About

Way of Yawara is a research-driven guide to starting jiu-jitsu, written for beginners and published in twelve languages. It is made by Blake Crosley, a product designer and developer in Pasadena, who is a beginner in jiu-jitsu himself.

A beginner cannot teach technique from authority, so the site does not try. The posts explain what the ideas are, what the federations' rules actually say and what a first year tends to involve, and each one lists its sources at the foot of the page. The city guides record what academies publish about a first visit, their timetables and their prices: every fact links the page it was read on and shows the date it was read.

How it is checked

How we verify sets out the method: one fact, one receipt; a read date on every line; facts re-read on a schedule and withdrawn when they go stale; no rankings, no "best gym", no medical advice, and no experience narrated that was not had.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, write to hello@wayofyawara.com with the page and what it should say. Academies can correct their own entries the same way; the academy's own page is what decides, and a correction carries its own date.

Money

Some posts link to books and gear on Amazon. Those links carry an affiliate tag, and every post that has one says so above its first paragraph. The site takes no payment from academies, and nobody can buy a place, a position or a word in a guide.

The same maker publishes Randori, a training-log app for iPhone; where the site mentions it, it is his own product.

Why the name

柔 yawara is the old Japanese word for the gentle art: the unarmed grappling the samurai trained before judo had a name. The character 柔 means yielding, pliant, soft. It opens both 柔術 (jūjutsu) and 柔道 (jūdō). The name points at the older root, back to where the art comes from rather than to the sport it became.

So the site is 柔の道, the way of the gentle art: a path walked from the beginning.