What is no-gi jiu-jitsu?

Jiu-jitsu is what you do when the fight gets close, or ends up on the floor. No-gi is jiu-jitsu without the heavy jacket. You train in shorts and a rash guard, so there are no lapels and no sleeves to hold. Everything runs on body position, grips on wrists and necks, underhooks, pressure.

That makes it faster and more slippery, and it makes it closer to how things actually go in street clothes or in a fight with punches in it. It is also why I have built my teaching around it since the Hostility MMA days. No-gi is this gym’s specialty.

For a beginner it starts with the boring gold. How to keep somebody off you. How not to get pinned. How to get back to your feet and leave. Submissions come after that, not before.

The two words you will hear first are guard and rolling. Guard is what you have when you are on your back with your legs between you and the other person, and it is the reason being underneath is not the disaster it looks like. What guard is explains it without jargon. Rolling is live training: both people going, both trying, nobody pretending. It starts small, from one position, at a pace agreed beforehand, and it starts when you are ready rather than on a fixed week. See what rolling is.

People ask whether they should be learning the gi version instead. Both are worth doing and they teach slightly different things. Gi or no-gi lays out which fits what you are after. There is still a belt system under all of it, the same white to black ladder: belts in no-gi.

Wrestling and no-gi are cousins, which is why high school wrestlers pick it up fast. See everything you can train.

Gear is simple. Shorts without zips or pockets, a rash guard or a fitted shirt, and a mouthguard once you go live.