Ep. 326: Dropping In, feat. Rob Biernacki

Speaker 1: Have you ever wanted to know more about the hidden history of Jiu-Jitsu in America, including details even most experts don't know? If so, you should sign up for BJJ Mental Models Premium. Hi, I'm Jeff Shaw, I'm a professor at Western Washington University where I teach a history of martial arts class, and I'm also the head instructor at Bellingham BJJ. BJJ Mental Models Premium will give you access to my course, "This is Why We Fight: A History of Jiu-Jitsu in America," which is 12 classes, including a bunch of research that you can't get anywhere else. You can get it for free for the first week and start learning right away, plus you'll get access to a bunch of other amazing courses by people like Emily Kwok, Dominyka Obelenyte, Stephan Kesting, and other experts that I learn a ton from. So, if you are interested, BJJ Mental Models Premium is your way to go. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models, episode 326. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. I'm here again with the Vancouver Island sensation. I got Rob Biernacki on the line. How's it going, Rob? Speaker 3: They call that damning with faint praise. The funny thing is that I'm I'm not even a sensation on Vancouver Island, no one here fucking cares. I'm more popular in the rest of the world. Speaker 2: Well, here's my question for you, Rob. Are you sick of me yet? Cuz I think this is the seventh time in a week. Speaker 3: I was sick of you a while ago. Speaker 2: I guess no one knows, uh, but Rob and I just concluded, uh, recording a a mindset course, which we're going to throw up on Premium in a bit, so Rob and I have gotten very well acquainted over the last week or so. But, Rob, you had a topic that came up while we were chatting that you wanted to discuss here. I think it's kind of relevant to a lot of your travels, and also your Visiting Student Program. We wanted to talk about the nature of dropping in. What do you do when you go to someone else's gym? What's the protocol? Uh, but, of course, before we go into that, speaking of dropping in, why didn't you talk about the Visiting Student Program you guys have at Island Top Team, because I know you wanted to get that message out there before you close that off? Speaker 3: Yeah, obviously some of the people listening will know about this, but probably quite a few won't. We have a fairly unique uh program at our club. We call it the Visiting Student Program because we are extremely unimaginative with our naming conventions, but uh it basically allows people from pretty much anywhere in the world to visit our club for 1 week at no cost, so the training is free, but the accommodations are also free. So like I've got I'm pretty fortunate person. I've got a very nice house with three bedrooms, and I only use one of those bedrooms, so we tend to host people pretty frequently throughout the year. I'd say an average year we've got uh anywhere from 50 to 100 visitors that come through that uh stay with me for a week, and we host them for free, and generally speaking, we will pick them up from the ferry or the airport, however they happen to get to the island, and they'll ride with me to class. You know, some people will be coming from a closer distance, they'll have their own vehicle, but, basically, it's kind of like a We jokingly refer to it as the ITT inn. It's It's a little bit of a frat house. We commonly have two or three people staying with us. We'll have as much as, I think, five or six at one time at the house. So like the way that the Visiting Student Program has worked for, you know, about a decade, is if you just get in touch with me and book a spot, we will uh give you this opportunity to come and learn with us. So obviously, so that's a little bit of a different etiquette proposal when you're just staying in someone's house and dropping in at their gym, but we also get a ton of just drop-ins who are not staying with me, they're just It's just someone coming through town for a day or two and they want to train, or because the Visiting Student Program has gotten pretty popular and people have heard about it, and they want to come and visit, but their schedule doesn't align with mine, so like we're We know We tend to be booked a few months out for visitors, but that's just because they're staying at my house. If somebody doesn't want to stay at my house and just wants to visit for a week and train for free, they're welcome to do that as well. We've had people come out and just get themselves an Airbnb, or we've had people come out and do the week at my house and then do another 3 weeks at an Airbnb or a hotel or stay with somebody. We've got regular visitors who come out a few times a year, who will come out for a month or two months, or three You know, we've had people stay for like three, four months, I think, and just train with us, and so they will find accommodations or, in the case of some of them, they've made friends with some of, you know, my students, their teammates, they will stay with somebody. So yeah, like we've just got this really interesting kind of network of people who have, you know, sort of become distance students uh for Island Top Team who come out like once a year, some of them come out several times a year. Yeah, it's a pretty neat program, so we are probably as experienced as any, you know, nonsuper famous gym with having folks just drop in and more experienced than probably any other gym on the planet with people coming in and like being part of our team and being in my house and a little bit part of my life, and getting to know people on that basis. So I've got probably Yeah, like I might have more insight into the type of person who travels to drop into gyms and visit places for Jiu-Jitsu than than just about anybody. Speaker 2: Yep, and I know a lot of people in the BJJ Mental Models community who have taken you up on that. It's funny cuz I've seen you post pictures on social, and I think to myself, "Hey, I know that guy who is with Rob. I thought that person lived in Texas, though. What are they doing on Vancouver Island?" So, Speaker 3: We have had visitors from almost every corner of the world. Every continent other than Antarctica has been represented on the Visiting Student stage, and I would really love it if somebody from Antarctica would please come before we close the doors on this thing, so. Speaker 2: Well, this also ties into a lot of what you've been up to, because you spent a significant portion of 2024 doing seminar tours. I mean, I know that you were basically living out of a suitcase there for quite a while, and so you've sort of seen this on both sides. You know what it's like to be the host, but also what it's like to be the visitor as well. And this is a common question that I see people ask, you know, when I I drop in at someone else's gym, what's the etiquette? What should I do? And I haven't really heard many people talk about this. So, I want to give you a chance to maybe discuss this as someone who Uh, let's talk about it from the perspective of the person dropping in. What are your thoughts on how you can get the most out of that, and also how do you find a place that you would vibe with? I mean, nothing would be worse, I guess, than traveling halfway across the country or the continent to train somewhere, and then finding out that you hate it, right? So, like, how do you vet these places? And what should you do when you're a guest at someone else's gym? What should you expect? Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's kind of interesting. There's two sides to it. There's the I want to train somewhere, and then there's the do they actually want me to train there, or you like am I a useful or a helpful participant, because we'll talk about the gym owners' side of it, and and that side of it later. But yeah, as far as like vetting a gym, I mean the great thing about our gym, it's fairly easy to get reports on it from people all over, because we've had so many visitors. So, if you're part of a community like the BJJ Mental Models community, or if you're on Reddit, or any kind of forum, like you can probably find out what it's like to come here. You can probably find out what it's like to go to, you know, B-Team or Atos, or whatever, like any kind of big gym where people tend to drop in. That's pretty easy to get a good read on. And, again, like enough people have done the Visiting Student Program that you can just kind of ask about it, and you'll get a few people that are are going to tell you what it's like. The issue, I think, for people like, you know, if you're traveling and you're going to drop into a gym is, you know, most towns if you're not going to a like a major metropolitan area with a fairly famous gym, you're getting You know, it can be pretty tricky to get a good read. I would argue against using online reviews for much, because like online reviews are basically Like it's impossible to distinguish signal from noise at this point, because you either get people who have encouraged their like student base to post a bunch of positive reviews, so you're going to get like nothing but positive review. Like I know some dog shit gyms with a, you know, 4.9 rating on Google. And I also know gyms that like, you know, they've been brigaded because somebody has a political disagreement with them, and so like I would say that Google reviews or Facebook Like, I'm not saying they're totally useless, but there are definitely a couple of things that could, you know, really skew the validity of those reviews. So honestly, for like an an average gym, you're kind of rolling the dice. There's a There's certainly the stereotype of Jiu-Jitsu people being shitty business owners and not replying to emails. So like obviously, part of the protocol is I'm going to be in this town at this time, I should email the gym. But, man, how many stories do you hear about someone doing that, and then they're just like they never replied to me? So there are plenty of owners who just like don't give a shit if somebody drops in, and just can't be bothered to reply, which I mean, I guess that's a you know, that's a sign in and of itself, maybe don't go there. But yeah, like I I think that if you are not able to email a gym and have a quick conversation with whoever about the process of dropping in, I would say probably don't go. If you are able to, then at least they're professional enough to get back to you and like, "Hey, this is when classes are, yes, we take drop-ins, here's the drop-in fee or not." I think a lot of places don't charge drop-in, I think a lot of places do charge drop-ins. Like I'd say a gym that doesn't expressly tells you, "Hey, man, we don't charge drop-ins," is a really good green flag, but I wouldn't say that a gym that charges a drop-in fee is a red flag. There are plenty of excellent gyms that are just like, "Man, this is my business." If If you get a certain amount of drop-ins, especially if you're a famous gym, you can have a pretty like hefty drop-in fee. You've I've heard of drop-in fees as high as like $50, $60, $70 for like one class, and they'll make you rent, you know, their rash guard or their gi, and so like by the time you get in there and have taken a class, you've paid 100 bucks, which I think is really silly, but that doesn't mean you'll have a bad training experience. It's just that, in my experience, when someone's like, "Yeah, dude, come in, train, we're we're happy to have a visitor, we're not going to charge you," that's probably the best indicator that you're going to have a good time as somebody dropping in. So I would say if you have an email communication with a gym and they give you that, you're good to go. But definitely, still ask like What's the best way to put this? Just like, ask them what the intensity level of their training room is, because there are plenty of gyms that are happy to have visitors, but they also don't give a fuck if they hurt the visitors because they're not their regular students. So I know I've had some of my students go drop in at some gyms and just get put through a meat grinder because they've got a target on their back for visitors at that gym. And again, that doesn't mean it's a bad gym, it's just if you don't know what you're getting into, and you're expect- And especially if you're being the you know, the typical kind of ad- advice that people give is be respectful, don't go too hard, don't try to tap anybody, there are a few things that people try and do. And then if you're at a gym where everybody's like, "Oh, fresh meat," and you're rolling in this really lackadaisical fashion, you can get hurt. So I think as long as you're getting a a good email response from whoever's running the place, and both people on either side kind of know that you know, the rolling is going to go like this, I think those are the things that you want before you go and drop in somewhere. Speaker 2: Good advice, man. And that's an important point to bring up, that you should make sure you have actually talked to the gym first, and that you're on the same page. It's one of those things where you you think to yourself, "Do I really need to explain this?" But I've heard enough stories from gym owners who have just had randos show up unannounced to know that yes, you absolutely do need to contact the gym, make sure that they are okay with you dropping in, there may be reasons why they're not. Make sure, like you said, that they even respond, because if you can't even get a response from the gym, that's probably a pretty good indication that there could be an issue there. I mean, maybe the gym is not even active, right? The thing you need to bear in mind is if they're not answering your emails, there's a good chance they're also not updating their website. And the schedule that you think they have may not be the case at all. So, always get on the same page with the person first. Always make sure that the schedule that you've got and that's posted is actually the correct one, right? I mean, nothing is worse than showing up to a gym that you traveled a long way to visit only to find out that, "Oh shit, they're closed." And also make sure that you're on the same page with the coach about, you know, funding that. Because it is, like you said, the best answer is people who are just happy to have visitors. I think most of the good gyms that I have seen would offer that. And I'd look at that as a green flag, that the gym is willing to just be welcome to people and they're not going to try to charge you, but it is completely reasonable to charge. So, I would always say, make sure that you check that in advance so you're not surprised. And even if it's free, it's often considered good courtesy to support them somehow when you go there. So if they don't charge you, what I know many people will do is they'll buy a rash guard or something when they get there, right? Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a very common like etiquette thing that people suggest is like, if you go to a gym, and they're like, "Oh, don't worry about it, we're not going to charge you," offer to buy a t-shirt or a rash guard. I'm the worst for that. I don't keep stock very much, so like I've had so many visitors come through like, "Hey, can I buy some gear?" I'd be like, "Yeah, you could if I had any." So yeah, it's definitely it's appreciated when people do it. But for those of us who are genuinely like, "Hey, man, I don't care, I just want you to come and train," it's not a big deal either way. Speaker 2: Now, something that we should expand on, too, you talked about the intensity to expect. That is really important. One of the things that I always tell people is whenever you're vetting a gym, for whatever reason, you need to know what the culture of that gym is and what their goals are. If you train Jiu-Jitsu just for fun, and you wander into a high-level, high-intensity uh competition gym, you're probably going to have a bad time. Right? Speaker 3: Yes. Speaker 2: Yeah. And similarly, if you are looking for heavy, hard rolls, and you show up and it's a bunch of like old retired accountants, you're not going to get what you were looking for either. Speaker 3: But they might help you with your taxes, so. Speaker 2: One of my training partners is also my accountant, so don't rule that out. But that's something to think about as well, is to kind of ask and get on the same page. And I encourage people to do this regardless of why they're vetting a gym. I mean, especially if you're looking to join a gym permanently, you want to vet that. But even just to visit, just to make sure that it's the type of training that you want. You want to ask that upfront, but also to make sure that you don't poison the room by accident. Because if you do come in expecting high-level intensity rolls, and you just beat the shit out of all of their hobbyists, it's unlikely you're going to get invited back next time. Speaker 3: Yeah, agreed. I think there's a really poor like overall culture around communicating about rolling intensity in Jiu-Jitsu. I think Well, it's probably just a poor culture around communicating, because we seem to have a bunch of autists in this community, myself included, who just don't want to talk to other human beings. And so they, you know, they run to a forum to have to ask if they're the asshole uh instead of just having a simple conversation with somebody. But that's also partially an atmosphere that's created within gyms, where like people are not told that it's okay to stop in the middle of a roll. Um you know, people are called pussies if they tap to certain th- So like, it's not everyone's fault, because there are a lot of mixed signals in the community. I mean, let's face it, a good chunk of the like relatively well-known competitors/influencers/gym owners in our in our sphere are like fucking man-babies who like swing wildly from, you know, "I'm the toughest guy, and I'll fucking kick your ass," to, "Every hobbyist is welcome, and you should roll at your own pace." And like, man, which which version of you do we listen to, right? It's pretty bipolar. So yeah, I think it's not necessarily people's faults that they're not quite sure you know, how to navigate, you know, the roll with you know, one type of person, and then a roll with another type of person, and you can have two different students at the same gym, and one of them's, you know, going to have a nice, easy roll with you, the other one's going to try to kill you. Like even at the gyms that I would kind of like warn people about, like, "Hey, man, you might get a really hard roll there," you can also probably get a really good, easy, not easy, but like a really good, safe, you know, measured roll with some of the people. It just comes down to like I encourage this at at my club, which is, first of all, sit down with your partner before you slap bump and like, what kind of roll are we getting into? Like, what is okay? Like, personally, when uh somebody comes through my door as a visitor, I don't know them, there's a couple questions that I ask right before the roll. First is, "Hey, man, do you know uh, do you have any injuries? Is there anything I need to know about? Okay, cool." Two, "Are you leg lock friendly? Like, do you uh, you know, like, should I even be bothered leg locking you, right? Like, if you If you come from a Gracie Barra, and you don't do kneebars until brown belt, and let alone heel hooks, like what's the fucking point in me heel hooking you? Like, that doesn't prove anything." So like, I want to know a little bit about you, a little bit about where you train, and and I want to know if you have any injuries, and I want to kind of know like, yeah, style-wise, that's still a pretty big like, you know, divide. It's eroding, and there aren't too many gyms now that just don't do leg locks at all, but they do exist. And if you're somebody from a very gi heavy IBJJF gym, and you just don't do any leg locks, I'm like, "Cool. I just won't go for any leg locks at all." Like that's something that I like to get out of the way. Do you have any injuries? What's your familiarity level with leg locks? And then we'll usually give them the like, you know, "You set the music, I'll dance to it" kind of speech, which is like, "However you want this roll to go, it can go. If you start ramping up the intensity, I will do the same. You decide. If there's anything that I perceive as being unsafe, one of two things will happen. I will either not let you move at all in the roll, and just staple you into the mat, and you'll you'll eat shit on bottom of mount and get roadhouse choked a few times, or I'll just stop rolling with you." Like if you're a 250 lb, you know, super athlete, and you're going to be bouncing all over the walls, then I'll just be like, "No, you know what? We're good. We don't have to roll." So like, I try to make sure that everybody kind of knows what they're getting into. I've had visitors come in. I had a visitor about a week ago where like I put him in an armbar, and I was very gradually increasing the pressure, and at one point just was like, "Hey, dude, are you okay? Cuz your arm's about to take a pop, right?" And like, I'm not going to keep going, because I've got you. You're locked out. You're not doing anything. You're not defending it. You're just kind of sitting here and like, I don't know, maybe hoping that this is all I got. I'm not really sure what's going on with you, but like He's like, "Yeah, no, I'm okay." And then it was like, "Oh, okay, tap." Just FYI, dude, if your elbow is locked, you should be tapping. You're not really get like You're not gaining anything by waiting the extra 5 seconds and taking a bunch of strain on your ligaments. So like, I had a little chat with him about that. He'd been training for like less than a year, and I guess he was fairly flexible in his elbows, so he was kind of hoping that maybe. So yeah, I try to be fairly like, "Hey, man, do you know what you're getting into? Okay, cool." But there's a plenty plenty of gyms that that doesn't happen. Like I know for a fact that kid would have gotten his elbow like popped pretty badly at a couple other gyms. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. There are are significant differences in Jiu-Jitsu culture. And this is something that I think many people who have only ever trained at one gym for an extended period of time don't realize. I see this sometimes when we run our camps. People show up and it's pretty clear that they they've never really trained anywhere outside of their home gym, and often they get a bit of a culture shock, right? Because, I mean, look, BJJ Mental Models has its own kind of culture and the gym that we might be hosted out of has its own culture. And sometimes if you've only spent your entire training environment in one type of place, when you switch over, you realize, okay, there's a lot of things that I took for granted as assumptions about how we behave in Jiu-Jitsu that really are not as universal as I thought. They were only relevant to my gym. And you have to also factor in the fact that many Jiu-Jitsu coaches, even to this day, give horrible advice to their students. I'd love to actually do just like a bonus episode one time where I just get people to tell me what's the worst thing you've ever heard a Jiu-Jitsu teacher say to their students. Like, I remember hearing a teacher say one time, you know, "If you're in a competition match, if they've got you in an armbar or a leg lock, yeah, it makes sense to tap. But if they've got you in a choke, go out on your sword." That is the most dumbfuck advice I have ever heard in my life. I mean, there's going to be people just getting like slept at completely meaningless local tournaments because of that kind of dumb shit. But, you know, sometimes some coach said that to someone and they think, "Oh, that's okay, well, that's what Jiu-Jitsu is." They go to another gym and they apply that standard and they get fucking escorted out the door, right? So one time we had a guy out from out of town who was like a a competitive judoka, and he came in and this guy was just a raging asshole, and he was like trying to He was basically trying to kill everyone that he rolled with, and um he wound up getting into a big shouting match with one of the black belts, and eventually the head coach had to come by and tell this guy like, "Look, you're not going to make any friends if you act like this when you're at this gym." And the visiting judo guy said, "I'm not here to make friends." And he wound up getting physically escorted out the door. It was uh something else. So, I always tell people like, don't assume that what is normal for you in your Jiu-Jitsu culture is the same everywhere else, right? Not everyone fights to the death, or maybe if they do, there's a protocol for when and how you do it. Not everyone is on the same page, like you said, about what techniques are okay and they aren't. I mean, in a perfect world, we'd have a unified Jiu-Jitsu rule set, but one of the cool things about Jiu-Jitsu is the crazy diversity and experimentation of all of these different rule sets, so you can never assume that people know the what you know and they're used to what you're used to. And the issue is if you surprise someone, like if someone has never trained heel hooks in their life, and you throw one of those on, even if they know that heel hooks are dangerous, and even if they know that they don't know how to escape it, when you take people out of their comfort zone like that and you fluster them, sometimes they freeze, or sometimes they fight back without thinking, and if they don't know what they're doing, that's where injuries happen. So always get on the same page with people first. Speaker 3: The So part of the the protocol for us, you know, from the side of like, you know, here we're we're the gym, we're going to have visitors, here's what we do, and this isn't just for visitors, this is just a general thing. So we have a pretty I shouldn't say extensive, but a pretty well thought out um safety and etiquette policy where like, you know, the following things are banned, the following things are encouraged, the following things are discouraged, here's how we want you to train, and anybody that wants to roll at our club has to sign. That's it. Like the We have to show the you know, they have to read it, if they have any questions, they can ask them, and then they've got to sign it, because we don't want to have exactly that issue where like somebody comes in, and maybe they're from a gym where flying scissor takedowns on white belts are totally acceptable, whereas at our gym, that's an insta ban, right? Like if you leave your feet to like suspend your weight off of a standing opponent in regular training, we make allowances for cer- certain things in competition training, but like in a general class, if you do something like that, that's just a ban, you're just not allowed to train anymore. So, yeah, when when people come through the door and visit, it's like, "Okay, I see you've got some cauliflower ear, you know, you've been training for a couple years, maybe you come from a goon gym. Here's the safety and etiquette policy. Have a read through that. If you got any questions That tends to take care of a lot of that misunderstanding about what's the general rolling style, or rolling pace, rolling atmosphere at at at our club. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. As I get older, and I I hear more people talk about their Jiu-Jitsu drama, something that I'm realizing is that one of the most important things from a social element in Jiu-Jitsu is making sure that you are on the same page with your training partner as to what the intent is. You know, when people talk about how to learn Jiu-Jitsu, always the focus is on the technical details. But I think there's this whole element of, from a social standpoint, how do we get the most out of our team and our coach and even ourselves, right? Because the social element, how we interact, is super important. And like you said, many, many people in Jiu-Jitsu, rather than just asking their training partner, they'll go on Reddit and publish some 500-word essay about, "What should I do in this situation?" You could have solved this by just asking the person. And so I always suggest when you are in an unfamiliar environment or you are with a new training partner, the first thing that you should always do is get on the same page about what the intent of that roll is. Pretty much every situation I've seen where a roll ended in disaster, it was because people didn't do this. That two people started rolling, but they had different understandings of what the goal of the roll was and what was allowed and what wasn't, and then it just went downhill from there. You can solve a lot of those problems by, as I would tell my kid, using your words. Right? Just ask them. If you aren't sure, ask. And as a black belt, I always try to model this, right? And I've seen you do that too when you do seminars. I will go out of my way to try to ask, you know, to learn about the culture and who I'm sparring with, and if their shoulder is barely hanging on by a thread and I need to want you know, monitor for that. Just use your words. Set that as an expectation. When you meet someone new, and you don't know who they are, you got to break the ice somehow. Normally, in the real world, you might ask, "What do they do for a living?" Well, in Jiu-Jitsu, ask, "What do you want out of this damn roll?" Right? And and, "What can I do to make this productive for you?" That's the other thing, that a good roll is not just about what you need, it's about how you can serve your training partner as well. Speaker 3: Yeah, and like I said, when, you know, when it comes to a a visitor, it's there's an additional layer to it, because if we're if we're talking about our teammates, if you're not a good teammate, then you just you don't belong in the room, right? So if somebody is already familiar with the culture of your gym and they're now not a good teammate, they're not safe, they're not cooperative, et cetera, et cetera, then, okay, it's clear that we can just invite them to train elsewhere and move on. With the visitor thing, that's where things get tricky, because I think most of the time when somebody's coming in to visit, they've got really good intentions. I think most people who visit are It's the usual story: "I'm a Jiu-Jitsu purple belt. I've been training for 5 years. I'm on vacation. I want to get a couple of sessions in. Because I'm on vacation, I'm not going to come in here and try to like, you know, blow through the Maybe I Even if you are somebody who's quite skillful, maybe you compete quite a bit, maybe you're a really good purple belt, maybe you can fuck everybody up, you know, a more local gym that doesn't have high-level guys, but you still probably don't do it, because hey, whatever, you're on vaca- Like that's just not what you're looking for. And if you are that type of purple belt or whatever competitor, and you're going somewhere just to get good training, well, then you're going to go to a you know, a high-level competition gym, and now you can't fuck everybody up, and now everybody's kind of matched up. But every so often, you get the visitor that comes through the door who is just not fucking right in the head. And no, and we've had that, because like we one of the questions that I get about the Visiting Student Program whenever I talk about it is like, "Oh, you know, have you had any like, you know, got any stories about some weirdos that you wouldn't want back?" Cuz I'm overwhelmingly positive about the Visiting Student Program. I think it really only adds value. But when it comes to hosting people, having people come into your gym, even if they initially are like, you know, they do all the things that we would like them to do, they email you a few weeks in advance, they make sure that they communicate what kind of like all that, they can be doing all the right stuff, but I've had a couple of people come through, not necessarily from the Visiting Student Program that are like staying at my house, but like we did have one guy, I don't know, like a year and a half ago, you know, he did all the right things, "Oh, I'm, you know, fan of your work," and and he came through, and he was just like staying near the gym, and came in the first day, and he was just like during the not the rolling part of the class, but just during the regular class where we're just working on a particular position, he was just going way too fucking hard. And I just like, "Hey, man, you need to dial it way back, because you're not getting any benefit right now. You're way too new at this to be going at this level of intensity and learning anything. Just like, by extension, you're not helping your training partner." And then, you know, I had the same conversation with him the next day. And it was like, "Man, you traveled all the way." Like I think he drove like 10 hours or something to be here. So now I've already Like I feel bad, because you know, this guy wants to be here, he wants to learn, and he's done all this travel to be here, I don't want to just make him sit out, but I was like, "Honestly, man, I like I talked to you about this yesterday, I'm having to talk to you about it again right now. If you can't correct this right off the bat, I'm going to have you sit." And sure enough, you know, 10 minutes go by, I'm like, "You know what, dude? I'm sorry. Do me a favor, just have a seat. Just watch the class." Um, and if I had been, you know, too hesitant to do that, if I had been too accommodating, that's a guy that could have injured somebody. You know, we had another guy that wasn't a visitor, he was a student that was a little bit silly, and a couple of people were like, "Is that guy quite right in the head?" I'm like, "No, but I don't think he's dangerous." So, but let's keep an eye on him. Like you really have There are people who will come through that are just a little whacked in the gourd, and they can say all the right things, and it seems like they're going to be okay, but when you watch them drill or rep, or play one of the games, or whatever, or roll, and like, "Man, they said all the right things, but there is just something off about that person." It's really important, I think in those cases, to be on high alert. Like I said, my solution is I just make them sit, or if it's the case of rolling, I think I've talked about this before, there are people who have come through, whether they be visitors or somebody who's interested in training and doing a trial week or whatever, and they come from like a quote, unquote "MMA" background, and they just roll like fucking goons, and I will just Whether me or Rory, or one of my brown belts, and we roll with them, and we make them eat shit for 6 minutes, and then at the end of the round I'm like, "Did you enjoy that? Cuz you're breathing really, really hard, and I'm not breathing even slightly, and every single roll that you have from here on out, just FYI, is going to be like that. You're never going to get to move like an inch during a roll. I will hand-pick your training partners, they'll be instructed to straightjacket you, and like not allow you to move and just submit you over and over again, because the way you move is unsafe." And you've got to be super emphatic, and you've got to go to that point right away, like there isn't You don't give somebody who's frantically rolling and potentially going to injure someone, you don't give them two, three, four, five rounds to figure it out. You get one, and if you don't figure that shit out, you're off the mats, or you get that experience. So that's one area like with visitors, you know, if one of your students, sure, maybe you give them a little bit of leeway. With a visitor, I just don't think it's worth it, because there's absolutely no like there's just no benefit. There's no benefit to having somebody who isn't a regular student that you can get a where you can have a read on them, where you can know that, okay, you know, maybe this time it was an accident, maybe this time it was this, maybe this time it was that, because the consequences are so significant of somebody who conducts themselves in that manner. And again, it's not frequent, but I just like I've had a couple of people come through the door that I think are like legitimately like mentally ill on some level and just shouldn't be in a combat sport, and that's something that needs to be identified even if the initial the greeting process was totally amenable. Speaker 2: I know a coach who refers to Jiu-Jitsu and the the people who train it as the Island of Misfit Toys because you attract a lot of people of all types. That's actually one of the cool things about Jiu-Jitsu, is the weird cross-section of people that you get into it. And I wouldn't change that, but it is something that you need to be aware of. You know, you will get people who train because they're athletes and they want a new athletic endeavor, or you'll get people who train because they're non-athletes and they want to try something, they want to learn to protect themselves. And you'll get just total lunatics who just want to hurt people and just want to fight. And you have to be very careful to guard against that third category. I used to train at a gym that was right in the the the center of Vancouver, right? Like big city vibes, and so you got a lot of weird foot traffic. Some totally, you know, violent person might walk by the gym one day and be like, "Fuck it, I want to learn to train UFC," and just show up. And if you don't vet them, they can do significant damage. And there's many levels to what I mean by damage, right? First of all, they're going to run the risk of hurting themselves or one of your customers. And we all know that with Jiu-Jitsu, the most important thing is consistency over time. Getting constantly injured is the most effective way to completely knee cap your Jiu-Jitsu and to never get better if you're constantly on the shelf. So, especially at a a junior level, where white belts and blue belts might be less aware of how to roll safely, you've got to really guard that and make sure that outside elements that come in aren't doing something that could hurt the people there. Um, but beyond that, too, there's just the culture element of what kind of gym do you want this to be? When you're building a team, it only takes one toxic element to poison the whole team. I've seen this many times in corporate, right? But also in Jiu-Jitsu. You can have a gym where everyone is awesome, but if you've got one person who sucks and you don't deal with that right away, then you are allowing the culture to degrade to their level. It just takes one person to ruin a team, whereas to build a good culture, pretty much everyone has to help elevate it, which is kind of one of the reasons why culture is hard, right? If you If you want a good culture, everyone needs to chip in. If you want a bad culture, only one person needs to ruin it. So it's super important to gatekeep those people. And again, that's not to say that we want to get into the situation where we're being overly judgy or discriminatory, but we do have to be able to try to vibe check and understand if a person's coming in, do they represent a possible danger to other people on the mats or themselves? And that can be a like you said, it could be kind of a hard thing to suss out. You have any pointers on how to do that, on how to actually evaluate whether someone is like safe to roll? Any screening questions you can ask, or is it something where you just need to see them go? Speaker 3: Honestly, I mean there are definitely red flags, so I hate to like this, obviously, there are a lot of like really normal, great people that do MMA. But I would say, in my experience, a dozen years into this now, if somebody's coming from a MMA gym and talking a lot about all of their different MMA background, and like, dude, one guy sent me like a highlight reel video of him like lifting weights and shit, that's a giant red flag. You know, like when somebody's talking extensively about their versus somebody's like, "Yeah, hey, I'm a blue belt from this gym in Winnipeg. I'm moving to your town to check it out." Yeah, yeah. That's not like, by no means, a red flag. Like somebody giving you some insight into their previous training. But it's the low level of experience in MMA where like they've been training for a year or two, but you've got two paragraphs or three paragraphs about it, and then the person is like super muscular, which anytime you're doing a like really cardio intensive sport, but you look like a bodybuilder, I mean you got that way with steroids. It's pretty simple. So like the level of emotional control of somebody like that is not likely to be very high. So I'd say that's the one like pretty big red flag, really low level of MMA training, but going on and on about the training that they've done and how they want to do this and do that. And like none of them do, none of them stick around. I've literally never had anyone who went on and on about their MMA aspirations come in and they barely ever even sign up, and if they do, they split within a few months, because they thought they were, you know, way up here, because maybe they trained at a gym that just didn't have a particularly high level of grappling or whatever, and then they come to us and they think they're going to be like one of the studs in the gym, and they just get rinsed by all the blue belts, let alone like the higher belts. So yeah, like those people don't stick around. So I think like that's probably the only big red flag that I know of. Obviously, if somebody's going on and on about that their street fight ability. And like, now the one of the whackadoos that we had come through, he was saying how like, "Oh, if you tried to guillotine him, he could just break your fingers in a street fight." And we were like laughing about it, because we thought he had left, and then he was like coming down the stairs after having showered, and like we were just we were having a chuckle about it. If they're definitely people like that, if somebody's talking about their street fight experience, yeah, also clearly like a huge red flag. But yeah, I think other than that, you just have to see them roll. We've had people come through that, you know, when they want to try out the class and they ask to roll with me, and they just go completely fucking ape shit, and if you thought that like the way to ingratiate yourself at a new gym is to try to like beat the instructor when you don't have any trade like any experience, or you like you've watched a few YouTube videos. I don't know, man. It's that same old thing. You set the music, I'll dance to it. If you go hard in like a roll in your first week with the coach, you're going to get subbed like 15 times in a round, man. That's all that's going to happen, and then they don't come back. Like it's it's literally like none of those people ever come back. So, up to you to decide whether it's worth even going through the process of allowing them to roll. I do just because I think if you're actually any good at this stuff, you know, you should be able to handle anybody that comes through the door of that ilk. You know, it can be kind of fun for me, and for any of my black belts, any of my brown belts, this can be amusing. But if you're on the smaller side and you're a hobbyist black belt, and, you know, you're not like a competitive black belt, there's a type of body type and attitude type that will come through your door where if you try to do the same thing that I'm doing, you might get hurt. So like I definitely don't wouldn't recommend that everyone do this, but oftentimes you do need to see it. But those are the red flags that I've seen. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a tricky one. How should the instructor respond against an aggressive student? Because, yeah, some people will just go in there and they'll just let the person do their thing, and they'll match the intensity. But on the other hand, there's really not that much benefit to the instructor to do that, especially if the instructor is a Jiu-Jitsu professional, right? Because, look, if you are a black belt, and you've got some hyper-aggressive white or blue belt visiting, we all know the black belt can win. There's no question about that. But even if you do beat them, at a roll of that intensity with that little control, there's still the risk of injury, right? What if they, like I don't know, stick a thumb in your eye? What if they bite you? There's a lot of things that can happen. Speaker 3: Yeah. Dude, I had somebody like a, you know, a 1-week trial person years ago who was, you know, like 6'4", 220, whatever, they just headbutted me, and they split my eye open and I had to get five stitches. Like they weren't competent, they weren't dangerous in the sense of like that we would think of it, but, man, was that guy ever dangerous, cuz he just went fucking spastic and just headbutted me. So yeah, even if you are quite capable of like handling somebody, and you're being a little bit gracious, and then they start moving suddenly aggressive. Cuz like it's one thing if they're just aggressive right off the bat, and you know that you you shouldn't just allow them any freedom of movement, that's one thing. But if you're being nice, and they it seems like they're being nice, and then all of a sudden, partway through the roll, they their eyes get big and they see an opportunity to get you, and they all of a sudden explode, that's hard to account for, so like even if you're quite capable, there's a risk associated with that, that is sometimes not worth it. Speaker 2: Yeah, and that is a thing to bear in mind, right? You got to avoid this tendency to feel like, "I've got to match this person's intensity and show them." That's often where injuries happen, and they can happen regardless of skill. I mean, I can bring in up an example, too, similar to what you talked about. I remember one time I was sparring with some like day-one, uh, new white belt. I was kind of helping him do his trial, right? And we were doing some basic guard work, and the guy just elbowed me right in the face. Busted my face open, had an important meeting I had to go to the next day. I had to like figure out how the hell am I going to do this without looking like Edward Norton in Fight Club. And he wasn't trying to, he was tremendously apologetic about it. But, I mean, you got to think from the perspective of someone who's never done combat sports, right? When people start grabbing your neck and your collar and your head, sometimes if you're untrained, the body just goes on autopilot and you just start flailing around all over the place. So, and what did I gain out of that? I gained nothing out of that, right? I mean, I, and I wasn't even trying to do anything to this guy. That was just an honest, good faith accident. So, I always encourage people, if you're going to try to, you know, match the intensity of the new person, you got to be real careful doing that. And especially because this can kind of lead into the whole mat enforcer culture thing, right? Which is its own bullshit that I like to avoid. So it I always tell people like there's more at stake than just who won the roll. And I mean I know that you and I have talked about this many, many times, that the goal of training in the training room is not to win, it's to learn. And so as a a more experienced person, you have to be willing to identify those situations and just say, "Hey, I don't think this is quite safe. We got to pause this. We got to do something else." I never want people to feel like they're obligated to follow through and complete the training if they feel it's gotten unsafe, right? You should always be willing to pause and say, "I think you're going just a bit too hard. I don't want to get injured, so let's take a break. Go do something else." Speaker 3: You know, if there's one takeaway for whether you're visiting a club or in your own club, if there's one takeaway about what's the one thing you can do to really reduce the chance that you get injured, it's that. It's anytime you get into like this roll is going in a direction, I don't like it. You know, you get those your hair is standing on, or you're just like you notice your heart rate going up higher than you want, like whatever signal it is that you use to be like, "Oh, man, this is going somewhere that I didn't expect it to go," and your normal response is to grit your teeth and just to okay, like let's let's get into the battle. If you just at that point stop and go, "You know what? I'm good. This is about as hard as I wanted to go. We've kind of gone past that. Let's" And like, I've given safety briefings at my club. I've talked to so many people about this. That is a very difficult thing for people to do, because it tends to be perceived as a breach of etiquette, or a breach of social norms or whatever, because it is it's rare at clubs that you see that happen. And I just, I mean, I cannot encourage this enough. You can say no to a roll for any reason you want. We always say that no is a complete sentence. Someone asks you to roll, you know, like if I watch somebody roll, and I see that they're rolling in a way And it doesn't even have to be safety. I um I had a recent experience with it in a roll with somebody where I was, "Man, you know what? I'm just not getting anything out of rolling with this person." Like they just they roll in a way that's clearly designed to try to not lose, you know, they want to get through a round with me without getting tapped, or they want to get through a round with me without X thing happening. And like, "Man, it's just fucking boring." So like, yeah, I'm just at the point where I just don't care. So I'll just tell people, I'm like, "You know what? Yeah, dude, no. I don't Like I'm not going to roll with you anymore, cuz it's just it's kind of a waste of my time." And so it can be for that reason, it can be for safety reasons, it can just be like, "Hey, you're 250 lbs, I'm 175 lbs. What am I going to get out of rolling with you that's worth the risk of the size difference if you're not the kind of person who is extremely careful about throwing your body weight around?" You don't have to explain that. It's literally like, it's, "That person smells. I don't like the way they smell." You can tell them that or you can just be like, "Nah, I'm good. I'm not doing this roll." And that needs to just be the end of the exchange. There shouldn't be any like hard feelings, there shouldn't be any like bitterness, whatever. It's like you ask someone to roll, they're not rolling that round, that's as far as it needs to go, and it should be the same in the middle of a round. "Hey, I'm not getting what I need out of this roll. I'm just going to take a break." Which is different than, because this is since we're talking about this, it's different than Speaking of visitors, like we had a visitor come through here, and they kind of like they quit in the middle of a roll, and one of my students got like really frustrated about that. He's like, you know, "Basically, as soon as I started tapping them, they quit in the middle of the roll." And so I just had a conversation with both participants. I was like, "Hey," It's like, "Oh, I just thought that" the visitor was like, "Oh, I thought I was going to The intensity went up, and I thought I was maybe going to get injured." I was like, "Okay, well, was your training partner moving in a way where, you know, you thought they were uncontrolled?" He's like, "No." "Okay. So, did they catch you in a submission?" He's like, "Yeah, you know, I got caught in a leg lock." "Okay. And did they Was the movement uncontrolled in any way? Did they not release immediately when you" like, "Oh, no, no, they were fine." "So really what's happening here is like you started to lose a roll, and you quit." There definitely, you know, once we you create that culture of you can stop a roll for any reason and it has to be accepted, now you have to have the second conversation with everybody, which is like, "Yeah, but now don't be a sook. If somebody is actually just like beating you in a roll, finish the round, right? Like take your lumps." Because we can definitely go way too far in the other direction where like you pretend that it's about safety when like it was clear that that was nothing to do with safety, and it was just you turned it up, you thought you were going to win, the other guy matched your level and started to get you, so you decided to bail cuz it was a- So like I kind of, yeah, if we're going to bring up this idea of you can always turn down a roll, you need to be very honest with yourself about why you're doing it. That's a little bit more of a like mindset kind of training mentality thing that you've got to be very, very honest with yourself about. Am I just giving up? Am I just quitting cuz I'm running into more resistance than I hoped? But when it's the other thing, when it's just, "I don't think that I can keep going at this pace safely," absolutely stop in the middle of a roll. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's a tough one, because as our mutual friend uh, Jeff Shaw has said, Jiu-Jitsu, like all things in life, should be consent-based. As you said, "No," is a complete sentence. It is always okay to turn down a roll, and I never want to create a culture where people are afraid to do that. Like let me give you an example. There's a a coach I know who is very famous, very well-known, and they insist that it is never okay to tap from pressure. And they tell people, "Don't ever do that." I think that is a really damaging thing to tell people, because you don't know why someone is tapping, right? They could be having a fucking heart attack on the mat. They could be suffering some sort of PTSD flashback. It isn't for the coach to tell people that they can't give up. And I think you've got to be careful not to make people afraid to just walk away if they don't feel comfortable. That's got to be the baseline, is if you don't feel comfortable, stop the roll. Because a lot of the time, like you talked about, when people tap for no reason, sometimes it might be because they feel like they're losing and they kind of want to escape that situation and save face. Sort of like the whole, "I'm going to coach you through how to submit me" thing. Right? I'm trying to get out of this without visibly losing. But part of it might also be that they've just exited their Jiu-Jitsu comfort zone, and I think that in the context of new people, especially I mean, we always tell people, go outside of your comfort zone, that is important for learning and growth. But if you're in a high-velocity position or situation, and you don't know how to keep yourself safe, and you're scared, like you said, your intuition is telling you an injury's about to happen, I think it's okay to park it there, and to just say like, "I'm not happy with the way this is going." And we should, like you said, we should never shame someone for doing that. I think it's important to trust your intuition on things like this, because sometimes, if something bad is about to happen, your intuition will catch that before your cognition does. I know someone who was in a terrible car accident, and they said that they knew it was going to happen before it did. Like they could feel it, and then it happened, right? So I think that we have to encourage people to rely on that intuition and not feel afraid to just say no and to end the roll. But on the other hand, like you said, if we identify that this is a mindset thing, where they're maybe quitting because of a mindset issue, well, that's something that we can coach people through, right? And it's worth talking to our students to figure that out. But that is It's worth bringing up, because I think way too many gyms err on the side of telling their students don't tap, when in reality, I think tapping should be the default if you don't think things are going to go safely. Speaker 3: Yeah. I mean, that's definitely something that we go through with our beginners at our gym during their intro, is like you can tap for any reason. You can tap to pressure, you can tap cuz somebody stepped on your ponytail and you can't move. Like it really doesn't matter. You can tap because you're about to go off the mats, you can tap cuz you're about to run into another pair of uh training partners. Like basically anything where you're not 100% sure it's safe to continue is something you can tap to. So like we always We reframe it that like tapping in a tournament or in a match, or in a MMA fight, or whatever, that's an act of surrender because you think you're going to get catastrophically injured. In the gym, tapping is just a signal to your training partner that you're not 100% sure it's safe to continue. They're almost completely unrelated in that sense. Like you would never tap somebody in the middle of an MMA fight to reset because you're up against the cage. You can tap somebody in the gym because you're up against the wall, and there's some people over to your side where if you roll, you're going to roll on someone's ankles. Like these are completely different signals, right? And by not separating them, we create a false equivalence about tapping always means this. And so because people associate tapping with surrender, and they associate surrender with a negative thing, they tend to become a little pathological about tapping, if that's the only way they understand it. Whereas if you just, like, "Hey, in the gym, tapping serves this purpose. In a match, tapping serves a different purpose." That really takes care of that issue. So that's It's an important thing to communicate that to visitors. It's an important thing for visitors to know that going in, that like, "Hey, this is what tapping actually means. You can tap for whatever goddamn reason you want, and it's on the other person to respect that." Speaker 2: I really love that, just the idea of thinking of the tap as a family of techniques almost, where there's not just one reason you would do it, but it's context-dependent. It means one thing in a competition match, it means another thing in a training environment. I think that's a really important distinction, and I haven't heard anyone else explain that. Something, Rob, that I've seen you do, when we're on the topic of dropping in, as the coach, if you are being brought into a gym to drop in and basically do a seminar, or even if you're just visiting and you just want to stop by and train in a new place, if you're coming in there as kind of a a black belt or the head of a class, it can be a tricky situation, because you're surrounded with a room full of people, not just one person, but could be dozens of people. You don't know them. You don't know what they're going to do. But if you're the seminar host, in a lot of cases, you're kind of expected to roll with them. And this brings up a great illustration of how we can model behavior. This is something I've seen you do when you do a seminar. I've noticed one of the first things that you do when it's time to roll after the technical instruction is you give everyone a kind of a just a quick explanation of like what a seminar roll is supposed to look like, and then you grab a relatively safe-looking person and you model that. Like everyone sit down and watch this roll, see how this goes, get a feel for the vibe that we're looking for. We're not trying to kill each other, we're not trying to collect scalps or anything like that, right? We are just trying to basically play. It's like a meet and greet almost at a seminar. And you also have to bear in mind, too, as the student, if you go to a seminar and you try to kill the coach, I mean, yeah, they might be way better than you, but if they get shark-tanked by 50 randos who are trying to kill them in different ways, they're probably not going to want to come back next time. So, I love how at a seminar part of what you do is when you come in, you bring that aspect of the culture, you model that, so people understand that a seminar is supposed to be a chilled-out skill development environment. It's not supposed to be where you're going to try to test yourself against a bunch of strangers, right? I like the way that you explain that. But I'll turn it over to you if you've got any thoughts to add on top of that. Speaker 3: Yeah, I think, well, I mean, it's interesting when you bring up the idea of like visiting a a club as a black belt, because there are kind of two ways that that goes down, right? So there's maybe even three ways. So like there's obviously like you've been invited to a club to teach a seminar. You're getting paid or, you know, maybe you're not, and it's like just maybe they're part of your affiliates or whatever. You're at a club to teach a seminar. So in that circumstance, there's definitely not always an expectation. People will understand if you're injured or if you're like, you know, for my recent experience, there's been times where like, "Hey, guys, I've been teaching." You know, for the last 5 days, I got in a car, drove 5 hours, taught a seminar, went to bed, woke up, drove 5 hours, taught a seminar, and I have done that for the last 5 days. In which case, everyone's like, "Yeah, dude, cool. You know, we're not expecting you to roll." I still do, but what I do is I just like, you know, I kind of let them know like, "Hey, guys, I'm going to roll with the black belts first, and I'm going to see what I feel like. If I'm still okay, you know, I'll roll with some of the brown belts or the purple belts." And I'll give the, you know, the speech that I give, which is, "Hey, I'm 47, 48, whatever years old. I'm not on steroids. I can't roll with 50 people in a row and just like go through the room, but I'll try to roll with as many people as I can, and if you treat me with care, we can have a nice, fun roll. If it seems like you're trying to like beat me for the sake of clout, A, I promise you, you won't get my medals at the end of it." It's not Highlander, it's not like you chop my head off and you get my quickening. You're not proving anything. "And, B, I'll either just try to sub you really quickly or I'll just end the roll. Like I'm like, oh, you're 250 lbs and you're going ape shit on me? That's cool. I don't really need to deal with this. I'm just here to teach a seminar." So yeah, there's there's definitely that form of communication that I can give that that will help. But the other thing that I think is important when visiting a gym and teaching a seminar is, like you said, there's just like local habits. I think the 1-2-3 clap thing is pretty stupid, but a lot of gyms use it. So one of the things that I'll ask is like, "Hey, you know, you guys do the 1-2-3 clap thing here? Oh, you do? Okay, cool. Well, then I'll do it." And so like if you've ever seen some of my seminar footage, which I post a fair bit of it online, a lot of times there's that 1-2-3 clap thing going on that like is just not a part of my gym culture, but it's a part of their gym culture, and if it's a part of their learning process, I'd rather go along with them than try to force them to go along with me, because I'm already asking them to try out some new stuff. My seminars are pretty different than most seminars. We're doing a lot of gameplay stuff, we're doing a lot of live work. It's not just a, you know, me trying to teach them 10 techniques in a row kind of thing, so like they got to listen to my swearing. You know, I'm already asking enough of them. I don't want to try to impose in that sense. So I think being really communicative with what is the atmosphere that I'm going into, how can I help you guys feel comfortable, and obviously like really encouraging people to ask questions as much as possible is something that I like to do. If it's something where you're just like passing through town and you drop in at a gym, and they ask you to teach, then I think it's basically the same thing as a seminar. You're certainly not obliged to roll with everybody, and as long as you try to go along with the the habits, it's fine. The area that I find kind of tricky is if you're a black belt, you know, if you're a pretty good black belt and you go and you drop in And I've had this happen where I drop in at a gym and they're just like they want me to participate in the class, and I try to be as unassuming as possible. Like, "All right, I'm here to take like" You know, one experience that I had dropping in at a gym where I just I could see them starting to do a warm-up, and I was like, "Hey, man, I don't want to like step on your toes or anything, but as someone who thinks that warm-ups are kind of silly, you know, could you maybe give me an idea of like what time you guys are done, and then I'll just come back in and like jump in the class then?" And they're like, "Oh, well, no, come in like, but do the warm-up with us, do the warm-up." "Oh, jeez." Like, all right. They did fucking dodgeball in an adult class. Right? So I'm like, "Oh, god. Okay, whatever. I'm a guest, I'mma keep my mouth shut, they're doing dodgeball, fine, whatever." So they do the dodgeball, they do all the nonsense of like front rolls and shrimping and all that, and it's like, you know, we're 30 minutes in. I'm like, "All right." And then they're, you know, they're teaching some stuff, and I just I'm keeping my mouth shut. I don't want to say anything. And I'm paired up with a a blue belt lady who was like, you know, 50, 60 lbs lighter than me, so I pretty much just like, "You know what? My job today is to help her. I'm going to get less than nothing out of this from a like a a technical perspective. I The the stuff that they're showing is not stuff that I think is all that great. I'm well familiar with it, so I don't need any more reps. I'm just going to try to help her out." And so I did that. I was just like I was just trying to be a uke, I was just trying to help her out. And then we get to the end of the chain of techniques, and the final technique was like a banana split or something. And so like you know, I'm letting her do it, and like and I'm tapping, cuz I'm just I'm just like, "All right, you know what? I'm just going to get through this, and I'm going to get my rolls in and I'm going to head off. And like I'm on vacation, like fuck this." And the coach comes around and is like, "Hey, you know, are you tapping cuz it's working or are you just tapping to be nice?" I'm like, "God save me from this." I'm like, "I'm tapping cuz I'm being nice, obviously. Like this woman is 5'4" and I'm 6'2", and there's just like no physical way that she could do a banana split on me in a way that it's going to work." And I don't want to say that, but I'm like, "Look, I'm a big guy, you know," and the coach was fairly small. And I'm like, "This is going to go bad. This is going to go bad." But I was just I was just honest. I'm like, "Look, it's not quite She doesn't have the range of motion necessary to tap me." And then the coach got very insistent. "No, no, no, you know, like we can make this work." I'm like, "Oh, fuck. Here we go." And like I should have just been like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, it's it's working. It's working." That's a mistake on my part, I learned from this. Because what ended up happening was the coach went to put me in a banana split, it didn't work. Look, you know, the same thing, like, you're 5'3", 5'4", I'm 6'2". Like you just don't have the necessary body type to get this to work. And then all I did to like stop it from happening was I just I tensed my hamstrings. And so the coach was, "Well, you're you're resisting it." I'm like, "Well, I'm going to." You know, like, would you say that if you put me in an armbar and I flexed my biceps? You know, it's not like I'm connecting my hands, it's not like I'm doing anything to actually defend the technique. I'm just isometrically contracting my muscles. If you couldn't armbar me when I isometrically contract my biceps, I would say the armbar doesn't fucking work, right? I mean, obviously, I'm not saying this to the coach, but I'm like, "Hey, do you mind like a tip? Cuz you're doing this banana split and you're nowhere near the end of the lever. Do you know why this isn't working?" "Well, no. What do you mean?" "Well, you're gripping in like the middle of my femur. And it's partially cuz you're shorter than I am, but it's also partially cuz, you know, like it's not going to work. There's no way you could do this that would make it functional on someone my height." And then, "Do I need to explain how levers work?" And I ended up having to do that. And it made the coach feel shitty, and then like when we're rolling, I'm literally letting everyone get to 95% of what they want, and then just like getting out of it, and and and kind of doing other stuff. And they're like, "Dude, what the hell? How come none of this is working?" I'm like, "Guys, have you ever rolled with like a competitive black belt before? Cuz I think that's just what's going on here, guys. I'm not magical. I'm just a black belt that competes once in a while. I suspect you've never rolled with a black belt that competes, because trust me, I'm not that special, and believe me, I'm not trying very hard." And so it just ended up being a really weird vibe where I tried to go along to get along, and then because I refused to lie about whether, you know, I was tapping because the technique was genuinely working, and it ended up being this weird pissing contest with a coach that I didn't want to get into that ended up being, yeah, like if you're in the class and the shit they're showing is kind of whack and it's not working, just leave it alone. That's my takeaway from that, is like don't worry about it, you're not going to help anybody, you're there on vacation for 1 day, just pretend. Like it it just doesn't serve any purpose. I wish I had done it differently, because I don't want to come through someone's club and make anybody have a bad experience. And I spoke with the owner of the gym later, and they were actually very cuz it wasn't the owner that was coaching the class, and the owner was just like, "Man, honestly, from the reports that I got, the coach was just kind of being a little bit unnecessarily argumentative, and the students all had a very interesting and fun time, but that coach ended up like leaving that gym after a little while." It didn't end up meshing, so like I don't know if that was part of the catalyst that that led to that or not, but it was just not an experience that I was like enjoying in the moment. I was trying to find like figure out a way out of it. So I would say that if you are visiting and, you know, like the level is a little bit below what maybe you're used to, don't get into a like a discussion with the coach about whether or not they understand how levers work. It's not enjoyable. So yeah, definitely yeah, put yourself very, very much second to the experience of everybody in the room. Speaker 2: Yeah, I have seen that myself sometimes, where coaches attempt to overcoach. They cannot accept the fact that the technique they showed doesn't work in a few cases, and they just won't let it go. Whereas in reality, for complex skill development like this, it takes a lot of time and reps. People are not going to just get something right away. And moreover, I think a huge disservice that we do to people in the Jiu-Jitsu community is tell them that every technique works universally, and if it's not working for you, that's a you problem, that's a technique problem. But body dimensions and body attributes are a very real thing. Like there's There's some stuff that I just cannot do effectively, and there's some stuff that I can do effectively, but I've given up trying to teach it, because no one else seems to be able to do it. It's just unique to me. And everyone has those things in Jiu-Jitsu. One of the worst things that you can do as a coach is if someone isn't quote, unquote "getting it," like sitting down and just turning it into a project, putting them on the spot, and trying to troubleshoot it. And where this gets really hilarious is where they're doing it to another black belt and then they get into a pissing match. So I think that is important, that you have to kind of just let things go sometimes. Yeah, it isn't worth trying to turn it into a big thing. A lot of the time when the coach is being very insistent, like, "Do you have it? Do you have it?" Sometimes it's worth just throwing the bone at them and saying, "Let's just move on. No one's going to be banana splitting someone who's a foot and a half taller than them. Let's just move on past this." Speaker 3: Yeah, it doesn't even have to be someone tall. It could just be like you've got a gymnast that can do the splits. Like, dude, that shit's not going to work on them, right? There's a lot of reasons. Anyway, it was just a very strange experience. I hope people can learn from my awkwardness, which is you know, one of the leitmotifs of my life: learn from my awkwardness. Speaker 2: So, Rob, something else I'd like to get your perspective on as someone who's done a ton of seminars recently. How do you feel the dynamic of a drop-in changes when it's something more intensive like that? It's one thing to just be visiting out of town and attend one or two classes. It's another thing when you attend a camp, and you're going to be somewhere for a series of days, maybe all day, in this like Jiu-Jitsu intensive workshop. What are your thoughts on what you've observed from doing this in terms of how people attending those camps can get the most out of that experience? Speaker 3: Well, the easy answer is ask questions. So, I'm really glad that you brought this question up because I kind of did my first real like, you know, week-long camp recently, and it was a It was a wonderful experience. I honestly like if I had a choice, I think that's the preferred way of trying to absorb let's say we would call a seminar instructor's material. A single seminar is fine, like there's nothing wrong with it. I can get a fair bit of work done. I think most seminars, I don't want to shit on it, but I think the seminar industry in Jiu-Jitsu is largely an opportunity to do a meet and greet with a famous grappler. There's not a lot of good seminar presentation out there. It's the exception rather than the rule. I'm not saying it doesn't exist. There are some people who are very good seminar presenters, but I think for the most part, it's just a way to subsidize a famous grappler. Which that doesn't make it wrong, hey, just you know, like know what you're getting into. Like if you go to a Royce Gracie seminar, for fuck's sakes, you're just there to take a picture with the guy. Speaker 2: Well, you might get a blue belt. Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly, you might get a blue belt, but other than that, you're just going there to take a picture with the guy. You will learn sweet fuck all. But there are people who are very good at presenting seminars, and you can go do a, you know, 2, 3-hour session with them and walk away with like a significant increase in your skill level within their area of expertise or with a particular game, whatever, like that can absolutely be done, so I'm not trying to like minimize that, the seminars can be very valuable. But the camps, man, especially when it's a smaller group. So like the camp that I did was in Greece, it was with uh Palaestra, they do these, you know, vacations in this small town in Greece, you stay on the hotel near the beach and anyway, it is awesome. Two training sessions a day, and so you get to know everybody, it wasn't a huge group, it was like 15, 17 people. A few of them were people I already knew just because they had they were subscribers to my site, they had one of them or two of them had visited before, so like it was just a really good group. There were people that I didn't know at all, but there was one person that came to the camp where there was a bit of a miscommunication. They had sent me an email prior to the camp that I didn't get, and as a result, they you know, a little bit hesitant throughout the camp, and every single session that I teach, whether it's in a camp, whether it's in my school, whether it's a seminar, I encourage people to ask questions, I want them to come to me, you know, like feel comfortable asking, you know, at any point I There's tons of like Q&A stuff that we do, and that just didn't happen for this one person, so it was like a situation where everyone else gave me really glowing feedback, and this one person just didn't feel like they got everything out of the camp that they wanted to, which is a real bummer for me, because I want every single I take it as a huge point of pride that anyone that attends a seminar of mine or like any learning experience of mine, if they want to get something out of it, and they're not getting it, I want them to tell me so I can help them get it. And so the single biggest piece of advice is just like ask questions. When the coach offers the opportunity to ask questions, ask questions then. One of the things I've started doing in my seminars and my camps recently is I will tell people that, like, "Hey, ask me questions," but I try to take it a step further where I'll mention that like, you know, not everyone is comfortable asking questions in front of a group. There's definitely a level of nervousness, anxiety that you're going to look foolish in front of a group of Jiu-Jitsu people by asking a Jiu-Jitsu question, which, I mean, I might think that's silly, but that doesn't make me right, and like I can't put myself in somebody else's head, so if they have actual anxiety about that, I want to acknowledge that, so I've started telling people like, "Ask me a question. If you don't want to ask a question in front of the group, just call me over later on, and you can literally whisper the question in my ear. Like if you don't want anyone else to hear it, I don't care, I just want to help you." So if you're going to attend one of these, and at any point you're not getting what you want out of it, just go talk to the coach. I mean there will be coaches who ignore you, who just like they don't care, but for the most part, somebody's like well-known enough and a good enough coach to be doing a seminar, to be doing a camp, they should be pretty receptive to you. And so just like definitely ask for a roll if you want one. You know, depending on the size of the camp, man, I know some of the Globetrotters camps are like you've got 70, 80 people on the mat, so it's not always possible. Like some of the seminars that I do, I've got 50, 60 people on the mats. I am absolutely not going to try to roll with everybody. If I've got anywhere from, you know, like my a typical seminar for me is about 25 to 30 people, you know, some of them are around 40, and I've had a few that are 50 and 60, but like I said, I'd say about 25, 30 is pretty typical. And then once in a while I'll get one that's like 12, 15 people. That's pretty rare, but it happens. In that case, I'll absolutely roll with everybody. If it's 20, 25 people, I'll try to roll with everybody. If it's much more than 30, that stops being possible, so I definitely don't want people to go into a camp expecting to roll with the coach, because again, the coach may be injured, there may be a certain number of people. You know, I hate to say this, but if you're a white belt, there's a pretty decent chance that you're not going to get to roll with the guy. If there's any decision to be made whether I roll with someone and don't roll with someone, if they're a white belt, there's a pretty good chance that I'll say no. If I'm at all on the fence, I'll roll with a purple belt, I won't roll with a white belt, cuz it's just not worth it. It's not worth the risk of injury, it's they don't need to roll with me to get that much out of it. And if you're expecting a roll where the coach is just like entirely there to help you learn during that roll, you're not getting that. That's what private classes are for. If you want someone to roll with you and just like spend the entire time just trying to help you, that's the province of private classes. If you're rolling at a camp, at a seminar, we're both just trying to have fun. So like unless you really specify to them that, "Hey, I'm expecting a a great deal of feedback, and I'm expecting you to like analyze my game and then tell me something after that," you're not necessarily entitled to that. I try to do that for people when I can, but it's not something you should expect. But as far as the instructional part goes, everybody that's attending the seminar, the camp, is entitled to maximize their learning experience through the instruction that the coach is presenting. So if something is not quite working for you, if it's not quite right, if you're not getting it, you know, I always say that's never a you problem, that's a me problem, that's my fault. If I explain it in a way and you're not able to understand it, I need to explain it differently, which means I either need to ask you some questions, or demonstrate it differently for you, or you did need to ask me some questions to help you understand it. So like just be as willing as possible to be super upfront and open, and just like grab the coach, and be like, "Hey, this is what I need. I don't get this, explain it to me again." And just be very honest about whether or not you're getting it. If they explain it and it doesn't quite get through, don't just go along, and be like, "Oh, yeah, yeah, sure." No, like make sure that they explain it to you in a way that makes sense to you, that you derive a benefit from. So that's the the biggest thing I can say is just make sure and do that. Ask questions often, ask them even if you think they're silly, ask them even if you need to ask them five times on the same topic, just ask the questions. Get the coach to to recognize you, get the coach to frankly to to give you the attention that you're entitled to as part of the camp. Speaker 2: Yep, great insights, man. I agree completely. As always, use your words. I also agree with you that the multi-day camp format is really awesome, because as the person providing the material, I like it since it gives you the opportunity to pivot partway through. You can come into a camp with this amazing idea for what you want to show, but if you get there, and then you realize that the material that you wanted to present is not appropriate for the audience, you probably, if you're a good coach, you're going to want to pivot. And it's a lot easier to do that if you have more time. So, what I've found is, if you do a multi-day camp, it's easier to make it more interactive, where it can be more back and forth. If it's a one-day thing, you as the coach have to regurgitate everything you've got in a very short time period. But if it's a multi-day thing, you have the ability to show some stuff, see how people are responding to it, get feedback, pivot if need be. You have another day where people can go home and go back to the hotel and marinate on what they learned, and come back with kind of a fresh eyes the next day so that you can revisit things, which is huge for your ability to retain information, is to to hit that topic more than once. So, my feeling is, if you're going to a one-day camp or a, you know, a 2-hour seminar, odds are it's kind of going to be a technique show and tell, and maybe a meet and greet. But for most people, you're probably not going to get game-changing Jiu-Jitsu insights out of that. I think you're more likely to improve your Jiu-Jitsu if it's a more immersive, intensive experience that spans a few days. Speaker 3: Well, as the presenter for me, part of the huge benefits of it is just like What's hard about seminar tours isn't the seminars, it's the travel, right? So like the camp that I did was 5 days, and there's two sessions a day, so like I taught more at the camp than I normally do like when I'm at home in Nanaimo, but it didn't feel like it, it didn't feel like work, because it was a beautiful beach camp, and I was going and eating gelato three times a day in between teaching, right? Like so the level of like just effort and energy expenditure that you're spending as a seminar presenter on getting to, you know, 14 different gyms across a continent over the course of, you know, whatever amount of days, that's completely different than you showing up at a location and just being there for, you know, three, four days or a week, and just relaxing and teaching Jiu-Jitsu. If I had my way, I would only teach camps. I love teaching seminars and I actually do enjoy travel when I've got enough downtime in between the seminars, but it can the travel can be a grind, whereas at a camp, it's just not a grind at all, so you're able to like completely focus on the presentation and on learning a little bit about people's games and and and helping dial everything in. Yeah, I I just I'm really looking forward to the opportunity to do more of those in the future. I think it's the best way. Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, Rob, let's talk about the Visiting Student Program here, because this might be the last chance people get to come and go through this with you. Why don't you talk about it and what's available and how people can make use of that? Speaker 3: Yeah, so I mean, you know, I kind of gave the brief version of it earlier. The long and short of it is that I'm changing my life around a little bit. I'm going to be doing more traveling, I'm going to be taking a reduced role at my club in the future. My time as a full-time head instructor is coming to an end, and as such, I'm planning on relocating, so I won't be living in Nanaimo full time. I'll probably If things go right, around the middle of 2026, I will start to reduce my workload here. I'll probably be coming into town and teaching 3 days a week, and the rest of the time I won't be in town. So what that means is I won't have a house here in Nanaimo that people can come to and stay with me. That doesn't necessarily mean that we're completely ending the Visiting Student Program, it just means that in the current form that it exists, which is you get to stay at my house for a week, sometimes more, and you know, you can ride to the gym with me For those of you that are for some reason interested in that amount of interaction with me as a human being, I don't know why, but fact of the matter is some people are, and so for those of you that want the full like the immersive Rob Biernacki experience, the opportunity to have that is pretty much coming to an end in at some point in 2026. We're mostly booked for the rest of 2025, particularly for new people. So, how I should probably like detail this is they're kind of like a few different categories of visitors. So we've got people who are affiliates of ours, right? Like I've got about 15 affiliate clubs throughout the world. Our affiliates can always come and visit, like that's there's not really a a restriction on that. Then we've got like regular visiting students, like almost distance students who just like they come here several times a year, they're essentially friends of mine, they're teammates, they're people we know, we're a little bit more accommodating with those people, like you know, there are people who can like message me, and you know, I'll squeeze them in on the weekend kind of thing. But if you're just like a new person that I don't know and you want to come and visit, that you know, that's the other category, is like you're not a regular visiting student, you're not somebody that's part of our network, you're just somebody that wants to come out and do this, we really don't have any more spots like for sure for the rest of 2025, unless you want to be part of the No-Gi Worlds camp, which happens in November. But if you want to be part of the No-Gi Worlds camp, like you can't be some like random hobbyist that's a white belt, like there's some requirements, because you've got to be able to help the athletes prepare. So somebody were to want to come out, there might be a spot here and there throughout the rest of the year that I could find, but I can't guarantee it. So really, we're talking about 2026, which means there's going to be a few months out of that year that are available, and for new students, I generally only make 1 week out of any given month available, cuz, A, I like having my house to myself, B, I travel a fair bit now. So yeah, there aren't going to be that many spots left. If you are interested in actually doing this, because I won't be living in Nanaimo full time, it's just not something I'm going to be able to offer logistically. What we may look at doing is continuing to offer it, just having some sort of dorm set up at the club when an expansion occurs, that's something that we're going to think about doing. Or obviously, anytime somebody wants to visit and just doesn't want to stay with me, like you're welcome to come, but then you can come anytime. So you don't need to book a spot through the Visiting Student Program, you can just show up. I mean, if you're interested in learning from me directly, I would encourage you to reach out and make sure that I'll be in town, but you definitely don't need to. So, yeah, if you're interested in actually doing the full-on, like, hang out at my house, go to training with me, and and do all the classes and all that, that is it's coming to an end relatively soon. And so yeah, definitely hit me up. You know, I I do love hosting people, it's not that I don't enjoy the process, it's just if I'm not here and I don't have a place for you to stay, I can't have you joining me. So, I am reachable through the website, [email protected], or you can hit me up on Instagram @islandtopteam, and we can make arrangements for you to come and visit. Please do so, because uh I'd love to meet you. If If you're the kind of person that this appeals to, I've just met so many really amazing, interesting, quirky, funny, awesome people through this program, people who have become you know, quite good friends of mine throughout the world. It's weird. I have this like network of places to stay now. In all these different you know, there's quite a few cities in the world that I can just go to and be like, "Hey, yo, you, I'm I'm coming through town, you mind if I crash at your place?" So, yeah, I'm not doing it for that reason, cuz I I'm good. I can just get a hotel room, it's fine. But it's more so just that like I find these people really fascinating. I'm pretty good at Jiu-Jitsu, and I know a fair bit about cars, but, you know, other than that, I really like to be educated by people who know a lot more than I do about stuff, and so it's been super fascinating for people to come through that have, you know, these jobs that I don't know about. Like I met somebody recently that's like a musician for the army, of all things. You know, not something not a job that you, hey, would necessarily think exists, right? Like I've had you know, uh particle physicists and like doctors of all kinds come through here, and I can just sit there and listen to them tell me about their jobs, cuz it's just really fascinating stuff. So, yeah, I really enjoy the process of meeting these people, and being the dumbest guy in the room with a lot of very like educated, intelligent folks helps keep me on a good track as a person who would otherwise be inclined to just like shut myself off from the world and be very asocial. This enables me to engage with people in a really good way that's outside of the, you know, the Jiu-Jitsu sphere. It's different if I'm the coach, it's different if I'm the expert in the room. The way that people relate to you is very different, so I really value the input of having, you know, guests at my house where we can interact on a more kind of personal level. So, yeah, if that sounds like it's interesting to you, definitely please hit me up. Speaker 2: Amazing, sir. Well, I will put a link to your contact info in the show notes, so if people want to find you and get the ball rolling on that, just hit the show notes. Um, I'll make sure that it's easy to find how to contact you on Instagram. Anywhere else, Rob, that you would suggest people contact you beyond that? Speaker 3: No, those are pretty much the only spots. And, I mean, who knows how evergreen this might be. I certainly wouldn't be on any Meta platform if I could help it, if I didn't need it for business. So if a different social media app comes up the where I, you know, I don't have to give any money to like deranged billionaires, that would be lovely. Speaker 2: I am in the same boat with you, man. I am increasingly trying to figure out how I can become less dependent on Meta, but, man, that's a conversation for another day. I do want to give you a chance though to plug BJJ Concepts, because if people want to learn from you, but they're not able to make it out to where you are, I mean, you have the benefit of having, in my opinion, one of the best online video instructional academies in Jiu-Jitsu, especially for the price you charge. I think the value is tremendous, and I think it resonates well with people who listen to this. Now, I know I have made you plug this about seven times in the last week, so. Speaker 3: Let me speedrun this. bjjconcepts.net or bjjconcepts.com, both of those will take you there. Give me money. Thank you. Speaker 2: Give him money. Thank you. Awesome. So again, I'll put a link to that in the show notes, too. And everything we make is at bjjmentalmodels.com. The podcast, the newsletter, the mini episodes that we've started doing are all completely free. If you want to kick it up to the next level with us, BJJ Mental Models Premium is how you do that. Over the last year, it's really exploded in growth, not just in terms of the number of subscribers that we've got, but also in terms of the scope of what we're making. Really, I think at this point, it's one of the most comprehensive networks of just information and resources from a massively diverse group of coaches. If you're a big fan of, I mean, talking about deranged billionaires, I can't believe I have to say this, Rob, but I canceled my Audible subscription. I've been a subscriber for like 15 years, but I've decided that Jeff Bezos doesn't need any more money from me. So if you are one of those people and you would like to support quality Canadian Jiu-Jitsu journalism content, please do consider signing up for BJJ Mental Models Premium. We've got a massive audio library of courses, ongoing uh professional-grade podcasts, and tons of other instructionals and benefits and content that are there too. I mean, I always tell people that BJJ Concepts and BJJ Mental Models Premium are a pretty good marriage in terms of things to sign up for. I think a lot of our subscribers have a massive Venn diagram overlap with yours. So, I would recommend that everyone, if you can, please do check out BJJ Concepts and BJJ Mental Models Premium. I'll put links in the show notes. But, Rob, as always, man, thanks so much for coming by. I know you probably have a Steve Kwan fatigue at this point, but it was really great to have this chat. A unique topic, too, and I hope that this gives people an idea of how to make the best use of these experiences that you can only really get in a sport like Jiu-Jitsu. Speaker 3: Yeah, and I mean I generally don't endorse the notion of marriage, but in the case of BJJ Concepts and BJJ Mental Models, I'm willing to make an exception. Speaker 2: We're like friends with benefits, I guess. Awesome. Well, thanks a lot, man, and thanks to everyone who listens to this, really do appreciate it. And we'll talk to you soon. Take care.