After his new book “BJJ Techniques to Defeat Bigger, Stronger Opponents” hit #1 under the entire category of “Martial Arts” at Amazon.com, BJJ Legends writer Daniel Faggella  sat down with us to talk about the book’s success, and his personal journey of putting the book together. Dan is a No Gi Pan Am Champion, expert division champion many times over, and one of the most prolific writers and interviewers in the BJJ world, having conducted dozens of interviews with world champions, and producing three books on combat sports skill development.

BJJ Legends: Dan, you’ve done a LOT of writing about beating bigger opponents in BJJ over the last number of years, why did you decide this year to finally put together the book?

Dan Faggella: Believe it or not, I like to say that this book has taken me four years to write. It was four years ago that I conducted some of my early interviews with Justin Rader, Ben Askren, Draculino, and many of my heroes in the world of grappling, and I’ve kept up the interview habit ever since. Over the past year, after teaching a ton of seminars and writing a lot of articles on this similar topic, I decided that I finally had a clean way to explain the core message.

BJJL: What was that core message for you, Dan?

DF: The message of this book is pretty simple. Statistically speaking, the game of beating bigger, stronger opponents is different from the “normal” game of winning at your own weight class. The sweeps, submissions, and positioning strategies that the best little-guys use to beat the best bigger grapplers are unique, and it’s a skill and strategy that’s teachable.

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As we get older, we’re told what we can’t do, or how we just aren’t physically able to perform like we used to during our younger years.  While it’s true to an extent, it’s not a death sentence so to speak.  Being able to compete into an older age—40’s and beyond—calls for fantastic discipline, both physically and mentally.

Taking care of your body is obviously huge, and getting the right amount of sleep to allow your body to recover is as well.  However, the approach for older grapplers is as much mental as it is physical, and I was lucky enough to sit down with John Connors who shared his take on being a successful grappler at an older age. We conducted a similar interview with 40 plius black belt Michio Grubbs about injury prevention for older grapplers in BJJ.

There were many good points that John made, but there was a few that I wanted to dig into a little more in depth.

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“Modern Jiu Jitsu, as my DVD illustrates, isn’t new jiu jitsu just a better way to do the things we have always been doing. We aren’t reinventing the wheel, we are using better application of technique to make the wheel better.”  Caio Terra

In part three of our series exploring and charting Caio Terra’s Modern Jiu Jitsu series we will be focusing on his instruction regarding the Turtle and back control positions.  This section is available as an App directly from ITunes for all your Apple devices.  This information is also contained in the second half of the 2^nd DVD in the Modern Jiu Jitsu set.  If you haven’t already seen them please take a few minutes to check out our breakdowns for the Closed Guard and the Mount.

I won’t go into too much detail on the quality of instruction (excellent), the audience (white/blue belts) or production value (excellent) because those aspects of the set have been covered in our previous review.  So, straight to the meat of it…

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UFC Champion BJ Penn, September Calendar freebie. BJ Penn uses his exceptional BJJ/jiu-jitsu to deliver exception UFC results in UFC 101.  From UFC 101 to your wall, here's a calander for September that is a great addition to your picts.  Also competing in UFC 94.