Gi Nogi

There are two major types of rolling in Jiu-Jitsu.

One is done when wearing the traditional uniform, and the other is when much lighter clothing is worn. The two types are called “gi,” which refers to the uniform, and “nogi,” meaning no uniform.

Normally, during nogi sparring, the participants wear very tight fitting shirts, called rashguards, and shorts.

The biggest differences are that the gi provides a lot of friction between the grappling bodies as opposed to the slippery action of rashguards, and a gi provides lots of grabbing opportunities, which nogi does not. There are also a lot of chokes available to gi grapplers that people going nogi do not face.

Strangely, both claim to be the more realistic garb.

Nogi people rightly say that if someone has to face a self-defence situtation, neither they nor their attacker would be wearing a gi. This is quite true. Gi people have the counter claim that neither would you likely be attacked by somebody wearing as little as nogi people use.

I suppose it's all a matter of preference.

I like all the chokes available when fighting in gi. One grabs the collar, and cranks away. This is hard to pull off against a trained opponent, but they have to be constantly on the defence, and so do I. This is exactly what I would do against somebody wearing street clothing should they attack me. The neck of a guy in a hoodie or jacket is just as vulnerable to a clothing choke, and so is a person wearing only a tshirt.

A bare-chested attacker is quite a different kettle of fish. Somebody fighting nogi need not be concerned about clothing chokes, and nor would a shirtless attacker. All a Jiu-Jitsu has left in the way of submissions they can use are triangle chokes, arm triangles, Darce chokes, rear chokes, guillotine chokes, leg locks, toe holds, heel hooks, knee bars, straight arm bars, Kimuras, Americanas, and all the other stuff that doesn't pop to mind at the moment. The body contact rashguard-on-rashguard also allow a lot of movements to be done far faster.

As it is best to understand both types of sparring, we do both. Two nights a week all our rolling is done in gi, while on the third, we dress all rashguarded up and spar nogi-style. A lot of folks here prefer nogi night, while others like the gi.

All good fun.