The Shintaro Higashi Show - 🚨 Marine vs. Detective: The Jiu-Jitsu Journey of Jeff Morris! 🥋

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

In this episode, Shintaro sits down with Jeff Morris, Owner & Head Instructor of Greenwich Jiu Jitsu Academy. A Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Black Belt, United States Marine Corps veteran, and active Law Enforcement Detective, Jeff shares his incredible journey—from discovering BJJ in the Marines to building a thriving academy and using martial arts for self-defense, personal growth, and community building.Jeff’s 25 years of experience in BJJ, self-defense, and law enforcement brings deep insights into the power of martial arts on and off the mats. If you’re passionate about Jiu-Jitsu, gym culture, or personal development, this episode is a must-watch!

So yeah, tell me about your approach. That it's very unique, I hear. Yeah. You know, and that's interesting. I mean, I wouldn't consider myself famous at all in the jujitsu scene. This is still relatively famous. You know, I've heard your name, you know, and your academy multiple times for people in the tri-state region.

You know, there's this guy that's always playing games, you know, in the room and it's fun and people are getting really good and really fast and, you know, it's in a very affluent neighborhood, so it's like it must be working. Hello everyone, welcome back to the Shintaro Higashi Show. I'm here with a very special guest, Jeff Morris. You were a long time Marine, Jujitsu black belt. You run this school, which is getting a lot of hype

because of the ecological approach. People are always talking about this new form of learning form of teaching. You're in Greenwich, Connecticut. Can you tell us a little bit about your jujitsu beginnings and the, your teaching methodology? Yeah, sure. So I mean my, uh, my beginnings, I've been in jujitsu for about 25 years now. So it was a very standard kind of late 1990s, early 2000s introduction to jujitsu. I was

actually in the Marines. I was serving in the Marine Corps. We had a completely random rogue blue belt. I think he was a Gracie Baja kid who was assigned in our platoon in the Marines. And we did a ton of hand-to-hand. So we were doing hand-to- to hand stuff all the time. We do it in our free time. We had kind of sand pits outside of our barracks that we would work with each other. And we had a ton of wrestlers, which was really cool. And he just slaughtered everybody. He weighed like 150 pounds. And he just cut right through everybody. So that was my first exposure. I was like, what is this? What is this cool thing? This kid's like,

he's an octopus he's like all over everybody and he you know he obviously explained to us that he met these Brazilians out in California he was from I think the San Diego area and as soon as I cycled out of the marines I was like I gotta find this so you know somehow some way and right around late 2001 early 2002 luckily enough I don't know how or why he ended up in this area But hoist actually opened up a school in Thornwood, New York, which you're probably yeah, you're probably from yeah I'm a new guy. Yeah, yeah So I ended up there and it was a small school. It was run by a cop Sergeant from Thornwood named Steve Cardion and I was there for about a year and a half

It was so so old school like the white belts kind of had to sit in the corner and didn't talk to anybody we did ironically enough no warm-ups we warmed up with drilling which was kind of interesting yeah that's great and that was my first exposure to Rob Khan who owns Gracie Tampa and has developed a ton of great MMA fighters and it's kind of like historically known for some nastier early age kind of catch wrestling jujitsu style grappling and Within about a year and a half. I I was I was young and I was I was probably not as bright as I am now I was like, I think I want to try some MMA

Yeah, so I I transitioned into another Academy in the Bronx called the jungle gym. That was a friend. I know about that Yeah, yeah, so um, so I actually received my blue belt from hoist transitioned into another Academy in the Bronx called the jungle gym. That was a friend. Oh, I know about that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, so I actually received my blue belt from hoists, uh, right during that transition. So at about a year and a half, and then, uh, I transitioned over to the jungle gym and I was with Justin Garcia for probably the lion share of the majority

of my training and it was, you know, MMA stand up, grappling. Justin was, uh, you know, stand-up grappling Justin was you know I think Rob was hoist his first ever black belt and I think Justin was one of Rob's first ever black belts so I was with him for a long long time and it you know to be honest with you I got tired of getting hit in the head so I was concussed a couple times and I was like you know what maybe this isn't the thing for me. Jiu-Jitsu is really cool. The commute got tough. I was still up here in Connecticut so I was driving like an hour and a half round trip every day and I ended up landing in Gracie

Sports under Marcio Stambowski who's one of you know one of the famous five. One of Hull's five black belts before passed. And he was up in Norwalk, Connecticut. So I received my purple belt and my blue belt under hoist, purple belt under Justin, brown belt on black belt under Marcio. And about, we're now I think about eight years, eight years ago, I decided that this is something I wanted to do.

I have extensive background in instruction and coaching and teaching. And I'm actually still a full-time detective with our police department here in town. Yeah, that was my next question. I thought you worked in law enforcement. I think you were saying, oh, I got work in the morning or something

trying to schedule a thing. I'm like, oh man, you run a full-time academy and then you also have a full-time career. That's amazing. Yeah, yeah, it's tricky. So when I decided to open here, it was strictly based on the fact that obviously I felt like I was experienced enough

and I was a good enough coach and I kind of understood how to pass information properly to students, but it was more of a flexibility issue. So I'm a crime scene detective. So I worked forensics with the Greenwich Police Department. I have the academy. Once I switched to the detective position,

I had a lot more flexibility in my schedule. So I was able to kinda do both at the same time. I mean, I can't imagine there being a lot of crime in Greenwich, I mean, it's such an awful neighborhood. I know, you know what, you'd be blown away. So this is what I tell everybody. Yeah. Cause I remember on the previous podcast, the,

the comment about credit is being ritzy. So it is. I go over there with my kid and there's a cafes and the stores and it's beautiful. Yeah. You know, it's, it's interesting. So it's, there's, it was kind of a twofold issue. Number one, we're, we're an amazing place that has amazing stuff and a lot of money and we're sandwiched between high crime areas. So we're an amazing place that has amazing stuff and a lot of money, and we're sandwiched between high crime areas. So we're a... Oh, okay.

Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah. We're like a destination location for crime. Yeah. Man, that's very interesting. So that's, maybe your business thrives because of that, because you're Brazilian, you're just to school in Greenwich, Connecticut, right?

Yeah, you know, and I'm lucky enough I did. My parents moved me and my brother here for public schooling when we were younger We were from outside the area and I've kind of been a mainstay in the community for a long time So yeah, I mean if you're detective over there, right? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely So, you know, there's that and that you know, there's another issue too Which is kind of outside something else that we do with our our Academy here. We have a huge Scholarship program. We're actually involved with Guardian Guardian Gym I don't know whether or not you've heard about them never heard of it no so Guardian Gym is a I would say we're the

largest 501 c3 jujitsu grappling 501 c3 in the world yeah so we're it's international we're partnered with the UFC with CJI, we're partnered with Sanable, we're partnered with Show Your Roll. Yeah, so the founders Ben Kovacs and Calder Powers is our XO and they've just expanded this program for zero cost, not only memberships but also tournament entrance fees if you have a scholarship kit in your in your program Uniforms and right now we've expanded to international. So we have 21 academies worldwide

We're in Mongolia. We're in Peru. We're in Ethiopia And we happen to be here and that's it's a dovetail because everybody thinks Greenwich is this just strictly affluent community And to be honest, we have about 30% of our community that's under the national poverty line. So it's interesting. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

You know, it's very interesting because, you know, you look at like, you know, mean and average salary and household income and things like that, and then you go to Greenwich and there are apartments there. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Apartment units there. Because like I'm in an affluent neighborhood in Westchester, New York, and there are no apartments over here

You know what I mean? Yeah, not only are there apartments, but I love to show everybody Strictly based on just kind of the preconception that there's nothing but wealthier. We have three housing. We have three Subsidized housing complexes. So we have projects. Yeah. Yeah, but they're like real Brooklyn projects. All right, come on Yeah, but they're not like real Brooklyn projects though, right? Come on. No, not anymore. Maybe like in the 80s and 90s they were a little bit, a little bit, a little bit not as upgraded as they are today. That's got to be brutal living in one of those and then everyone around you, you know, lives in a 37 million dollar house or something like that. That's got to suck, right? Yeah, well that's how I grew up. I actually grew up, yeah, my family moved into one of them

when they first moved down. And that was, that's, I have to be honest, that's the driving force behind the scholarship program here is just to make sure we, you know, we make available because otherwise you're looking at, you know, I have three daughters as well, which is a whole nother, a whole nother obligation. How old are your daughters? My daughters are 13, 15 and 16. Oh boy, man.

I have a six-year-old daughter and I dread those ears man. Yeah, it's tough. That's brutal. And they go to school over there in Greenwich? Yeah, they're all in school in Greenwich. Oh, that's awesome man. They have to be doing Jiu Jitsu then, no? You know what I did, the Cardinal Sin. I pushed them in really hard early on and kind of paid the price. So now we're slowly getting them trickled back in a little at a time. You know what's really interesting is starting early when they decided it wasn't something they wanted to do because dad was telling them to do it, now that they're teenage girls

they see value in it years later. So they're like, you know what, and obviously Jiu Jitsu is so mainstream now so they see it everywhere. Yeah, very true. I'm kind of doing the opposite. She's like ah you know I like ballet and skating more I'm like go do it you know but Papa's gonna go to judo and if you want you can come with me we get doughnuts You know that kind of thing and then we'll see if that works Yeah, there's no really right and wrong with this stuff, so you know you're famous now kind of right I?

I misspoke at the previous podcast when I was talking about the ecological approach. And I'm like, oh, Greg Saunders is over there. And that's another name in the ecological world of BJJ. He's very outspoken about this stuff. And I had a friend that went to visit your academy, and he was like, bro, it was so much fun. We played all these games.

It was a great experience. You know, David, Kim? Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I know. That's such a good time. And I'm like, oh man. All right. And I don't know why I assumed you were Greg. You guys don't even look alike. No, not at all. But yes, I misspoke. It was you, Jeff Morris. That's who I was talking about my previous podcast. I've never spoken to the other guy before or even, you know. So yeah. Tell me about your approach. It's guy before or even, you know. So yeah, tell me about your approach. It's very unique, I hear. Yeah, you know, and that's interesting. I mean, I wouldn't consider myself famous at

all in the jujitsu scene. This is still Relatively famous, you know, I've heard your name, you know, in your academy multiple times for people in the tri-state region. You know, there's this guy that's always playing games, you know, in the room and it's fun and people are getting really good and really fast and it's in a very affluent neighborhood so it must be working. I think maybe locally the word has gone around. I think one of the cool things is I think it's more of the academy. It's the vibe of the academy.

So we have a really, really interesting culture in our academy, which allowed us to transition in the first place. So, you know, my background training was, was embedded in an IP. So just straight drilling, step by step, you know, super cooperative for a very long time. And then interestingly enough, early on in my career, when I did switch to the MMA gym, it required more kind of positional sparring. You know, it's like, how do you teach how to not get punched in the guard? Is there a perfect technique for that?

I don't really think so. You know, like how do you teach how to punch when you're in the guard? You know, like what's the technique for that? So we did a ton of live work. I mean, a ton, a ton of live work. And when I transitioned back to a traditional Brazilian Jiu Jitsu school, um, I, I just, I always had all of these questions as a student. I was like, what's the context of why we're doing this? Why are we focusing on, why do we have

Kimura a month? Why are we, why are we focusing on Kimura's for a month? Why are we ignoring, you know, the rest of jujitsu? Why, why can I never show my back? You know, like we had a lot of these absolutes in jujitsu. Yeah, and sure. Never do this, never do that. Yeah. And it was always, it was like a needle in my brain. Cause again, like I said, I coach all kinds of things. I've coached firearms. I coach all kinds of tactics and you know, different processes in law enforcement I've been coaching for years and being, and I work in forensics. So I work in a science, you know,

in a science based industry and we're always looking for the next best idea. Not, you know, not trying to find what's perfect because what's perfect isn't really sustainable. What's the next best idea? And I actually stumbled upon Greg's, I guess I think it was maybe an Instagram post and the very first thing I did, which is I think everybody else has done, I was like, that's positional sparring. This guy's trying to sell something. It's crazy.

I don't know what he's talking about. And then I think luckily, again, just kind of based on, I don't know if it's demeanor. I don't know if it's how I hold myself to a standard to become a better coach for our students. I don't know if it's my willingness to just try to kind of like learn from everybody. Like I'm a fan of learning from white belts. So like I try to learn from everybody.

And when I took a deeper look, I was like, this makes a lot of sense. I'm like a lot of what he's saying makes a lot of sense. And he's clearly more versed in the science. You could tell by speaking to him, he really had a grasp of the science. So as soon as we saw that there was some value, I started to reach out everywhere that I thought potentially either already applied the concepts or were in the process.

So I reached out to Kabir Bath, who's in British Columbia, who does a phenomenal job with CLA with, he has an enormous kids program. So that was separate. You know, how do you teach kids with this, this process? And obviously I reach out directly to Greg, which, you know, like I just want to say like open on the air. Greg is one of the most misunderstood people I think in jujitsu. Like he's so passionate about what he does. He doesn't, if we bumped into each other on the road, he probably wouldn't even know who I was. I've sent students to his academy that he's accepted with open arms

to either show what he does or to let train. He's interacted with me. He sent me coaching pointers, coaching tips, giving me feedback on classes with literally nothing but I'm happy to help and a thank you. So we, you know, we developed a lot of what we were doing based on a pretty strict framework that Standard tends to use, which is CLA. And to be honest, I think one of the other things, a lot of these, the podcasts become a debate, like, is it eco or is it IP?

And I don't notice, and unfortunately, I think that's driven because it's these high-level practitioners and these famous coaches. Yeah. But I'm like you know maybe you should speak to some of the coaches that have kind of community schools. I know I have 200 students it's pretty good for a smaller school. That's great. You know we have I have five black belt coaches which is great for a small school. Phenomenal. But, you know, my metrics for measurement aren't necessarily how many people I have placing at ADCC. That's probably not gonna happen here. My metrics are, and it's interesting,

you brought up a really good point. The clients at Ellen Greenwich, they expect a product. You know? So one of the things that I focused on really early on was I was like, let's create a foundation For the culture and inside the Academy number one Let's make sure trade training is as safe and accessible as possible for everybody that enters the space and number two let's make all of the training as

efficiently geared towards improving grappling period and then let's get rid of everything else and see what happens. Yeah, awesome, awesome. I love that. So do you have a curriculum, like a set, okay, these are the games that's required for a beginner to be able to play a master. This is a thing.

Do you have like sort of a broad framework or some structure for these people? Yeah, so when we first start, and this is another thing that I have never once heard spoken on any podcast, I had coaches, so one of the interesting things that we do here and again I think it feeds into the culture is that I kind of created what I believe is more of like a collective, it's kind of a creative space. I want to coach as all of my coaches receive their black belts from different people, all of my

coaches are black belts that play entirely different jiu-jitsu coaches all of my coaches receive their black belts from different people All of my coaches are black belts that play entirely different jujitsu all of my coaches have different body sizes and different kind of types of bodies and All of my coaches learned strictly drilling and traditional style So I think the hardest transition was getting them on board So now I have five people that we know historically and traditionally in Jiu-Jitsu. We're the arbiter of truth. I'm a black belt, I know everything.

I had to convince five of them that their role was now to guide practice and learn how to coach instead of telling everybody what to do. Which was challenging, but we have an exceptional group of people here and they were all able to transition pretty easily, but it required so much work. We sent them to coaching conferences.

We did study groups together to understand at least kind of the basics of what we were trying to do. And then one of the first, and again, I have no idea if this is right, wrong or indifferent, but it worked with us. We created a shared PDF file that we were constantly on a daily basis updating, discussing, giving feedback on, which was giving us not necessarily a set style of games, but games for every position that we thought

was relevant to get started. So I think we had a master list of something like 50 games, but again, I think the game issue gets a little misconstrued as well, because the game is, I mean, you could literally take a simple pinning game from like a side mount alignment and you can constrain it to the point where you can play 75 different games, just trying to accomplish different things, you know? So it's not like the game is the exercise.

The game is like a really nice kind of outline for where you can go with that position based on what you want the intent of the grappler to be. I mean, we obviously have games that are more geared towards control. We have games that are more geared towards keeping control and creating isolation. We have more games geared towards, you know, creating space and finding ways to make your body move. We have more games geared towards making sure your opponent's body doesn't move. And then that's one of the interesting kind of dynamics with the issue is like that requires

a kind of a depth of knowledge and you actually have to be a good coach to understand how to pull this kind of engagement out of your students without telling them what to do. So, and again, another thing was it was so challenging. It's not just show up and now, and it was funny because I've taught for years and I've had my academy and we taught IP for a few years. And it's really easy as a black belt to come in and show your three favorite half guard sweeps.

That's easy. It's really easy. Yeah, for sure. What we noticed was how hard it was. How hard it was to end. And I learned so much grappling that I misunderstood in the first place. I was like, man, I really thought I knew

what was going on here. I don't. Yeah. You know? And now I kind of do, because I have to guide people to finding it. So quick question. The difference between CLA and IP like what are those things stand for? So CLA is as again. I'm not the science guy. So

Unfortunately with my time I read as much as I can I leaned heavy into Rob Gray's stuff He has three tremendous books that also really kind of well define this whole teaching methodology Especially and and specifically to jiu jujitsu in his last book So IP is information processing. So it's gonna be I'm gonna I'm gonna provide you information It's gonna be a step-by-step kind of linear approach These are the things that I want you to accomplish in the manner that I want you to accomplish them So think think very simply think static drilling. Okay CLA is teaching methodology which I believe falls under the umbrella of broader ecological

dynamics, which is we're going to let our members and our athletes just experience the environment that they're in. The environment that they're in is going to provide them the information so that they can then perceive and create actions based on those perceptions in real time. So that's the science jargon. But for me, and again, not a good rendition of the science jargon, Greg and a bunch of other guys are really good guys to listen for that.

To me, what it really meant was we're not going to be cooperative with one another. We're going to use resistance. And I want variation because if you can pick up what it feels like when somebody's actively resisting what you're attempting to do, you're gonna get the real cues for being able to proficiently perform those techniques or those ideas of what you're trying to accomplish.

So it's aligning our students in a particular position and say, you know, one of my favorites, we, it was, I had so many things that I had trouble with as a coach. It's like, how do you teach open guard? How do you teach that? You know, it's like, so, you know, one of the things that we started with was, you know, a seated player disconnected from a standing player.

And we said, you know, a seated player disconnected from a standing player. And we said, bottom player, you are, uh, your goal for this game or your first task for this game is to keep the bottoms of your feet connected to the top player as often as you possibly can and reinforce those connections with your hands as often as you can. Don't allow grips on your body to manipulate your legs and your feet and your connections to your partner. Don't let them take your connections off manipulate your legs and your feet and your connections to your partner. Don't let them take your connections off. If they do, put them back on. And again, this is probably a little further

than what I would do for a first game, first day, first minute in the gym. We also use analogy a ton. You know, one of the things, I got feedback from one of my adult students who watched a kids class. A kids class, we explained playing open guard, was like you were cradling a balloon in your lap and at no time could you allow your partner to

pass your legs and put their chest on the balloon because it would pop and then all of a sudden like an amazing level of creativity of using frames of you know I don't have to tell people you should frame using your forearms and using monkey grips Now I'm sudden there's a balloon there. You're like, you know things change. Yeah things change So yeah, and then you continue to scale, you know, like for example that games a great example You know what? We got a lot of when we tell people to put their feet the bottoms of their feet connected to their training partners So they can't pass their legs. We get a lot of pushing and a lot of kicking

to their training partners so they can't pass their legs. We get a lot of pushing and a lot of kicking. So then what we explain to them is, number one, we want you to now try to keep your position condensed. So use your legs to protect that balloon as well. If you straighten your legs, you can't do it as well. Number two, if you feel like you can't make a positive connection with the bottom of your feet, maybe try putting connections under their body and use the tops of your feet,

which all of a sudden starts creating, you know, options for hooks and lifting people. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. Very interesting. Right. So, you know, the problem with a lot of the IP approaches, right? So like, let's say, oh, you go knee cut and then you grab the collar and then you do this and that, whatever it is, you go into like into like I don't know some people might say the crazy dog pass or like knee weaves whatever you can't get the collar yeah yeah I don't let you grab it so would that be like a micro game like all right you know your goal is to grab the collar for this position go try it or that's just too small of a game or would you call that like a micro game or is that you might do 100% we were just call that like a

low variability highly constrained game. As a matter of fact, it's funny. He used those terms, man. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, think about it. Game. So I don't, you know, we don't use this language when we coach, we just talk

jujitsu, you know, but we just guide them this direction. I'm trying to be somewhat respectful of the people that have done all this work, you know, cause there's so much free information out there. But, um, you know, I would think to myself, yeah, you're playing a game with a simple task and a simple goal, that's it, you know? Awesome. All right, so I'm a standup guy, you know,

I do lots of judo, I do jiu-jitsu too, you know, but I'm really known for my standup, for my judo background. I'm sure you teach takedowns at your gym. Do you have games like this for takedown people? Yes, 100%, it was actually funny that you mentioned the grip problem. So what I've noticed early on, and I think you'll probably find this in the majority of the schools that like to teach this style, they're pretty heavy no-gi.

Because so much of what we do is also based on body connections and biomechanics and understanding how to move the body and connect to the body. The gi causes an external problem from the body that's, it's a tough puzzle to crack because you know, for example, we have a game in particular, a very, very small, very, very focused game on defeating grips. So if somebody says, so I got to get together with you on this. I think judo is where we're probably lacking. But we have, for example, somebody creates a collar level same side grip

and as their initial starting grip. And what the defender's job is to do as early as possible, create extension in the limb any way you can, and then try to break the grip. So the focus is another thing we do a ton of is external prompts. We want all of our athletes and students focusing on what's happening in the environment outside of them, within their, their training partner's bodies, where they are on the mat, as opposed to thinking about like, how do I make this,

this grip break proper? How do I put my hands in the right place? We just kind of drive them towards just make it disconnect, find the best way that works. Yeah. Yeah. Nice. You know? Yeah, nice. But stand up stuff. Stand up so we do a ton of wrestling here. We actually have a scholastic wrestling program. Really? That's awesome.

Yeah. We do high school and middle school wrestling here as well. And it's, you know, wrestling, I would actually say wrestling is a much easier sport. So what I do is I dissect everything and I look at the broad goal. Like what is the goal of this event, this exercise? So wrestling, the goal is you have two ways you can win. Without getting into the variations, the first way to win is by points. There's a couple different ways by points, but by points.

The second way to win is to pin your partner on their back and hold them. So if we know those two things are the two ways that you win, we can focus on either or, but I would focus on the physical manipulation, the pinning. So something like standing, it starts to kind of like show itself in more light when you think this process through. It's like, what are the better ways, first of all, I have to deal with a wrestling stance. So my partner is hiding his hips

and putting everything else in front of it, his shoulders, his hands, his head, like a traditional freestyle wrestling stance. So one of the ideas is how do we get through that? How do we get around that? How do we attach that and bring that to them so I can find ways to get to the parts of the body that are important for a takedown? You know, in wrestling, what's important for a takedown is getting to the body, getting to the hips, getting to a leg or getting to two legs.

So it's refocusing on that. The wrestling, I think, is really easy to do any CLA games. Judo, that's a little bit more of a bear. Yeah. I mean, Judo, we do it too. We're not just kind of like the IP approach. We're kind of a hybrid between the two. And there are some break falls that you just kind of have to kind of make the shapes Because it's natural instinct to kind of put your arm down and if someone's throwing you you break your arm You know so there's some of that like hey just memorize this thing and drill this there's some of that Then there's also the games of like alright putting the hand on the collar first You know these are some of the things that I may do you know figure out the rest stuff that you already do

Blend it all together, and let's do it for three minutes, you know? So we do some of that. How do you promote, I feel like, now that you have such a scientifically driven kind of a methodology, do you also incentivize people to stay around, train more, and then I feel like your belt system would not just be like, all right, you feel like a blue belt,

let me give you a blue belt. I feel like you'd be a little bit more cautious in your approach as well. Given your open mindedness about this kind of stuff. What do you do for that? Man, it's a mess. It's a mess. This, so this approach blew up everything that was traditional in my mind, unfortunately, and I can't do a curriculum. Yeah. It'd be like, all right,, cut past this past that past closed guard proficiencies. Okay. Here's the belt. Now you've been here for two years.

Yeah. And it's super diff. And I was so old school. Like, I mean, again, I was not, you know, early two thousands with hoist. I, my criteria used to be something along the lines and you probably heard all these, right? Like a blue belt is somebody who can proficiently defend himself in a real life situation to situation against somebody who's untrained and find dominant positions, you know, and who also competes actively well with his peers at white belt and tends to get the better of the majority of them. You know, you can kind of get that cascading ladder with all the belts.

I would do blue belt would be a priority of defending yourself. So learning all of the, you know, prop, this was kind of my old philosophy, learn, you know, the plethora of escapes from every single position, you're going to be in bad positions a lot of your blue belt career, you know, have answers, have answers for all of those problems, and continue to obviously develop a broader understanding of jiu jitsu. Purple Purple belt I used to say, now I want to see you play from the bottom well. I want you to start working open guards. I want you to be dangerous. Everyone feels good on top. It's so easy. And then purple belt, I think traditional, we always used to think of linking or blending

your techniques together. I really shouldn't see a lot of gaps in what you're doing. Brown belt was always the funny one. Brown belt, I think we used to say, we're not gonna give you a brown belt unless we know you're ready for a black belt, but now you better kind of refine your art. And there tended to be a little bit more of an emphasis on like pressure at brown belt.

Like learn how to not just hold people positionally, but use, you know, distribute your weight properly, understand center of gravity better, make sure when somebody gets down and underneath your position, they don't come back out. And then black belt was, you've built all the skills and requirements through the ranks to this point, you're really kind of understanding the majority of Jiu Jitsu off the top of your head.

You have answers for every issue. You can attack the upper body, you can attack legs, you could do take downs. Um, but man, I don't know anymore. And the interesting thing is I don't know anymore because I have currently, and you'll hear this from a lot of guys, we're not a competitive school. We compete and we do really well when we, I mean, small tournaments, we do tap, we did tap cancer out two years ago. So we've been, we've been using this, this format for a little over two years. We did tap cancer out two years ago. So we've been using this format for a little over two years. We did tap cancer out about a year and a half ago,

I think it was. We sent 21 grapplers and 19 of them medaled. You know? So, it's again, that's not ADCC, this isn't the highest level of competition, but it was a little bit of good anecdotal feedback. The problem I have now is that I am seeing development in white belts that I didn't think was even possible.

Yeah. Um, and by the time you hit, you know, a senior blue belt level with, with how we're kind of judging things here, you already have no gaps in your defense. You already have no gaps in transitions. You already really understand the entire game of jujitsu. Um, and I think that's based on the format too. So we didn't talk about our format or format. We tend to play and it's variable.

We tend to play somewhere between five to six games, a class, and we play all of jujitsu every class. So every class, my guys do a six or 10 minute standup game. Yeah. Every class, they do a six or 10 minute pinning versus trying to escape a pinning situation, a guard game versus trying to pass a guard. Uh, we tend to do, we pepper in a submission or a leg entanglement game. And it's just constantly, you come in and you train for an hour, but you touch every little piece of Jiu-Jitsu.

So they're really back-filling all of the stuff that we've said for years, like, well, how do you teach this? How do you teach recovering from a pass and then re-initiating a pass? How do you teach when it's time to go backwards when it's time to go forwards when it's time? That's a good question, man. It's like, you know, it's like, I've been grappling my whole life. And I'm like, yeah, that's

a very good question that most of jujitsu students can't answer, you know? Yeah. And what we do is we just immerse them in it. And that's that's where they live. They live in all those, those gray areas all day long. Alright, so let's just say, for instance, right? Deep path game. You'd start them in deep path. You give them a couple of goals in the wise. Would you even show two or three things that are very common? Like not your arm,

this way here, tip this way and go over on the pass. Like would you show any of that stuff? No, I mean, positionally, I would say something like deep guards interesting cause like head position matters a ton in deep guard, right? So like if you lose connection and you lose good head posture, you're going to have problems. People are going to step right off, you're going to step right over you. So if a position was absolutely, it was an absolute necessity for certain parts of your body to just remain in the position, we would give them external cues to help them in that process. And we would say, hold the position for as long as you can.

So we would start there. So I'd say something like, we're gonna start in an alignment like this, depending on if you have like the Jeff Glover deep half where you like to interchange the way that you're using your hooks in your legs, or you have the deeper underhook on the leg, or you have a shallow underhook towards the knee knee or if you have head position up against deep thigh or depending

on where we want everything for the games that we're going to play we would say something like connect your head but make sure that you never lose contact with the inside of their thigh so they're thinking about the inside of the thigh. The connections with the legs those connections are good for a couple things number one can be just retaining the leg So keep the leg number two it could be for lifting the leg So if you see an opportunity to lift the leg See if you can change the way that you're interacting with that leg using your hooks using your feet

Yeah, and then we would just play the game and say see if you off balance them if you off balance them great You don't have to follow up if their butt hits the floor We'll just call a reset or stay in the position for as long as you possibly can player on top Just try to kind of disassemble the position see if you can just ruin the position if you ruin the position reset and start again So let's just say for instance, right if we're working deep half is the top person instructed in any like do they have different? They must have different goals, right? And you guys are always going a hundred percent all the time to kind of be able to see all the different options now hundred percent Yeah, so we uh

It's very tough to go a hundred percent when you're training this style So, you know, we we adapt to it pretty quickly We don't talk a ton about it the length of the games really regulates how how much output you're gonna put in if you're trying a Simple skill like hold it holding a D path. For example you're trying a simple skill, like holding a D-Path, for example, there's a lot that's going on there physically. And there's a lot that's going on, kind of remaining in that starting position,

balanced on top, you know? You're using a lot of your body. So if you have a 10 minute timeframe to work within, where you're switching back and forth, you tend to do things that are efficient for your cardio, efficient physically. You can't burn yourself out and then have eight minutes where you can't get anything accomplished.

So everybody kind of adjusts that on their own. Sometimes it takes a class or two, sometimes it takes a month, but eventually everybody adjusts to that. But the initial question, the every game, both players have objectives, every single game we do skew sometimes. So let's say, and that's a big thing with game design in the room. If I go three weeks where I'm noticing no one's getting their guard passed we're gonna focus on guard passing and maybe

do an extra game and when we do that extra game maybe one of those games is gonna be weighed a little bit more towards the passer like we're gonna give them a little bit more tools to work with. So that's kind of how we make our adjustments. But every game, both players should have an intention that they're absolutely trying to accomplish during that, that exchange. I had a thing, man. This is really fun. This sounds so fun. I want to go by and work out now. You know, Hey, you're like right around the corner, man. Anytime I'm close, man. I'm close. I I'm gonna come by one of these days with my camera

if you'd have me and then show the world some of these fun games that you guys play. Yeah, I love it man. So we have us, we're here. We have really good friends. My friends Ryan and Alex are in Connecticut submission grappling in Bridgeport, newer school. That's all no-gee, so you can't do any judo groups up there.

Yeah, I mean I wrestled in college so you can't do any judo grips up there I know so they're up there. They run a fantastic program using the same framework You know, it's it's tremendous. It's and one of the things that it's I Don't like to get into the debate. I don't really care. I I think you should do whatever you think's best for your students Yeah, I'm not here to debate anybody. Yeah. Yeah, although the parts like hey, you know, some people actually do better with the IP approach You know, yeah people like that stuff and then there's a lot of current champions that went to stuff and a lot of these champions now of course they're gonna have sort of A survivor bias to that because all this is the way I learned it. I'm a champion So therefore it must be the best way. Yeah. I'm not trying to argue on either side.

I think both sides are really good for different people with different learning styles. Yeah, and I'll tell you what from teaching because I know that you have a background in education as well, teaching a really long time. If a learner has decided that he has a preferred way of learning, good luck trying to get him out of it. So it's like if that's what he wants, that's what they want. And I don't see anything wrong with it.

You know, it's preference. The interesting thing is, you know, like one of my other jobs, I think I mentioned it to you the first time we talked, I actually own a small security business as well. It's kind of like a one man show. And we do have a bunch of celebrities in town. So one of the celebrities that I work for is one of the better shooting guards in the NBA right now and

I have an out and over the years and Specifically the last two years when we were kind of like really trying to implement the system I was like man. I have access to all of these professional athletes and professional coaches and Let me see if I can get some feedback from some of these guys. And it was really interesting because when I first started learning the approach, it was reading, it was reading, listening to podcasts, listening to Greg stuff, listening to Rob Gray stuff. And I was standing.

It was funny because this came up in a, in one of the more recent debates about Kobe, Kobe and MJ, you know, they were so great because they did more than everybody else. And I was standing in a practice and it was a shoot-around and I walked up to one of the coaches that I became friendly with, we're still friends to this day, and he said, I said, you know, what are you doing for practice right now? It doesn't seem like it's just static stuff. It seems like there's some thought behind this.

And he's like, oh, we're doing small side of games. And I'm like, what do you mean? What are small side of games? I've heard that before. And he's like, I go, we're trying CLA. And he's like, yeah, it's absolutely the same thing. He's like, we don't do anything static. He's like, that doesn't make any sense.

That doesn't transfer any information from, you know, the athlete to the environment they're going to be operating in, which is an actual live game. He's like, if anything in the NBA over the last 10, 15 years, we're doing everything to get away from the traditional approach and making sure that all of our athletes are becoming problem solvers down to the point of literally throwing passes to a static shooter. They were throwing bad passes. And I was like, wow, you guys can't hit them in the chest. And they're like, no, no, no, we're doing that on purpose

He needs to organize around catching that and then getting a shot off in a certain amount of time We have a timer running too and I'm like, oh, he's got like all kinds of constraints and he's like, yeah How else would you teach? players to Execute under variability. He's like he's not gonna get hit in the chest with the pass in the middle of his game every single Time doesn't work that way. That's a great point. Yeah, that's a good I mean you still have to know how to shoot the ball right cuz you know, yeah, you got a right and Who's the guy curry? He's like takes all those shots a day. Yeah, I put a shot today

So, I mean there is definitely a fundamental important thing that you need to do fundamentally, but man, that's a great story, man Yeah, and it's great. So so the coaches. Yeah, so the coaches name is Dan Gourault He's the assistant coach for the New Orleans Pelicans right now and we've been even chatting recently and he's like man I don't I don't I don't necessarily understand the the argument from the other side we don't really do this in pro sports anymore and I'm like yeah I know we're catching up so fun man that's awesome quick little commercial commercial break. Thank you very much for the sponsors. Elijah, Jason, Levan, thank you so much. You guys too can sponsor the podcast and sponsor us on Patreon.

We have many different tiers. You can chat with me. You can do one-to-ones with me. The whole nine. Thank you very much for everyone's support. Yeah, man. Right back to it, dude. That sounds so fascinating. Do you play ball? No, I was, you know, I was a three-sporter when I was younger, baseball, basketball, football. I played... Not wrestling, huh? Not wrestling, not wrestling. Yeah, my first exposure to wrestling was in the Marines, of all places.

Wow, and you loved it. Good place to learn. Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. Were you great at the other sports, basketball, baseball? Were you good at those? Oh, man, I'm a 5 foot 975 pound bald white guy so baseball I was I was pretty good at baseball basketball I

was like a role player I was like one of them I'm gonna outwork people I play defense and football was probably where I excelled the most I actually got a scholarship to play at Iona College in New Rochelle back man you were you were like a full-blown New Yorker I'm surprised our paths never really asked before this. Yeah. Yeah, maybe it has it may have it may have yeah Yeah, it may have yeah back right. Yeah, I own I had a football program back in the day They don't even know they did I know about uh, I own I know lots of guys that went there I'm a little bit younger than you but yeah by a few years, but man All right. So where do people find you? so the majority of

Obviously just Greenwich jujitsu Academy dot-com is our website the majority of the the The kind of content we put out we don't really do content. That's the other thing like I don't really in I'm not trying to be an influencer. I'm not trying to sell anything I'm trying to make what we do great and I'm trying to network with other people that are trying to be an influencer, I'm not trying to sell anything. I'm trying to make what we do great and I'm trying to network with other people that are trying to do the same thing. So we have our Instagram page, and to be honest with you,

the majority of it is pictures of our students having a good time, getting promoted. It's again, I'm kind of outside, my sole focus with the time constraints that I have. My sole focus is to become a better coach. Every single time I have an opportunity to kind of invest some time in it. So granichujitsu.com, granichujitsuacademy on Instagram. And you know, it's interesting, we do, we get a ton of messages recently now that this

is all kind of popped off a little bit. You know, it has, you know, I'm telling you, I've heard your name or your gym numerous occasions from like probably four or five different people, you know. Yeah, I think so. Have you ever heard of this guy? I'm like, yeah, yeah, actually I have, you know, and have you ever been to his class? Like, no, but I'm going to change that and I'll bring my camera to be fun. Is that a lot? Yeah, oh, yeah, we we let everybody so we're super non-traditional So we really like yeah, we reinforce the idea of efficiency like we don't we don't know warm-ups. No lineups We just we come in and we start But we let all of our like a creative workspace. Do you ever just roll period? Yeah, yeah, so we actually leave the majority of our classes will run about 50 minutes 5-0 of games usually about 10 6 to 5 minute game

Excuse me 5 6 to 10 minute games and then we'll extend we'll do an extra You know somewhere between 15 to maybe 30 minutes of just live training. Wow great. That's awesome man Yeah, yeah, it's awesome, man. Yeah, yeah. It's been fun, man. This is, it's interesting. And you know, it's challenging. And I think that's the cool part is like, try to push yourself to understand what coaching is.

It's a thing. It's not just showing stuff, you know? Yeah. So top three most fun games. Let's end it with that. I mean, you know, the word games kind of makes it a little bit kind of like, oh, they're just messing around over there. But like, yeah's end it with that. I mean, you know, the word games kind of makes it a little bit kind of like, oh, they're just messing around over there.

But like, yeah, they're really games and they're, you know, an educational tool. And what are your three top ones that you find the most fun for, you know, your students? Oh, man, that's tough. We do so much control work here. So you know, I'm a super weirdo. My favorite position in J jujitsu is back defense So defending my back that's my favorite position. So I I yeah Yeah, yeah very weird I just you know what I see I think it's a

absolutely the most Unique defensive position in jujitsu. It's it's a position that we categorize as, you know, like the deep dark gates of hell, but there's so much movement that's still allowed. So... I'd rather be there than be stuck in someone, you know, on bottom side control. Yeah, so for years I've preached, you know,

it's always gonna be better for you in the long run to learn how to defend your back properly and give up your back than to stay pinned underneath somebody and mount. And for years people are like, ah, you're crazy. That's a 50-50. And I happened to my last my belt promotion, my stripe on my black belt was from Roger Gracie. He was doing a seminar at Gracie Sports in Norwalk and I had him for a second on the side we were talking about defense and he was like why would you ever pick Mount over back control? He's like you can move so much better with somebody on your back and he's like that's the essence of defense creating

movement. He's like if you can't move you can't defend yourself and I'm like man I agree a hundred percent. so I would say definitely a disconnection game from starting in a really deep back control like something like You know depending on what the back player and And what the room looks like we could do something like very simple like a like a traditional seat belt or body harness connection on the on the on the body and then the legs we could say you could have a choice you could either do hooks independent hooks or you could do a body lock and what we try to do is kind of scale not necessarily scale direct the intention of the defender like you have two problems right you have connections around your body around your legs and waist you have

connections around your body around your shoulder line under your arms and over your arms which one is holding you better? And which one creates more potential danger? So then we talk about kind of like priorities, right? What is the priority in the position? So what tends to happen is everybody starts to discover that as soon as the arms come off of me or they're disconnected or they have less meaningful connections, I can pretty simply move my back away from your chest.

And that'll start to give you all sorts of really interesting feedback for movement in different directions. It creates rotation, it creates kind of contracting your body and sitting up. It creates more opportunity to push yourself over your shoulders, partners above their head if they're not wedged over your shoulders. So, so something with the disconnection from a back position and then just finding movement, um, are one of my favorites, which is not a favorite in the room, but I think it's really good for development is starting in a mounted pin

and then working for something like getting under both elbows and then getting them connected to the head. Cause we know that position in isolation, both my arms stuck over my head while you're holding them creates a precursor for like limitless submissions. You could attack shoulders, you could attack straight arms, you could attack the neck, you can attack behind the shoulders, through the shoulders, you could attack a bunch of different stuff versus not allowing somebody to climb high onto your chest To approach your shoulder line. So we would give the bottom player, you know some sort of

Constraint like any time and every time you can keep your hands connected to your partner's hips. That's where we want your hands Don't allow them to elevate their position beyond your stomach and every time you can disrupt their position by pushing them off side to side do that. You know? So something like that. And then, you know, third is the open guard games I think are really, really valuable. The idea of, again, I've never learned a better way to teach open guard. Than something as simple as keep all of your limbs in front of the spot on your body you don't want your opponent. Or another thing that we stumbled upon early on was just if your legs are facing your opponent, likely your spine wants your head to face your opponent as well.

So use your body. If you're going to think about that shielding concept where I don't want them to get to the balloon on my stomach, it's going to operate a lot easier if I reorient my entire structure towards the person who's trying to put pressure on me. You know, like little things like that. And it becomes these super broad concepts that you see our members, they find it in real time. They're like, wait, I can't move my legs my legs back in oh that's because my shoulders are pinned in the opposite direction so yeah so it's like so I think those three I mean there are so many that we have fun with yeah that's awesome I can't wait to come visit yeah yeah I'm gonna visit you I mean yeah man this is such an honor to talk to you like this is a cool way to meet but I meet, but I've been watching your stuff for years, years.

I mean, like I know my Asoto Gari is like based on your videos. My Ochi Gari is like based on your videos. So this is like really, really cool. All right. And I hope I see you in person soon. Yeah, absolutely. Door is always, you're always welcome. And we we do drop ins, you know, so like anybody

that wants to come and train with us, as long as you're cool and you want to come in and have fun and learn, you know, our door is always open to anybody who wants to come train. Awesome. Thank you very much for being on the podcast. Thank you so much, man. Nice to meet you.