How did Rickson Gracie continue to develop his skill to ridiculous new heights, year after year, after he had already been the best in the world for 20 years?

How do you make massive leaps and bounds in your own skill level when you're better than all of your training partners?

How do you improve significantly when your only training partners are white or blue belts?

This video reveals one of the most profound secrets Rickson ever told me.

You can use this secret to improve your game tremendously, no matter who your training partners are.

In fact, I once asked him who he believed would win... 40 year old Rickson, or Rickson in his 20s?

He said, hands down, 40 year old Rickson would destroy his more athletic younger self.

And I saw him run through the best of the best so many times, it's hard to argue.

(This video reveals how).

If you'd like to lay the foundation to be able to do this for yourself, and continue to improve...

In August of 2017 the world got to witness one of the most incredible sporting events of all time.  A clash of superstars from 2 different combat sports met in a boxing ring in Las Vegas for what was arguably the biggest boxing event of all time.  Conor McGregor the 2 division champion in the UFC with impressive knockout wins over the 145lb champion Jose Aldo and the 155lb champion Eddie Alverez took on Floyd Mayweather Jr, the greatest boxer of this generation and arguably of all time.

This event was the most hyped sporting event of 2017.  Although many people did not give Conor McGregor a chance, never having fought a pro boxing fight before and fighting someone many consider one of the greatest of all time, he had a lot of factors to his advantage coming into the fight.  Conor was definitely the bigger, stronger and younger fighter.  Floyd was coming off a 2 year retirement and being 40 years old acknowledged that he was feeling the effects of his years...

Over the past few years, leg attacks have become quite popular in jiu-jitsu because many teachers and competitors recognized it as a weakness in most jiu-jitsu practitioners games.

I recently had my great friend Matt Jones of Iso BJJ in Adelaide Australia in town visiting me. Matt and his team are extremely well known in Australia for their proficiency with leg attacks. What peaked my interest in his approach to the footlock, or straight ankle lock as it's also called, was seeing how fast it came on.

Matt was training with one of my students who has been focusing most of his time the past year on developing his leg attack game. While Matt was trying to pass guard my student started to entangle Matt's leg and off balance him in an a tempt to go for a heel hook. As Matt was falling he grabbed the straight footlock and tapped my student as soon as his butt hit the ground even though my student initiated the heel hook first.

The amount of force Matt was able to...

Wow! Jiu Jitsu Magazine came out with an incredible new app that's taking digital magazines to the next level! It's called "Jiu Jitsu Mag 360" and you can download it on iTunes and Google Play store for FREE!

The app is FREE to download and the first digital issue is also FREE! It features TONS of free videos and unique 360 degree views on techniques.

I'm honored to be one of the featured articles in the first issue.

The word LEVERAGE gets thrown around a lot in Jiu-Jitsu but it is just one small element that helps us to be able to over come bigger stronger opponents.

What is also important to understand is proper body mechanics, how we can engage the larger stronger muscles in our body to do the work of smaller muscles and how to use the whole body as one for maximum efficiency.

Another element that helps us deal with strength is angles. Understanding the proper angle to engage our opponent where they are weak not strong. We never want to fight strength, we want to use it against...

How to break down techniques to figure out how to make them as efficient as possible or to figure out the most efficient/best counter to a technique?

This was a question that was brought up by one of my Mind Blown Jiu Jitsu Club Members.

The short answer is to question everything....

For me as I was coming up through Jiu-Jitsu it was never good enough for me to just learn a technique. What I was really interested in were all the things that surround the technique and trying to really understand what makes it work.

These are the things I work to master in every technique.

Timing.
What situation should I apply the technique and when was the best time? If the timing is off, the technique is going to require too much strength or not work at all.

Baiting.
How could I bait my opponent or set them up to give me what I wanted? For maximum efficiency we always try to use our opponents movements against them. So I was always trying to find the necessary reaction to the get the technique to work...

This is a very special day! I just want to take the time to wish Rickson Gracie, my instructor, one of my biggest inspirations in my life and a person who has inspired so many others a very Happy Birthday.

To celebrate his birthday I just wanted to share one of the many stories about him that motivated and inspired me as I was coming up.

It was in the mid to late late 90's (97 or 98 maybe) at the Pico academy when Fabio Gurgel came to town with several black belts from Brazil. One of the black belts that came with him was Roberto "Spider" Traven. I believe Roberto was a world champion black belt at the time or won the world's shortly after this visit.

I remember seeing Rickson train with all the black belts, and doing what he normally does to them all, which is submit them multiple times within a 5-6 minute roll, but with Roberto he could not even pass his guard. You see this was the first time any of us had been exposed to the Spider guard, named after Roberto. Gripping the sleeves...

Why “the back” position is not as good as most people think in MMA or for fighting.

Many consider “the back” position the most dominant position in all of jiu-jitsu and are willing to give up any position to take the back.   “The Back” is considered by many the golden position, a place where we all strive to get to but for MMA or Self Defense it is not a position I recommend for my students and I usually advise them NOT to take the back if securing it places them on the bottom of their opponent.  If given the choice I always prefer for my students to maintain the mount and stay on top and here is my reasoning why:

There is a much greater ability to do damage with strikes from the Mount Position. 

From the mount we have the advantage of being able to reign down very heavy punches and elbows.  From the back, striking is quite limited because we are facing the back of the opponents head and striking that area is illegal in...

Here is one of the latest interviews I did with Shawn Mozen, founder and CEO of Agatsu.

Shawn is one of the foremost authorities in kettlebell training in the world and a lifelong martial artist.  He found out about me and Hidden Jiu-Jitsu from a Faceobook ad and I was lucky enough to have him come by Dynamix MMA and train for a few days while he was visiting in Los Angeles.

We talked a little about the site, my ideas on jiu-jitsu and I shared with him some basic ideas and adjustments to make some techniques more effective.

In this video we review some details on why framing on the bottom doesn't always work and another option.

We also reviewed a couple examples of how normal BJJ training can leave you wide open to be hit and the small changes that can implement in your training that can keep you safe from strikes.  The styles do blend together.
To check out all the amazing fitness and strength and conditioning stuff Shawn does go here http://www.agatsu.com/

"The training is all in your mind!"

For a long time in my training like most people I always thought I had to train with the best and the toughest guys to improve and get better.  Then one day after talking with Rickson I realized my strategy for how to get the most out of my training was all wrong.

You see, I witnessed first hand so many times Rickson training with the current world champion of whatever year and whatever weight and absolutely annihilate them.  Many times after the training the black belt would say "they have never experienced anything like that" OR "they felt like an absolute white belt training with Rickson".  I would see him tap guys effortlessly multiple times in a 5 minute training session.  These were guys who were winning the Mundials submitting everyone in their division.  Many of these legendary greats, Fabio Gurgel, Saulo, Xande, Fabio Leopoldo, Paulo Filho, Renzo Gracie, have all talked about their experience training with...

The details are in the deep understanding of Jiu Jitsu.

People ask me a lot of times for advice on how to improve quicker at jiu-jitsu.  I was one of fastest black belt under Rickson Gracie.  I started training in 1995 and within 6 months I had my blue belt.  A year and a half after that (2 years total) I was a purple, and got my brown belt in 2000, in 5 years, that is with taking a year off because I had blown out both my knees in a competition my first day as a purple belt.  I ended up getting my black belt in 2004.  (the story of why it took me so long to go from brown to black belt is a great story with many lessons for another article!) It was never a race for me, in fact, I never really wanted or cared about getting belts, the only reason I mention the timeline is to give people an idea of how my teacher, who was considered to have extremely high standards, acknowledged my progress.

I was really blessed with my circumstances when I started...