The Grappling Monthly Podcast

"I'm not teaching for a paycheck. I'm teaching because I love doing this."

Professor Thomas Castro Chamorro is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who teaches the 11 a.m. all-levels class at Legacy Glendale in Glendale, California.

He came to grappling in 2011 by way of a track and field injury and a Frankie Edgar double leg seen on television, and found his footing at an academy in San José, Costa Rica.

The conversation follows the decisions that brought him here: choosing jiu-jitsu over a career as a pilot, a difficult conversation with his father, and a two-week trip to Los Angeles that became a permanent move. He talks about teaching as something he fell into as a blue belt, and why he has never had to fake interest in his students' progress.

On the mat, he explains how a smaller grappler deals with bigger opponents, why a large, untrained white belt worries him for reasons other than submissions, and what changes when training partners treat the round as a game.

Also in the conversation: why he no longer rolls to win, the spread of leg lock systems into kids' classes, and a lightning round.

Recorded on location at Legacy Glendale, in Glendale California.

GUEST

Professor Thomas Castro Chamorro

Legacy Glendale, Glendale, California 11 a.m. class, Monday through Friday, all levels, gi and nogi Website: www.legacybjj.com 

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thomy_the_cat_04/ 

ABOUT GRAPPLING MONTHLY

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected] 

#jiujitsu #bjj #bjjpodcast #martialarts #brazilianjiujitsulifestyle

"My job is to teach jiu-jitsu, not to train jiu-jitsu... But my dream is to train jiu-jitsu."

Beatrice Jin is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt who teaches, competes, and helps run Kogaion Academy in Arlington, Virginia. She found BJJ eight years ago, by accident, after moving to Washington, DC for an internship with plans to become a journalist.

She does not consider herself an intuitive grappler, and that has shaped how she learns: through systems, high volumes of positional sparring, and deliberate work on the parts of the game that do not come naturally.

On competition, she talks about nerves that have not changed since purple belt, and about what the tournaments where she performs well have in common.

She walks through the decision to leave her office job for jiu-jitsu, which she calls the hardest of her life, and how she balances her own training with teaching.

The conversation turns to competitive women's jiu-jitsu in the DC, Maryland, and Virginia region, where a weekly women's open mat began with three purple belts, and to what happens when rivals decide to train together.

For newcomers of any age, she sets out the minimum commitment she asks of new students, and what competition shows a coach that the training room cannot.

Also in the conversation: her takeaways from ADCC, why she trains both gi and nogi, and a lightning round.

GUEST

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

"I don't know if I found jiu jitsu so much as it found me."

Mike "Murdah" Carrasco is a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, DJ, bboy, and artist who trains at Legacy Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in Burbank and teaches nogi at Matspace in Burbank.

This conversation is about approaching grappling as a game rather than a contest, and what that changes: how long you last in the sport, what you learn from a new partner, how you carry a BJJ black belt into someone else's gym, and how much of your identity jiu jitsu should hold.

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

What does it mean to build a life around jiu-jitsu when the rest of your life refuses to stay the same?

Professor Ariane Dang and Stephen Harty join The Grappling Monthly Podcast at Mizu Studio in Montreal for a conversation about Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a long-term practice rather than a fixed identity.

Both are BJJ black belts whose relationships with the art have changed over time. Competition, teaching, relationships, parenthood, work, and the simple reality of getting older all alter what training can look like. The question running underneath the conversation is what remains when the conditions that once made jiu-jitsu easy to prioritize are no longer there.

That creates a different way of thinking about longevity in BJJ. Progress does not always mean training more, competing more, or performing at the same level indefinitely. Sometimes it means changing the standard, accepting interruption, and finding a way back to the mat without treating every change in circumstance as a retreat from the art.

The conversation also examines the environment that makes that return possible. In a city with a dense Brazilian jiu-jitsu and nogi scene, Montreal offers practitioners very different gym cultures within a small geographic area. Ariane discusses why those differences matter particularly for women entering BJJ, where the coach, training partners, number of women on the mat, and overall culture of an academy can determine whether an uncomfortable first experience becomes an exit from the sport or the beginning of a long practice.

There is also a larger discussion about what it means to teach jiu-jitsu now. Students have access to instructionals, YouTube, Instagram, competing methodologies, and more technical information than previous generations of practitioners. That access has increased scrutiny of coaches while also giving them more opportunities to study, adapt, and reconsider how Brazilian jiu-jitsu should be taught.

Across those subjects, Ariane and Stephen approach jiu-jitsu less as something that sits apart from ordinary life than as something that has to evolve alongside it. Training can remain important without remaining unchanged. Competition can give way to coaching. Shared training can coexist with an individual relationship to the art. Time away does not have to mean the end of the practice.

For anyone thinking about BJJ longevity, returning after time away, balancing jiu-jitsu with parenthood or work, coaching, women in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, or the Montreal grappling scene, this conversation examines what staying with the art can actually require.

Recorded at Mizu Studio in Montreal, Quebec.

GUESTS

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mizumtl/ 

LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE

Website: www.grapplingmonthly.com 

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major

Subscribe and turn on notifications.

Nicholas Guillemette teaches full time at Team Evolution HQ in Gatineau, Quebec which is located in Canada's National Capital Region. He started at five, quit completely from sixteen to nineteen, and has trained full time since coming back.

Our conversation is one about finding your limits. Where they sit, how he found it, and what he will not spend to cross it. We talk training volume, lifting, what a heavyweight owes the room when he rolls at somebody else's gym. Why wrestling changed his competition nerves more than his results. Constraint games and drilling in his classes, and why he thinks the standard positional round teaches nothing. Nogi, gi, Pans in October, No-Gi Worlds in December, and the black belt he asked to postpone.

After talking to Nic, it is hard to tell he is only 24. Coaching at the academy his family built, and direct about the trade: teaching is selfless, competing is selfish, and he did both badly before he found a split that held. Recorded on site at Team Evolution HQ in Gatineau, Quebec.

GUEST:

Nicholas Guillemette

Team Evolution HQ 74 Boulv. Gréber Gatineau, Quebec

Website: www.artsmartiauxevolution.com

www.instagram/@nickyg_bjj  and www.instagram.com/@teamevolutionhq 

ABOUT GRAPPLING MONTHLY

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport. The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community.

The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG: www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

Professor King Osimco started jiu-jitsu in Iloilo, in the Panay region of the Philippines, at a point when there was no affiliated gym in his hometown and instruction came from downloaded videos.

He trained in the United Arab Emirates on a four-day emergency response rotation, riding two hours each way to reach a mat. He is now a black belt, one of the head coaches at Centre Evolution HQ in Gatineau, and the director of its Muay Thai and MMA programs. This conversation covers the whole route, we discuss: 

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG: www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

"Your body type doesn't matter."

Professor Rodrigo Alves is the head instructor and co-owner of Brave Martial Arts Institute in Ottawa, an Alliance affiliate. He started Brazilian jiu jitsu in Campinas, Brazil in 2002, at seventeen, after years of soccer. He spent eleven years as a student before his black belt, began teaching in 2012, and moved to Canada in 2019.

He is direct about why the sport speaks to him. He describes what learning BJJ looked like in Brazil when he began, what was expected of a beginner on day one, and what that approach looks like nowadays. The conversation ranges from Prof. Alves' take on lineage and what happens when your professor changes affiliation, to owning a BJJ school in a new language, new country, and during COVID.

Whether you're a beginner or experience jiu-jitsu practitioner, there's something here for you.

Many thanks to Prof. Rodrigo Alves for taking the time to share his story on The Grappling Monthly Podcast.

Recorded on site at Brave Martial Arts Institute in Ottawa.

2161 Thurston Dr Ottawa ON K1G 6C9

Phone: (613) 319-7951

E-mail: [email protected]

Website: www.bravemai.com

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms. Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

#bjj #jiujitsu #jiujitsulifestyle #martialarts #alliancejiujitsu #ottawa #canada

Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt Pierre-Olivier Leclerc on 12 years at Tristar in Montreal, nogi competition, teaching, and training at 33 with 75 in mind. He walked into Tristar Gym as a white belt at 21 and never left. He now teaches at three Montreal academies and actively competes in no gi jiu-jitsu in major competitions.

In this episode:

- What an edge in nogi grappling used to cost, and what replaced it now the information is free

- Making a living in BJJ: part time work, seminars, and a market with far more black belts in it

- How he builds a class, mixing systematized position work with constraints and situational rounds - Training volume at 33, and why he treats rehab as sport science rather than softness

- Scouting, IBJJF, and why he stopped pulling guard

- The word sacrifice, and why he will not use it about himself Recorded on site at Mizu Studios in Montreal, Quebec.

Guest

Pierre-Olivier Leclerc

Instagram: www.instagram.com/@leclercbjj #

BJJ #NoGi #GrapplingMonthly #bjjlifestyle #jiujitsu

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms. Subscribe and turn on notifications.

IG and TikTok: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

"If you understand the art at its core it is the art of de-escalation."

That is Professor Jay Zeballos, three decades on the mats at the Jean-Jacques Machado Academy in Woodland Hills, describing Brazilian jiu jitsu in terms most practitioners never reach for. Not leverage. Not control. The ability to lower the temperature of a situation, including your own.

The argument he makes is a practical one. Grappling gives you options that striking does not, and holding those options is the skill. Most of this conversation is about what that changes once you accept it: how you train, how you teach, and how you carry yourself in the hours you are not on the mat.

Zeballos is direct about where responsibility sits. A student's state when they walk out is not an accident of the day they had. It is a product of the room, and the room is built on purpose. He talks about what that requires from an instructor, why people who say they hate jiu jitsu are usually describing a gym rather than an art, and what actually keeps a person coming back after the novelty is gone.

The conversation moves through ego, which he treats as a logistics problem rather than a character flaw. There is a place for it and a place it does not belong, and he is specific about both. That leads into the tap, which he frames as information rather than verdict, and into why removing the finish from a training round changes the behavior of everyone on the floor.

He also talks about evolution. Thirty years inside a lineage that traces to the source has left him unsentimental about preservation. Technique that stops moving is not tradition. It is just wherever your teacher happened to land. He describes what he has watched change in nogi and in the gi over three decades, and why holding the art still costs you more than it protects.

The last stretch of the episode is about longevity. Zeballos turns 60 next year and still trains and teaches full time. He describes deliberately conceding positions to protect his body, adapting a game rather than shrinking it, and what he means by surrender as a training concept rather than a mindset slogan. If you are training past 40 and wondering what the next twenty years look like, this section is the reason to watch.

Underneath all of it is his answer to why any of this still requires a person in a room. Jiu jitsu is a feel, and feel is the one thing that does not transfer through a screen.

Recorded at the Jean-Jacques Machado Academy headquarters, Woodland Hills, California.

Guest: Professor Jay Zeballos

Academy: Jean-Jacques Machado Academy, Woodland Hills, CA Website: https://www.jjmachado.com/  Instagram: www.instagram.com/@jayzeballos

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG www.instagram.com/@grapplingmonthly 

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]

Every beginner does the same thing the first time someone tries to throw them. They stiffen. They fight it. They plant their feet and try to make themselves impossible to move. Sensei Kenji Osugi has spent sixty years explaining why that instinct is exactly backwards, and why the person getting thrown is often the one learning the most.

Osugi Sensei started judo in the '60s, ten years old, after watching a film and telling his father he wanted in. He lost every match for a full year before he won a single one. That year is where his teaching comes from. He does not train students to study their opponents and hunt for weaknesses on film. He trains them to build a technique so complete that it works no matter who is defending, or how well they see it coming. He learned it from a sensei who won national titles at 145 pounds against men twice his size, on two throws everyone knew were coming.

The conversation moves outward from there. How the sport changed when the IJF started asking spectators what they wanted to see, and what got removed to keep judo from looking like wrestling. What eight hours a day in a closed Japanese training hall does to the people who survive it, and what American grapplers tend to misunderstand about the difference between fighting and learning. Why kata, the part most people skip, is the reason judo exists at all. And a quieter thread running underneath all of it: what a lifetime on the mat costs the body, and what Osugi Sensei now tells young athletes he wishes someone had told him.

This one is for anyone who trains judo, BJJ, or no-gi and for anyone curious about the generation that carried the art before it was marketed.

Sensei Kenji Osugi leads Sawtelle Judo in Los Angeles and continues to teach judo while they're academy searches for a new permanent home.

Guest and academy 

Sensei Kenji Osui - 7th dan Judo black belt

https://sawtellejudoschool.com/

About Grappling Monthly

Grappling Monthly is an independent editorial media brand covering the culture, people, and business of Brazilian jiu-jitsu and the grappling arts. Based in Los Angeles, the brand produces in-depth conversations with the coaches, gym owners, competitors, and practitioners shaping the sport.

The Grappling Monthly Podcast is the flagship property. A weekly long-form interview series hosted by Sébastien Maniatopoulos, a BJJ black belt establishing roots in the Southern California grappling community. The brand's editorial focus is on the human stories behind the art: how academies are built, how practitioners evolve, how the culture of jiu-jitsu intersects with identity, business, and community.

Grappling Monthly publishes across YouTube, Instagram, Substack, and major podcast platforms.

Subscribe and turn on notifications. IG: @grapplingmonthly

For sponsorships and collaborations: [email protected]