Martial Arts

In MMA and boxing, padded gloves and headgear are designed to lessen the forces encountered, primarily those resulting from linear acceleration, but what about other types of impact forces?

You get home from a competition and all your friends and teammates want to know, "How did you do?" How do you handle this question when you lost and don't want to talk about it?

When preparing for a big competition of any kind individuals tend to “psyche themselves up.” Do you act tough or are you a calm competitor? What's YOUR game face?

Whether for a promotion or a gold medal, sometimes we must compete against friends. How do you keep mutual respect for each other while still respecting the competition?

Some of the best we have on the subject of martial arts, covering ALL different facets - nutrition, ego, technique, conditioning, competition, and more from our experts and black belts.

Injury is a fact of the grappler's life. But how should we handle it if WE are the reason a training partner gets injured?

Not all of us can be the best in the world at Brazilian jiu-jitsu. But all of us can make a meaningful contribution to the sport if we want to.

You can find a BJJ tournament any time of year, but there are some events that draw lots of big names and big action. The event scheduled the end of this month in Irvine, CA, is one such tournament.

It's competition season for grapplers, and I am getting ready for several upcoming tournaments. In the coming weeks, I'm going to write about my preparation - come along for the ride!

Not sure where to start learning? Start small. Over time, enough manageable chunks will take us farther than we ever thought possible. In anything.

I asked some grapplers how and why they got started in BJJ, to continue to try to explain that elusive “X-factor.” Read on for the stories of some of my fellow disciples.