Ending my own Personal Gi vs. NoGi debate

Which is better????

Good morning to everyone who’s tired of debating Gi Vs. NoGi

Today’s article is all about some thoughts I’ve had recently including my evolution as an instructor at an academy that teaches both.

Here’s a quick summary of today’s article:

• Gi Vs. NoGi… who cares

• In my 14 years of training, I’ve been wrong about a few things; this article explores what I’ve been wrong about in the whole gi vs. nogi thing.

• How to leverage both Gi and NoGi to get better at jiu-jitsu (regardless of what you’re wearing)

• Is Nogi better for beginners?

This article is for paid members, so make sure you’re subscribed here. Also, as usual, if you subscribe for a year, I’ll send you both of my books (The White Belt Survival Guide AND Jiujitsu 201 for free). If you sign up for a year, please be sure to email me with confirmation so I can send them to you —the process is manual.

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When I first signed up for a jiu-jitsu membership 14+ years ago, the close looked something like this:

“Awesome, welcome! Here’s a copy of the schedule. We alternate Gi and NoGi so every day you can do one or the other.”

And that was basically it.

I showed up every day to train, sometimes with both my Gi and NoGi gear and I trained. Maybe it was a geographical thing but I never recalled a “Gi versus NoGi” differentiation; it was all just jiu-jitsu to me.

Training predominantly in the gi wasn’t necessarily a choice for me either. When I moved, there weren’t many places offering NoGi. Almost every school was dominated with gi classes. And it was ok, I didn’t have a preference. I was just happy to be training jiu-jitsu.

Over time, I fell in love with the Gi and all of the nuances behind it. I liked the intricacies behind training in a Gi and to me, it was much harder (and thus more valuable?) than training NoGi.

In the last decade plus, the incredible growth of NoGi jiu-jitsu has a lot of people choosing sides. I’ve had so many (unwanted) conversations about the merits of NoGi training versus Gi.

I’ve listened to people who have never once worn a Gi talk about how “NoGi is better”. And, I’ve shared my own opinion about how the Gi is “better”. I’m not blameless in this debate. I’ve been more opinionated than I’d like to admit.

Initially, my love and preference for the Gi has been primarily based on the fact that the learning curve is harder. The gi adds complexity. Just the extra grip configurations alone are enough to make things exponentially more complex.

Over time, my opinion has evolved and lately I find myself opening up more towards NoGi.

I’ve been wrong about some things in my jiu-jitsu journey. My opinions on NoGi are something I’ve maybe been wrong about and realizing this has made me a much better instructor and practitioner.

This personal and professional growth is recent too.

I started consuming more instructional content and to be quite honest, the only two instructors I really buy anything from are Gordon and Danaher. But unfortunately, with those two, there’s not much in the way of gi…

This whole recent journey started with a desire to save some money on BJJ Fanatics. I figured if Gordon and Danaher were the only two instructors I wanted to spend money to learn from, how could I incorporate their NoGi instruction into Gi training.

Then I realized that the things I’ve been wrong about could be leveraged to make myself a better practitioner and a better instructor.

Below, you’ll find a summary how I’ve been developing my game based on a combination of the two.