AJ Discianni, a BJJ black belt under Brad Court and co-owner of New Asgard Martial Arts in Pennsylvania, has spent over a decade inside the sport – and he believes a lot of the teaching practices still stuck in circulation belong in the past.
Speaking on the Jits and Giggles podcast, Discianni made his frustration very clear:
I’m 11 years in, and I’m still going to gyms where they’re doing 15-minute warm-ups of jumping jacks, push-ups, sit-ups…
They pay me to do Jiu-Jitsu, not to do push-ups.
Behind the comment is a business philosophy: students are customers.
They invest real money and time into training, so the responsibility falls on instructors to actually teach – not fill space with calisthenics anyone could do at home for free:
That hopefully shouldn’t be a hot take, but there are a lot of people who’ll probably be really upset because they have to figure out how to teach people for a full hour now.
In his view, warm-ups are often used as a crutch, an easy way to consume class time when instructors don’t have enough structured teaching planned.
Discianni argues that Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu suffers from a lack of overall instructional maturity:
The level of Jiu-Jitsu is so low.
At New Asgard, which Discianni runs alongside his wife Cat, the approach is intentionally different.
Warm-ups don’t dominate the first quarter of class. Instead, sessions are structured around maximum mat time and meaningful technical development
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