How I think about the sport.

Grappling is infinitely complex

There are more positions, transitions, and variations in no-gi grappling than any one person could ever catalogue, let alone solve. Chess has been studied seriously for centuries and still hasn't been closed. Grappling is worse — the pieces are bodies, the board is three-dimensional, and the metagame mutates every year.

Trying to write down every technique and the scenarios it applies in is a dead end. So is trying to build one giant decision tree for the whole sport. Both collapse under the weight of the material. The honest version is to accept that complete documentation is impossible — and then ask what the next-best thing looks like.

19 major systems, not ten thousand techniques

Instead of cataloguing techniques, I've broken modern high-level No-Gi into 19 systems a well-rounded athlete needs competency in. The choice of 19 is mine and it isn't universally agreed — another coach or athlete would cut the sport slightly differently. I find that these divisions reflect how decisions actually get made within a match or training scenario.

The systems aren't isolated. They connect in dynamic ways — passing flows into leg entanglements, guard retention flows into scrambles, back control flows into turtle, turtle flows back into guard, and someone skips it all by cartwheeling onto a Kimura. But compartmentalisation still helps. It allows you to focus on one area at a time without pretending the rest doesn't exist, assigning appropriate proportions of cognitive attention to the most likely threats and opportunities.

Specific subsystems even exist in hybrid state, midway between defined major systems (think the classic 10th Planet 'truck' — a blend of simultaneously attacking both the back and lower body).

Know where you are

The single most important habit in competitive grappling is being able to answer two questions at any moment in a match:

• Which system am I in right now?
• What are the current goals of this system — mine, and my opponent's?

Once those are clear, techniques organise themselves around the goals. Without that awareness, technique is just memorisation to reactions — and static memorisation does not allow for the most optimal applications of those skills, often breaking down under pressure and exposure to new stimuli. The point of a system isn't to give you more moves. It's to give you a frame for choosing between the ones you already know.

Closed systems vs open systems

Not all of the 19 systems are equal. Some are more tightly bounded, with clearer goals and less potential variation. The back attack system, for example, has a much more finite set of meaningful positions, grips, and decision points — you could genuinely document it to a high level of detail practically.

Others are the opposite. Passing, guard retention, leg locks, wrestling — these are much broader. They need principles and sub-system frameworks, not a single diagram. Trying to treat the entire game with this low-level detail is where most analytical models break down.

It is better to conceptualise your jiu-jitsu the way a computer manages data: a hierarchy of instant-access cache for what is being used right now, working memory for what might be needed soon, and bulk storage for everything else. In a jiu-jitsu context your clear structural map of major systems, high-frequency connections, and overarching goals sits at the top, always present. Specific detail — sub-systems, decision points, technical mechanics, dilemmas — loads in only when you find yourself in the scenario that calls for it. Trying to hold fine-grained detail across the whole sport at once is the mental equivalent of fitting an entire hard drive into RAM. Processing slows, responses falter.

The chess analogy is also useful here: openings and endgames are studied as closed systems because they can be. The middlegame is played on principle because it has to be. Grappling works the same way.

A living repository

This site is not a course, and it is not a finished product. It is a structured documentation of how I currently think about the sport — concepts, systems, positions, dilemmas, and the mechanics beneath them. It will be updated as the metagame shifts, as I learn more, and as gaps get filled in.

It will never be complete, and it will never be fully "right" — there is no complete, and there is no right. What it can be is an ongoing amalgamation of high-level instruction, competition-proven technique, old fundamentals that keep working, and newer concepts emerging from CLA and modern training methods.

Why FRACTAL?

Pure mathematical fractals are visualisable patterns of infinite complexity, defined by detailed, self-similar elements that repeat forever at any scale. They are generated by iterating simple mathematical rules, creating structures where zooming in reveals never-ending new, complex details.

Sound familiar?

Inspirations

Fractal BJJ owes an obvious debt to others already doing serious analytical work in this space:

• The Technical Grappler
• LIMI BJJ
• BJJ Mental Models
• Grappling Insights