r/grappling

After years of watching Men of War grappling competitions, one thing is clear: if there’s no submission, the person on top wins. It doesn’t matter if the bottom player has more submission attempts, better movement, or demonstrates better Jiu-Jitsu. Get on top, stall, and hold position—that’s apparently enough.
The officiating has been consistently atrocious over the years. Frankly, I don’t understand why anyone would choose to compete under an organization with such questionable judging.

A BJJ black belt and Aikido black belt collaborate! What do you think?

What do you think of Aikido and BJJ mix?

I dont want to be embarrassed 😅

I’m a competitive brown belt which wants to practice my remote coaching skills. Send me a sparring/competition footage of you and I’ll give you a free review on what you did wrong.

I’m a purple belt with around 8 years of grappling experience. I’m also registered blind due to Retinitis Pigmentosa, with roughly 5 degrees of functional vision remaining.

I’m trying to develop a game built around making and maintaining connections, minimising unnecessary scrambles and controlling opponents through pressure, positioning and grips.

My current game:
Standing: Collar ties, underhooks, Russian 2-on-1s, arm drags, body locks, foot sweeps and trips.
Top: Body-lock passing, leg pins, half guard passing, rides, cradles and heavy positional control.
Bottom: Knee-shield half guard, butterfly, shoulder crunch, octopus and turtle.
Submissions: Arm triangles, D’Arces, armbars and Choi bars.

My biggest issue is losing connection during transitions, particularly from bottom. When opponents disengage, change angles or scramble, I can lose track of their positioning and end up reacting too late.

I’ve previously relied on wrestling up, but I’m finding that breaking connection to come up often leaves me exposed, particularly to back takes.

What I’m looking for:
Advice on systems, concepts or specific grapplers worth studying that prioritise continuous connection, strong inside positioning, effective hand fighting and limiting an opponent’s freedom of movement.

I’m particularly interested in developing a bottom game built around sweeps, reversals and back takes without having to disengage or rely on speed and athleticism.

I’m not necessarily looking for individual techniques, but rather overarching principles and interconnected systems that I can build my game around.

Any recommendations or experiences would be appreciated, particularly from people who favour a slower, pressure-heavy, connection-based style.

For context I’ve been training for almost 4 years. I feel like I am extremely far behind because I spent the last 3 years and ~8months training at a gym that would just teach a random technique of the day and then go straight into rounds with no real time to actually learn the skill. I’ve moved to a new gym and feel totally lost. I want to start improving but I have no game plan or sense of direction. I don’t know how to tell my coach this as when I ask one of them I feel like I don’t get the answer I’m looking for. I’ve spent that last couple weeks focusing on half guard and I was starting to think “oh wow maybe now I’ll get into the flow of properly knowing how to improve!” But the last few weeks including this week I’ve just been leaving class frustrated and with more questions than answers. This week has been hard due to my cat of 5 years dying and I just need some reassurance that I’ll be able to actually start to enjoy BJJ again. I need some sort of blue print on how to train. Unfortunately I can only train 2x a week due to school and rugby but I’m not looking to be some phenom just looking to find a
way to improve.
Thanks guys for reading.

I’m going to be Thailand in the coming months and wanted to do some training while I’m travelling.

From what I’ve read there are some decent gyms out there that might be fun to try out, but I’ve heard the chances of getting skin infections there are much higher than other places. I wanted to hear others opinions on if it’s worth the risk training over there, and if so, is there anything out of the ordinary I can do to protect myself extra.

I would love to heard others experiences with good/clean gyms as well!

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