Mini Ep. 103: Cracking the Whip

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 1: 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. And we're going to spend a few minutes talking about how to crack the whip in jiu-jitsu. Now, that is a language cue I like to use to explain the relationship between looseness and tenseness in jiu-jitsu. Is tenseness even a word? I don't know, but it is now. We often tell beginners to be loose, to stay loose. That's a really good idea for people who are just starting in jiu-jitsu. But we tell beginners that because they have a tendency to be too tense and too tight. Because jiu-jitsu is new and scary, beginners tend to tense up and that can impact their effectiveness. So with new people, telling them to loosen up is good advice, but there is a time when you need to tense up. And that's when you want to exert force. If you're always tense, then your muscles are going to fatigue faster, it's going to be easier for your opponent to manipulate your body, and you're telegraphing your intentions. So you don't want to do that. You want to be loose by default, but you also need to know when to tense up and how to tense up. And that's what cracking the whip is all about. Speaker 1: Think of how a whip works. A whip is just a loose rope. There's no tension there. Until it's time to crack the whip. And then through technique, you can generate all of this force in just a tiny split second and then the rope goes loose again. That's what I mean by cracking the whip. You go from loose to being tense when it matters in a split second and then to loose again. That transition from looseness to tightness and back to looseness is how you generate explosive force. It's how things like judo throws work. If you've ever stood up with a black belt judoka, you've probably felt that they're very loose at first, but when they hit you with that throw, they tense up very quickly. And it's because they know when to do that. When by tensing up, they can put all of that force into you and they're loose at all other times so that you can't exploit that tension. So learning to loosen up is an important step forward at the beginning of your journey, but it's not that being tense is bad. It's that you need to be tense when it makes sense. And knowing when to switch from loose to tense is an important phase of your jiu-jitsu journey. That's when you commit. When you tense, that means you have committed to the move. And so you should tense when you think you're actually going to get that move. If you're tense before that point, you're creating risk. Looseness means conserving energy and being hard to predict, and it's harder to manipulate someone's body weight when they're loose. Tension means using your muscles. The issue with being tense all the time is there's no next level of intensity. If you're already tense, you're already maxed out. So you can't generate more strength if it's required. Speaker 1: A lot of techniques like throws require you to crack the whip by delivering force in short controlled bursts. Think of how a whip works. It's a loose piece of rope until it cracks. Then in a split second, there's an explosion of force and then it goes loose again. We want our timing-based techniques to work like this. Loose, quick tension, and then loose again. That helps us conserve energy, it makes it harder for our opponents to move our bodies and it makes us more difficult to predict. But then when the time is right, we crack the whip. We get tense, we generate force, all of it into our opponent and then we loosen again. So looseness is important for defense, it conserves your energy, it protects you, but being tense matters too because that's when we actually take steps forward in a fight. The difference between a beginner and an advanced jiu-jiteiro is that the advanced practitioner knows when it's time to be tense. And if you need a simple way to think of it, crack the whip. Loose, then tense, then loose again. This is a great example of how your choice of language, a simple external cue can improve your jiu-jitsu. This kind of stuff is helpful to a lot of people and if you want more like it, please check out bjjmentalmodels.com. We have long-form episodes that discuss key concepts in the sport of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, plus mini episodes like this and our newsletter. These are all free, so make sure you pick them up. And if you would like to go further with us, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is the world's largest audio library of jiu-jitsu master classes. You can get that at bjjmentalmodels.com. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you soon.