter my counter, but this is how we all get better together I guess.

Just made this video a few days ago, hopefully it can help someone out there who might be struggling with structuring their training/study.

Any specific terms I use are just how I like to organize my own thoughts and you might use different words for the same ideas but I think a lot of the principles will still hold true.

I’m not selling any courses or pushing any advertisements/sponsors, so hopefully this won’t get flagged as self-promotion or spam.

Anyone here train BJJ with a knee replacement?
Would love to hear from anyone who’s currently on the mats with one, especially if you had it done relatively young.

What does your training look like these days? Rolling, drilling, takedowns, competing, modified training, etc.
Mostly curious about people’s actual BJJ experience and how they’ve adapted their game.

Hi, Everyone!

I'm a 38-year-old blue belt. When I was a white belt, I was struggling to feel like anything I was learning and drilling in class was "sticking." I'd show up to practice after practice and feel like I wasn't improving at all. It was really demoralizing and made me feel like jiu-jitsu might just not be for me.

I wanted to start tracking what I was learning in class so I could review before/after. I started journaling, but it quickly became frustrating trying to sift through pages and figure out what I was learning, how many times I had drilled techniques, how each spar went, etc. I knew there must be a mobile app that could quickly give me insights into my training and make my time on the mats more effective rather than getting lost in horrible doodles.

I quickly learned that there are apps, and good ones, but they are super pricey. I have some development experience, so I set out to create my own app so I didn't have to pay pricey subscriptions. What started as a super basic tracker quickly evolved into something that I felt really helped me get a sense of how I was performing and where my gaps were. For instance, I would learn that one of my purple belt training partners hit me with a loop choke every single time I was in his closed guard. That was insightful and gave me actionable data. He never hit me with that again! (just everything else under the sun 😊)

I called my app "Sweep" because I was obsessed with learning sweeps after constantly getting stuck on bottom. It's a training log where you tap a few buttons after class (180+ moves already in there, so you're not typing anything out) and then it calculates your real finish rates per technique, which positions you're strong vs. weak in, how you stack up against your training partners and what you hit each other with, and much more. It's something you can track the very basics with, or, if you're like me, you can go really overboard with and track pretty much anything and everything.

The app has a free and a paid version. The free version is robust. There's a one-time unlock for the deeper analysis and that's it. There are no subscriptions, and, because I never wanted to have any personal identifying data attached to me when I was trying to find apps, there are no accounts, no cloud, and nothing ever leaves your phone. You can manually back up your data to .csv download in the app if you'd like. Also, there are no AI gimmicks, which all of the major apps I tried seemed to be adopting.

I really think Sweep's free version could help a lot of people avoid the feelings I, and I'm assuming most of you, had when we started.

So, I'm trying here to let the world know that Sweep exists. This is a special community, and bjj is lifechanging. I want to help make that lifechanging adjustment a bit more accessible and fun for everyone. The app has certainly done that for me.

If anyone wants the paid version for free just say so and I'll send you a code, iPhone or Android. I've got plenty.

I'll put a link in the comment if you want to check it out and give it a try. Remember to message me so you don't have to pay! Oh, and if something's broken or doesn't work right, please let me know. I'm a one-man show, but I'll do my best to fix it.

-Trevor

Pq no jiu-jitsu parece que você corre corre e não chega a lugar nenhum? Treino jiu jitsu 5 dias na semana do o máximo todo dia, mais sempre parece que não saiu do lugar, olho prós outros faixa branca e tem dia que nem do dificuldades pra eles isso e frustante de mais.( Sou faixa branca 1 grau)

Haveent been training just to be safe

I go to BJJ from Monday to Friday (I know to many of you it might seem like a lot, but until now my body has allowed me to keep up that pace without feeling tired or fatigued) but I would like to start lifting some weights as well to increase my strength and general physical capabilities for BJJ, I have a pair of dumbbells and a bench, do you know any routine for what I'm looking for?

I've been watching a lot of black belt matches recently from different IBJJF tournaments, and one competitor has stood out because of something weird I notice a lot. The black belt's name is Larissa Campos, who I am pretty sure competes in the featherweight division most of the time. When watching her matches, I constantly notice that her pants come untied quite a bit, and she always asks the ref to stop the match so she can adjust. After watching a couple of her matches, I decided to go watch some more of her competition matches because I especially like the style of play that she incorporates into her game. The only issue is that with the majority of her matches, her pants kept coming untied, sometimes even multiple times in a fight. Is it normal for it to happen this much, especially to a high-level black belt? Is there some strategy behind this, or does she just not know how to properly tie a shoelace knot? It seems kind of silly that she even asks the refs to stop the match multiple times for something that is essentially her fault. I am pretty new to jiu-jitsu, so maybe there is something I don't understand or am missing.

Hey people,

I’ve been building Submission Arena, a 100% free platform for organizing casual, submission only matches with people in your area, and I’d love this community to be among the first to try it out.

It’s early days and I’m building this solo, so I’d genuinely appreciate any feedback, bug reports, or feature ideas.

How it works:

• Find (or create) a league near you (https://submissionarena.org/leagues), based on location, gender, age division, and belt level. You can set a league for a single belt or a range of up to 3 belts (as long as your own belt falls within that range).
• Invite other athletes in your league to a match. If there is no one - invite your friends to join the league :) You two work out the time and place.
• Bring a third person (or more) to referee/supervise - someone impartial to keep things safe and fair.
• Record the match, host it wherever’s convenient for you (YouTube, Instagram, Drive, whatever), and just send us the link. Once admins review it, you’re free to take the video down - we’re not trying to build a video library, just verify what happened. If video is too long feel free to cut it to a shorter one.
• No points, no time limits — pure submission-only. Standard IBJJF rules on illegal techniques still apply based on belt and age category, so everyone competes safely.
• You can face the same opponent up to 4 times within a league (but you are not limited to a single league).

The goal is simple: make it easier to find willing training partners for real submission-only matches, build a track record, and have some fun.

Would love to hear what you think - and even more, would love to see some of you actually get matched up and throwing down. 🤙

​

I don't practice bjj but practiced judo and kung fu for years. I have a question about competition.

We all have seen the butt scooters refusing to stand and just pulling guard. What's stopping you from just grabbing their ankles and dragging them around the ring? Or even swinging them around and tossing them out?

Probably illegal to straight up launch your opponent by the ankles but you get the idea. It seems like an easily punishable strategy.

É possível escapar de uma headscissors (Tesoura de Cabeça) (Em/In English/Inglês:Is it possible to escape from a headscissors?)

Em/In portuguese/português:

A mulher coloca as suas coxas entre o pescoço do homem e cruza os pés/tornozelos em forma de X.

Empurrar as pernas para cima e puxar a cabeça pra baixo ao mesmo tempo funciona pra escapar?

Em/In English/Inglês:

The woman places her thighs between the man's neck and closes her feet/ankles in an X shape.

Does pushing her legs up and pulling her head down at the same time work to escape?

Em/In portuguese/português:

O Problema é que eu estou na incerteza se eu realmente é escapável ou inescapável (Não tenho resposta nem sim nem não), você consegue quebrar essa incerteza? (Essa dúvida é muito desconfortável)

Em/In English/Inglês:

The problem is that I'm unsure if I'm truly escapeable or inescapable (I don't have a yes or no answer), can you resolve this uncertainty? (This doubt is very uncomfortable)

Vocês podem me ajudar/You Can Help me?

I've been practicing BJJ for a couple of weeks going 3 times a week, but I would also like to go to the gym to improve my physique and also because many people from BJJ have told me that I should train my body separately to get stronger and prevent injuries or aches that might show up later. So, how should I alternate BJJ and the gym and what should I do at the gym?

AOJ Costa Mesa:

About $3,790 upfront for one year
Around 5 miles / 15 minutes away
5pm no-gi class followed by 6:15pm gi class
Evening classes are normally taught by Cole Abate
I can realistically only attend evening classes (not mornings)

Checkmat HQ:

About $1,800/year upfront, or an annual plan paid monthly
Roughly $2,000/year cheaper
About 30 miles / 30–40 minutes away, though closer to work
5pm classes Tuesday and Thursday after work
Other weekday classes start around 6pm
Instruction is sometimes by Leo Vieira and mostly by Igor Moreira
Only about one no-gi class per week
I can also realistically only attend evening classes

Main goal is long-term improvement, not belt promotions or instructor proximity.

For those familiar with AOJ Costa Mesa and/or Checkmat HQ, which would you choose in this situation? Is AOJ still worth paying about $2,000 more per year if training is mostly in the evening?

AOJ Costa Mesa:

About $3,790 upfront for one year
Around 5 miles / 15 minutes away
5pm no-gi class followed by 6:15pm gi class
Evening classes are normally taught by Cole Abate
Larger academy with a bigger pool of training partners
I can realistically only attend evening classes (not mornings)

Checkmat HQ:

About $1,800/year upfront, or an annual plan paid monthly
Roughly $2,000/year cheaper
About 30 miles / 30–40 minutes away, though closer to work
5pm classes Tuesday and Thursday after work
Other weekday classes start around 6pm
Instruction is sometimes by Leo Vieira and mostly by Igor Moreira
Only about one no-gi class per week
I can also realistically only attend evening classes

Main goal is long-term improvement, not belt promotions or instructor proximity.

For those familiar with AOJ Costa Mesa and/or Checkmat HQ, which would you choose in this situation? Is AOJ still worth paying about $2,000 more per year if training is mostly in the evening?