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).

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?

I’ve been wondering what people like and dislike about BJJ gis, so I put together a survey. If you include your email address, you’ll have a chance to win and have me record personalized instructional video on whatever you want. (Direct link to the survey.)

I reviewed the armbar instructional by John Will and David Meyer over on Lockflow. Check it out »

After watching the The Twister I was very intrigued by Eddie’s success with lockdown and old school (his favorite sweep). I started trying it out and wasn’t having much success, other than stalling with the lockdown.

Reading his first book, Jiu-jitsu Unleashed, helped a little but I still found myself just being smashed from half guard while desperately holding on to the lockdown.

I spoke to many others who were studying Eddie Bravo’s half guard and almost all of them had arrived at the same point: all his moves seemed like they should…

While training this Saturday, somewhere in all of the twisting and turning of sparring, I pulled a muscle midway down my back.

I didn’t think much of it while I was warm, but as I cooled down after class, I realized just how badly I’d got it. It hurt to stand or walk, raise or lower my arms, turn to either side. I had trouble finding a position I could sleep in, and it was an endeavor to get out of bed the the next morning. Even breathing wrong made me…