Gabi Garcia has never held back her opinions, and her latest comments are bound to fuel debate in the grappling world. On the Jits and Giggles Podcast, the nine-time world champion pushed back against the current no-gi wave, insisting that gi training remains essential for anyone aiming to reach the top.
“If you don’t train one day a week like gi, you don’t go be a champion no-gi,”
Garcia said, cutting against the prevailing trend of athletes abandoning the gi entirely.
Her stance isn’t about nostalgia. Garcia argues that gi training forces precision and structure in a way that no-gi alone cannot.
“You need like train with gi and take time,”
she explained, adding that technical development in the gi transfers directly into no-gi success.
She also called out a recurring weakness she sees in modern grapplers.
“I saw a lot of people they know a lot of like (leg)locks but they don’t know pass one guard and basics,”
Garcia noted, pointing to a generation more obsessed with heel hooks than guard passing.
From her perspective, the gi builds awareness of grip placement, weight distribution, and positional adjustment—details she says are often missing in submission-only specialists.
“When you’re training like with gi you know where you put your hand, you know like you know where you need like the adjust the position, right? Why you don’t have like no-gi?”
Garcia’s position places her alongside figures like Marcelo Garcia and members of the Gracie family, who continue to defend the gi as the backbone of technical development. She summed up her stance with a phrase that echoed across the podcast: making “the gi great again.”
Beyond the gi vs. no-gi debate, Garcia also stressed the importance of dominant positions over risky shootouts.
“The most beautiful positions for me is the back attack and mount position because when you attack like you expose your legs too and it’s a 50-50 you know for both sides,”
she said, contrasting mount and back control with leg lock battles where both athletes gamble.
Garcia’s remarks will resonate with traditionalists and frustrate no-gi purists in equal measure, but they underline her consistent message: mastery starts with fundamentals, and for her, that foundation is built wearing the gi.
