Being a White Belt and not having access to a Black Belt in person makes my Jit-Jitsu Journey a little bit tricky at times. So I wanted to highlight some resources that I utilize in the development of my Jiu-Jitsu game.
BJJ Brick Podcast:
Personally I am a huge fans of podcasts, I listen to them all the time more so than music, I find it an easy way to engage your brain with fun topics while also being able to get other somewhat mindless things done.
The BJJ Brick Podcast was recommended to me at a White Belt seminar I was attending and it has since entered my regular podcast rotation. It is a fun but serious BJJ podcast, Bryon and Gary bring on various guests from all aspects of Jiu-Jitsu to analysis things that they like, have made them, successful etc. Then once a month they don't have a guest and will go off on different topics on things they recommend, those podcasts include: "Better BJJ Habits for Better BJJ" , "What MMA Can Learn from BJJ and Vice-Versa" and "How to Evaluate Your BJJ Game for Better Results" to name a few. The goal of the podcast is to help you find your "Brick" or your secret weapon that you can use at any time to help you become dominate in your Jiu-Jitsu game.
Grapplearts/ Stephan Kestings
Stephan Kestings has really taken to the digital age with BJJ. His website, Grapplearts, has just about everything any practitioner could use at any stage of their game. It has links to his YouTube channel where he posts instructional videos, breaking down every level of move, he sells instructional videos which are a bit more in depth look at things, a BJJ Mobile App that has short 1- minutes videos on basic moves when starting out and lastly his podcast, among many other resources available. For myself I mainly his the website for the instructional videos if there is a particular thing I am working on or want a bit more of an explanation I will often find myself checking his channel first. And then I am also a fan of his podcast, most episodes are fairly short and digestible around 10 minutes but there are ones that run 40-50 min and they cover a bit of everything with interviews and tips and tricks to help you with your game and mindset.
Zen Jiu Jitsu - White to Blue By Oliver Staark
This book offers a lot of basic fundamental ideas that I would believe to be the basis of any long time practitioner's game. For me it is a nice, short (about 100 pages) and easy refresher book to read. My biggest take away from this book was the idea of keeping a Jiu-Jitsu log book, which I have mentioned previously, recoding every training session, spar or seminar that I do so I can reflect on my progress as I go along.
Jiu-Jitsu University by Saulo Ribeiro
This book was recommended to me by the head professor of the academy we are affiliated with. He was up at our gym teaching a seminar and I asked some resources he would recommend for white belts to use when starting out. The book itself is all about different techniques to use and the book tries to keep everything at a natural progress breaking it up by level. It is fairly detailed with lots of pictures to breakdown each technique that they are trying to teach. I would definitely recommend this book. It sits in my gym bag in case there is ever a move I may be drilling with another lower level and maybe something isn't feeling right so it is a handy resource when you don’t always have YouTube available.
What resources do you use?
