Mini Ep. 90: Force Vectors

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know, we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient jiu-jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to bjjmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of jiu-jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. This episode is going to be a quick explanation of the concept of force vectors. This is terminology that first came onto my radar when used by Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team. It's a foundational concept that explains how to use frames effectively to support and redirect incoming weight. If you've ever been in a situation where you are on bottom position, your opponent starts trying to drop their weight on top of you, you frame against them and it just doesn't work. That might be because you're not properly responding to your opponent's force vector. Now, before we get into how this concept applies to jiu-jitsu, let's talk a little bit about what force vectors means. If you remember high school physics class, a vector is a mathematical term. It's a combination of magnitude and direction. As an example, velocity is a type of vector. It's where you're going in a certain direction and you're going at a certain speed. But vectors can be about more than just speed. Vectors can also be about incoming force, how much force is coming towards you and at what angle it is. This is very relevant in jiu-jitsu when your opponent is trying to use their body weight to pin you and you are using parts of your body such as your arms or your legs as frames to keep them at a more comfortable distance. So, if someone is trying to bring their weight towards you, they're trying to drop their force onto you. You've got two ways to deal with incoming force vectors. One is to meet and support that incoming force and the other is to redirect that incoming force. Let's go through both of these in order. So, first, if someone is dropping their weight on top of you and you want to support their weight, it's important that you meet them with a frame at the exact same angle as the force that's coming in. Let me give a real world example that might make this a little bit more apparent. Think of a kickstand on a motorcycle or a bicycle. Motorcycles especially and bikes can be quite heavy, but at the right angle, a kickstand, just a small piece of metal, can support the weight of the whole thing. However, a kickstand at the wrong angle isn't going to support the bike at all, it's just going to fall over. Similar concept with jiu-jitsu, that's a force vector at play. You have incoming gravity or force coming towards you and if you meet it at the exact same angle, even if it's a lot of weight, you can still support it just with the skeletal structure of your body. That's often enough to support a lot of weight coming in. However, you've probably had experiences before where you try to prop up someone's body weight and you just can't. This is likely happening because the person on top is switching the angle of their body. When you spar against experienced opponents, you may have noticed that when you try to frame against them, they may respond by angling their torso or their hips. The reason they do this is because it changes the force vector. If you are using your arm or your leg as a frame to support your opponent's weight, when they shift their weight, now that frame doesn't work anymore. So, if you want to use your frames to support your opponent's weight, you need to make sure that you are matching that incoming force vector. If they angle their body in a different way, you've got to change your frame so that it continues to match that incoming weight. If they're able to pivot their body so that you are no longer meeting the incoming force vector with your frame, probably they're going to just collapse it and their weight's going to come down on you. So, that's the first option that you have with incoming force vectors, to just meet it and support it. And again, in this situation, think of using your arms or legs like a kickstand. You're trying to meet that exact force vector directly so that you can prop it up. So, the second option is to redirect the force vector as it comes in. If you're just trying to prop up your opponent's weight, you're not going to be able to do that forever and it tends not to work that well against people who are much heavier than you. So, the second option is to redirect the force that your opponent is driving towards you. There's a few ways that you can do this. One is by using lever control, so that means grabbing your opponent's arms, legs, or head to change their angle so that the force that's coming towards you is going in another direction. The other example is that you can move your own body. If your opponent is resting their body weight on you, then when you move your body, it's going to force them to move theirs. An example of this is getting an underhook and wrestling up when you're in bottom half guard or bottom side control. Your opponent on top is trying to put their weight down on top of you, but by getting that underhook and rotating around their torso, you can change the angle so that now you are on their side instead of underneath them. So, while the first option, which is supporting the force vector is helpful, often you can only do that for so long. If you sit on the bottom supporting your opponent's weight, it's likely a matter of time until they figure out how to change the angle or break your grip so that your frame doesn't work as effectively anymore. When you redirect the force vector instead, you get out of their way and start being able to get around them and this can often help you escape or improve position when your opponent is dropping their body weight on top of you. So, to recap the lesson about force vectors, we want to identify the exact angle of incoming force and either meet or redirect it. Hopefully you find this useful. This is the kind of concept we talk about at BJJ Mental Models. There are full length episodes of our podcast plus more mini episodes like this completely free on our main feed and you can join the amazing BJJ Mental Models newsletter, all at bjjmentalmodels.com. And if you want to level up with us, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium, the world's largest library of jiu-jitsu audio master classes on strategy, tactics, mindset, philosophy, concepts, things that don't fit well into traditional jiu-jitsu instructionals. Thanks as always for checking us out and we will talk to you soon.