Ever heard someone explain the difference between fashion and style?  It’s pretty simple:

Fashion is all about following the latest trends, whereas style is about ignoring the trends and being true to your own aesthetic.

Some looks, like those giant suits guys used to wear in the 2000s, might have been fashionable at the time, but look ridiculous in hindsight.

But if you’ve got style, you don’t need to change anything: you can rock the same thing your whole life and always look great.

Fashion is about being trendy.  It's got an expiration date.  But style is timeless, and it'll look good forever.

The “trendy vs. timeless” debate has huge implications in life, beyond which pants you decide to put on in the morning.

It's really about whether you're a short-term or long-term thinker.

Trends in Jiu-Jitsu

Chasing trends, or what's fashionable, is short-term thinking.  When you follow fads and chase the meta, you're being trendy.

Trendy techniques might work for a while, but over a long enough time window they'll probably lose their value.

Maybe the trendy stuff will stop working once the surprise factor is gone.  Or maybe it requires athletic attributes that you'll lose as you get older.  But either way, it probably has a shelf life.

Building your entire Jiu-Jitsu game around trends is like building your wardrobe around the giant men's suits from the 2000s.  One day, you'll probably realize you invested in a bunch of stuff you can't use anymore.

Timelessness in Jiu-Jitsu

A focus on timelessness is more akin to having “style,” and it demonstrates longer-term thinking.

When you're a timeless grappler, you're less concerned about what's hot in the meta right now, and more concerned about building a gameplan you can play for the rest of your life.

The benefit to a timeless gameplan is that you'll always be building on it.  You'll see the benefits of compound growth over time.

On the other hand, if you're too busy chasing trends to build on the fundamentals, you might one day find your training partners have all passed you by. 

How to be a timeless grappler 

If you're trying to assess whether a technique is timeless, it helps to know the right questions:

• Does this technique only work because it's novel and because people don't know how to defend it?
  
  
• Is the technique being used consistently, and successfully, in high-level competition?
  
  
• Will this technique still be relevant in 10 years?
  
  
• Will I physically be able to perform this technique for the rest of my career?
  
  
• Is this technique generally useful, or only useful under a particular ruleset?
  
  
• Does this technique build on what I already know, or is it an “evolutionary dead end?”

It's important to remember: sometimes you do need to follow the trends, simply to avoid getting surprised by a technique you haven't seen before.  But we should always be thinking about whether we're learning for the short-term or the long-term, and the questions above will help you assess that.