In Jiu-Jitsu, you rarely see Gi practitioners who refuse to train No Gi, but the large majority of “NoGi only” practitioners literally hate the Gi and never train in it. Why is that?

Have you ever heard some No Gi only guys say “The Gi is unrealistic bro” ?

The Ultimate Fighting Championship introduced mainstream America to Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Spectators were able to witness the effectiveness of this martial art as Royce Gracie dominated his opponents who often times were much larger than him. Since then, many have turned to BJJ as their chosen martial art for self- defense.

Today Mixed Martial Arts fighting almost requires expertise in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in order to be successful in the cage. Moreover, those who do not have at least an elementary understanding of the basic concepts that revolve around BJJ tend to get taken down and submitted. A basic understanding of Jiu-Jitsu is necessary at the very least to properly defend. However, in the UFC today, the athletes do not wear a gi the way Royce Gracie did. This gives aspiring martial artists the impression that to learn Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu you do not need to train in the gi. To be quite honest, they are wrong. Training in the gi is absolutely necessary for the following reason:

Become more technical and defensively sound

Rolling in the gi offers both you and your opponent way more submissions. These submissions are “gi reliant” meaning that they don’t exist if you are not wearing the gi. Therefore, you must learn to be more defensively sound because you have more submissions to defend. In addition, wearing the bjj gi gives you and your opponent the ability to establish “grips” that would not exist without the gi. Your ability to prevent your opponent from moving and vis versa, forces you to have to become more methodical in order to effectively advance your position. The bottom line is that training in the gi helps you develop a higher level of technical ability and a stronger defense. To put the argument to rest, simply study the past no-gi champions or some of the elite UFC fighters in the world, and you will find that many of them train religiously in the gi.

If you’ve been training just no-gi so far, it can be quite intimidating to transition to the gi… But why is this so? And what can you do about it?
Junny Ocasio shares his opinion on the matter and some advice that might be of help:

Junny Ocasio Teaches How To Use No-Gi Skills In The Gi Including Guard Passing, Guard Pulling, Playing Guard, And MORE!

• Junny Ocasio has a long list of No-Gi accolades but originally started off in the Gi.
• Use battle-tested no-gi skills that can be easily adapted to work in the Gi.
• Junny’s fine tuned details will help transition your favorite no-gi techniques to be even MORE effective in the Gi.