Open Note Grappling

Hi. My name is William and I love martial arts.

I started training mixed martial arts around 2009 when it was all mohawks and tribal tattoos. Today I’m a Brazilian jiujitsu black belt, I teach no gi grappling, and I have a website dedicated to helping people take control of their own martial arts learning called Open Note Grappling.

I talk, write, and think about martial arts and everything that impacts its world a lot. Occasionally that culminates in exhaustive studies on some of the best competitors in the world. And other times it’s just one technique, competitor, or idea that I keep seeing. It’s interesting, but it doesn’t warrant more than a few hundred words. That’s why I started this.

To put it mildly, the martial arts world is inundated with content. There are instructionals, youtube highlight reels, podcasts, and everything in between to waste your time on. And while quantity often begets quality, you gotta sift through a lot of hay before you can hope to get poked by a needle in this content wasteland. In my experience, more data does not equal better decision making. You might have heard the Bruce Lee wisdom turned cliché, “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” This newsletter is that one kick.

500 Words of Fighting shares one technique, fighter, or idea that I see in the wide weird world of martial arts that you should see as well. In 500 words (or less) we’re going to explore mixed martial arts.

I make no promises about regularity, only length. In 500 words (or less) you’ll learn more and more, and you’ll be a better martial artist for it. Or, you’ll be a more informed watcher of the sport, able to wow the crowd of Buffalo Wild Wings as your enlightened eyes examine every inch of the athletes expressing excellence in the form of pummeling each other for a paycheck. If you’re into that or this 👆 input your email down👇 there.