- After 25 years in Jiu-Jitsu, Gianni Grippo calls open mats “often a waste of time.”
- His problem isn’t the open mat itself — it’s the random, unstructured rounds that tend to fill it.
- The fix is intention: show up with a specific focus, or set situationals, instead of just racking up hours.
- He runs structured sessions daily at Bodega Jiu-Jitsu and has ADCC and the IBJJF World Championship on his fall schedule.
Gianni Grippo has spent 25 years competing in Jiu-Jitsu. When a grappler with that résumé says open mats are often a waste of time, the take is worth sitting with — even if it stings the hobbyist who treats Sunday open mat as sacred.
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.
Gianni Grippo: Open Mats Stall Progress
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.
We sometimes can find that open mats in general can be a waste of time. I feel like there’s a lot of random rounds in open mats and I feel like a lot of people, it’s an opportunity for people to move to get a sweat going. But sometimes I just feel like, if you’re trying to get better, you really want to improve, I feel like a class with actual structure is more beneficial.
–Gianni Grippo, on the Jits and Giggles podcast –
He was careful to add a condition. The problem is not the open mat as a space — it is how most people use it. Hours of rolling without a target rarely move the needle.
Unless you really actually take matters into your own hands and you tell people what you’re working on in the rounds or you set certain situationals, I just feel like sometimes hours of open rounds is not really always super productive.
–Gianni Grippo –
The Space Where Generations Learned Their Jiu-Jitsu
That position lands against a deep cultural current. For decades, open mat has been treated as one of grappling’s default development spaces — the extra session after class, the weekend room where students roll with different bodies, revisit the week’s positions and test themselves outside the normal lesson format.
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.
Grippo’s 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.
What Training With Intention Actually Looks Like
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 — and admitted he has been on the wrong side of it himself.
I would definitely go through phases where I’m like: “Oh, I don’t feel like I had a focus” and yeah, I did the reps, I did the work, but my mind wasn’t completely there or I didn’t come in with something I wanted to work on.
– Gianni Grippo –
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.
I think it’s always important to come into sessions with something that you want to focus on. And whether you get it or not, that’s one thing, but I think you have more productive time when you come in with deliberate goals. That’s how you get better faster.
– Gianni Grippo –
Open Mats Aren’t Dead — They Just Need A Question
Grippo is not telling anyone to skip open mat. He is telling them to give the session a job.
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 — but only when it answers a precise question.
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 — they came in knowing exactly what they were working on.
