Black Friday / Cyber Monday Grappling Improvement Guide
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Dear Jiu-Jitsu Manual reader,
As someone who sells jiu-jitsu stuff online, I may be legally required to send something into your inbox today, telling you to buy something.
I will participate in this cacophony of consumerism, but with a twist! I want to focus on stuff that I've bought, either on Black Friday or at another time, and actually experience a meaningful improvement to my life from it.
The list is majority unaffiliated. If there's a connection or conflict of interest, I will let you know. The focus is on things that are grappling-adjacent. Some of them will have images, and some will not.
I'll tell you about the wild discounts for my courses at the very end of the newsletter only if you stick around.
Sleep Related Items
I bet you were expecting a rashguard or a knee brace (which I think suck) at the top of this. No, I think the biggest impact we can make is by looking at recovery. Improved sleep will not just help you on the mats, but in every single aspect of your life. I like to think of these things as help to sleep faster (getting more quality from a reasonable amount of time).
This has to be the Ferrari of sleep masks. When it first came out, I shocked myself by paying $100 for it. Since then, I've bought two more. This is the pro version; they also have much more affordable ones that are still several levels above the average sleeping mask.
I've never had my nose broken, but it did get hit a lot, and I did reset it a few times with an audible cartilage click. My nostrils are more crooked than Bernie Madoff and my wife complains of my snoring. I need help getting oxygen as I sleep. The intake breathing strips are better than the normal nose strips (in my opinion). The magnets give you more space to breathe, and they are also good for when you have a cold. Not good for rolling though; in that case, the conventional breathing strips work better.
I have been taping my mouth during sleep for almost 10 years now. Since I first read the book Breath by James Nestor. Noses are for breathing, and mouths are for eating and drinking. Sleeping with your mouth open at night is common, bad for your oral structure, your snoring, and, surprisingly, your teeth.
But I will NOT tell you to buy hostage tape or some similar cleverly marketed mouth strips. All those are, are pre-cut kinesio tape. You can save a huge amount by buying a giant roll of any kinesio tape on Amazon and some sharp scissors. You don't even need rounded corners.
We are making a big leap from a $30 recommendation to a $3000+ one. But you'll find this a more honest opinion than you're used to hearing. A few years ago I bought an 8Sleep mattress cover, with cooling/heating and sleep tracking.
Pros:
- Great for situations where you can't get the room cool enough (it should be under 68F).
- Getting into a cool bed in the middle of the summer feels amazing
- The entire bed vibrating for your alarm is effective
- Separate settings for each side
Cons:
- Pricy + a yearly subscription
- After a couple of years my tracking features no longer work and the software is glitching a bit, makes the $200+ subscription seem a bit silly
- During a recent AWS outage it became clear that the bed uploads tens of gigabytes of data to servers through your wifi for some reason
Verdict: If you've got the means, I think it's worth it, despite the cons. If not, there are or will be alternatives for a more affordable price.
Back to plugging holes... These earplugs are the best. Effective and reusable. The only downside is that you'll get used to them, and it will be very difficult to fall asleep without them. I will note that I will re-consider wearing them when I move. Currently, my home has just 1 entry - a door, which has an alarmed wedge infront of it. If it didn't, I'd want to be more alert.
Data & Nutrition
In January 2025, I went to the lifting gym adjacent to my academy. Typically, I would lift randomly. At random times, doing random exercises. But knowing that tracking is important, I wanted to try logging the lifts into an app. I got the app Hevy on the store.
Since then, I have tracked 234 lifting sessions. You won't believe what happened next; I got JACKED. I went from 203lbs to 218lbs. Stopped getting bullied by my world-class black belt 220lb training partners. The gamification of progressive overload and good data made it easy. But, I was also eating with the goal of getting to 220lbs.
P.S. You can follow and stalk me on this app.
7. Dexa Scan
I was gaining weight and eating everything until I noticed something on my stomach. FAT. Something that has not appeared there in any noticeable quantity since I started grappling.
Deeply disturbed and offended by my naivety, I decided to start cutting. But, since the data-driven approach has been doing so well, I decided to do my first Dexa Scan first. I used a California company called BodySpec, which parks vans around the city with a Dexa machine and a technician in them. I booked, showed up, got done in 10 minutes and had results in my email within minutes.
The TLDR is that yes; I got fat - 19% to be exact. I have the muscle mass data to compare over the next year, and I also learned that my bone density is completely off the charts, in the 99.95th percentile.
Thus began the calorie and macro counting. At first, I trained a ChatGPT model to be my MacroBot. Basically this AI's sole purpose was to log my food intake from pictures, voice notes or searches and compile a daily table featuring all the macros.
This worked pretty well, but there were a few mistakes that got me a little mad and risked retribution from our future robot overlords by berating poor little ChatGPT.
So I switched to an app, a very established on at that - MyFitnessPal, thinking that it will be better because it is designed for this exact purpose. That proved to be the case, and I paid for the premium version to avoid ads.
9. Bloodwork
I recently signed up for MarekHealth. I did so because they sponsored CJI. Previously, I'd just use my regular healthcare for periodical bloodwork. Checking hormone and nutrient levels is a nice-to-have for athletic performance, but it can also discover some health issues to address.
I'm still in the early part of the process with Marek, I haven't done the labs yet, I just have them scheduled. I will tell you that if you put their thing in the cart for black friday and then you don't buy, they'll send you a 50% coupon instead of the 25% one though. I can't recommend them yet, but I recommend getting labs done somewhere.
Supplements
With tracking macros, one thing becomes clear. It's really easy to eat too much fat and not enough protein. At my house, I only had Cannoli flavor protein up to a few days ago, an exotic flavor hunt gone wrong. So I opened the Amazon app and got some of Jocko's Peanut Butter Chocolate and Cookies & Cream Protein powder bags and had them in a shaker within hours. I get my creatine, omegas, vitamins, etc from them as well.
I promised disclosures - I'm friends with Jocko, but not paid to shill. I buy his stuff because I know that it is as advertized and that he would commit harikiri if people were selling crap products with his name on it.
We also buy his ready-to-drink stuff wholesale for our academy, and 1% of my blood is constantly JockoGo, the energy drink. The best flavors ranked are: Nitro Pop, Pink Lemonade, Black Cherry Vanilla.
While I think JockoGo is a 10/10 energy drink, there is one 11/10 (for me). The Gorilla Mind, specifically the Bombsicle flavor. Maybe it's the 200mg of caffeine, but that thing will light you up.
I also use their Gorilla Mode Nitric Stimulant-free pre-workout. It doesn't have caffeine, but it does have something that makes my workouts better.
The critical grip switch comes now. The lapel has to get passed to the other hand. As soon as the connection is made, it’s time to start swinging the back to face the opponent head on.
Gear
In 2013, I did my first big international competition. The very first edition of No-Gi Europeans. That's where I met Matt Benyon, who had founded Scramble a few years prior. I had over-performed that day, getting double bronze and landing a Scramble sponsorship.
They've sponsored me since then. Even now they'll still happily send me any design I ask for. I really think that their designs are unmatched. Recently my favorite has been the kintsugi set (gold and black) and anything that has to do with Pride (the fighting championship, not the rainbow stuff).
Another of Jocko's companies that I give my money to, happily. I was gifted a lot of their rashguards, shorts and gis. I especially like the pants with the clip instead of the drawstring, in part because it prevents the berimbolo.
But what I've been buying from them are jeans, NanoWool shirts and hoodies, all made in America. I got to meet a lot of the people who work there at OriginCamp this summer, which was a blast.
I've had a lot of gis in my day, but only recently did I pay a lady to create a completely unique one for me. Rematch Gi makes custom, upcycled gis and I got two. A Roman Empire and Samurai inspired one. They're not cheap, and they're a little loud, but they're also pieces of art.
Damn it. I'm so tired from putting this together that I barely have the energy to shill for my own stuff.
I have two courses on my site now, the Gi Video Manual is brand new. The No-Gi Video Manual is a year old, but I've updated it since. They're both cheaper than they have ever been or ever will be, especially when bought together (a lot of people caught on to this).
If you want to support me and support yourself, grab one, or both!
Click image for Gi Video Manual:
Click image for No-Gi Video Manual
See you in the next (normal) newsletter!
- Miha
P.S. I also have my book Modern Submission Grappling, which ranks pretty high on the list of grappling gifts. It's something physical, useful and very affordable.