I have unsurprisingly been frequenting BJJ forums during the current pandemic. The dominant voices tend to echo the view being put forward by Trump and his administration when it comes to the necessity of ending local shutdowns throughout the country. In the case of the BJJ community, some members care about this at least in part because they feel entitled to train and they bridle at the thought that the government has the authority to paternalistically intervene in their lives. On this view—which we might call the “right to choose risk” view—if consenting adults want to gather to train thereb ..read more

Needless to say, it’s been a shamefully long time since I posted something new here. In the wake of my second neck surgery a few years ago and my more recent shoulder/bicep surgery, I haven’t had the drive to stay on top of the latest happenings in the grappling world. That’s not to say I haven’t done some teaching here or there or that I don’t still watch a lot of instructional videos, it’s just that my enthusiasm has waned given that I haven’t been able to train. My frustration with not being able to train serves as a nice segue into this post, which is motivated by all of the ceaseless chat ..read more

In this (meta)post, I want to say a few words about the difference between tokens and types--that is, the distinction between generalizations and the specific instances that fall under them. In philosophy, we often use the distinction and it gets used in blog posts about jiu jitsu all the time. Just google for lists of "types of training partners," "types of coaches, "types of black belts," etc. to get a sense for how ubiquitous the distinction can be. As both a blogger and a reader of blogs, it's especially important to be mindful of the distinction in order to keep previous, current, and fut ..read more