Stephan Kesting interviews Roxanne Modaferri about the differences between MMA training in Japan and the USA, continuing to improve after 12 years in the sport, snapping a 6 fight losing streak, and what tryouts forThe Ultimate Fighter were really like.

Download Stephan Kesting's Roadmap for BJJ book for free at http://www.grapplearts.com/book

Steve Whittier is a cool guy. He manages to combine both thoughtful analyses and controversial opinions into one eloquent package.

In this interview we talked about lots of different BJJ and MMA related topics, but the main emphasis and recurring theme was functional drilling and the efficacy of different types of BJJ training methods.

http://www.nexusma.com

http://www.grapplearts.com

BJJ Black Belts Ritchie Yip and Stephan Kesting have a wide-ranging discussion, centered around tips that BJJ beginners need to know.  

Material covered includes:

• Whether beginners should in their own class or mixed in with more advanced people
• Things to look for when checking out a new school
• How to avoid situations where you’re just going to get maliciously rag dolled by senior students
• How instructors can teach a class of differing levels
• What the the only real spiritual benefits of martial arts training is
• How to tell if a martial arts school is run by a complete A-hole
• Why training with black belts only is a huge mistake
• What happens when people interested in taking a kickboxing class end up in the jiu-jitsu class by mistake
• Why learning jiu-jitsu is much harder than learning boxing, and how not to get discouraged during that learning process
• The most insane idea Stephan has ever had for making a training dummy
• And much more...

For more about Ritchie check out www.infighting.ca

For more about Stephan check out www.grapplearts.com

Here's a really cool video interview I did with my friend, BJJ blackbelt, renowned coach, and fierce competitor Elliott Bayev.  

This interview is special because we break down the steps of building a BJJ gameplan.  We go right from the basic BJJ self defense gameplan, and build up to the intricate strategies used by world class competitors.

There are tons of immediately useful takeaways here.  And along the way we also discuss self defense, the role of competition, and the evolution of new techniques and positions in BJJ.

If you want to download Elliott's Complete Spider Guard Gameplan Mindmap for free visit http://www.grapplearts.com/spider/

This is a really cool interview with my friend, black belt, and fierce competitor Brandon 'Wolverine' Mullins.  Brandon and I originally worked together to create the highly acclaimed instructional How to Defeat the Bigger, Stronger Opponent Volume 2. In our time together today Brandon and I discuss,

• Life and death on the seminar circuit,
• What changes you need to make to your guard to transition from gi to no-gi,
• How to connect moves together to make a smooth and fluid game,
• The evolution of jiu-jitsu, including the new positions and strategies that are continuously changing the sport,
• Why you always need to pushing to improve your position even when you're ahead on points.
• And much more...

Stephan: I’m here today with my friend,Adam Singer, who runs The HardCore Gym in Athens, Georgia.  He is probably best known for being Forrest Griffin’s MMA coach during the formative years of Forrest’s career. He’s also a jiu-jitsu black belt and has trained tons of fighters.

I’m really looking forward to picking his brain about MMA and jiu-jitsu and the relationship between these things. He’s an outspoken guy, so I’m sure we’ll have a good conversation. So thanks for talking to us today, Adam.

Adam: Hi. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Stephan: So, you're driving around town as we do this interview?

Adam: It's hard for me to find any place where I’m not going to be bothered by people. And so I figured, I’ve got the air-conditioner on in the car and I’m just going to drive around. We have what is called “The Loop”. It’s about 10 miles long and I’m just going to drive around “The Loop” with cruise control on and talk to you.

Stephan:  Okay. Well, hopefully we don’t have the first live car crash on a podcast. I’m all about firsts but that’s one I’d prefer to avoid.

Adam: That'd be a 'snuff-cast?'

Stephan:  Yeah, the snuff-cast. I think that might be a very, very niche thing...

Before we get too heavily into this, tell us a little about about your background in martial arts, how you got started and where you’re at now.

Adam: Sure. Yeah. I took traditional martial arts as a kid, tae kwon do, karate, and then I wrestled in high school and wrestled a little in the navy.

And as soon as I saw the first UFC in ‘93, I immediately fell in love with it. I knew that that was what I wanted to do. I came down to Georgia to go to engineering school, and my brother followed me down here and we just started getting more involved in the martial arts. We got really into Jeet Kune Do for a long time. We travelled to California as much as we could and did a lot of seminars. The good thing about the Jeet Kune Do community in the early ‘90’s was they were big into Brazilian jiu-jitsu as well.

Stephan:  They were merely an adopter of BJJ for sure. That and Shootwrestling as well...

Adam: Right. Well, there were Ralph Faulkner and Paul Vunak. Paul was the first Jeet Kune Do person we trained with - we used to train in his house. He understood immediately when he saw the Gracie’s how much they had to offer. There are stories that he actually took the Gracie challenge and lost, but never ended up in any of the videotapes. But he encouraged all the students to dive into jiu-jitsu and we did that.

And after a few years with Paul Vunak, we started training with Matt Thornton, who runs the Straight Blast Gym. Matt is incredibly important to me, an important figure in my growth in the martial arts.

We were doing jiu-jitsu and we opened the gym. We started at the university and then we opened a gym up off the campus probably 12 years ago, maybe a little more, and now the Hard Core Gym has grown into what it is today.

Stephan:  And when you say “we”, that’s you and your brother?

Adam: Right. Most people don’t separate Rory and I. I’m the older one. I am the one that never fought in the UFC. My younger brother fought in the UFC and was on TUF. So whenever I say “we”, I’m speaking of myself and Rory. Even when I say “I”, I’m usually speaking about myself and Rory.

Stephan:  It’s the royal “I”.

Adam: The Singer Brothers, that’s how we’re known.

Stephan:  Perfect. So maybe tell us a little bit about some of the fighters that you guys have trained and have come up through you guys. Obviously, there’s Forrest Griffin, he’s probably the biggest name, right?

Adam: Right, When we first started to doing this, Rory and Forrest came to the conclusion one afternoon that they wanted to fight. And I really had no interest in fighting, so I said, alright, '

Stephan Kesting interviews Scott Nelson from On the Mat about the history and evolution of BJJ in North America.  Along the way Scott shares some pretty crazy stories from his travels around the world.

Want to find out how to be a more effective martial arts teacher? Stephan Kesting interviews BJJ black belt Ritchie Yip about the art and science of teaching martial arts.  Lots of tips and tricks for teachers and aspiring instructors in this one!

Stephan talks with 2013 Pan American middlweight champion Clark Gracie about training, competition, growing up Gracie, and yes, that famous picture with the hair and the omoplata.

Stephan interviews John Perretti, the matchmaker for the early UFC and the EFC (Extreme Fighting Championship).  He put together some of the most iconic matches in the UFC before Zuffa took it over in 2001.  

In this interview he talks about the rules and weight classes he created for the fledgling sport of Mixed Martial Arts (a term that he is credited with coining), how he found and selected fighters, brain trauma in the combat sports, his disdain for the current state of the UFC, and much more.