Free Form Jiu Jitsu

No-Gi Training!

You wouldn’t believe the lengths that some jiu-jitsu coaches and athletes go to, in order to avoid using the word “lose.” You’ve probably heard or seen these all before:

“You either win or learn”
“Didn’t get the result I wanted”
“Today wasn’t my day”
“The ref cheated me”
“The rules are bogus”
“I’d rather lose going for the sub than win on points”
“We just keep it playful”
“My opponent was a sandbagger”

…and on, and on.

Winning and losing are both part of competing. And even though the training room is not, itself, a competition— there is a degree to which *competitiveness* in the room is essential for skill development.

So don’t pad your ego! Don’t soften the blow of losing!
If your guard got passed— look for the technical solution!
If you lost a ref decision— revisit your strategic error!
If you got overpowered— start building your physical tools!

A win is a win and a loss is a loss. These are just data points, they say absolutely nothing about your character or worth as a person.

I promise you this: the sooner your ego makes peace with losing, the faster you’ll learn from it. And when that happens, you’ll win more.

Our women train harder than your men 💅🏼 🤷‍♀️

Youth sports should:
-Be fun
-Be safe
-Build confidence
-Teach discipline and perseverance
-Build friendships
-Teach teamwork
-Teach skills/good technical habits from an early age
-Teach how to play the game well, which means learning how to win and lose well

Youth sports should NOT:
-Provide a competitive outlet for parents (!)
-Force children to endure abusive coaches
-Be glorified babysitting sessions
-Be primarily about game outcomes

Remember: We want kids to enjoy the gift of jiu jitsu into adulthood. Don’t scare them away or burn them out while they are young!

ATTENTION COLLEGE STUDENTS!

If you are home for the summer, we’d love to have you on the mats. Train all summer for only $299

This discount is for junior and high school students as well! 🤼 🥋 🙌

Here is one mark of expertise: the ability to take something complex, and make it understandable.

Jiu-Jitsu is incredibly complex. But that doesn’t mean your instructions need to be! Coaches, do your best to keep it short and simple. Don’t use 100 words, if you can say it in 20.

Long descriptions and lectures slow down practice. They suck the energy out of the room, and they don’t help your athletes learn better anyways! They are mainly a result of (a) ego— the instructor wanting to show off their knowledge, or (b) lack of preparation.

In competition, the economy of words is EVEN MORE important. If you are matside, do not overwhelm your athlete with too much information and instruction.

•Your first job ☝️ is to communicate the time and score.
•Your second job ✌️ is to make one or two HIGH IMPACT statements— opportunities that your athlete may not see, or motivation if they need to know that NOW is the time to go!

Learning to communicate clearly is a skill. It requires practice and discipline!

Check out this AWESOME t-shirt that made for her son 🤩. Conor is part of our kids program, and he brings great energy to every practice! 🔥

As coaches, our job is to be truthful with our students.

Excessive praise leads to overconfidence— and an overconfident athlete is unprepared for the challenges of our sport.

Excessive criticism leads to underconfidence— and an underconfident athlete does not perform according to their abilities.

Whether it is in practice or competition:
Don’t flatter, don’t exaggerate small victories;
Don’t insult, don’t minimize small victories.

Simply share what you see!

Toughness and determination are usually assets in jiu jitsu.
However, they can also become liabilities.

If you encounter a problem— maybe you keep getting stuck in a particular guard, maybe you can’t finish a certain submission, maybe you keep losing in competition— then PAUSE, and analyze the problem.

Don’t be so tough, that you keep running into the same wall over and over! Stop, learn, correct, improve.

Recently, I was talking to a fellow coach about the work we do. What is a coach’s job? What makes someone a good coach?

Most importantly: How can we improve as coaches? After all, coaching is a type of skill! It can grow, if it is exercised correctly! If we demand technical improvement from our athletes, we should demand improvement from ourselves as coaches too.

Every Thursday, I’ll share a new coaching principle on this page. I don’t think any of these will be terribly novel, but they may spark helpful reflection and conversation on what we are doing as coaches.

——————

Coaching Principle #1: It’s Not About You

Jiu-Jitsu was here before you, and Jiu-Jitsu will be here after you. Jiu-Jitsu would be here without you.

You are not a guru, or a sage, or a demigod. Most of your technical knowledge can be found for $29.95 on bjjfanatics.

If you bristle at this, ask yourself why. Does it sting your ego? Do you need the adoration and flattery of your students? Do you like to be seen as all-knowing? Do you enjoy the power that comes with the position?

If so, then you already know what to do. It is the thing you tell your white belts over and over: LOSE THE EGO. It will only make it more difficult for you to learn new skills.

This is the paradox of coaching: the more you stand WITH your people—rather than over them; the more you see yourself AS PART OF the team— rather than the boss of it, the more your people will trust you, and the more receptive they will be to instruction.

Humility is the heart of team building.

Last weekend, some of the team competed at the Chicago Open.

These competitors all showed great heart! They prepared well, and fought hard.

There were several exciting wins— one sweep to win with 15 seconds on the clock! And there were heartbreaking losses. That’s why we do it— because the only people who understand how good it feels to win, are people who have battled back after a loss.

I am proud of you all:
🥇no gi, 🥉gi
🥈 gikorina_ 🥈gi
Matt Dornbos 🥈gijpg 1-1 w/ a sub 🔥fajfrowska got underhooks 🪝

We also had several people drive down to cheer! Thank you all for taking time out of your weekend to support the team: .tbroccoli and Dan

We have a strong team, and I am grateful for every one of you 🫶

Onward!

We are very glad to welcome Adam Wardziński for a seminar on Sunday, July 21 at 11:00am.

Pan Champ 🥇
European Champ 🥇
Pan No-Gi Champ 🥇
Abu Dhabi World Pro Champ🥇

Registration is now open, and we expect it will reach capacity!

To register: DM / Text/ Call / Email
Venmo:

Private lesson today with the funny and talented 🎤

This dude is legit! He knows jiu jitsu, and he’s down to roll. We sparred for nearly a half hour after the lesson today. 💪 On top of that, super classy— didn’t want any hand outs or special treatment. 🙇‍♂️

Ronny has a show on Friday evening at the . Check him out!

In the past month, I’ve taken some extra time to reflect on the growth of our team— who we are becoming, and what we’ve accomplished in these past three years together.

Along those lines, I wanted to express my heartfelt gratitude to a small group of people who have been with FREEFORM since Day One.

These are more than just first members— they are the foundation of our team, and they have made irreplaceable contributions to the positive and competitive culture we have at the academy today.

There is no way to pay someone back for their presence— all you can do is be thankful. So as a very small token of my gratitude, I gave these sweatshirts to the crew after Saturday’s seminar. They are Champion reverse weave, with FFJJ logo embroidered on the chest and Day One embroidered on the back.

Thank you for being here from the very beginning:









Josh Rogers

Not pictured: , .triggs ,

We just wrapped up a two-day seminar with our head coach, Professor 🔥🔥

As always— the series, techniques, and concepts that we learned were world class. Lucas just stays ahead of the game. Our coaches are eager to begin reviewing and repping these series in class for the next couple months! 😮‍💨

Thank you Professor Lucas for spending this time with us. And sincere thanks to everyone who came out to learn and train! Onward. 🙇‍♂️

2024 PAN CHAMPIONSHIP

Some of the team traveled to Florida last week for Pans. This was our largest group ever, at a major championship— with 9 competitors! 🔥

We won some, and we lost some. I am deeply proud of our team for how seriously they took their preparation, and how hard they fought at the tournament.

HUGE thanks to Coach for running the gym while so many coaches were gone. And thanks to Coach for traveling with the team, and doing so much at and around the tournament, so we could focus on winning!

- 🥇 brown belt master
- 🥇 brown belt master
Scotty Pawela - 🥈 blue belt master

Next up: Chicago Open and 2024 World Championships!

Onward.

#2024

Fantastic training last night at ! Thank you Professor for welcoming us to your academy 🙇

Honored to share the mats with Professor , , and 🥇

Thank you Professor Gezary for taking the time to help us with passing 🔥

We look forward to returning soon!

FREEFORM IN SIX!

We are now taking pre-orders for our new No-Gi set.
All adult and youth sizes available!

Pre-orders are due by March 31. Price goes up after that date.

Gear will arrive late April, in time for playoffs and championships!!

Design:

We are honored to welcome our Professor to FREEFORM Jiu Jitsu, for TWO DAYS on April 5 -6 🤩🔥

Friday at 6:00pm will be a No-Gi seminar 🤼
Saturday at 11:00am will be a Gi seminar 🥋

DM / call / text / email to register.

It is our ongoing commitment to bring world class jiu jitsu instruction to Milwaukee, and to make it accessible to as many people as possible! Let’s keep working together to raise the level of jiujitsu in Wisconsin and the Midwest! 🙏

We had a trio of competitors travel to the Indianapolis Open today. This is such a hard working group 💪

made her purple belt debut, going 2-0 with one submission for 🥇 Brooke outscored her opponents 30-2 today!
korina_ went 1-1 for 🥈 Jess overcame suboptimal conditions this week, and did what she had to do to make the finals. We are so proud of Jess’s grit, her perseverance, and her Osoto Gari! 👏

had a good 5-0 lead going before getting caught in a loop during his first match. Max is becoming a handful, and we are very excited to see him at Pans in two weeks! 🔥

Congratulations to Brooke, Jess, and Max for your preparation and results. All three of you are becoming quiet leaders of our competition crew!!

Onward.

Congratulations to .fajfrowska and .jaber for their success at the tournament on Saturday!

Kyro won her absolute division and Bebars won his no-gi division.

It wasn’t easy! Both of these athletes took losses early in the day. We made some simple corrections between rounds— they showed grit AND coachability— and they came back for gold! 🥇

Great work, team. We are very proud of you both!

Special thanks to , , .korina_ , , and for coming out to support the team!

Congratulations to on winning the Wisconsin State Wrestling Tournament at D3- 150 lb! He finishes his high school career with a remarkable 152 wins 😳🔥

Stone stays on the wrestling and jiu-jitsu mats year round. He is an incredibly hard worker, and a class act. We are delighted to have him on the team.

Congratulations Stone, on your very impressive accomplishment! You did the work and earned it. 🥇

Onward!

The hardest part of jiu jitsu isn’t the hard training, or overcoming bumps and bruises. It’s keeping up with laundry.

But the second-hardest part is saying goodbye to teammates. Some of the team met for dinner last night, to send off .zens , as she heads to San Diego next week.

Ari was the first woman competitor to join our gym. She came in every day and scrapped with the guys. She jumped into hard rounds at our competition classes, and never asked for special treatment. She just wanted to train and grow.

On top of that— and I know she won’t be pleased that I shared this— but she has a degenerative condition in her spine, that can make rolling and lifting quite painful. Again, she never asked for pity or special treatment. In fact, this will be the first time that many of her training partners even learn about Ari’s back.

Ari is a real one— tough, athletic, fun, and an encouraging teammate. We will miss you!

Congratulations to .triggs for placing first at Sectionals today, and qualifying for the WIAA State wrestling tournament!

Rosemary is a blue blue. She works to become a complete grappler by training in the gi, no-gi, and in a wrestling singlet.

Congratulations Rosemary, we are very proud of you!!

The 2024 Pan Championship is 5 weeks away.
Training camp is in full swing!

Good weekend at the Atlanta Open!

We took a small but dedicated group to the tournament this weekend. It was very rewarding to see the preparation paying off for some of these athletes!
korina_ finished 2-2 on the day, for 🥉 in her division. She won both matches by submission, and made a noticeable step up in strategy and ex*****on this weekend! We are very proud of you Jess! It’s fun to watch your game grow.

finished 2-1 for 🥉 in his division. This was his strongest showing of any tournament. Max stayed close to the game plan, and showed his ability to fight back in close matches. As Max’s technique has improved, so has his mental toughness and confidence. Congratulations Max!

Matt went 2-0 in division for 🥇

and did not get wins, but are returning with a clear sense of the adjustments and improvements they need to make. Much respect to all of our team for challenging themselves!

Thanks to Coaches and for making the trip with the team this weekend! And thanks to Coach for taking care of the gym while we were away 🙏 🙇

And thanks to everyone from the team who called, messaged, checked in, and cheered while these competitors were away. We have a strong team!! 🫶

Onward!

Mighty Maddie rode her bicycle from Mequon to the Third Ward, for this morning’s 6:00am class 😲

That’s dedication!! 👏

ON QUITTING

Jiu jitsu isn’t for everyone. Some people decide not to stick with it and that is okay. You are the best judge of your life— nobody should ever make you feel weird or ashamed for moving on!

HOWEVER, most people quit jiu jitsu far too soon. How can you possibly know if you will be good, if you quit while you are a beginner? And if you quit this too soon, what will keep you from quitting the next thing too soon?

When you begin ANYTHING, you will feel enthusiasm. Your imagination will paint all kinds of romantic pictures— totally unrealistic ideas about the new thing. This is true of jobs, of hobbies, of relationships, etc.

But when enthusiasm fades — as it must — you will be left with doubts. “Maybe this isn’t for me. It’s not fun. It’s too hard.“ This is when it is MOST IMPORTANT to dedicate yourself. Find a trustworthy guide, an encouraging team, and pursue the reward even though it feels far off.

Quitting is a habit. Dedication is a habit. And yes, sometimes we need to quit one thing, to dedicate ourselves to another. But know this: there is a significant reward for people who persevere. People who quit often regret their decision. Masters of a craft rarely do.

ONWARD!

“Running an academy is hard”

So what! We get to do work that we love! How many people have jobs that they love?

Your life is passing by one day at a time, while you complain about cleaning the mats.

Coaches: Find your fire again! Start practicing gratitude for the chance to live this incredible life— or hand over the reigns to someone who will.

Onward!

Preparation means more than just training.

Preparation consists of:
-Technique study
-Match review
-Strength, Conditioning, Mobility work
-Sleep and adequate rest
-Eating well
-Understanding the rules

Today Coach Matt and Coach Paul completed the Rules Certification.

We want to give our athletes the best chance of victory! So we prepare the best we can— right down to the rules. If you are on our team, we care about your success 🙌

Would love to see offer something like this as well 🙇‍♂️