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Gianni Grippo has spent 25 years competing in Jiu-Jitsu. When a grappler with that r\u00e9sum\u00e9 says open mats are often a waste of time, the take is worth sitting with \u2014 even if it stings the hobbyist who treats Sunday open mat as sacred.<\/p>\n
Grippo made the comments on a recent episode of the Jits and Giggles podcast, and the framing matters. He was not declaring war on extra rounds. He was questioning whether unstructured mat time deserves the reputation it has quietly earned as a reliable engine for improvement.<\/p>\n
The heart of the argument is about structure, not effort. Grippo described open mat as a place where a lot of athletes simply move to get a sweat going, rather than a place where anything specific actually gets better.<\/p>\n
He was careful to add a condition. The problem is not the open mat as a space \u2014 it is how most people use it. Hours of rolling without a target rarely move the needle.<\/p>\n
That position lands against a deep cultural current. For decades, open mat has been treated as one of grappling\u2019s default development spaces \u2014 the extra session after class, the weekend room where students roll with different bodies, revisit the week\u2019s positions and test themselves outside the normal lesson format.<\/p>\n
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That structure had real value. Grapplers could meet unfamiliar games without entering a tournament. Smaller athletes could find rounds with larger partners. Competitors could sharpen pace, while hobbyists collected rounds without the pressure of a formal curriculum. Plenty of careers have been built substantially on exactly that kind of extra, self-directed mat time.<\/p>\n
Grippo\u2019s critique is really about what those hours produce. The same loose format that makes open mat appealing can also let an athlete repeat their best positions, avoid uncomfortable problems and mistake fatigue for improvement. A hard hour of rolling may produce useful resistance, but it does not necessarily isolate a technical flaw and build a repeatable answer.<\/p>\n
For Grippo, the fix is not avoiding open mat entirely. It is walking in with a plan. He said he tries to always identify something specific before stepping on the mat, rather than simply accumulating rounds \u2014 and admitted he has been on the wrong side of it himself.<\/p>\n
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His own routine reflects that discipline. Grippo runs structured sessions daily at Bodega Jiu-Jitsu, lifts three days a week and builds in real rest. With ADCC and the IBJJF World Championship on his schedule this fall, the message is clear: for elite competitors, showing up is not the hard part. Showing up with a purpose is.<\/p>\n
Grippo is not telling anyone to skip open mat. He is telling them to give the session a job.<\/p>\n
An athlete preparing for a leg-lock-heavy opponent may need specific entries and defensive reactions more than ten random rounds. A guard player struggling with pressure passing may need repeated starts from smashed half guard rather than fresh neutral rounds. In each case, the room still works \u2014 but only when it answers a precise question.<\/p>\n
That is the usable takeaway. Open mat has built too many careers to be dismissed, and Grippo is not trying to dismiss it. He is arguing that the grapplers who got the most out of those sessions did not just show up \u2014 they came in knowing exactly what they were working on.<\/p>\n