Editorial Policy

What we publish and how

Guard Theory publishes writing about grappling alongside selling grappling apparel. That combination creates obvious incentives to distort, so this policy exists to constrain us and to let you hold us to it.

Independence from commerce

• Editorial content is never written to justify a product claim. If an article and a product page disagree, the article is not changed to match.
• Product mentions appear in an article only where they are genuinely relevant, and are visibly separated from the editorial text.
• We do not publish reviews of our own products, and we will not solicit or display customer reviews we have influenced.
• We have no sponsored athletes, no affiliate income and no paid placements. If that ever changes it will be disclosed on every affected page.

Accuracy and sourcing

• Every factual claim about a person, an event, a date or a result is checked against a source before publication, and the sources are listed on the article.
• Preferred sources are official records, recognised organisations, competition archives, established journalism, published books and direct documented statements. Another brand’s blog is not treated as an authority.
• Contested history is presented as contested. Tradition and gym lore are labelled as tradition and gym lore.
• Quotations are used only where documented and attributed. We never invent a quote, never present a paraphrase inside quotation marks, and never fabricate an interview.
• We do not imply that any practitioner endorses this brand.

Technique content

• Technique writing carries a safety note and states its limitations.
• We say plainly that written material does not replace a qualified coach.
• We do not make medical, injury-prevention or performance claims.

Authorship and dates

• Every article names a real author.
• The publication date is the date the article was actually published. We do not backdate content to look established.
• Meaningful revisions update the modification date; the original publication date is preserved.
• The dates shown to readers and the dates in structured data are the same dates.

AI use

Drafting assistance is disclosed rather than hidden. Nothing is published without human research, verification and editing, and no article is published purely because a tool produced it. Where a page is machine-assisted and not yet human-verified, it is not published.