Blunt BJJ talk for getting less stuck.
I Suck At Jiu Jitsu Show is an opinionated Brazilian jiu-jitsu podcast built around getting better without pretending the sport is tidy. Josh McKinney mixes guard theory, training rants, tournament talk, and hot takes into sharp lessons that still feel like open-mat banter.
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I Suck At Jiu Jitsu Show is a Brazilian jiu-jitsu podcast about getting less stuck, less confused, and less precious about training. It has jokes, but it is not lazy. Josh McKinney uses blunt solo episodes, live conversations, and hot takes to turn common mat frustrations into technical decisions. The show is especially interested in how grapplers learn. It questions old habits like mindless drilling, generic fundamentals, and copying instructional language without understanding the fight underneath it. Then it gets specific. Bottom side control becomes a problem of focus, frames, angles, and asking better questions. Guard passing becomes a ranked field of options, judged by how well passes create pins and control. Guard itself becomes a practical argument about which positions are worth years of training and which ones look better than they function. The show likes tier lists because they force choices. It also likes arguments because BJJ culture is full of them. Sitting guard, turtle guard, belt status, heavyweight rounds, mouthpiece etiquette, and competition courage all become fair material. The 951 Hot Take episodes give that energy a format, letting people throw out opinions and then watching the room push back, agree, roast, or reframe the point. Live episodes widen the scene. Open-mat recordings and tournament conversations bring in tired coaches, road trips, new gyms, match stories, and the strange social life around grappling. The pace can be chaotic. The ideas are not. Under the sarcasm is a steady concern with language, perspective, and whether a concept survives contact with real rounds. It is a show for grapplers who like being challenged more than comforted. It rewards people who enjoy the sport's technical rabbit holes but still want the talk to sound like a gym, not a lecture hall.
Made for: For Brazilian jiu-jitsu students, competitors, and coaches who like technical detail delivered through arguments, rankings, live mat stories, and opinions. It fits listeners who want practical training perspective without a polished seminar tone.
What sets it apart: The show turns improvement into a running debate, using tier lists, hot takes, and live tournament or open-mat conversations as teaching tools. Its edge is the mix of real technical specificity and rowdy gym-culture honesty.
Jiu-Jitsu is hard. Join host Josh McKinney on his forever quest to "suck less at jiu-jitsu." Learn from high level black belts, in depth conversations, and off the wall rants by the host himself.It is guaranteed that each episode will help you suck just a little less at jiu-jitsu, or your money back.Josh McKinney is an accomplished adult black belt competitor with a "suck-less" mindset that can help anyone progress
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Josh McKinney makes Jiu-Jitsu training methods, positional choices, and gym arguments easier to examine and apply.
Josh McKinney treats Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu improvement as an argument worth testing on the mat. Solo teaching episodes share the feed with guest conversations, while caller hot takes and an open-mat recording let practitioners challenge the assumptions and etiquette surrounding…
This is the mat-side argument where your favorite guard gets ranked and your learning model gets cross-examined.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A sitting-guard argument turns a work complaint into a funny, technical debate about positions and points.
Max’s defense of sitting guard begins as a working-person complaint. After drywall, carpentry, painting houses, ladders, sprayers, and rollers, he wants his jiu-jitsu hobby to let him sit down.
A clear case for replacing mindless drilling with focused practice, real understanding, and better repetitions.
The episode treats improvement in Brazilian jiu-jitsu as a cycle of focus, understanding, and quality repetition. Rather than copying an expert's knee cut and drilling it on autopilot, practitioners are encouraged to notice the personal adjustments that a polished demonstration…
A concept-first jiu-jitsu review grounded in practical armbar and guard-passing detail.
This episode pushes back on the belief that effort, discipline, toughness, and repeated fundamentals are enough to make jiu-jitsu click. Its clearest idea is the difference between collecting techniques and building a model for why techniques work.
An 18-year jiu-jitsu guard survey turns training choices into a sharp argument worth having.
Josh McKinney turns 18 years of testing jiu-jitsu guards into a pointed ranking of what actually deserves training time. He lays out the criteria, reserves two double-S spots above the regular S tier, and leaves enough room for disagreement when other grapplers prize something…
A loose open-mat conversation turns a mouthpiece handshake into a sharp look at gym etiquette.
An open mat turns into a hot-take booth as a handshake involving a mouthpiece opens up a lively conversation about gym manners. The live setting lets the discussion move naturally, from praise for an "old man jiu-jitsu" segment that works for young and old, small, weak, and…
Jeremy finds jiu-jitsu's odd rewards in black-belt perks, post-match rituals, and friendships built under pressure.
Jeremy's conversation treats jiu-jitsu competition as a way to see what shifts around the mats when a belt, a seat, or a reputation changes. He looks back on befriending Devin partly because he did not want to face him as a purple belt, jokes about Devin as the coach willing to…
A six-week camp built around weekly practice competitions that make tournament performance feel familiar.
Competition prep becomes a six-week habit: practice performing every week. Josh McKinney builds on advice from Mark Vives, who competed each weekend and recreated a full competition at his gym whenever no tournament was scheduled.
Jiu-jitsu stories from beyond the scoreboard.
Mat talk, jokes, and practical jiu-jitsu.
Discipline after the hype fades.
Old-school karate, pressure-tested for real life.
Jiu-jitsu stories from inside the academy.
Mat talk with mileage.
Host Josh McKinney shares his 'perfect six-week training camp' method for jiu-jitsu competition preparation.
Host Josh McKinney interviews world champion black belt Jeremy Brick about his jiu-jitsu journey and mindset.
I Suck At Jiu Jitsu Show #370, "Sitting Guard is SOFT," opens with Max, a 36-year-old painter from Portland who says he started jiu-jitsu at 33 and still gets told not to sit guard.
Josh argues that jiu-jitsu progress can move "10x" faster if you stop chasing every technique and follow a three-step system.
I Suck At Jiu Jitsu Show #368, "You Learned BJJ All Wrong!", argues that jiu-jitsu is a problem-solving game, not a move list.
Josh McKinney introduces a new segment where listeners share hot takes about jiu-jitsu, starting with a voicemail criticizing lightweight practitioners who complain about rolling with heavyweights.
Josh McKinney ranks every guard pass in a tier list to help listeners improve their guard passing in jiu-jitsu.
Josh McKinney puts X guard in the SS tier because Marcelo Garcia and MMA examples show it can shut down athleticism and create top positions.
Kyle Watson and Junior Silva turn gym hygiene into a hot take about mouthpieces, fingernail clippers, and "community" trimmers.
The host interviews two coaches after a BJJ tournament, discussing their experiences with winning, losing, and coaching.
A black belt explains what is required for each jiu-jitsu belt and what to focus on to get promoted.
Josh McKinney reacts to and roasts the top 10 wildest Reddit posts about Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu.
Josh McKinney shares competition hacks for BJJ coaches, focusing on how to prepare a team and coach live matches effectively.
Josh McKinney discusses the most requested topic on his show: how to effectively study jiu-jitsu tape to improve your skills.