RALEIGH, NC — Trevor Halland, a 34-year-old logistics operations analyst and three-stripe purple belt at Riverside Grappling Academy, announced Saturday evening that he has completed and distributed an 11-slide Google Slides presentation demonstrating, through what he described as “a rigorous multi-variable analysis,” that he is the single most efficient grappler currently enrolled at the facility.
The deck, titled Training Efficiency: A Comprehensive Portrait of My Progress at Riverside (Version 2.3, revised twice before distribution), was shared via email with coaching staff, distributed in the academy’s group chat, and posted to his LinkedIn profile with the caption: “Excited to bring some analytical rigor to a domain that too often relies on gut feeling.”
Halland has competed in six tournaments over four years as a purple belt. He has not won a match.
This fact does not appear on any of the eleven slides.
“What I wanted to do,” Halland explained in a brief post-class presentation delivered to three teammates who had been stretching near the water cooler, “was create a framework that captures the full picture of grappling efficiency — not just the narrow lens of wins and losses, which frankly is one data point in a much larger story.”
The slides are as follows.
Slide 1: Executive Summary. A bar chart establishing Halland’s position in what he calls the “Riverside Grappling Efficiency Index,” a proprietary composite score he developed and populated with data about himself. He is first. He is also the only person in the dataset who knows the dataset exists.
Slide 2: Methodology. Three bullet points explaining that efficiency was defined as “maximum technical engagement per mat hour,” a term Halland invented. He notes the definition “deliberately excludes outcome bias,” which is another way of saying it excludes outcomes.
Slide 3: Submission Attempt Rate. A line graph showing that Halland attempts more submission attacks per rolling minute than any other purple belt at the academy. The accompanying footnote, rendered in 8-point font, notes his submission completion rate (9%) and offers the observation that “high attempt volume is itself a measure of offensive mindset.” His competitive record appears in this footnote. It is one sentence. It reads: “Note: tournament results reflect a sample size too small to be statistically meaningful (n=6).”
Slide 4: Defensive Efficiency Rating. Defines survival in an inferior position as a “positive training outcome” and tracks how long Halland endures bad positions before tapping. He scores well here. Teammates report he does hold out for a long time. They also report this is because he does not know when to tap.
Slide 5: Technique Diversity Index. A pie chart. Halland has attempted 23 distinct submission types in the past 14 months, more than any other tracked purple belt. The pie chart is very colorful. The pie chart does not note that 21 of those techniques have never threatened anyone.
Slide 6: Guard Recovery Ratio. Tracks the percentage of times Halland successfully re-establishes guard after being passed. The metric is defined broadly enough to include “created space to reassess position,” which his training partner Marcus Okonkwo described as “that thing where he scoots away from me and we both stand back up.”
“I didn’t know I was in a dataset,” Okonkwo said. “I also don’t know what guard recovery ratio means.”
Slide 7: Active Training Tenure. Halland has trained for nine years. He is first in this metric among the purple belts. It does not account for the fact that three of the gym’s brown belts have trained for twelve, which Halland addresses in the footnotes by limiting the analysis to the purple belt cohort, “to ensure equitable comparison across equivalent rank populations.”
Slide 8: Instructor Positive Feedback Frequency. A scatter plot. Coach Daniel Vega said something encouraging to Halland 47 times in the past year, more than any other tracked purple belt. Vega confirmed he did not know he was being tracked. He also noted that he says encouraging things to everyone, and that for one of those 47 instances he was fairly sure he was talking to a different student.
Slide 9: Peer Drilling Preference Rate. How often teammates chose Halland as a partner during drilling segments. He scored third. The footnote blames “selection bias driven by social familiarity rather than perceived technical value.” He has trained at Riverside for nine years. They know him fine. He still scored third.
Slide 10: Rolling Commitment Index. A formula of Halland’s own design: rounds completed versus rounds available, adjusted for time spent attempting technique versus “passive defensive positioning.” He scores very well. He’s not sure anyone else has tried this metric. He’d score well regardless, he’s confident.
Slide 11: Conclusions and Recommendations. A summary slide establishing Halland as Riverside’s most efficient grappler “by the full composite measure.” There are three bullet points under “Recommendations.” Two of them recommend the academy adopt his efficiency framework for belt evaluation purposes. The third recommends that tournament performance be formally weighted at no more than 15% of any belt assessment, “given the high variance and low sample-size reliability of competition results.”
Coach Vega, reached by phone the following morning, said he had received the email but had not yet had time to open the attachment. He said the subject line — Riverside Grappling: Efficiency Data FY2025–2026 (PLEASE READ) — had given him pause.
“I thought it was about the lease,” Vega said.
Three of Halland’s teammates said they’d looked at the deck. One said it was “interesting.” One said it was “a lot.” The third, a 22-year-old blue belt named Connor Park who has been training for fourteen months, said he had submitted Halland twice during Tuesday’s open mat and had not been included in the analysis.
“He told me the sample size for newer students wasn’t sufficient for meaningful comparison,” Park said. “I asked what that meant. He said it meant I wasn’t in the dataset. Then I asked if that was because I submitted him. He said that was an outcome-based interpretation and he’d rather not engage with that framing.”
Park submitted him again on Thursday. It is also not in the deck.
Halland confirmed Saturday that he is working on Version 3.0, which will expand the analysis to include what he calls “longitudinal trajectory indicators” — a set of metrics showing that even if his current efficiency scores are disputed, his rate of improvement over time is itself a strong predictor of future dominance.
The deck will have fourteen slides.