Jon Plyler's BJJ Page

This weekend, I went down to Atlanta for the Lutador Grappling tournament. This was the first of several tournaments that I am planning on participating in to ramp up to the Mundials. It was also the first tournament that I have participated in as a purple belt. I had two basic goals for this competition: Do well in the competition and don't get injured. Well, I met at least one of them....I actually won my division in the gi, but I ended up kind of messing up something in my shoulder.

I had si… Continue

I can't say that it came as a big surprise to me yesterday to hear of the passing of the legendary BJJ founder Helio Gracie. In fact, it was news that I had rather expected to hear for some time. Afterall, the man was 95 years old! However, I still felt a little bit of unexpected sadness when I came to the realization that this great martial arts innovator was no longer with us. I guess it was only appropriate that I found out the news while actually on the mat rolling. I was in the middle of an… Continue

I've never been a big time competitor in BJJ, but I do compete occasionally just for fun and to kind of put myself out there to see how I stack up against the competition. However, my new years resolution this year was to try to compete more and challenge myself. So, along those lines, I've decided to make my first ever run at the Mundials, the Brazilian Jiu-jitsu World Championships.

The Alliance team has consistently been among the top competition teams in the world, and last year won both th… Continue

Yep, that's right....I'm sitting on the sideline....on the injured reserve list....out of commision. I severely strained my neck/upper back a few weeks ago, and it's still not quite right. Unfortunately, I wasn't smart enough to lay off of it for a while after I got well enough to move....a little bit....and I went back to training again too early. Then, as I was preparing for a tournament, I re-aggrevated the injury and again, couldn't move. It's somewhat better now, although still not 100%, bu… Continue

Well, I had spent the last several months getting in shape and polishing up my game preparing for the NC State BJJ Championships this past Saturday, only to injure myself two days prior to the competition to the point that I was unable to compete. Actually, it was an injury to my neck that I sustained a few weeks earlier which had been bothering me for a while, but I re-aggrevated it pretty badly. I was working with one of my training partners who is a little bigger than me, and I was drilling e… Continue