Marry the Ocean, Date the Waves.
We’re grapplers before Jiujitsu players.
Jiujitsu players before gi or no gi players.
We play for competition above IBJJF or NAGA specific rule sets. Or for no competition at all.
All but a sliver of our population would recognize which art we specialize in by watching or experiencing it. We should remind ourselves of this and focus our training on this great similarity across all the grappling arts, ancient or with the modern twists. And spend most of our energy here.
Train the differences in the art/rules for a mission specific objective, but return home always to the grappling fundamentals that cross all arts and ages.
Next mission? Train specifically for that. Return home.
When we’re new, we get the lowdown on many of the differences of each art as we encounter them, then the differences of rule sets within each sub-art. But as we evolve, we circle back to see the great majority of similarities over the differences within each.
We should mostly train fundamentals they would’ve trained in ancient Greece and Japan, and will be training millennia from now. When we do, it’s much easier to switch between ever changing and fleeting rule sets than it is to dive deep into the weeds while missing the pond.
Different grappling innovations and modifications come and go, with each rule set or fad with us for a season and a reason. We surf the different waves us they appear in different ways on different shores, but we understand there’s an ocean pushing all of them.
Marry the ocean, date the waves.