Editorial policy

Factual claims are traced to official competition records, recognised organisations, reputable interviews, books, established journalism or direct statements. Anything disputed needs more than one independent source.

Where the historical record is genuinely contested — and in jiu-jitsu's history it often is — the article says so rather than picking the tidier version. Every article lists the sources it was built from.

We do not invent quotations or training anecdotes, and we do not attribute private motivations to people who have not stated them. We do not present gym legend as established fact.

We make no medical, hygiene or injury-prevention claims. Technique writing describes mechanics; it does not promise outcomes.

Journal articles carry the Guard Theory editorial byline rather than a person's name. A person's name goes on a piece only when that person wrote it or has read it and agreed to put their name to it.

The rules on this page apply to every article, whoever drafted it, and every article lists the sources its claims are traced to.

Nothing is backdated. An article carries the date it was genuinely published, and that is the date shown to you and to search engines alike. Substantive revisions add a modified date rather than overwriting the original.

Every Technique Library entry is fact-audited and voice-audited, each independently of the draft, and nothing is published until a named person has read it and signed it off in the source. Until then it is unlisted and marked as a draft.

Guard Theory makes apparel and publishes the Journal. Where an article touches something we sell, it says so.

Reference material — the Technique Library, the historical writing — carries no commercial links in its body. That is what makes it worth citing.