Miha brings 20 years of grappling experience to Legion AJJ. He co-founded the academy and our 5-Week Beginner Course. He is currently a black belt in judo and black belt in jiu jitsu. Miha is also a best-selling author of Modern Submission Grappling: A No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu Manual
AWARDS
Pro Grappling Judge (CJI, Flograppling, UFC)
11-1 Record in Amateur MMA, 11 first round finishes.
Best-Selling Author of Modern Submission Grappling
BIOGRAPHY
Miha was born far away from San Diego in Kranj, Slovenia. He grew up under and in the Alps trying a variety of sports during his childhood. Around the age of 9 or 10, he began training judo in his hometown.
During his mid-teen years, he trained with the Slovenian Olympic judo team, which has produced 5 Olympic medals since 2004, with 2 golds. Despite training at such a high level and intensity, he didn’t want to continue with judo. There were a number of reasons, the main one being the constant changing of the rules that made judo a less complete martial art.
At age 18 Miha joined a local MMA club with dreams to become an accomplished MMA fighter. That journey lasted 3-4 years during which Miha cleaned out the local amateur MMA scene, amassing a record of 11-1 with 11 first-round finishes (mostly submissions).
More importantly, the MMA club also offered jiu jitsu as a part of the curriculum and after 4 years of training both Miha decided to not get punched in the head for a living.
So began his full-time jiu jitsu career.
During his jiu jitsu journey, Miha moved out of Slovenia where the scene was very small (as the country itself). His path took him to live in Warsaw, Poland; Oslo, Norway, and Dublin, Ireland.
While living abroad Miha started competing all over Europe, eventually reaching the World Championships in Los Angeles and Abu Dhabi as well. During this run, he amassed 5 IBJJF Nogi European Open medals, including 3 silvers. He also won multiple IBJJF Open competitions, getting the coveted Double Gold in a couple of those outings.
After a few years of living and training in Dublin, Miha and his wife Emma began a 2-year long around-the-World trip, which literally took them around the World two and a half times. But that’s a story for a different web page.
This trip gave Miha the chance, to train and teach jiu jitsu in many different cities and countries and also allowed him to sharpen his skills by competing internationally. This led to him claiming some very exotic titles, such as the 2018 New Zealand Nogi Absolute Champion.
The present
Recently Miha relocated to sunny San Diego at the invitation of Legion’s Head Instructor Keenan Cornelius and started instructing here at Legion HQ, offering his vast experience to our members. In 2022 Miha created the 5-Week Beginner Course and made it the starting point for anyone joining Legion. In August of 2024 this course is reaching a milestone of the 50th cohort. A total of almost 1000 people have entered the course with hundreds still training as a result.
In 2024, coach Miha was also a judge at the revolutionary grappling event the Craig Jones Invitational #1, which introducted $2.3 million in prizes and achieved over 3 million views in 3 days on YouTube.
Miha teaches some of the classes on our schedule, but there are other ways to learn from him.
Reach out to Miha directly to book one of his limited private lessons.
videos
learn from miha
In 2022, Miha created the Beginner Course curriculum that has since been taught to over a thousand people in various different cohorts. Miha still participates in the classes and works on improving the curriculum with small details, along with the other coaches.
He also teaches the weekly Judo for Jiu-Jitsu class, every Saturday at noon.
learn online
For those not fortunate enough to live in sunny San Diego, Miha created a video course package that follows the same structure as his book. It covers all major areas of no-gi jiu-jitsu in digestible way.
It features 9 chapters with 1 hour of instruction each, mind maps, bonus judo and kimura courses and more.
instructor
founder
BEGINNER COURSE DIRECTOR, JUDO INSTRUCTOR
GI INSTRUCTOR
NO-GI INSTRUCTOR
JUDO/WRESTLING INSTRUCTOR
GI INTERMEDIATE-ADVANCED INSTRUCTOR
EAGLET & WOMEN’S JIU-JITSU INSTRUCTOR
6AM INSTRUCTOR
BEGINNER COURSE AND EAGLET INSTRUCTOR
EAGLET & Beginner INSTRUCTOR
No-gi instructor
EAGLET INSTRUCTOR