Sinister Ed

Starting from your Knees in BJJ

Today I worked with a lady during her first BJJ class. I first worked with her during the technique instruction portion of class. As she became comfortable with the Mount maintenance and stabilization

Self-Defense expectations from BJJ training

I had a good conversation with a colleague yesterday about what you can expect from BJJ, especially as a smaller person (e.g., a 100 lb woman) facing a significantly larger assailant (e.

Epistemology

This article collects some of my favorite concepts and writing on the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion, epistemology I do my best not to think in terms of true and

A Cholesterol Comedy, Part 3

When last we left our intrepid hero, he was mighty confused. Two follow-up lipid tests had yielded markedly different results. Nov 2018 May 2019 LabCorpEverlyWell Quest total262245279 HDL485057 LDL186132* 204† triglycerides1426370 all measurements

A Cholesterol Comedy, Part 2

At the conclusion of Part 1 [https://www.sinistered.com/cholesterol-comedy-1/], I summarized how well I adhered to the antecedents of my hypothesis: no added sugar and more exercise. As I progressed through

A Cholesterol Comedy, Part 1

Goals In November 2018, I visited my general practitioner (GP) for my yearly physical. Most things looked pretty good, but he was concerned that my blood lipid panel included an elevated Low Density

The Last Place You Want to Be

Yesterday I told an acquaintance I've been training Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Without missing a beat, his reply was, "In a real fight, the ground is the last place you want to be." It's deeply

Martial Arts Efficacy - Resistance is Futile

Even well-intentioned martial artists and self-defense trainers can wander out of their areas of expertise and draw overly broad conclusions. In the following video, a couple of highly experienced MMA fighters evaluate gun

Martial Arts Efficacy - More Likely to Fight

The basic fallacy goes something like this: > If you spend your time thinking about violence or practicing violence, you're more likely to engage in violence. A more constrained, focused, defensible claim can be

The Lost Decades

There's an interesting parallel between Judo ne waza and defensive handgun shooting. They both underwent a period in the early- to mid-twentieth century during which aspects of their core technical skills stagnated or

Fighting Sports

One way to look at the relationship between a "real fight" or "street fight" and a fighting sport is to consider the rules, restrictions, and limitations imposed on the competitors. Any student who

The Fight is Coming

As Mike Seeklander says, "The fight is coming. Be ready." It's true. Survival challenges lie in wait, somewhere in your future and mine. They may be a gunfight, a fist fight, disease, unemployment,