Danaher on Gi vs Nogi and his biggest influences 

Shout out to Eddie Bravo for paving the way to no-Gi BJJ

I was extremely lucky to have a Judo coach who would take me aside after class to review everything we did in class without the gi.

I dislike how some traditional jiujitsu gyms start practice with insanely difficult warmups. Sometimes more then half the class is just a conditioning type workout with little or no focus on jiujitsu. Conditioning should be done separately in my opinion. Some of the best gyms I’ve ever rolled at implement a fun dynamic type warmup to begins the practice. It quickly gets joints warm and helps focus the group. Then they use the live spar/roll as the conditioning. I’m sure a lot of people will disagree, but it’s my opinion. Great interview of JD!

I've seen & been captivated by both these guys on JRE, and t never crossed my mind that they would have an absolutely great convo. Thanks for sharing, I will watch the extended

I mostly only do No GI, the school I go to promotes only in GI, I don’t mind as I don’t do it for the belts. I totally agree with these guys on their opinions. Great interview 👍

In Brazil, until Fadda, JiuJitsu was only taught to rich folks. It wasn't "for poor kids who could not afford a gi." They challenged the Gracies, beat them. This is the main reason why leg locks were frowned upon. They were considered "suburban" techniques.

I feel strength and conditioning should be given like homework, especially in schools they don’t have sessions every day

Just depends how you play the game. My gi game is pretty much the same as my no gi game. I don’t rely heavily on gi grips and I don’t really play gi based guards. I’ve heard Marcelo Garcia and Matt Serra talk about this as well.

ive been training for almost 2 years, a year ago i stopped training in the gi, i enjoy no gi better, great conversation

I think the idea of gi is based on tradition and learning how to manipulate an opponent with clothes, albeit standard clothes are not as durable as a gi. However, no gi eventually becomes the necessity in training bc you need to learn to actually grab your opponents body

people shit on gi techniques saying they don't transfer to the street but what people seem to forget is the majority that do gi are hobbiests that do it for sport, no one shits on a basketball player because it doesn't transfer to fighting

I like training both, but I have always done more gi. The gi never left me with a handicap from the grips, since I haven’t developed my game around them. Yes, I use them in the gi, but I don’t do any weird lapel guards. I’ve never been drawn to that style of jiu jitsu.

I would suggest training both if you truly want to be well rounded , and be a great instructor like John. Gi is harder to me because there seems to be way more techniques and things to worry about...No Gi is better exercise because it's more difficult to stall - it's a faster game....

Nothing better than rolling in the gi without taking a single grip and winning using nogi techniques. If your game isn’t transferable between the styles then to me it isn’t real. Which makes no-gi the default, regardless what clothing I’m wearing. I Kimora trap is far stronger and useable than any gi grip

I think unless you’re really serious if you’re hobbyist, the best answer is whatever you’re gonna continue bc you like it.

As much as I respect these two I still disagree. I started no gi and found training in the gi to help me understand fundamentals and get the thought process of bjj down. Its slower, you can hold onto the gi and take your time to think and I've found that crutch to actually help me think about the problems I'm facing. Its helped my No gi more than my No Gi has helped my Gi. Just my opinion and experience though.

@firas you say you hate the Gi but your profile pic of your channel has a picture of you with aGi and belt lol love your channel and thank you for the amazing insight

Nogi is physically better, but gi is art

I attend class to learn bjj techniques and not spend 15-30 mins of strength and conditioning. Sorry about that coach Firaz but that’s me. I can do it at home or before I go to class but not during. I rather learn techniques, principles and sparring.

Amazing video!!

Why can't one do both?

in my mind, training nogi is better because you can't leverage a gi. less leverage forces you to be better

Gi makes you more technical defensively No Gi makes you more technical offensively

Imo the transition to no gi shouldn't be that hard. No you don't have as many handles but the fundamentals are still the same. I didn't really train no gi until late blue to purple and never really had any trouble at all. Just faster paced and more slippery. To me it's just a translation of the grips.

i disagree with firas on this i did judo 10 years and did bjj 3 until i decided to do no gi i find the transition to be easier going from gi to no gi only thing with no gi its more fast paced so if your somewhat athletic its easy to translate everything but the other way around would be horrible dealing with grios is like a whole other sport so no gi guys will have trouble

I find that guys who are stronger are better at gi because they can just hold you with the lapels. I agree on everything but the fact that athletic guys do better in no gi.

I love gi and Nogi equally.

10th planet must be on to something

Early on Firas mentions then quickly skips over the key idea, that more training leads to better skills. If you only go to the nogi training sessions or you only go to the gi training sessions you simply getting less training time than the people who do it more frequently. The guy who only grapples will be better at grappling than the mma guy who splits time between grappling and striking. Time on task is the biggest variable. Those guys that were truly great in both gi and nogi had their 10,000 hrs of dedicated purposeful training in earlier than those that have come in to the sport(s) later on.

100% agree with y’all, my “coach” always bullshitting about “you have to do Gi” to us, they tryna make a cult

Mark Kerr won ADCC without ever training in the Gi. I believe also Dean Lister won. Quite a few.

since my english is not perfect i didnt get which aspect of wrestling it is they are integrating into JJ ? what was it they said/ meant at the end ? thx !

In no gi most the guys are not wearing long sleeve rash guards. They are also wearing shorts. It’s pretty difficult to get a solid grip when you are both drenched in sweat. There’s sweat all over the mat and it’s a slippery mess. Belt promotions are pretty much non existent. I train for self defense and if I get in to it in a real world situation, dude will be dry. So Gi makes more sense to me with a No Gi rolling style. I’m still grabbing his wrist and I could care less about a collar choke.

My view is simple. Training with a gi is largely pointless because that's a situation that doesn't really exist anywhere. In the real world clothes are not these loose fitting, highly durable fabrics. They are tighter fitting and harder to grab, and will stretch and tear when pulled. And people arent just going to sit there and struggle while you hold on to their sleeve, the will just pull out of their shirt or jacket. If you are talking about a martial art, in its most basic sense, it's about learning to use nothing but your body to defend yourself. If half the things you learn are about manipulating articles of clothing that don't exist in the real world then the whole thing becomes kind of pointless.

I'm so old I remember when leg locks didn't work.

unfortunately, those schools stuck in their old ways are still out there. I've been blue belt no stipes for a year and 5 months now. Guys that got their blue belts after me, that I destroy, are already at 2 stipes because they train mostly gi where as I train almost exclusively no-gi with only a few gi classes here and there. My instructor considers no-gi "the easy 30% of jiu jitsu"

ok I'm convinced

these are two different sports really, u gotta train gi to be good at gi, and train no gi to be good no gi. Simple.

Honestly, I feel like you shouldn't even call it "No-gi BJJ", it's become pretty much just submission grappling/wrestling and I prefer to watch the high intensity, wrestling heavy No-gi over the slower, more pure BJJ "Gi BJJ"

A few things. I'm not a huge fan of no gi. People are rarely wearing skin tight clothing and -- therefore -- slippery as hell. I guess if you get in a fight at a Speedo convention. Two, I neither like nor dislike the idea of no conditioning. I do believe the whole steroid thing is pretty sad though. It is definitely two different sports. But the reason people do one or the other are manifold.

Let's remember that every bjj practitioner develops his own game that study moves during class but really on their own Gordon had all the knowledge possibly from gi as well as gi So not needing gi might not be true unless they have a coach who has done all the gi homework

Butter is that effective?

Do you believe, never give up your back? As I do...

"The integration of wrestling and jiujitsu" - you mean like Luta Livre was doing in Brazil for decades? It's wrestling, not nogi

This stuff always feels a bit silly. Gi Jiu-Jitsu is done in a Gi just like boxing is done in gloves and MMA is done with (smaller) gloves. Gi players are best at Gi Jiu-Jitsu, No-Gi players are best at no-gi Jiu-Jitsu. Gi players are dependent on the Gi the same way no-gi fighters are dependent on not getting punched in the head the same way MMA fighters are dependent on having gloves so they don't break their hands when they punch at an odd angle, and so on and so forth. There's one word for a fight without any rules -- on any terrain, no rounds or time limits, no scorecards, use any equipment or weapons you want, and, most importantly, have as many other people on your side as you can gather. It's war. Anything that isn't actual war is a sport on some level.

There is no judo club that doesn't do 45 minutes of warmup which is flexibility and strength and conditioning! Wrestling is same. It's not just elite clubs.

👍

ask JD about the people he trains being off their faces on stetoids!!!!

Yeah wait Till Galvao will Beat the shit out of Gordon. And Peña also did. it twice and this Time he gives a damn about the fight. So wait.

The bald Anglo American reminds me of Morpheus from the Matrix

The gi is training wheels

I don't know who this guy is. But Danaher didn't speak much in this video. Bye.

biggest influence?? steroids!!

Reality rewards Merit and NOT Pageantry. No Gi. No Belts. Skill. Respect. Passion. You will be rewarded with victory. Nap. Snap. Tap.

Oh and 1 more disadvantage with the gi; the washing

Thank you for asking him to speak up. It’s fucking annoying that he whispers. It doesn’t make him Zen it makes him annoying. You are a coach! Save the Kane in Kung Fu whispers for your GF and yoga class.

Eddie bravo was saying this for years. He even used the judo vs Greco analogy in his books. He got a lot of heat for that too. Now everyone is like, “duh, obviously.”

So in short everything becomes catchwrestling??

Coach, just wanted to say thank you for taking the time to make these videos for us. It's really a treat to get your perspective and also getting to hear people like John on your channel as well. Keep up the great work, oss!

Yes low emphasis on belts :) I trained no gi for 4 years before Gi, and I used to roll with people I didn’t know and some would ask me what belt I was before rolling and I said I don’t have a belt let’s just roll

No Gi and Gi jiu jitsu is still jiu jitsu...I love jiu jitsu so I train both and love both. In my opinion you can't have one without the other it's all one. Oss 🤙🏿

I trained in Gi BJJ and I got smashed by my NoGi cousin. I am hanging up my Gi and focusing on NoGi.

I'm interested to know what is both of your opinions on SAMBO and Judo.

I’m a retired cop. Been in tons of fights. Never fought a guy wearing a gi.

I started in the gi, then over the years I preferred no gi a little more, but both have their place. I remember mma guys preaching about how useless gi training is for self defense because people don't wear gis on the street lol. As if the odds are really high of getting into a street fight with a bare chested muscle man not wearing pants. I don't usually go to bars where muscular men hang out in speedos, do you?

judo 100kg old man here. prefer gi, obviously. harder to find rolls nogi across weight and ages. harder to slow it down and get as many rounds in for my old ass nogi. Also I can stack and get heavy and hold a pin until uke doesn’t have enough wind to fight my (limited) subs but prefer the guard play w gi which is rapidly disappearing from nogi, or the explosiveness/urgency of ne waza. to each their own i guess.

great discussion, more please

Gi translates to no-gi much better than no-gi translates to gi. 99% of MMA guys who win with jiu jitsu are gi practitioners. Luta Livre was no-gi, exactly no-gi, it was not something different. They solved over 2 decades which was better. Gi won decisively, so much that the conversation is dead in Brazil. The issue isn't being gi-dependent. It's being gi-competent and no-gi competent. Gi grips are needed to be gi-competent. Brazil will always be the soul of BJJ and they will always heavily favor gi. Gi is going nowhere. Bravo has had time to create MMA and ADCC monsters and it just hadn't happened. Danaher has done much better, but still no MMA guys who win with their BJJ. Maia, Vieira, Lovato, Ortega - all MMA guys who win with BJJ, all gi-only or gi-mostly guys.

Like to see Gordon do the BJJ world championship....

I agree with Eddie Bravo that No Gi is the best training for MMA, but I also agree with Rener & Giron that Gi is more street than No Gi (because people on the street tend to wear clothes)…what say the experts?

My school trains in gi...but I would switch to no-gi if I had the opportunity...for one simple reason, based on real-life experience: crackheads that jump people at gas stations don't wear gi's. Hell, they might not even be wearing a shirt, so I don't want to rely on clothing grips.

Renzo said it best. “Wearing the gi is like wearing a condom and no gi is not”. Enough said

I have seen purple belts with some experience on nogi making black belts who have never done nogi looking like white belts when they do nogi for the first time.

Stop talking shit about BBJ and show respect for those that create MMA ( Gracies)

What's ironic about people who rep Gi over No-Gi is that they frequently state that the "Gi slows down your game so you get more technical." If anything, it should be the opposite. You should want to speed up your grappling game so you can get in and out of a fight as quick as possible. Wrestling and Judo are all about finishing your opponent as soon as possible, which is a better mindset for self defense or MMA, because the longer you're in a fight, the more things that can go wrong with it, especially a street fight.

“You got your black belt, that’s it shut up about it” also John being a 6th degree black belt

No Gi all day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day!

No gi is better if you want to learn to fight against people who's shirt/jacket you can't effectively use against them. Gi is better if you want to learn to fight against people with a top that you can effectively use against them, like a jacket or a hoodie.

Gi and no gi are 2 completely different sports imo.

How about wearing the gi but not grabbing the gi just look at it like nogi where you cant grab the shorts

Who has a deeper understanding of the game? John or Roger?

He's wrong about the conditioning part... At Marcelo Garcia and Fabio Clemente there was A LOT of conditioning.

Mark Kerr dispelled that myth many years ago also coach.

No gi is a complete diferente animal, that's it

Lol thank you for low-key calling these stupid new guards a waste of time... I remember having a conversation with the "galaxy guard" guy; just a couple of simple questions related to why he thought what he was doing was better than a Roger Gracie- type basics game that and "hey dude, isnt that just ashi garami?").... He was (and probably still is) convinced he's doing something important in jiu jitsu lol.....and the righteous indignation he showed at some simple questions was hilarious.

AS someone who started a year ago at a dojo that does gi/ no gi/ MMA, I see them as just different ways to apply you toolkit and have different values at different time. I's say being able to contorl you opponent without grips is High Valuable from a pure combat perspective I wouldn't dismiss the Gi portion as well since I live in NYC and hoody season can last until the end of April. I also think that the hate against gi's seems to just stem from a more western perspective on combat sports. You can see them as two different branches of the same art. Gi is now a tool in your arsenal like a baseball bat would be to a ball player. No Gi is "harder in the sense that you have less tools but that's its own type of fun. One being more realistic for self defense shouldn't be the barometer of value since no matter what they both will get you some use. No Gi is more practical and offers no barrier to entry unlike GI but Gi also opens up a few more techniques to be used adding a bit more spectacle. There is also the tradition and "spiritual element". FOr me personally I like the gi because I feel like I am wearing a uniform and feel the connection to something that extends generations before me. It's ceremonial attire. If all your interested in is fighting and not the more spiritual/mental aspects that Jigoro Kano wanted I get why you'd scoff at the gi etc. I also understand gi only people who value the traditions etc. Everyone should just practice they way they want leave the fighting for the matt. Gi or no Gi we are brothers and sisters in arms representing this great sport.

If the gi didn’t exist would anyone invent it? Of course not. It’s simply traditional…nothing more. All arguments about it being essential were always nonsense. You “had” to train gi cause the BJJ schools wore it. That’s the only reason.

I get the argument back in the day where the best jujitsu practitioners we Gi, and to learn from the best/get black belt you had to learn Gi.

can someone talk about boris, my old trainer in Mexico always talked about someone who was named boris ripping peoples heads off.

Everything you learn in no-gi can be applied to gi but not everything you learn in gi classes can be transferred over to no-gi, might as well just do no-gi So It doesn’t matter if someone is wearing a jacket, shirt, sweater or shirtless, no-gi takes care of all situations.

nogi>gi... Oss

When i say gi is unnecessary to get good im an idiot, when danaher says it people listen. Feels good to be validated lol

Im sorry dont agree. Isn't Mica Galvao dominating in No Gi and GI??? while he still does Gi moree. The thing is if its for selfdefense then i would reconmend Gi. Helps if your on the street fighting someone who wears clothes....now if your going to do MMA or grappling i just reconmend both... best examples are the young on3s and if you look at someone like mica.... thats your example not gordon ryan.

You really need a video guy that handles your equipment and editing. Solely.

It is for me and my brother a principle, We'll never put on a GI. No needs for that.

Ryan Gordon is black belt whit GI , he is not 100% nogi

I would like to eee a conversation between coach Firas and coach Steven Williams

hey Firas, do you have an early prediction on Makhachev vs Oliveira

Pretty sure that danaher said the opposite on a podcast with Matt sera

Controversy settled, next topic