aesopian.com | brazilian jiu-jitsu

People have urged me to start a forum and I’ve thought about it, but I feel there are already enough places to talk about BJJ. You probably read at least Sherdog, the Underground and JJGear, to name a few. There’s no shortage.

But I got to wondering, what would I want out of a forum? A lot of message boards tend to be for the “bored at work” crowd, which can be fun, but doesn’t always lead to the greatest serious discussions. Sometimes you get good answers to technical questions, but you’re more likely to get the billionth “BJJ vs Judo vs Wrestling vs Baguazhang” thread and gi vs no-gi arguments with a healthy dash of Eddie Bravo love/hate, and zero belts asking “how do armbar?” That gets old.

So what would I really want?

• Interesting and thoughtful discussions
• Original content, tutorials and videos
• Low drama, no politics
• No trolling, no gimmick posters

Now if I didn’t think there was a forum that already had those things, then I’d consider starting one. But Jason Scully took care of that for me. He runs The Grapplers Guide. He’s been building up a community of grapplers who are interested in improving. He’s also put a lot of work into creating videos, drills, gameplans, worksheets and all kinds of tools to help you get better.

You’ve got to buy a premium membership to get access to the best stuff, but it’s cheaper than a book or DVD if you compare the cost to how many techniques you get and how much potential it has to give you personalized instruction and advice. Some of my favorite drills come from Scully’s videos.

Check out The Grapplers Guide and let me know what you think.

Edit: I just noticed that lifetime memberships are 50% off this week only. That’s only $67. You’ve probably paid twice that for an instructional DVD box set that’s now gathering dust.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 at 2:52 pm and is filed under Schools. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response.