A little bit more about who I am and why I write about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
“When you’re in the middle of it, it’s hard to appreciate the era you’re training in. In BJJ, people like to say they’re sharks and the ground is their ocean. But the truth is, we’re closer to goldfish. We know we’re swimming, yet we’re oblivious to the changing ocean around us.”
Me.
Hello there.
My name’s the Lost Creonte.
I write about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. I’ve spent just over 12 years in this sport, and have gone through the full jiu-jitsu lifecycle – from hobbyist to competitor and now to coach.
I started ‘The Lost Creonte’ Substack after COVID when, as a purple belt, I lost access to world-class coaches and training partners. The only way I could progress was by cross-training, which led me to travel around the country, going gym to gym, coaching BJJ.
This period made me realise there really is no difference between being a ‘Creonte’ and being someone who ‘Cross-trains’. In fact, if you’re the type of person who uses the former unironically, then this Substack probably isn’t for you.
I’ve always thought ‘Creonte’ was a term which encapsulates the worst parts of jiu-jitsu. Namely, a cult-like lineage system which prevents jiu-jitsu – and the martial artists who practice it – from benefiting from any sort of outside influence.
While my travels meant I couldn’t get promoted for a long time, being free of jiu-jitsu’s affiliation and belt system also made it worth it. I was able to cross-train between gyms and grappling arts with all the bad bits – lineage, politics and hierarchy – cut out.
I wanted to create a Substack that preserved some of that. If you like jiu-jitsu analysis and conceptual essays, without the weird traditions, this is the place for you. My academic and professional background is in writing, so I figured this was a good way to combine the two.
In 2026, I ended up returning home, earning my brown belt and becoming head grappling coach at my home gym, and, as I’ve written about, it was bittersweet. As soon as the belt was tied around my waist, I felt like I had lost some of that freedom. That’s why you’ll see the character I use in this Substack always wearing a purple belt and usually wandering through the desert.
Modern-day jiu-jitsu
Everything I write about is to help people navigate the modern jiu-jitsu world. The sport has changed immeasurably since I first started. Here are three of the main challenges I think our sport faces:
Speed
Never in the history of martial arts has information been this abundant. While our predecessors needed to travel the world to find techniques, an entire digital universe of techniques is now available in the time it takes to type a search query.
Techniques that were once confined to continents now travel over the internet at nearly the speed of light. Meanwhile, the human brain still operates on biological time. In the time it takes you to register the word ‘heel hook’, that same information could travel around the Earth several times through fibre-optic cables.
Scale
There are now tens of thousands of jiu-jitsu techniques and instructional videos on YouTube alone. Even if you watched five new BJJ videos every day, it would take you decades to see them all.
Compare that to the pre-2000s, when access to high-level information was tightly constrained. Unless you trained close to the founding generations of Brazilian jiu-jitsu or travelled to Brazil as a gringo, you were largely cut off from the wider technical conversation. The difference is night and day.
Now it doesn’t matter how niche your question. It could be about De La Riva details, Torreando passing mechanics, or the ever-expanding list of modern guards like Squid, Octopus, or Rubber. Take your pick. An answer is always a few clicks away.
What used to be the ‘I’ve never trained, but I watch UFC’ guy has morphed into one who believes they can learn jiu-jitsu almost entirely through YouTube or arguing with someone on a Discord server. I find it troubling that, when I browse Reddit now, I see more and more people asking how to train jiu-jitsu without a training partner.
Identity
If that wasn’t enough, jiu-jitsu is in the middle of an identity crisis. The speed and scale of the internet haven’t just changed how techniques spread. It’s forced the sport to look inward and question what it values.
Authority once flowed through a small number of families and academies, often carrying the surname Gracie. Now, the conversation no longer happens in Brazil, or even in gyms. It plays out online, across Reddit and Instagram threads and forums, in daily, polarised debates.
Like most conversations mediated by algorithms, the incentives matter. These systems don’t surface what’s most accurate or useful; they surface what provokes the strongest reaction. The result is a lopsided town square, where the volume of extreme positions is cranked up, while the nuanced centre ground is put on mute.
What follows are endless threads arguing maximalist interpretations of the ecological approach versus the oldest, most rigid versions of “traditional” training – as if jiu-jitsu has to choose between them.
And as if the most functional version of the sport hasn’t always lived somewhere in between, combining constraint and freedom, structure and exploration.
So what sort of writing can you expect?
Cross-disciplinary approach
Anyone who’s read my stuff will know that I believe BJJ benefits a lot from outside influence. This first includes what we can learn from other grappling arts. I’ve written about what BJJ can learn from Judo, Wrestling, and MMA grapplers. Here’s the piece I wrote on what we can learn from Judokas:
My first coaching experience was helping Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu athletes transition to MMA, so I’ve always been interested in the grey area between martial arts.
I also think other schools of thought can help us better understand grappling. My main influences are:
- Systems thinking: Especially based on ideas from Donella Meadows’ book ‘Thinking in Systems’. I think Systems Thinking is one of the strongest ways to break down and understand any complex system, and jiu-jitsu is no exception.
- Evolutionary biology: I’m a big believer that the way complex systems self-organise in the natural world is very similar to how jiu-jitsu evolves – both on the meta and individual level. I’ve written essays about how things like the Red Queen Hypothesis apply to the BJJ meta.
I’m always looking for frameworks and principles from other sports that better explain the sport and show what the most recent research says about the best way to progress in it. For example, this article on how to build a jiu-jitsu curriculum, based on recent research on what is best for long-term learning:
Types of essays
I’d say my writing falls into one of three buckets.
Timeless essays
As I said, I’ve been in this sport a long time, so some of my essays condense all of that experience into writing that I hope will be as true today as it is decades from now. Most of these will be big issues that I’ve mulled over for around ten years. Here are some good places to start if you like this sort of article:
- How to study the BJJ meta: the art of spotting technical trends as they spread through the sport
- Why principles matter and techniques fail under pressure
- Why competition requires a different kind of BJJ
- What earning a brown belt taught me about the BJJ belt system
- The dark truth about jiu-jitsu’s greatest outliers, and what we can learn from them
Training guides
Progress in BJJ is highly non-linear. I write guides to help you know what to focus on at different levels. The best place to start is my White to Blue Belt guide:
Analysis
I do technical analysis, breaking down how certain positions work and the games of the best athletes in our sport, including:
Thank you for reading!
I’m over the moon to say that, last week, we hit 500 subscribers. Thank you so much to everyone who reads my work week in and week out. I can’t tell you how much it means to me.
For those who’ve just arrived at the party, I hope this essay has served as a good way to reintroduce myself and give you a flavour of the type of writing you can expect from me.
First off, for everyone who’s already subscribed, I want to say a HUGE thank you. I’m truly humbled by how much this Substack has grown and by everyone who reads each week and leaves thoughtful comments.
Please never hesitate to DM me with jiu-jitsu questions or things you’d like to see in articles. I see this as a reader-driven publication, so any of my subscribers can request topics whenever they like.
Anyway, that’s enough from me. Have a great week of training!
Leave a Reply