Years ago I used to hang with a bunch of hardcore MMA fighters. They’d party in the clubs till dawn, then still drag their asses in for hard training in the morning. Their ability to go without rest was impressive. Only later did I realise they could only do this because they were young and fueled by a devil’s brew of steroids, stimulants and painkillers. Not surprisingly, all of them later … [Read more...]
What is a Crossface in BJJ
The crossface is one of the keys to a brutally effective side control. You can use the crossface to turn his jaw into a lever to turn his head and limit the directions he can turn. This makes it so much harder for your opponent to escape, tires him out, and kills his will to fight. A properly applied crossface is a tool you can use in the gi, no gi, and MMA to double how heavy you feel on top; … [Read more...]
Three takeaways from the Craig Jones Invitational
I was glued to my computer for hours this weekend, watching every match (and some more than once) in the Alley at the 2024 Craig Jones Invitational in Vegas. (I caught little bits and pieces of ADCC, too, but there was more talent and fewer stoppages at CJI.) The entire competition is available on Youtube... CJI Day 1 CJI Day 2 Anyway, I came away with a renewed appreciation … [Read more...]
How to Reset the Back When Your Opponent Has Almost Escaped
Being on someone's back is the crown jewel of BJJ. From this position, all your weapons are pointed towards his throat and all his weapons are pointed away from you. Life is good! The trouble is that once you're on the other guy's back he's going to do everything he can to escape. He'll try technical escapes like going to the weak side and using the ground to scrape you off of him. And if … [Read more...]
Three Big BJJ Lessons Learned on a Solo Trip in the Arctic
Earlier this summer I completed a beautiful and difficult 19-day solo canoe trip in the Canadian Arctic. There's a lot of time to think on a trip like this, and here are the 3 big lessons I learned... You can order my new book "Perseverance, Life and Death in the Subarctic" on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Indigo/Chapters, or your local bookstore! Three Big BJJ Lessons Learned on a Solo … [Read more...]
Gold Medal Judo Techniques that Work in BJJ
I've previously written about why you probably shouldn’t use the top-scoring judo throw - Seio Otoshi - in your BJJ practice. (To recap, this throw requires a TON of reps, potentially exposes you to back takes, is gi-dependent, and there’s a high chance you'll roll over your opponent to end up on the bottom.) But don't throw the Judo baby out with the bathwater!! There IS a heck of a lot … [Read more...]
DON’T Use This Top Judo Throw in BJJ!
I came across something really neat recently. Someone called DrSeioNage did a TON of data analysis and looked at 5850 elite judo matches to identify the top-scoring techniques. The highest-scoring technique of them all during the time period studied was a throw called Seio Otoshi. This throw involves turning your back to your opponent and is often performed dropping one or both knees … [Read more...]
Revolutionary Omoplata
A Technique that Bridges the Gap between Sweep and Submission By Stephan Kesting Originally published in Grappling Magazine in 2002. The omoplata is all the rage these days: it's a submission, a sweep, and a setup for other submissions and sweeps. If you go to a high-level grappling competition tomorrow, you will almost certainly see it used multiple times. The omoplata is a little bit … [Read more...]
BJJ vs Bears – Lessons Learned on a Solo Expedition in the Arctic
I just recently got home from a difficult solo canoe trip in the Canadian Arctic where I didn’t see anyone for weeks. Bears, storms, icebergs and exhaustion, this adventure had it all. Since I was alone, I had a lot of time to think. A big takeaway was how relevant some aspects of this wilderness stuff were to jiu-jitsu. Here are the three big lessons I learned from that trip, and how they … [Read more...]
Get My Next Jiu-Jitsu Instructional Free – Seriously!
After 4 years of writing my book, Perseverance, Life and Death in the Subarctic is now available for pre-order. This is an adventure story about my 1,000-mile solo trip from the boreal forest to the windswept tundra of the Arctic after a life-saving kidney transplant. Bears, forest fires, rapids, storms... it all happened on that trip. Early reviewers have been unanimous in their praise … [Read more...]
How Has MMA Training Changed Since the First UFCs?
I was honoured to talk MMA with Denis Kang, an MMA pioneer with 55 fights in organisations ranging from Pride FC to the UFC. In this conversation, we covered how fighting off the wall, sparring with small gloves, and doing more sparring and less conditioning before a fight has changed MMA training. How Has MMA Training Changed Since the First UFCs? - Audio Only This conversation was also … [Read more...]
Training Isn’t Competition, Competition Isn’t Training
There's a HUGE difference between training and competing, not only in how hard you go, but also in the strategies you employ. The priority in competition is winning, but the priority in training should be learning. That's why if I run into something new in training - a weird grip, a submission, a leg entanglement - my reaction is probably going to be, “Oh, how interesting, let’s see where … [Read more...]
Grapplearts Instructionals, a Buyer’s Guide
"There are just too many BJJ instructional choices!" I hear this a lot, so I put together a buyer's guide for you. Scroll down, and if anything resonates with you, check out the instructional links. Q: Do you struggle to find time to train? Focus on using the very best training methods to make all your training time productive with the approach used in BJJ Games and BJJ … [Read more...]
The Most Annoying Grip in BJJ
When I was a bluebelt in the late 90's we had a visitor to class. This guy was a purple belt, trained at a well-known school in California, and had a very tricky game. One day I was in his spider guard and he caught me in a grip I had never seen before. All of a sudden, I had no use of my left hand. Then he secured the same grip on my right sleeve, and now I had no hands left to grip him … [Read more...]
The Real Benefit of Training Jiu-Jitsu
Martial arts training obviously teaches you techniques, combinations, strategies and tactics of the art itself. And if you train against resistance (like you would in BJJ, boxing, wrestling, judo, MMA, etc) then it’ll ingrain those techniques deeply enough so that you can use them in a real fight against a real attacker. Which is great. But arguably, the biggest effect of training … [Read more...]
Controlling and Submitting from The Crucifix Position in Jiu-Jitsu
Being on someone's back in rear mount is an incredibly dominant position, but I think there's a good argument to be made that having him in the crucifix is even better. You see, finishing a skilled opponent from the back is much easier if you trap one of their arms with your legs so that they only have one hand left to fight the choke. But in the crucifix, you're using four limbs - both your … [Read more...]
What Happened to the UFC?
Luke Thomas is one of the most influential MMA analysts in the game and the host of The Morning Kombat Podcast. I was delighted to talk to him on my own show, The Strenuous Life Podcast, today. We covered... How the sport of MMA has changed The rise of Eastern European fighters Why is the terrible behaviour of MMA fighters tolerated Can other MMA organisations ever rival the UFC … [Read more...]
Train the Kimura as a Position, Not Just a Submission!
The Kimura is a powerful bent armlock that primarily attacks the shoulder joint, but in addition to being a very powerful armlock it's also a control position. Here's the condensed form of this argument in video format. Check it out and then scroll down for many concrete examples of new ways to use the Kimura. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/B-XT1JfhTF4 The Kimura is Both a Submission AND a … [Read more...]
How to Do the Von Flue Choke
The guillotine choke is the second most popular submission in MMA (after the rear naked choke) and an omnipresent threat in no gi grappling and gi jiu-jitsu, so you need a solid guillotine defense game! But the only thing better than defending against a guillotine is reversing it and using his choke attempt to set up a submission of your own. That's where the Von Flue choke comes in! This … [Read more...]
Use BJJ Mentality to Get Through the Tough Times
On an instagram Q&A (@stephan_kesting) I was recently asked, "What is the most unlikely yet fortuitous place jiu-jitsu has come in handy for me?" You might think that the answer was using it to subdue an opponent in some crazy streetfight, but actually my antagonist was far more deadly than that; polycystic kidney disease... Here's the video of me answering this question in … [Read more...]