MegJitsu

BJJ isn’t for the faint of heart. It is one of the more challenging ways to spend your free time. This is, of course, why we love it! However, one area that can feel particularly frustrating is sparring. Full disclosure: I am only a purple belt; I have very limited competition experience; and since becoming a parent my training is more like 2 times a week rather than 6. That said, I have 20 years of martial arts experience, including 14 years on the mats. So, I have picked up a few things both through my personal struggles and working with folks at different stages of their journies. With this in mind, I hope these BJJ sparring tips can help you to develop your sparring game.

BJJ Sparring Tips: Physical

When mulling over my BJJ sparring tips, I realised they fell into two main categories: physical and conceptual. On the one hand, are more physical or practical considerations. On the other hand, are more conceptual or mind-set considerations that can underpin your physical practice. Let’s start with the physical.

1. Drill Beautifully

The starting point for improving your sparring is drilling. Only through consistent repetition of your techniques will you develop the tool-set and muscle memory to improve your sparring. That said, there’s drilling and there’s drilling. You want to do the latter.

That is, inattentive reps won’t get you very far. You need to drill beautifully. In practice, to me, that means:

• Methodical: do your best to practice each step exactly in the manner and order demonstrated by your instructor
• Elegant: seek to move with fluidity and grace applying each piece of the drill mindfully
• Smooth: focus on smooth movement as this will develop into speed faster than rushed, staccato drilling
• Attentive: keep your mind on the task at hand. While there is value to exploring the potential vulnerabilities of a technique, when drilling use your time to drill the scenario provided by your instructor. Know that there’s always a response to and/or vulnerabilities to a given technique. However, your job right now is to drill the technique and ‘bad guy’ indicators provided by your instructor. As you progress, you’ll learn more techniques and nuances. So, do yourself a favour and stay on task rather than chatting about the whys and wherefores – you’ll get there in time!
• Relentless: don’t stop until your instructor calls time. If you’ve got a question, get an instructor’s attention. Camaraderie is a big part of our practice, no doubt, and we needn’t be dour. However, it is more important to get those reps than have a chat/give yourself a breather. Be dogged in your pursuit of drilling excellence.

In short, number 1 on my list of BJJ sparring tips is: approach your drilling with mindful precision. Discipline and precision in this area of your practice will pay off when the ‘water gets deep’ in sparring.

2. Positional Sparring

This list of BJJ sparring tips assumes that ‘free-rolling’ is the kind of ‘sparring’ you are looking to improve. Many readers will be aware of multiple sparring types such as positional sparring, flow-rolling and free-rolling. Each of these tools suits a different job and, ultimately, training a variety of sparring methods will improve your free-rolling.

So, positional sparring is sparring from a set starting-point often to a set end-point. For example, one person in full guard with the goal to pass; the other person seeking to sweep or submit. When either player meets their goal, the positions are re-set. This form of sparring can help you to apply techniques that you don’t yet ‘own’ under a bit more pressure than in straight drilling, but without the full chaos of a live roll.

Clearly, the beauty with which you applied your technique in drills will degrade in this and all other sparring scenarios. That’s exactly why you worked so precisely in drills! Now that your implementation is getting a bit messier in sparring, it is still pretty tight.

3. Flow-rolling

If my BJJ sparring tips includes positional sparring, it is only logical to highlight the value of flow-rolling. Flow-rolling is another kind of ‘transitional sparring’ that sits somewhere between drilling and free-rolling. However, it is more free-form than positional sparring, as there’s no set start or end points. This style of sparring is generally at a slower and more relaxed pace than free-rolling and partners are encouraged to: 1) ‘catch and release’ rather than to apply submissions; 2) keep moving by not holding positions for more than a few beats. While flow-rolling can feel really awkward at first, with consistent practice it can help you to develop your timing and your application of techniques that are not yet fully integrated into your game.

BJJ Sparring Tips: Conceptual

To re-cap, some ‘physical BJJ sparring tips’ include precise drilling and including variety in your sparring forms in order to improve your free-rolling. However, there’s more to sparring than the right grip or accurate positioning of the hips, it is as much in the mind as in the body.

1. Goals, Have ‘Em

Sparring with a mission can help you to consolidate and evolve your game. Know what you’re working on and stick at it until you’ve got it working. A gauge I use to determine if I can do a new thing is if I get it consistently on lower belts of all sizes and proportionally less successfully as the skill gap closes. For example, when I was focusing on basic scissor sweeps from the guard as a blue belt, I felt it was ‘mine’ when I could get the sweep on white belts of all sizes on the regular and occasionally with people of my own experience level. By the time I had some ownership of this sweep, my team mates started to have answers to my sweep. In response, I then focussed on a kimora attempt if the sweep failed and they based out with a hand or transitioning to a variation to remove a supporting leg if they based out with a knee.

This is the arms race. Through this escalation, you and your clubmates strengthen and expand your skill-sets. By setting and pursuing clearly defined goals, you can gradually build your toolkit, timing and judgement.

2. Build From a Solid Foundation

Goal-oriented sparring practice is a great way to develop your skill-set and make consistent – if sometimes agonisingly slow – progress. So, how do you choose your goal? Simple, start at the beginning.

You learn lots of cool drills in class. Sometimes these techniques are further along the journey than where you may be. Don’t get me wrong, it is great to be exposed to these techniques and you should try them in positional sparring, flow-rolling and free-rolling. However, when defining your sparring goals, start basic and progress from there.

In other words, if you don’t yet ‘own’ a decent elbow escape from mount, putting energy into spider-guard sweeps is putting the cart before the horse. Therefore, map your goals logically and trace a route from more basic and high percentage defensive and offensive techniques towards more advanced variations. This approach can help you to create a solid foundation of fundamentals while giving you the skills and timing to move towards more ‘advanced’ variations as and when you’re ready. Again, to be clear, yes – don’t be afraid to try stuff! Nevertheless, when identifying your goals, start with the basics and build from there.

3. Defence First

Moreover, when defining your sparring goals, think ‘defence first’. This has multiple advantages. Firstly, from a self-defence perspective, focussing on keeping yourself safe has merit. Likewise, from an injury-prevention point-of-view, working from a defence-first mindset can pay great dividends. Secondly, from an improving-your-sparring vantage point, confidence in your defence can help you to move towards opening up to mount your attacks. In other words, once you’re an excellent nail, you can find yourself getting a share of the hammer-time. Similarly, an excellent understanding of defence, augments your offensive powers. That is, fully understanding how one defends a position, can help you to better develop attacks-by-combination and the subtlety that great offence requires.

4. Fight Fire with Water

From a defence-first practice naturally flows patience and resilience to goading. You know what is really easy for this lightweight 42-year-old woman? Dealing with strength. ‘Cuz guess what, I already know that you are stronger than me; if you take a break from proving that to yourself, you’ll have a much better chance of getting the better of me. Want to know why? I fight fire with water.

I have zero interest in playing the strength game. While I take care of my body including strength and conditioning for BJJ, I lost the absolute strength battle when I got on the mat. Pretty much all of you are bigger and younger than I am. That’s cool, I’m patient and more annoying. Through defence-first training and a focus on ‘not losing’ rather than ‘winning’, I’m able to ride out a storm and pick my timing. Attacks telegraphed with brute force are relatively easy – if exhausting and repetitive – to deal with. And I’m obnoxiously persistent. However, smooth, sneaky, elegant traps blind-side me and are much more likely to get me ruffled.

So, the moral of the story is, stay cool. Work your goals, built on a broad foundation of basics, with an eye towards defence and you’ll find comfort where there is none. In that place, you can chill, find your opening and ply your offence. It might not be today, or tomorrow and it may well be 5 years down the track, but that’s kinda what you signed up for when you walked onto those mats. That in itself took guts, so the ability to remain composed in chaos and weather the storm is in there. Find it. Harness it. Nurture it.

5. Tap Early, Tap Often

No set of BJJ sparring tips is complete without mentioning the importance of tapping. If you’ve spent any time on the mats you’ve doubtless heard common tapping tropes: ‘if you’re not tapping, you’re not learning’, ‘leave your ego at the door’ and so on. Cliche as they might be, these adages are worth keeping close to heart and mind. A willingness to tap is vital to your BJJ sparring. Why?

First of all, safety. Yours and your partner’s. The tap is sacrosanct, and with good reason. What we do is really quite dangerous! Respecting the tap is essential to keeping everyone in one piece and fully functional. Moreover, this cuts both ways. If your partner has you, tap! It isn’t fair to them if you allow ego to take control and put them in a spot where they injure you. Likewise, if you feel or hear a tap – STOP! Not sure if that was your partner or not? Stop anyhow and reset if you erred on the side of caution. You already know this, however it bears repeating.

Next, learning. If you are the smartest person in the room, you need to find a new room. If you are uncomfortable with not being the smartest person in the room, address that right now. Vulnerability to learning is the only way you are going to get better at BJJ sparring. That includes tapping early and often. Feel like you could power out of a sub? Go for it. Congratulations, you just learnt nothing. Forgo the saccharine pleasure of ‘escaping’ through speed/power/force. Pull your big-kid pants on and tap. Well done, you and your body now know where there’s a hole in your boat. See steps 1-4 above, and repeat. Now, you’re really getting somewhere.

Finally, as a bonus, resist the urge to tell someone ‘that wasn’t a real submission’ after you just tapped to it. I get it, perhaps it wasn’t very well applied, or it was some sort of strengthy bend-you-into-a-pretzel move. That’s on them. Your job is to work with your instructor to develop great responses to their attacks, even if they don’t seem to be proper. Help them address their offensive technique with superior defensive technique. Keep the snarky ego-driven sour-grapes for the ‘inside voice’.

Conclusion

Of course, no purple belt’s humble BJJ sparring tips can prepare you for the gruelling self-examination that walks hand-in-hand with levelling up in jiu jitsu. All I can promise is that this formula has been at the heart of my practice and improvement from day 1. My understanding and application of these concepts has advanced and, I can only hope, will continue to do so. Perhaps, there’s helpful BJJ sparring tips here for you too. Because this beautiful thing we do, man, it is tough.

Oh, one more thing, keep those arms tight #trex

Acknowledgements

If any wisdom is to be found here, it has been repurposed from my instructors past and present, including, but not limited to Dave Birkett, Marc Walder, John Ingallina and Greg Walsh as well as great practitioners whose seminars have pushed me along, notably, Royce Gracie, Ryron Gracie and Frank Cucci.

jiu jitsu lifestyle (joo-jit-soo lahyf-stahyl): the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, and etc that together constitute the mode of living of those engaged in Brazilian jiu jitsu, a martial art and combat sport that teaches a smaller person how to defend herself against a larger adversary by using leverage and proper technique.

‘The habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards & etc’. In other words, the fundamental components and expressions of one’s worldview. When jiu jitsu is your lifestyle, no matter what else comes your way, quitting is not an option. Injuries, big moves across cities, states or oceans, babies, elderly family, work pressures, money pressures, time pressures all conspire to cut our time with jiu jitsu short. Living the jiu jitsu lifestyle isn’t just about acai bowls and being mad on kimono. Those things are part of it, but just the tip of this ‘berg. At some stage, not sure when, like with a sweep, there’s a point of no return and your relationship with jiu jitsu is no longer negotiable; it takes on a life and momentum of its own – think that’s called ‘love’.

Love is easy at the start. It is all hormones and handsy and sweaty and fun. With the miles come the struggles and the pressure tests and the challenges. In love as in jiu jitsu, endurance offers great rewards. In love as in jiu jitsu, some drop out and some commit for the long haul, for better or worse.

I know now that I am in this thing, come what may. 5 years ago jiu jitsu was easy. It wasn’t really, but after 7 years my confidence in my defence let me work my offence. I was putting myself in triangles and all sorts of bad spots with good level, bigger people and escaping, reversing and submitting. After intense toil and self-scrutiny I could finally sniff the experience that seemed so common and ‘easy’ for the men in my club. Then, KABOOM!

ACL surgery; pregnancy; birth and caring for an infant (plus a sprinkle of postpartum depression for good measure); trans-Atlantic move; re-entry shock; refurbishing a new house; new jobs; and homesickness. For the record, my worst days are better than most of the worlds’ bad days – I get that – nonetheless, my life got mangled.

Jiu jitsu stayed with me, and I with jiu jitsu. My pregnancy was active and included drills and some sparring. Infancy was the toughest to balance, and while infrequent, privates with my UK coach, Dave Birkett from Dartford Academia de Jiu Jitsu, kept me in the game. Within 12 months of the baby, Friday night training was more and more regular. 2 and a half years on, we moved to the States where I scrambled to find the right club for me. Serendipty! Gracie Jiu Jitsu Victor had just opened its doors. Likewise, up the street was Wolf Brigade, a strength and conditioning gym, that has empowered me to take my body back after a rocky recovery from ACL reconstruction / pregnancy / birth / infancy-sans-self-care. In all the chaos of becoming parents and moving overseas, jiu jitsu – and what Greg Walsh at Wolf Brigade calls ‘physical culture’ – kept me steady and on course.

The Jiu Jitsu Lifestyle Doesn’t Always Move Forward

Sometimes, one has to step back to truly move forward. Readers may be aware that I chose to wear a white belt when I started at Gracie Victor. With all the disruption to my training, my body, and my fitness, this was the right place for me to start in a new town and with a new club. This decision was all about me. It was about what I needed to rebuild. It was about my need to feel worthy of my belt. It wasn’t asked or expected of me.

Gracie Academy respects the belts of students that come from outside. I needed to take a step back and methodically re-work my core jiu jitsu. The Academy offers a clear path for someone in my position: belt verification. ‘Verification’ is the process whereby the Gracie Academy verifies that one’s skillset and mindset harmonises with the priorities of Gracie Jiu Jitsu. Pre-requisites for a verification are passing the Gracie Combatives and Blue Belt Stripe 1 tests. This is a lot of material. Dozens of techniques and their ‘slices’ along the full spectrum of ‘self defence’ to ‘sportive’. The material was familiar to me, but in the way a language I was once fluent in and haven’t used for many years years is familiar.

My coach at Gracie Victor, John Ingallina, has been by my side pushing and pulling me along to my verification since the day I arrived at his door. From Spring 2016 he and I trained together for my BBS1 and his BBS2 exam. We trained intensively for our exams, drilling controls, submissions and counters from mount, sidemount, guard, half-guard, back mount, leg locks and standing. It is a comprehensive and intuitive syllabus though quite overwhelming at the start.

It was a great pleasure to work with John on this. He’s a fantastic training partner and picks things up freakishly fast. He’s a solid grappler and while a lesser person might be threatened by a higher-ranked student, John’s been nothing but encouraging and invested in my progress. This speaks volumes. He’s a deft coach and instructor, far exceeding any experience or expertise I have in those areas. We’ve become fast and true friends; I feel really lucky to train with him and his club.

In early autumn we submitted our examination materials. Proud to say we crushed our exams and sights were now locked on purple belt verification.

Verified!

The verification process was rigourous and fair. Once I’d passed muster with the Combatives and BBS1 exams, John arranged for a live verification exam with a Gracie Academy black belt. Frack Cucci of Linxx Martial Arts Academy in Virginia Beach made the journey to Western NY for a seminar and a verification exam.

A word on Professor Cucci. He’s tremendous. A former Navy SEAL with over 30 years of martial arts under his belt, he came to jiu jitsu – as did so many – after Royce Gracie’s performance in the early UFC. His instruction is calm and measured and the seminar – a 2 hour session on guard sweeps and a 2 hour session on guillotine mastery – was a delight. His work with military and law enforcement gives a really interesting insight. Technical tweaks for LE in light of cuffing procedures, common circumstances and unique tactical situations, as well as subduing suspects while keeping tasers and sidearms ‘out of the party’ was eye-opening. After 4 hours of a steady drill pace with my training partner, Kyle Bagshaw from Gracie Victor – if you have the opportunity I highly recommend training with him, he just reps, it’s fabulous – it was verification time.

While in someways a formality – afterall the process leading up to requesting a live verification is quite thorough – the verification exam was legit. I rolled with Frank – gi, no gi and gloves-on – for over an hour. It felt relentless and put my technique, mindset and energy conservation through their paces. It was a bigger challenge than I’d expected in terms of endurance. I really appreciated being taken seriously and given a proper test. I felt valued and respected and not ‘rubberstamped’. Frank’s comments for improvement were helpful as well as hard to hear. The issues that have plagued my jiu jitsu from the get-go persist. In particular, I’m far too hesitant with my offence. On the upside, the feedback was more positive than negative. I have clear areas for improvement and John and my clubmates are by my side to help me address them.

5 years ago, I was out with an ACL reconstruction. Since then, I’ve recovered from a knee op, had a baby, moved overseas and generally shaken things up. Today, I’m close to my pre-natal game. Steps forwards, backwards and forwards again. Here we are jiu jitsu, still dancing, and I am ready to work some new moves with you. Now that we’ve gotten ‘back’, let’s get ‘better’.

Take the Suck Over the Quit

Gentle reader, I know you go through things on and off the mats that make it seem that jiu jitsu just isn’t worth it. And perhaps, for you, it isn’t. But, if you’re here, reading this, then perhaps it is. If not yet, there will come a time when your jiu jitsu faith may be tested. Whether babies or jobs or injury, some wedge will seek to insert itself between you and jiu jitsu. But without jiu jitsu who are ‘you’?

In the words of Hollie McNish:

I lost my name at toddler group. From Hollie, or Hols, or Hollie McNish. I’m now known as so-and-so’s mom. However, the mom isn’t complaining about this loss of her name, as she does the same to others when she says she “got a drink with Izzy’s dad” or “ran into Molly’s gran.” Once a person becomes a parent, they are forever labeled as “mom” or “dad,” that’s just how it goes.

It’s only when the stars are out and everything’s dark that my own name creeps out from under the table and I’m able to remember the person I am, with a hot cup of tea and a book in my hand and a two hour slot to remember my own plans before I turn off the light.

Jiu jitsu is where I live. The ‘me’ apart from work, or family, or money, or my early 40s. It is my spirit, whimsy, vitality, grit, and madness. Without it, I’d be a husk.

Jiu jitsu takes but jiu jitsu gives and gives and gives. With my verification came congratulations from friends old and new and training partners on either side of the Atlantic. While there is no me without jiu jitsu, there is no jiu jitsu without you. We are in this together and as ships on a rising tide we sail together forever part of each others’ journies. In what seem to be dark, uncertain and divided times, that’s pure and that is good. Jiu jitsu is love.

Photo Credits

ACL Operation. Photo by © Meg Smitley.
2011 Portrait. Photo by © Fighters in Focus. Used with permission.
Purple Belt Verification. Photo by © Gracie Victor. Used with permission.

I am having a great time at Gracie Jiu Jitsu Victor! We arrived in Rochester just short of a year ago. The disruption of the past year has been pretty intense. On the one hand, I miss London, the UK, our friends, family and lives there very deeply. On the other, Rochester has a lot to offer us and our family-life is certainly more balanced and happy. Big achievement! As we begin 2016, we are much more settled here. Finding the right folks to train with both at Wolf Brigade Gym and at Gracie Jiu Jitsu Victor has really helped me to reclaim the Roc as ‘my home’.

There are some very skilful and welcoming BJJers in the Greater Rochester Area. For me, John Ingallina and the people at Gracie Victor offer the school that is right for me. I am incredibly grateful that this club started offering GJJ around the time that I arrived in Rochester. I am so pleased to have been welcomed and embraced by this group of practitioners. John is a very well-rounded and seasoned martial artist. This is clear from his skill and his humility. It is also clear in how invested he is in his students’ progress. John sets a great tone and his club is full of men and women of a wide range of ages and abilities. A very inclusive and loving place to train.

Settling-in here has taken a toll on my health and fitness. In London, I walked many miles everyday, attended a couple PT sessions a week and trained jiu jitsu. Here, we drive everywhere, it took several tries to get my gym and jiu jitsu situation right and last year much of my ‘free time’ was eaten up with renovating our new house. This resulted in the undoing of much of my hard work in the UK to get my fitness back after becoming a parent. When we arrived in Rochester I was 3 kilos off where I’d like to be, now I’m more like 6 kilos off. It may not sound like a big deal and in the scheme of things of course it isn’t. However, I do find it really demoralising and just don’t feel at my best, physically, while at the same time I seem to lack the lifestyle mojo I once had to eat well and to move about. As we’re getting on a more even keel now, I am hopeful that 2016 will see me lean out a bit more and get my diet to a clean and healthy state.

On a more positive note, I’ve been really enjoying strength and conditioning classes at Wolf Brigade Gym and I’m there pretty consistently twice a week. I’m making a deal with myself to up that to three times a week in February. In the jiu jitsu arena, I had a chat with my coach, John, about how I’d really like to work more conscientiously towards getting my Gracie Academy blue belt and be more involved with Gracie Victor. Over the course of last year, my attendance was okay, making it in once a week as much as I could, but overseas moves are no small potatoes and there’s been a lot of work getting ourselves set-up here. This impacted on my training frequency. It also impacted on how much my head was in the game and how goal-oriented my training was (or wasn’t). John has been more than happy to meet me halfway and we’ve come up with a timeline for my blue belt examination. This has really helped me to get focused and the process of working through the BBQD (Blue Belt Qualification Drills) has been a useful exercise for me.

I’ve practiced the techniques included in the Gracie Combatives programme for years. Even still, I never really internalised the names nor could I systematically name the variations for individual techniques. I could perform these techniques in class and sparring, but I was intellectually lazy about it. Having to commit the syllabus to memory has helped me to re-engage with my jiu jitsu in a number of ways. Firstly, it has helped me to consolidate and strengthen my existing knowledge of Gracie Jiu Jitsu by forcing me to properly and fully internalise a syllabus. Secondly, working through the BBQDs has encouraged me to put more mind-cycles on jiu jitsu. Since becoming a parent my visualisation and jiu jitsu daydreaming time has reduced to essentially zero; in my leisure-time laden pre-natal days I would spend several hours a day musing on technique, considering problems in sparring, writing in my training diary, watching interesting fights, reading jiu jitsu blogs. Readers know exactly what I’m referring to. After the boy came into my life and my leisure time was radically compressed, I dropped all of that ‘mental jiu jitsu time’. This affected my on-the-mat performance as well as my emotional connection to my art. Making a goal to get this blue belt thing done has helped me a great deal to build-in time for jiu jitsu contemplation. Finally, I feel much more motivated to make sure I am getting more and very consistent mat-time so I can get better at jiu jitsu and healthier in my body. Two things crucial for my sense of well-being.

So, with all this talk of getting a(nother) blue belt, I suspect some readers are curious to know what is the situation regarding the belt that I wear? As some readers may remember, the jiu jitsu Internets went a bit mad when I made an off-hand remark that I would be wearing a white belt in my Combatives classes when I joined my new school. I followed this up with a discussion of why, in my case, it felt like the right thing to do, though no one at Gracie Victor expected me to change my belt. Big feelings erupted. Not so much about me, per se, but my telling of my story acted as a catalyst for a flare up of tensions around the Gracie University system, how the Gracie Academy codifies its syllabus and delivers its instruction, and the intense opinions around ‘GJJ’ and ‘BJJ’. I respect and appreciate the complicated feelings associated with ‘GJJ versus BJJ’. I myself feel uncomfortable with the somewhat divisive nature of the term ‘GJJ’. At the same time, the material that term is used for and the material disseminated through the Gracie Academy’s CTCs is exactly the sort of stuff that I want to be involved with. With that preface, what friggin belt am I wearing?

I wear a white belt. It has a stripe on it. Wearing a white belt makes me feel like a part of my club, rather than like a swaggering interloper parachuted in from the UK. I don’t bully or ‘sand bag’ anyone, and the people who train with me understand, respect, and recognise my previous experience. The Gracie University system has a clear procedure for handling belts awarded outside of their system:

If you have achieved rank in Gracie or Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu from any school that is not accredited by the Gracie Academy, your belt color will be recognized in the Gracie University student database, but it will be tagged as ‘unverified’. In order to officially recognize your rank, we must verify your knowledge of the street applicable techniques of Gracie Jiu-Jitsu, and the only way to do this is for you to demonstrate proficiency in the Gracie Combatives techniques by passing the blue belt test. In other words, if you were awarded a purple belt by a BJJ instructor, and you pass the official Gracie Combatives blue belt test, then Ryron and Rener would consider assessing your skills to see if your purple belt can be formally recognized by the Gracie Academy ~ Gracie University FAQs

This suits me very well; of course it wouldn’t be right for all readers. My relationship with jiu jitsu has been on the fritz for a number of years owing to a knee operation, a pregnancy, an infant, and an international move. Methodically working through the Combatives syllabus, as discussed above, has been invaluable in helping me to reinvigorate my relationship with jiu jitsu. It is my intention to work up to the Gracie Academy Blue Belt one stripe material. Then, I’d like to seek to have my purple belt ‘verified’. Could that happen in 2016, maybe yes, maybe no. Lots of smaller goals and milestones to reach first and right now I’m targeting submission of my blue belt exam materials by the end of Q1. First things first!

Photos reproduced with permission of John Ingallina, Gracie Jiu Jitsu Victor.