Category Archives: BJJ News

News about seminars, tournaments, schools, and instructors.

Ranking Gis from Best to Worst

After reading the results of the gi survey from last year, a reader sent me an interesting series of emails about running an analysis of the data. Here’s what he had to show and tell:

I stumbled across your gi survey a while back and came back to it this weekend as I was looking for a new gi to buy. I decided to have a quick crack at analysing your dataset (actually just the question about favourite gis).

I cleaned up the data by using only responses from people who owned at least 2 gis, and who had listed one of those as their favourite. After that, for each pair of the 21 gi brands that were owned more than 10 times in the dataset, I counted the number of time the 2 brands were owned together and one of them was listed as the favourite, and which one was the favourite. I then ran a quick statistical test on the pairwise comparisons. I also summed up the numbers for each brand, to get an overall value of a brand versus all the others and ran a statistical test on that too.

According to the study:

1) Shoyoroll seems to be the best brand overall by quite a margin, so if you want the best gi no matter the price, this is your best bet.

2) Sirius and Padilla & Sons really stand out as the best deals by far given their high ranking and low price compared to every other brand analyzed. They both have very comparable rankings and prices so it’s hard to recommend one over the other.

3) If you want to try something different, go for Isami (but consider Shoyoroll, Sirius or Padilla & Sons first).

4) Of the 6 major brands identified in the survey (Atama, Koral, Gameness, HCK, Keiko Raca and Vulkan), Vulkan seems to be the best, followed in order by Koral, Keiko Raca, Atama, HCK and finally Gameness. So if you want a gi from one of the big brands, go for a Vulkan (or perhaps a Koral if you really don’t want a Vulkan).

5) At the other end of the spectrum, Krugans, Adidas and Kikskin seem especially bad.

This is a quick and dirty analysis but I hope you’ll find the results as interesting as I did. It actually made me buy a Padilla and Sons straight away, given the overall results above versus the price of the gi (plotting proportion against price would be an interesting graph too).

Seiji is Awesome! Reverse Omoplata in MMA

Skip to 14:40 for the finish.

Link to Youtube video. More videos of Seiji hitting this move in tournament are posted in the comments.

Seiji Sugiman-Marangos (Franco/Behring Jiu Jitsu):

“I first came across Matt’s (Aeso) rants on the virtues of the crucifix position and reverse omoplata as a white belt with less than a year’s experience in jiujitsu.  I thought that the technique looked really cool and began looking for the position during rolling.  It wasn’t until I used the technique to win a match while I was still a white belt that I started taking the position seriously and began corresponding with Matt to troubleshoot the technique as well as working with my coaches: Shah Franco, Marco Costa and Richard Nancoo, on integrating it into my game.

“For the past few years I’ve slowly been accumulating wins by reverse omoplata in the blue and purple belt divisions of the local tournament circuit. Ever since I had my first professional MMA bout last year I’ve had the thought in the back of my mind that one day I’d like to finish a fight by reverse omoplata.  During my most recent fight, hitting the technique was the furthest thing from my mind, but when I felt my opponent’s arm grab my leg I went to the position instinctively.  After executing the technique I think I was probably as surprised as my opponent as well as everyone else in attendance.

“The reverse omoplata is not a complicated or gimmicky move (most people learn how to front roll in their first BJJ class).  Although it may appear risky, I find that the most difficult part of the technique is the initial arm trap and not the roll-through, which is where you risk losing dominant position.  I wouldn’t advocate giving up back control with hooks (although I have been tempted in the past) but the reverse omoplata has been one of my main options from side-ride for almost as long as I have been training.”

Want to learn the move? The original reverse omoplata tutorial is up here.

Stephan Kesting’s Free BJJ DVD

Stephan Kesting emailed me last week to let me know about a freeBJJ/grappling DVD he is releasing and I wanted to pass the word along to everyone. You can watch a preview here or sign up to get the DVD here. I own all of Stephan’s DVDs and have been a big fan of him and his sites (Grappleart.com and the newer BeginningBJJ.com) for years. It’s awesome that he is putting out this DVD since his original instructionals remain some of my favorites.

For those of you wondering, my knee is healing up fairly well and I’ve been easing back into training. Not 100% yet but it’s doing as well as I could hope. Leave a comment and let me know how your training has been going!

UPDATE: 10 Quick Tips on the FightWorks Podcast

Update! You can get 5 more tips in The FightWorks Podcast at the tail end of a really interesting show about the Pan Ams. Get it here.

This week Caleb of The FightWorks Podcast had me on to go over the first 5 of the 10 Quick Tips for White Belts. More interesting than that is Caique got his red and black belt from Rickson and sat down to talk about his introduction to the Gracie family, jiu-jitsu back in the day in Rio de Janeiro, his arrival in the United States, jiu-jitsu today, and much more. Check it out!

BJJ Gi Survey Results

Here are the results of the BJJ gi survey. A second survey will be coming out soon that fixes some problems with the first. For example, you couldn’t match durability or sizing problems to a specific gi (since they were all lumped together).

The data collected could be sliced and analyzed in more ways than I’m showing below, so I’m offering it in CSV for anyone who wants to crunch the numbers. Here’s an example: The top three favorite brands were Atama, Gameness and Koral. But that’s not a big surprise when they are the three brands most people own and most people only have 1-3 gis. What would be interesting to see is of the people who own these brands and others, are they still their favorite?

BJJ Gi Survey Spreadsheet — Download CSV · View as HTML

(Email addresses have been removed.)

BJJ Gi Survey Results