Are you Evolving?

"What causes evolution in the Arts is Ailveness. If you take the resisting opponent out of the equation, evolution ceases. You can see this clearly in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Anyone who says BJJ has not evolved in the last ten years has been living under a rock. The teams that do the best, tend to be the ones the compete the most, and stay on the cutting edge of what the competitors are doing currently. They HAVE to in order to be COMPETITIVE. If you take a BJJ school, pull them out of all tournaments, organize the curriculum to such an extent that it becomes anal, and don't allow an open mat policy to wrestlers and BJJ'rs from other Gyms, then very quickly that entire schools performance begins to drop off. Those that have been around BJJ for the last ten years or so know exactly what I am talking about. We know what schools those are, and what schools turn out great practitioners. The beautiful thing about BJJ is that is ALWAYS evolving at the competitive levels. That doesn't mean you have to be in Rio, or LA and enter every tournament. But you DO need to keep your training Alive, and as such, evolving within the confines of your own Gym. If you shut the doors, and make it a 'closed mat' or closed gym', as opposed to an 'open mat' policy, then very quickly the lack of new blood leads to inbreeding, and everyone's games start to become stagnant."

M. Thorton
StraightBlastGym.com