Grapplers Guide is an old platform for BJJ and grappling courses. It has courses from many of the best BJJ instructors of the world – but are these courses up to date? In this Grapplers Guide review I share why I think that in 2022, there are better options out there to learn BJJ online.
Grapplers Guide Review Summary: Outdated
In one word, I find Grapplers Guide outdated.
The courses are old. Therefore the techniques in them are outdated, but also they fall short of what you expect of an instructional in 2022.
Grapplers Guide used to be a good option for people that want to buy many courses at once, instead of paying per instructional at BJJ Fanatics. But there’s better options now.
Better alternatives to Grapplers Guide are:
- Submeta: Submeta has far higher quality courses and you don’t have to pay for a lifetime right away.
- BJJ Fanatics: BJJ Fanatics offers single courses that are much longer than they used to be, with more details, by the best instructors. If you’re concerned about their price you can check out their daily deals.
Also read:
- Submeta Review – The Best Place To Learn BJJ Online?
- BJJ Fanatics Review: Top 10 Best BJJ Fanatics Instructionals
What is Grapplers Guide?
Grapplers Guide is a platform with many BJJ courses from different instructors. You’ll find courses from almost everybody you know: Lachlan Giles, Craig Jones, Travis Stevens, Mikey Musumeci, Josh Hinger, Jon Thomas, and many many more.
How good are the courses on Grapplers Guide?
They’re not good (imo). They are far below what you expect of a BJJ course in 2022.
First of all, they’re very short. For example, Craig Jones has a course called ‘the floating half z guard’, which is a very small position and the course is less than 1 hour. I’m not saying that all courses houls always be 12 hours long, but on GG I find them all far too short to be useful.
Second, they suffer heavily from what I call ‘random videos disorder‘. They just share a semi-random collection of techniques, without a strong common thread or idea behind them. This makes these courses not fat better than just watching YouTube videos.
Third, they’re old. If you see a course from an instructor you like (such as Craig Jones or Lachlan GIles), it’s probably at least a few years old. Therefore the techniques are often outdated. Let me give an example of that.
Example 1: Craig Jones Modern Leg lock defense vs Get off my legs Gringo
Let me illustrate what I mean with an example. Let’s compare 2 instructionals by Craig Jones: Modern leg lock defense on Grapplers Guide with Get off my Legs Gringo on BJJ Fanatics. In the table below I summarise some basic information about them.
| Modern leg lock defense | Get off my legs Gringo | |
| Topic | Leg lock defense | Leg lock defense |
| Publication year | 2019 | 2021 |
| Total duration | 1 hour and 18 minutes | 5 hours and 19 minutes |
| General quality | Mediocre | Great |
Also read: Get Off My Legs Gringo Review: 1001 Details from Craig Jones
Both courses are about the same topic: leg lock defense. However, Get off my Legs Gringo (GOMLG) is a far better course that Modern leg lock Defense (MLLD), for a few reasons.
First of all, MLLD is 2 years older than GOMLG, and that’s a big deal. The evolution of leg locks has been incredibly quick, especially between 2019 and 2021 (it’s arguably slowing down a little after 2022).
Therefore MLLD is massively outdated. For example, it doesn’t talk about 50/50 at all, let alone backside 50/50, which are very important positions now. GOMLG does cover these. And all the techniques and details are just better in GOMLG.
This is also related to my second point: MLLD is much shorter than GOMLG. So Craig can’t really cover everything that he needs to cover.
And thirdly, the overall quality is just better in GOMLG. So I’m talking both about the mixing and video editing, and about Craig as a teacher. Craig made like 10 instructionals and taught hundreds of seminars in between filming these 2 courses, so he just got much better at explaining techniques.
Also read: Top 10 Best BJJ Instructionals Ranked (2022)
Is grapplers guide worth it?
No, I don’t think Grapplers Guide is worth it. The content is outdated, and they force you to pay for a lifetime. I think there’s better alternatives available in 2022, that are cheaper and better.
Grapplers Guide alternatives
There’s multiple alternatives for Grapplers Guide. The most important ones are:
Submeta: the best alternative to Grapplers Guide. You get access to more than 60 courses that are all recently filmed by Lachlan Giles (one of the best instructors ever), and it’s even cheaper too. This platform was launched in 2022 and I believe it will take all of Grapplers Guide’s market share very quickly, because the quality is just 100 times higher.
Also read: Submeta Review – The Best Place To Learn BJJ Online?
BJJ Fanatics: the biggest BJJ course platform. Here you have to buy instructionals per unit, so it’s a different model. But their instructionals are more up to date, in depth and higher quality.
Also read: BJJ Fanatics Review: Top 10 best BJJ Fanatics Instructionals
FAQ about Grapplers Guide
But everybody on Reddit says grapplers guide is the best?
They bought it a long time ago before Submeta existed. And they’re invested in liking Grapplers Guide for the rest of their life because they bought lifetime access (that’s the only way you can buy it). But trust me, the courses on Submeta are way better. Just try it for a month.
Why did Grapplers Guide become bad?
Grapplers Guide can’t attract the best instructors anymore. If you look, you’ll see that Craig Jones, Lachlan Giles, Jon Thomas and others all stopped publishing on GG years ago. I don’t know why that is, but I suspect it’s because GG doesn’t pay them enough. I tried to look into their business model but I couldn’t find any public information about this.
How much does grapplers guide cost?
Grapplers Guide costs $297 for a lifetime. They don’t have any recurring subscription option. But you can split up your payment to 6 payments of $55 and get the lifetime access.
Who owns Grapplers Guide?
Jason Scully owns Grapplers Guide. He’s a black belt with some cool videos on his YouTube channel (the ’24 arm bars in 2 minutes’ ones). But he’s not a world class competitor or anything.
