About BJJ Reflections

What’s in It for You?

BJJ Reflections is here to help you think better as a BJJ player through articles you can read, often within a few minutes.

While you can’t improve your grappling skills just by reading articles on the internet, BJJ Reflections can give you insights that might take you years of trial and error to gain otherwise.

Why do I say that? Because the insights I share through BJJ Reflections are based on my twenty years of training and competition experience in BJJ.

Through BJJ Reflections, you can gain these insights and use them to avoid potential pitfalls and level up more quickly than most BJJ practitioners who go through their journey without much guidance on what to think and how to think regarding their BJJ skills. This is especially the case if you are early in your BJJ career.

Many of the BJJ Reflections articles are targeted at beginners (white/blue belts) as well as intermediate players (purple belts). But I know advanced folks follow BJJ Reflections, too. If you want to know more about these articles, the best way is to sample some of them here.

If you enjoy reading my articles, you can subscribe to the BJJ Reflections email newsletter and receive new articles three times a week — on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

I originally started BJJ Reflections just as an email newsletter in 2020, but after two years of consistently writing and sending emails, I decided to start posting past articles on the site in August, 2022. If you don’t want to wait for two years till these “latest” emails are posted on the site, sign up for BJJ Reflections today… though I plan to update the site more frequently.

Who Is It By?

My name is Masafumi Matsumoto. Masa for short. I am originally from Japan and based in Belgrade, Serbia.

A portrait of the man behind BJJ Reflections
Photo by @tebezvonu

I started practicing BJJ in Hobart, Australia*, in 2002. But I received all my belts from my coach back in Japan, Tatsuya Onose.

Lineage: Mitsuyo Maeda > Carlos Gracie > Carlson Gracie > André Pederneiras > John Lewis > Enson Inoue > Tatsuya Onose > Me

I also learned Judo under Peter Chung at ANU Judo Club from 2003 to 2009, in Canberra, Australia.

I traveled around the world extensively from 2012 until the beginning of 2020, bringing my BJJ gear everywhere I went and visiting different gyms in different countries.

Some of my competition results include:

  • 1st Place – SubHunters Renegades [Submission Only No-Gi Invitational in Belgrade, Serbia] (2021 – Under 66kg)
  • 1st Place – Belgrade Masters (2021 – Black/Adult/Absolute)
  • 1st Place – Belgrade Open (2018 – Brown/Adult/Middle)
  • 1st Place – IBJJF Pan-Pacific (2017 – Brown/Adult/Feather)
  • 1st Place – Dumau Jiu Jitsu Japan Cup (2014 – Purple/Adult/Feather)
  • 2nd Place – Rickson Gracie Cup (2014 – Purple/Adult/Feather)
  • 2nd Place – Rickson Gracie Cup (2014 – Purple/Adult/Absolute)
  • 2nd Place – IBJJF Asian Open (2010 – Blue/Adult/Feather)
  • 3rd Place – JBJJF Japan Nationals (2017 – Brown/Adult/Light-Feather)

And more 1st, 2nd, and 3rd places at other regional/local competitions in various places throughout the years. I win sometimes. I lose sometimes.

Most of you probably don’t care about my competition results, especially given that I haven’t won anything that includes “world championship” in its title, but the point is that I actually and still compete. You can be assured that I walk the walk rather than just talk about my BJJ fantasy that is not based on experience.

If you want to get in touch with me, you can contact me via email, Twitter, or Instagram.

* In case you are wondering what I was up to in Australia, I studied philosophy at Australian National University, specializing in analytic philosophy. And yes, if you are familiar with Australia’s geography, I started in Hobart and moved from Hobart to Canberra.