Threads

Hear me out. The grips are useful. The friction is useful. But 80% of what makes someone good in the gi makes them MORE vulnerable in no-gi. Roger's mount? Marcelo's back system? Buchecha's pressure? All of it works without a gi. Meanwhile half the gi black belts get cooked in 30 seconds at sub-only. If I had to start over knowing what I know now, I'd do 70% no-gi from white belt. Fight me in the comments.

Genuinely curious. The thing nobody told you that would have saved you 2 years.

Marcus Almeida swept the heaviest division at IBJJF Worlds 2014 without dropping a round. Submitted Rodolfo. Submitted Bernardo Faria. Closed out absolute with his own teammate. No decisions. No advantage wins. No close calls. Just a rolling extinction event. Who else has ever done this at the highest weight class? Roger's Worlds runs were dominant but not THIS dominant. Galvao's ADCC runs had close finals. Gordon's 2022 absolute had a war with Felipe Pena. Make the case for anyone else.

4 years, 3 stripes on blue, finally got the purple last Friday. A few things I wish someone told me at white: 1. The plateau at 2-stripe blue is real. It's where you stop improving and start refining. Trust it. 2. Train less, drill more. 5 hours of focused drilling > 15 hours of rolling. 3. The belt doesn't change your game. It just confirms you have one. Oss to everyone grinding.

Loud, viral, hilarious. Also: where's the medal count? CJI was an exhibition, not a tournament. ADCC results have been mixed. The marketing is A+. The output, by black-belt-grade-mat-time per medal, is mid. Defend the team. Real medals only.

Three years in, and the post-mortem is still incoherent. Garry says financial. Danaher says creative direction. Gordon says nothing. Nicky Rod implies personal. What actually happened? Have we as a community accepted that we'll never know, or is there a version of events that holds up to all the timelines?

Genuinely curious. The thing nobody told you that would have saved you 2 years.

There's a brown belt at our gym who absolutely smashes every white belt with full intensity. Hurts people regularly, ego rolling. Coach won't address it. I'm a purple. Do I say something or steer the new people away from him?

Mine: blue belt told a competing brown belt mid-match "his guard is open" while reffing. You know what I mean. The unhinged stuff.

Multiple rounds where Mendes-affiliated black belts won by referee call against Atos and Alliance. The video clips made the rounds for years. Some say obvious bias. Others say IBJJF rule misreadings get magnified online. Higher belts who were there — what actually happened? Was it a real scandal or did the internet narrative outrun the truth?

The IBJJF rule set in 2026 still doesn't allow heel hooks in the gi. Their argument: too dangerous, kimono catches, knee injuries spike. The counter-argument: every other major rule set (ADCC, EBI, sub-only, WNO) allows them and the sport has moved on. IBJJF is freezing technical evolution. Whose side are you on?

Marcelo at +99kg is a fantasy weight he never campaigned at. But what if. Sub-only, 30-min match, EBI overtime if needed. Gordon's back-attack pressure vs Marcelo's reactive guard and X-guard sweeps. Marcelo's seatbelt vs Gordon's scrambling defense. Real answers, not "Gordon weighs 30 lbs more, duh." We're hypothesizing.

Lex Friedman crying about Ukraine in a JJ podcast. JRE clips of Eddie Bravo conspiracy theories. Influencer-host podcasts where every episode is "tell us your story" with zero pushback. Which shows actually move the conversation forward? Which are pure grift? Names.

CJI changed the salary conversation for one weekend. Then went back to normal. ADCC purses are still embarrassing for the level of skill. Does the sport need a players' union? Or is BJJ structurally never going to be a paying career for more than 20 people?

2 kids under 8. Demanding job. Wife gives me 4 days a week. I get 6 hours of sleep on a good night. Masters with kids: what's the actual schedule that works for you? I'm close to burning out.

18 months at purple and I feel like I've gotten worse. Browns are roasting me. Other purples have figured out my game. Is this how it goes? When did yours end?

When was the last time a top-3 finisher at Worlds black belt division relied on classic Lloyd Irvin / Bernardo Faria pressure passing as their A-game? Leg drag, knee cut, body lock. Pressure as a *modifier*, sure. Pressure as the primary strategy? Maybe the answer is "Felipe Pena." Maybe nobody. Make the case.

Both at their absolute peak. Roger 2009-2012 era. Buchecha 2013-2015 era. 20-min match, IBJJF rule set. The argument I keep losing: Roger has the best mount in BJJ history but Buchecha has the best top pressure in BJJ history. So who imposes their game first? No coping out with "they wouldn't actually fight."

Question is genuine. A 28-year-old black belt who got there in 9 years has different attributes than a 48-year-old who got there in 25. Do we treat them as equivalent ranks? Should we? Or do we need an honest conversation about what the belt represents at different ages and time-on-mat?

Both 22-26 age range. Both multiple-time IBJJF Worlds champions. Both technical to the point of being scary. Tainan: cleaner closed-guard system, more tournaments, more medals. Mica: more flair, faster ascent, the Worlds black belt at 19. Who's actually better, and who do we look back on as the defining grappler of this era?

I'm 43. Train 4x a week. Wake up creaking. Was 20 minutes warmup at 30, now 45 minutes at 43. Masters: what's actually working? Sauna? Sleep? Specific lifts? Cold plunge? Or just acceptance?

I see "got my black in 6 years" posts everywhere. Mine took 14. Some friends took 18. Black belts who took the slow road: what kept you in the gym?

I keep hearing "blue is the longest belt." I've been blue 18 months. Feels like I'm nowhere near purple-level rolling. Real numbers. How long for you?

When the founders were graded, it took decades. The BJJ community has steadily compressed the time. 7-year black belts are now common. 5-year black belts exist. Is the standard dropping or is the training getting better? Because both can't be true.

Not the BJJ Fanatics hype. The one that actually made a difference in your rolls. For me: Lachlan's leg lock fundamentals. Rewatched it 5 times. Game changed.