Ep. 389: The Double Tap, feat. Drew Foster

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member, has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in jiu-jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in jiu-jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access. And if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to bjjmentalmodels.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey everybody, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 389. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent jiu-jitsu approach. And I am here again with friend of the podcast, host of the State of the Meta podcast as well, and a guy who seems to have his fingers in pretty much every aspect of jiu-jitsu these days. I've got Drew Foster. Drew, how's it going? Speaker 2: I'm doing well, friend. How are you? Speaker 1: I'm doing great myself. People probably are familiar with you because again, you're all over the place, but if you want to give yourself a quick intro, do feel free. Speaker 2: Yeah, my name's Drew. I'm a black belt in Durham, North Carolina. My main thing is coaching at Elevate MMA. I coach about 12 classes a week right now. And then I also am the chief of staff for PGF. We just wrapped up our 2026 season less than a week ago. And I also do some podcasting for you over on the premium side of things and generally am super busy these days and have a lot going on. But yeah, I also have a yeah, I have an instructional website too with a couple products on there that you can find over at DarceDynamics.com. Speaker 1: Fantastic. And you're one of my favorite guys to chat to because you've got such a great analytical mind for picking through what's happening in jiu-jitsu and understanding trends. That's really the purpose of the podcast that you do with us on BJJ Mental Models Premium. And a concept that you had brought up there a while back, which I reposted about and it got a good amount of traction, was the idea of the double tap. I love this idea. I had sort of been doing it myself, but I didn't know it was a thing that other people had discussed, but then you brought it up and that educated me that, oh, this is actually a defined concept that comes from some pretty great minds in the sport. I'll pass this back to you then. What is the double tap in Brazilian jiu-jitsu? Speaker 2: All right, I'll explain where I got this from real quick. Just a quick cliff notes on what it is is kind of when you do the same thing twice, often because it didn't work the first time, and instead of doing something else, you just do the same thing again. And I never heard the term from anybody else used before. I mean, double tap is not a super original term by any means, but I first saw Marcelo Garcia talk about the concept. And he had by even today's standards, a super innovative website where you would go on his website and this it probably started in like in 2010 or so, and he would upload all of his rolls onto the website and every single move that he did in the roll, I don't know who they paid to do this. I hope it was good money, but they would have somebody go through every single roll and tag every single move that he did during the roll and splice them up into their own little segments. And so when you clicked on a roll, you could see the list of moves on the side that he did in the roll and let's say north-south choke, that's where I first saw this. You could click on that and it would show you every time he's ever done a north-south choke in a roll at his gym. And you could just click this in action tab is what it was called, and you could just watch him do that on a loop. And then you could also see like discussions that he had around the move and stuff like that where he would just be like talking shop with his best athletes or students, people asking him questions and stuff. And one person was asking him one of the key things for the north-south choke, and he was talking about this idea of just trying to do it twice. So he would say he would drop into the north-south choke and often there would he wouldn't be able to seal up the space all the way or they would have their their chin tucked a little bit. And then instead of trying to like grind through it, he would just back off of the move a little bit and then as soon as he backed off, their defenses kind of relax a little bit and then bam, he would just immediately drop right back on it again. And usually after their defenses were kind of lowered a little bit, it would lock on a little bit deeper the second time. So you could see him drop on the move and then kind of come off of it and then immediately drop right back on it again. And that really stuck with me for sure. Speaker 1: I love this. It's so simple, but it's so sneaky. It's kind of like a a Jedi mind trick that you can do to your opponent. When we look at how to make our submissions more effective, we're often trying to find what is the one missing super technical detail that we could just drop in there and suddenly tighten everything up. But sometimes the tricks that really make your moves tighter, it's not some missing technical detail, it's a weird strategy or tactic that is just unexpected. And this idea of letting up the pressure so that your opponent drops their defenses and then you slam it back on again. Again, it's just this little Jedi mind trick that is surprisingly effective even against really good grapplers because it's just not a thing that people expect. Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. People often are really used to these like complex chains and these sequences and these multi-step patterns, like, okay, this move combines good with this move and they're used to these transitions like triangle armbar or things like that where they think they're going to do something different. But a lot of people just don't expect that you're going to do the exact same thing another time. And I have found that it works better for some things than other things. Before you set this up, I was trying to think of a couple of examples of other things and situations where I like to pull this out. But yeah, it really does throw a lot of people off guard. And I mean, what are you going to do? Like the alternative, right, is if if you attack me with something and then you let it go, like it's just kind of strange to keep defending something that's not there, right? So it I mean, of course I'm going to relax a little bit or, you know, stop defending the thing that was there because you're not trying to do it anymore. So it's a pretty logical thing to take advantage of. Speaker 1: To give an example of how I like to use this, I am a notorious Ezekiel choke spammer. And when I get mounted on someone, especially someone who knows my game, as soon as I get one arm around their neck, they know the other arm is coming through for the Ezekiel, so they get their hand in there to defend. And the thing about a classic Ezekiel choke is if your opponent has their hand in the way and they're ready to receive your incoming hand and block it, it's really hard to finish the Ezekiel. So, I used to look for all sorts of fancy ways to get their hand out of the way or snake my hand through or maybe if I circle my wrist, I can clear it and finish the choke. But the most productive and effective tool I found for beating that defense is I just let the Ezekiel go. So I'll put my fist through there like I'm really going for the choke and they'll bring their hand in to defend it. And then if I can't get my hand through, I'll just relax it and pull it back out. And like clockwork, people will drop their hand when I do that. They'll drop the defense and then I just slam the Ezekiel back in and it works unbelievably well. And it's not some fancy high-tech body mechanic thing. It's basically just a a fake out. And this area of jiu-jitsu, just using little tiny mental tricks to fake out your opponent is so under-discussed. I mean, I know you've talked about it, friend of the show Marco Chickerelli talks about this a lot as well. But sometimes the the trick to making your moves effective, it's not more technique or more mechanics or more details, it's a little bit of subterfuge. Speaker 2: Yeah, 100%. And there's even like it sounds so silly, but my friend Matt Scaff is big on a lot of this stuff too is like these little like mental tricks and kind of psychological games. And I was even saying, I was even thinking one thing that you can do to be even more like have a little more subterfuge with it is just kind of give like a frustrated sigh when you let go of the first attempt. You know, like, ah, it didn't work, you know what I mean? Because people hear those, you know, they hear the breathing patterns, people pick up on that stuff. And uh, it's just something you could do to have a little bit more fun with it. I think too, when you've been training for a while, you have to find like little fun kind of games to play with yourself and like just do little things to keep yourself amused and entertained a little bit. And one thing I like to do that's kind of fun is to kind of make the other person think I'm frustrated, like, ah, that didn't work, you know what I mean? You can't you can't be too obvious with it. You have to be a little bit, you have to sell it a little bit. It has to be kind of subtle, but just a little some kind of sign to make them think that you're giving up on it when you really aren't. Speaker 1: Now, what are some rules or guidelines that you've found for where this double tap idea works? I'll give one right out of the gate. I find the double tap works a lot better from positions where you can attempt a submission and let it go without losing anything. So I brought up the example of a mounted Ezekiel choke. You talked about Marcelo's north-south choke. These are both good examples because if you let the choke go, you're still in a dominant top position. So it's easy to just double tap again and you don't lose anything. I am assuming it would be harder to do a technique like this if you were say attempting a triangle from the guard. Because if you let it go, you're letting your opponent get their posture back and there's no guarantee you can just slap on a triangle again after you've let it go. So I think one guideline is this is going to work best if it's a type of submission where you can let the submission go, but still maintain the exact position that would let you just slap it on again. If you're going to lose position, you can't really double tap effectively. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I actually hadn't really thought about exactly like that, but that is probably a much simpler way to think of it. I had thought of all these like like individual spots where I I like to do it and that is kind of the unifying factor, I think. Sometimes I'll throw it on like a straight ankle lock a little bit, but if you have a strong bite on the leg, you aren't really giving them too much, I guess, to come off of it there. But yeah, I agree. Something where you're in like a stable position that's not too scrambly or not too likely to give the other person an escape. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think the straight ankle lock is an interesting example because if you have the person's leg entangled and you can prevent them from getting full base, it's hard for them to get out even if you technically let go of the submission, as long as you're controlling one or maybe both legs. How does that work for you? It sounds like you've been using that somewhere. Speaker 2: Yeah, you mean in regards to the straight ankle specifically? Speaker 1: Yeah, I'd love to know how the double tap plays in there. What do you do? Because the thing about the straight ankle, I love this position because it's so easy to fake a leg lock and then just get up and take top position, but I want to know how you use this. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you know, sometimes and it's I guess it kind of blurs the line whether you're just making adjustments or actually doing like a double tap kind of thing. But sometimes I think I've been messing with the ankle lock a ton the past year, a lot of like the new school style shotgun ankle lock stuff. And sometimes I just don't get the foot as close to popping out from under the front of my armpit as I would like. You know, you kind of want that feeling where you almost want to push the foot out from under the front of your armpit, but your bite is going to prevent that from happening. And sometimes it's just not as far forward as you want. So you seal on it and it feels like you're kind of going to lean into the toes to finish it, but it's not quite where you want. So you kind of have to sometimes relax things and then rebite onto it. So I guess that's kind of how I was thinking about it with the straight ankle lock and just sort of so there is a line, I guess, where it's like, are you adjusting the position or are you actually letting it go on purpose to bite and do it again? And with the ankle lock, I guess I don't do it as much as an intentional, hey, I'm going to let this go and rebite onto it on purpose. I think I do it more in that scenario as just kind of like, hey, usually my initial bite isn't always where I want it to be. Maybe I just need to spend more time working on it. And I kind of have to come off of it and then reclamp on it a little bit. One where I for sure do it is the arm triangle position. And I combine it with this idea that I got from Ryan Hall called making the other person do reps. And it's the same way, like if they're in a gym and they're lifting weights, if you make somebody do enough reps of lifting a weight, they kind of get tired. You know, and when you have someone in an arm triangle and they're opening their shoulder up and they're trying to fight you with it, if you just kind of like lean in and back off and lean in and back off and lean in and back off and you do it multiple times in a row like that, it's like they're having to open their chest up against resistance multiple times and every time they're going to be a little less strong than the previous time. So I really like to do it a lot from there. Same thing with that ankle lock position. I think if you kind of come off of it, rebite, come off, rebite, come off, rebite. And I guess you could still call it a double tap, but you could do it more than two times even. And it just their ability to defend it, you're making their foot do reps or their arm do reps, right? Because you want to keep your foot in like a strong posture. And when it starts getting attacked, maintaining that posture with your foot against that clamp gets tiring multiple times in a row like that. So I like to combine it with that idea of making the other person do reps, if that makes sense. Speaker 1: Oh, that absolutely does make sense. The arm triangle is a great example. People often look at the arm triangle and they get frustrated because it can be hard to finish, but that might be the wrong psychology around it. The arm triangle is especially powerful as a hold. I mean, the the Japanese name Katagatame means hold, right? Shoulder hold. It's a great submission too, but if you're insistent on trying to finish it right here, right now, it can be a little bit tricky to finish that one quickly. And you're also ignoring the most powerful part of the arm triangle, which is once you get someone into that position, it's very hard for them to get out of it. So, I love that idea of making them do reps, just making them do work, defend, release, defend, release. It costs you almost nothing as the top player to do that. But for the person on the bottom, it's tremendously frustrating and stressful when that happens. Speaker 2: Yeah, it really is. It's super taxing. And again, you don't have a choice. If you don't do it, you're just going to get tapped. So it's really like, I think all those good dilemmas come from giving people no good choices, right? So it's not like you really have a say in it. If you don't do it, you're just going to get tapped. And if you do it, you're going to get tired and then probably get tapped. But it's always better to probably lose in 30 seconds than definitely lose right now. So you still have to, you know, try something, you know? Speaker 1: Now, you also talked about with ankle locks, sometimes you loosen it so that you can readjust rather than to intentionally double tap. And the cool thing about this idea is from the opponent's perspective, it doesn't really matter because they don't know what your intent is. They don't know, is this guy loosening this because he doesn't quite have the submission or is he loosening this because he's trying to Jedi mind trick me? And so if people get acquainted with you as a double tapper, then it adds that extra layer of doubt in their head because they never really know, okay, does this guy actually have this submission or not? There are some submissions, particularly leg submissions, as you mentioned, where just due to the variability in people's legs, whether it be leg length, foot size, ankle flexibility, knee flexibility, it can be really hard to consistently do the same leg lock all the time. I find that things like chokes are much more consistent in terms of body type. But there's so much variability around people's legs. It can be hard to just make it work exactly the same every time. So a big part of leg locks, especially setting up more finicky ones is sometimes you've got to loosen a little bit and maneuver their heel or their instep into the right position and then finish from there. And again, this can be a situation where your opponent might not know, is he giving up on this or is he just readjusting or is he making me think he's giving up on it so that he can attack it again? It just adds that extra layer of psychology on top of things. And if you can make your opponent always question themselves because they don't quite know what you're going to do, that's a really powerful head space for you to keep them in because it just makes them doubt their own game. It makes them second guess themselves. And in the middle of a live roll, if your opponent is constantly second guessing themselves, that can add just a a microsecond of error to them. Just a little bit of delay that's going to make it more likely that you can just get the the heads up on them in every single exchange. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think you should sometimes not go right back to it. Like do vary it up a little bit. Sometimes do let it go, even if you think you could have had it. Like maybe you do let go every now and then and switch to a different attack or change just to keep people on their toes and not to be too predictable. I think especially if you're not competing or if you're just training for fun, like having a varied skill set is really, well, it's important to have a varied skill set anyways if you are competing. But if you're just training for fun, like just getting taps all the time is not always the most important thing, right? It's like just kind of developing a breadth and kind of depth both and switching things up and switching up your patterns and maybe you spend a week and you do the double tap on people and then you let go for real and you do switch to something else and then you go back to the double tap again and you're just kind of always keeping things fresh for yourself and always keeping other people on their toes so that you don't become too predictable. Because I do think if you become super predictable with the double tap thing, especially since, you know, there's certain positions where it's more useful than others. Once people get kind of hip to those, they can start preparing for it a little bit, I think, if you rely on it too much. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. If you become known as the person who does the double tap, then it loses its benefit, which is the unpredictability and the surprise of it. And really what we're talking about here is coming up with tools to be surprising in a roll. I don't think people think enough about that. Yes, technical skill and consistency and positional control, they matter, they're probably much more important. But a degree of deception and trickiness can actually take you pretty far. Everyone's got that one guy in the gym who's maybe not technically the best at jiu-jitsu, but they always manage to catch people because they do unexpected and weird things. And there's value to that. I think that if you can combine that on top of a solid foundation of technical proficiency, your ability to just be unpredictable really helps you, especially against people who have no idea who you are or have never sparred with you before. Speaker 2: Yeah, I heard a quote recently that said that people that do weird things on top of a strong foundation is like, that's the hardest style to deal with for the most part because they're doing things you aren't used to, especially if you haven't rolled with them before. They're throwing things at you that are unusual that you don't have a lot of experience with. And they have like rock solid fundamentals underneath it to kind of fall back on if what they're doing doesn't work or if you, you know, you counter, they end up in a bad spot. They have really good fundamentals to back it up, but they do a lot of weird and unusual things. I think there's a lot of truth to that. Speaker 1: Yeah, it reminds me of something that my old instructor once showed. He showed this variant of a somersault guard pass. And I I'm not talking about a cartwheel guard pass. I'm talking about a somersault. So basically you just roll up into a ball and just roll right over your opponent. And if you do it properly, you can wind up landing in north-south. Now, this is a pretty low percentage move. Most of the time when you try it, what happens is you wind up just somersaulting right over top of your opponent and getting back up and then you're still in their guard. So, it's not the most high percentage technique, but what my instructor said is, this can be a fun way to open a match or an exchange because it really puts your opponent in a strange position. They don't expect you to do that. And it makes them think, well, if this guy's going to somersault right on top of me, what else is he going to do? What other crazy things does he have in his bag of tricks? And now they're second guessing themselves right at the beginning of an exchange. I find there's a lot of other weird stuff you can do. I am notorious, back to the Ezekiel, I am notorious for trying to choke people inside their own guard, not because it's the most high percentage thing ever, but because it breaks people out of their patterns and their routines and suddenly they have to stop and think, oh, wait a minute, I'm not safe here. Well, I can't play guard the way I want to play it or the way I normally would if there's even a slight chance of a legitimate submission threat here. So what am I going to do now? And as soon as you get people second guessing themselves, everything becomes easier for you because now you've taken an advantage in the mental game. And that can be really helpful even against people who are technically better than you. I do this a lot, especially when people, if I know they're better than me at jiu-jitsu, my thought is, well, maybe I can be more unpredictable than them. And if I can make them start to doubt themselves, I notice they slow down just a bit and they become a little bit less special in terms of their talents and they fight more to a level that I can actually deal with them. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think anything that creates that like extra level of hesitancy. There's a reference Ryan Hall already. He had this other quote that's really stuck with me that he was just saying that everything is real if it feels real. And people rely too much on these cues and these sayings and these things like, oh, if you're if your knee line is free, you're safe. Like, yeah, until you roll with somebody that's huge and strong and really good and your knee line is free and they break your leg, you know what I mean? There's this purple belt that's at our gym that he'll throw like cross collar chokes from the bottom of knee cuts and stuff like that. And I can't say that I've been like tapped with it, but he has a really strong grip and it's really tight and you do kind of have to address it. And it's just it's it's weird to be in like top mount or top knee cut and have like a cross collar choke come at you. And I don't even know if he's really trying to finish it, but I think it might be a thing where he's just trying to get you to maybe approach a little bit more hesitantly or have a different posture than you normally would and like you have to respect things if they feel legit, I guess is is what I'm saying. And if you're throwing Ezekiels from inside someone's guard and weird things like that, even if you don't tap people out, if it's strong and they have to give give you a a real reaction to it, that's going to help you and then again, like you said, the hesitancy, forcing people to to like just play differently is mentally taxing for them. Speaker 1: Yeah, I call that porcupine strategy where you try to create little threats that make the other person hesitate to engage with you. Where you likely see this a lot is people who are notoriously good at choking you from bottom side control. My friend Micah Brickfield from 10th Planet Tobacoke is notorious for this. He will tap you out from bottom side control with ease to the point where when I'm sparring with him, I don't even want to pass his guard because I know I'm safer inside his guard than if I pass. And that idea of being like a porcupine and just being spiky so the other person thinks, I don't want to attack this person because, you know, how am I going to do this? How am I going to safely get past the quills? It can make it really difficult for people to engage with you if they think there's a legitimate threat. And to your point, it doesn't always have to be a legitimate threat, as long as the other person thinks it is. If they think it's a legitimate threat, that's good enough. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think everybody should probably develop like one or two kind of weird things. Especially like at purple belt or so, if you don't have a couple weird things in the bag, I think you should do that. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, definitely. This is a good pivot then. What would you say are some of the cool weird things you've seen in competition recently that might give someone pause? Like where you saw someone deploy something insane and then suddenly the other person just slowed down a bit because you can tell when they get a little bit hesitant when something unusual happens. Is there anything that stands out in the current meta that's of interest to you? Speaker 2: I'm trying to think real quick. I think definitely some maybe like counter leg lock stuff. There are people that'll extend their, you know, that'll kind of offer up their leg a little bit, but they're able to keep their own foot in a good position or do some subtle things with their legs where they're not actually feeling that risk of getting tapped. And then when the other person goes on the foot and kind of gets tunnel vision on it, maybe they take like a counter leg lock. I've seen Mikey Musumeci do that thing in the UFC BJJ a couple times where he's just kind of stuck out his leg and let people kind of do a single leg takedown on him so that he can start playing guard. I don't know how much that right there specifically creates a lot of maybe like weird attack patterns or anything. I'm trying to think of like something that really stands out. I think the biggest things for me that stand out are probably with some of the counter leg locking stuff a little bit, maybe letting people have your foot a little bit so that they can engage. I've seen a few people do some Mateusz Szysinski, he's pretty good at when you like post on his hip. He's pretty good at allowing you to post on his hip, so he'll kind of grab the back of your elbow and get that like shotgun armbar. I think he did that to Garry Tonon and I've did it to somebody else at a Polaris that had a pretty big name. I forgot who it was. It might have been like PJ Barch or Owen Flanagan, one of those guys. But that's another one, I guess, that I can think of a little bit off the top of my head. Speaker 1: Well, the counter leg lock meta is an interesting one. Again, on State of the Meta, I've heard you talk about this. The example that comes to mind is the the honey stick is a good example, right? A counter to the 411. It used to be that when you were rolling with a leg locker, they would really throw everything into the leg lock game. And you could tell, they were going as Rob Bernacki would say, leg locker bust, just putting everything into it because it felt like such a sure-fire way to win a match. But the evolution of counters to those positions, like the the honey stick, which counters the, you know, the 411/saddle/honey hole/inside Sankaku. So many names for this move. But to have a counter for that now makes people have a bit of a pause because they can't just go into the 411 and assume that they're in a dominant position where they can't be counter-attacked. Now, they have to defend from there. And so this thing that used to be a sure thing is no longer such a sure thing. There's a counter-response that has started to evolve. And again, there's that porcupine factor. When people know that there's the potential of a threat, they will engage just a little bit more cautiously. Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Can I tell you something funny real quick? Speaker 1: Absolutely. Speaker 2: So, there's a guy that he's a purple belt. He's really good. I think he should I'm surprised that he's just a purple belt. His name is Matt and he's from Tri-Star under Firas Zahabi and those guys. And he joined our gym about six months ago. And to be honest, I get a lot of like, what's the new stuff from him? I feel like he's the most on top of all this stuff of anybody that I know. And I've been working that honey stick thing that you were just talking about. And he hit me with this like recounter thing to it and he's like, oh, dude, you got to stop trying to honey stick. He's like, that's he didn't say dumb, but he kind of implied it a little bit. He was like, oh, that's like old stuff. He's like, that honey stick is super outdated. He was like, he has this way when you pummel your foot in where he kind of like retraps your foot, so your foot gets stuck even when you try to do the honey stick and then he just like inside he'll hooks me. So, it's like I thought I was being on top of things by learning this honey stick and this was just like two weeks ago. And he was like, oh, dude, oh, no, you got to get away from that. That honey stick is a bad idea. So, it's just crazy how there's always something, you know? Speaker 1: I love having that one person in the gym. And like you said, it's always a blue or a purple belt who is just completely up to date on all of the latest trends. Because like saying the honey stick is old tech, I'm not even sure if it's a year old. It's a pretty new technique. But there's always that one guy who is basically monitoring everything. Every gym has one of those. And man, sometimes that person can be one of the most valuable people in the gym. Not necessarily because all of the new stuff is actually good. You know, sometimes these new trends come up and they go nowhere. They're just evolutionary dead ends. So you don't want to get too excited about them. But to just have someone in the gym who can bring those new things in and expose you to them. It's kind of like they're asking you questions, you know, can you handle this? Can you defend against this? It really helps you refine what you're doing because you're getting this constant bombardment of new stimulus and new ideas. And sometimes they pay off, right? Sometimes something that you relied on, it proves to be much weaker than you initially thought it was because there's some very obvious or powerful counter-response. You know, our mutual friend Chris Wojcik with the Wojlock is a good example of that. And I just attended a seminar with him. And even he's like, I got new stuff coming out. I got a new instructional with better mechanics on all of this stuff. And so the evolution of the leg lock game is a fascinating area where people's expectations change so much because the game evolves so quickly. Speaker 2: Yeah, that one, the leg lock stuff just really just kind of seems to keep going and going and going. It's still so strange to me how on one side of the coin, there's people that are just so far down the rabbit hole with it and there's still so many people that are just like not very good at it at all and basically don't know anything. It's crazy. And then guard passing is another one right now where it feels like there's a whole lot of constant like shifts and and changing stuff with it. Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's another example where you can deploy this double tap idea is guard passing where you can try a pass, back off, try it again. Or like you said earlier, you can alternate. I mean, that's kind of the the common strategy for guard passing, right? Is to go left, right, left, right, back, forth, back, forth. In a lot of ways, that's an elaborate example of a double tap where you're trying something, you're switching to the other side and maybe if that fails, you're switching back to the original side to what worked before. Just forcing the person on the bottom to continuously adjust and move their hips and change their angle. The more you make them move back and forth, the more space and movement you create, the more likely they're going to make an error of giving you just a half inch of space. And often with guard passing at a high level, a half inch is the difference between you passed or you failed. And so just switching things up or even just double tapping, trying something, switching and then trying it again, forcing your opponent to reposition their hips and move can create a little bit of space and wobble them and create openings to the point where the pass becomes easier. Speaker 2: Yeah, and you just reminded me by saying that Marcelo Garcia also used to do that with the X-pass. I didn't even remember that until you just talked about it, but it was just like not a super popular pass right now for whatever reason. I think it's still pretty cool, but kind of step between the legs and kind of mule kick backwards almost like you're doing like a Uchimata and then your foot comes right back in front of the legs, kind of step into their hip line. And he would pop that thing again like two, three, four, like back to back to back. I remember he used to do that a whole lot. And for some reason, I just didn't think of that example until you just mentioned it. Speaker 1: Actually, I learned the X-pass from Emily Kwok, who's under Marcelo and I love that pass. I suspect maybe the reason it's fading a bit in popularity is just because it's really powerful in the gi, especially and as nogi becomes more popular, there's going to be, you know, passes that evolve that get more attention. But the X-pass is super powerful, especially as a response. Trying to force it or do it out of nowhere, I find is difficult, but where I get a lot of success with it is where I catch my partner in transition. So I'm doing something else and then as they're repositioning, they loosen their control on my leg just a bit and I mule kick it back out, which is exactly how Emily describes it. She says, kick like a donkey, right? You clear that leg. And then for me, the thing I love about that pass is you don't need to land in side control. You can land in knee on belly, which I much, much prefer, right? In IBJJF rules, you get extra points. As a smaller guy, I don't like to crash down on someone and to establish side control because I don't have the body weight. It's easy for them to push me off or push me out of the way. Whereas if I can pass into knee on belly, you get an extra three points and on top of that, I feel much more stable from there to then do whatever I want. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super cool. I've always wanted to train with her, man. I've heard so much good things about Emily. Speaker 1: Do you want to do a podcast with her? I can probably get her on State of the Meta. Speaker 2: Yeah, that'd be awesome. Speaker 1: That would be fantastic. Yeah, she's got a great mind for this stuff and of course she's so, you know, intimately connected with the history from Marcelo Garcia that she can speak in depth about all of this stuff. When you're talking about, you know, the poor person who went and actually had to tag everything on MG and action, that might have actually been her. So I'll put you in touch and we'll get that working. But anyway, I'd love to maybe talk about the why behind this idea of the double tap. And the way that I would explain it in terms of like, why does this actually work? People who've listened to our podcast before have probably heard us talk about pattern interrupts, which is when you can get someone to break from the mental script that they think is going to happen and then they have to stop and they have to actually think about what's going on. This is a very common tactic in sales, especially if I am say cold calling someone. Like if I call you and you pick up the phone and I'm trying to sell you, I don't know, an insurance plan. Even before I start talking, your brain is already gone into the script of, this is a sales call, this is a spam call, the answer is no, click, hang up, right? And my job as a salesperson, if I want to, not that I'm endorsing cold calling because it can be annoying, but if I wanted to do that, my job is to break you out of that script. I can't have you just say no and hang up without thinking about it. I need to say or do something that'll make you stop and take pause. And that's why when you see like spam messages or emails, sometimes they'll say something that is outrageous or confusing or unexpected. And it's because they're trying to prevent you from pressing that move to spam button. They want you to stop and think for a second. Because when you do that, you're forcing someone to stop being on autopilot and to then engage the cognitive layers of their mind and actually think critically about what this is. You've pulled them out of this automated script and now they have to go into a more detailed evaluation and that's a much slower thought process. So, in jiu-jitsu, our goal if we want to be competitive is to do as little live thinking as possible. We want to basically be on autopilot and the reason we train the way we do is because we want to encourage automatic grappling and automatic behaviors where you just you're so well trained that you can just do the right thing without having to stop to think about it. If on the other hand, you can do something that forces your opponent to stop and think, suddenly everything is slower and then doubt creeps in and now they have to evaluate their game. And if you're still going at top speed, they're probably going to fall behind. And that's why the double tap is so effective because it forces people out of that cognitive script. They have to stop and think all of a sudden because something unexpected happened to them and now they're going to be just one step behind you. And that's always a good plan in jiu-jitsu. If you can break the other person out of their programmed trained script of how grappling is supposed to work. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's super cool. I think that's right. I think people operate best in that flow state obviously and when people are good enough to not have to think, they're just kind of flowing with things and if there's some kind of way you can introduce like you said, pattern interrupt, something to get them to start thinking and get out of that flow state where they're just kind of in the zone and reacting to everything and when they have to start thinking a little bit more and making more decisions, it's going to slow everything down just a little bit and that's a cool thing to do. I feel like you said that super well and I feel like I don't have anything super insightful to add to that. I think that was really well stated. Speaker 1: I appreciate that. Well, as you're a student of the game here, I would love to know when we talk about things like trickery and psychology of grappling, who are you following out there? Who is really good at talking about this kind of stuff? Speaker 2: As far as psychological stuff and and tricks. I mean, Matt Scaff is like my favorite person for that just because he has like a a psychotic level of trying to have the edge on like every single person and develop game plans for like every single person that he rolls with and has all these really funny, like I think it's funny, levels of being like tricky with every single person and stuff like that or finding like exploits, I guess, for like this specific person. The last time I was rolling with Brandon McCathern in Alabama in November, he was like watching from the side just like a hawk and then I rolled with him next and I felt like nothing I did worked. He had just like downloaded whatever I was trying to do in that previous 10 minutes and had stuff for all of it. So, he's probably like the main person. A lot of stuff that I'm watching now and and checking out, I'm just I mean, as you know from probably listening to some of the other stuff I put out, I'm really into a lot of the CLA stuff right now and a lot of just like the big picture ideas and kind of concepts and not quite there's really not a lot of people that I'm following for like more trickier sides of things. I guess I'll just say PJ Barch is probably the guy that I'm following the most right now as far as a blend of technical content mixed with a lot of CLA big picture stuff and then, you know, maybe some stuff out there about like exploits a little bit. I know he has a couple things on his YouTube channel recently about things in ADCC rules that he thinks are maybe a little bit more exploitable or certain habits that people have that'll kind of run them into problems here or there. But PJ Barch is definitely the person that I've been paying the most attention to the past six months or so. Speaker 1: You've been all in on the CLA stuff. I'd like to get your opinion on this. What have you been learning or focusing on that's really caused breakthroughs for you and your students on that front? Speaker 2: I've been focusing a lot on literally addressing the problem that's right in front of you. So one of the biggest things I think I've improved on in the past five years is when I'm past five years, past year is when I'm approaching the guard, just like not letting people's feet touch me in a way that I don't like. So just keeping feet off me or if the feet touch me in some kind of way, at least have them in a position where they're not able to off balance me or prevent me from making like forward progress in any kind of way. And I've gotten so many comments recently about how frustrating it is to play guard against me and how people just can't get to any positions they want to get to because I'm just constantly addressing the thing that's right in front of me. So if the thing that's right in front of you is the feet, you're addressing the feet. Maybe if you're like that would be more like outside passing, that could be an example. If you're doing more like through the legs passing and you're maybe in like a knee cut or a split squat or a headquarters kind of position, the thing that's usually in your way are the person's arms, right? They're usually framing on you and literally just removing those obstacles out of your way. It sounds almost too simple, but I think a lot of times people get a little bit too caught up in trying to overthink things and I think the big secret to CLA is having a strong focus and intentionality while you're training and not just being on autopilot and having really simple things to pay attention to that aren't super complicated that are kind of right in front of your face. And it's really pretty impressive, I think, how frustrating you can be to deal with if you just focus on some things like that. I hope I'm not getting on too much of a side rant, but a lot of people, a lot of students of mine that have been training for less than 18 months or even less than a year, even if somebody that's good comes into our gym that's like good enough to beat them and tap them out, I think they're still going to have an annoying time rolling with a lot of them because they do a lot of things like don't let grips happen, don't let hands cover their hands, don't let feet touch them when they're passing. When they're on bottom, don't let the person on top have a stable position, just always addressing the thing that's like right in front of your face. I think makes it super difficult for you to be dealt with. Does that make sense? I kind of feel like I said a lot right there, but Speaker 1: I think it was great and I think you touched on one of the real benefits to the constraints led approach, which is what CLA stands for. I occurred to me that even though probably most people know, I don't think we said it in this episode yet. But the real power of the constraints led approach is it reduces your cognitive load so much. It makes it so much easier to just do jiu-jitsu without having to stop and think about everything. The challenge with the traditional method where a technique is shown in its entirety and then students have to go and duplicate it is that really works against the very limited working memory that we've got. If I put 10 steps to do a technique into your brain and then I give you two minutes to go and do reps of it, that's a lot of detail that you have to keep in your head at the same time. And you're also not optimizing for the most common case because if I give you a very specific technique with a lot of steps, in most cases, the odds of that situation arising in a match are pretty small. Sometimes people show me this technique and they say, okay, here's all of these steps to do this intricate sweep. And my first thought is like, I don't think I've ever been in a position like that in my entire jiu-jitsu career where it would make sense to even do that move. And now you're asking me to waste brain power memorizing this. When you can make training simpler, like you said, just little simple things that solve the problem right in front of you, like don't let them put their feet on you, don't let them connect with you. That makes a way bigger difference than trying to give someone the algorithm, the full playbook and then asking them to memorize it and and deploy it right away. And the beautiful thing about that constraints led approach is it builds on top of itself, right? So you give people these little pieces. And I mean, yeah, it is true that if the only thing you're focusing is don't let them put their feet on you, that's not a complete jiu-jitsu game plan. But if the person keeps training, they're going to start putting other building blocks on top of that. And before you know it, more complicated movement patterns will emerge that were never even directly told to the person. That's what people talk about when they talk about how, you know, I don't teach techniques. It's not that the techniques don't exist or that you're not really teaching them, is that you're steering people into the direction where the technique just kind of comes together itself because that's the most sensible thing for the student to do in that situation. And by doing it this way, the real benefit is you preserve the student's working memory so they don't get so overloaded. And that is such a a game killer for white belts especially or even blue belts because you have so little context of what's going on. If you are giving people a basically a test and you're making them memorize 10 steps, they're never going to succeed at that, especially earlier in their journey. But even black belts like myself, I really struggle when people give me too many things to remember at the same time. Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think also, you know, if you are going to show techniques or or really look at techniques, I really would just encourage everybody to think about what skill that technique is filling a hole for. So the techniques manifest the way that they do because they need to accomplish certain things. And if you can try to think about if you do learn a technique, I don't think that there's anything wrong with that. I still will show some techniques at our gym and stuff too. I'm not like against showing any specific thing. But just encouraging people to try to think about what role that technique is filling, what job it's accomplishing and not just thinking of it as a technique for a technique's sake, I guess. And also I think talking a little bit about, I really got this from Kevon Gonzalez, is if you're going to explain a little bit less about exactly what to do, maybe spending a little bit more time on the what it is, where it happens, you know, like the other things around it. What role it fills, why you might do a movement like that, giving some other context for it. So that way people aren't as frustrated and they're like, well, I feel like I'm not getting any details. No, you can still just still giving them some information, but you're giving more context around the thing that you're learning and just kind of explaining to them what role that thing fills. And then another thing he does a lot that I like is he'll say what I like to do is. So instead of saying something more prescriptive or like you have to do this, this and this, he'll say like, well, you know, this is what I like to do. But leaving room for them to understand that they don't have to do it exactly that way or that it could look a little bit different than this. I don't know. I'm starting to get sidetracked. I can I can really go on about this stuff for a long time because it's been a huge focus of mine the past 18 months or so. Speaker 1: Well, I would love to do that with you at some point in the future. But to tie this all back together, I think the big theme here between the double tap and CLA and all of this stuff is we're talking about what happens when our brain goes on autopilot and how to exploit that. The power of CLA is that it reduces the cognitive load that you need to grapple. It makes grappling simpler. There's less information that needs to be conveyed from the teacher to the student. And things like the double tap can sometimes take advantage of that. If you're not thinking things through, then you can get caught in these scripts that you've trained into yourself. But the flip side of that is if you're thinking too much, if you are questioning everything you do, then you're just going to be too slow to grapple effectively. So there's this constant tension in the way that we train where we want to train in such a way that we can do things mostly automatically. But on the other hand, we don't want to make things so automatic that we just drive off the cliff and make an easily avoidable mistake. And I think that, you know, all coaches deal with this at some point. I hear people talk all the time about how much how scared they are that they're going to, you know, train bad habits into their students. Honestly, I think that that concern is overblown a bit. I think that it's better to just encourage training because if people train and get exposure to enough ideas, the bad habits will prune themselves out, right? The alternative, if you try to build a room that never creates bad habits, you're going to wind up taking so much off the plate that people basically won't be training properly because they're so afraid of making a mistake. I have seen this a lot where you've got a black belt who is really really prescriptive about making sure that no mistake is made and every move is done perfectly. What happens is they wind up micromanaging and correcting so many details in the classroom that everyone's just afraid to even try. And you never you never want that to happen, right? So there's there's push and pull where on one hand, we want to be able to grapple without thinking. We want to make things as automatic as we can. But on the other hand, we don't want to make things so automatic that we just drive off the cliff and make an easily avoidable mistake. How do you find that balance as the coach between like getting people to train without thinking too much, but also making sure they are actually thinking when it's important? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's tough. One thing I just want to say quickly on the bad habits thing is I almost don't even think that bad habits exist. I just kind of think that people have to be not good at something until they're good at it. And that process is going to be a little bit messy and it could be shorter or longer from person to person, but you're just it takes time to be good at something and everything just kind of works itself out along the way. As far as that balance of having them be able to kind of move on autopilot, but not have to think too much and that balance, it's really, really tough. It's really tough with a room full of people in a mixed class when you don't get to choose who comes in and everybody has, you know, some people don't have the bandwidth to even do a lot of creative thinking or things like that when they come in the gym. If they have a stressful job or if they have a lot going on at home, some people come in because they want you to tell them exactly what to do and they don't want to have to think about it. Other people don't like to be told much and they want to kind of be on autopilot. So I think you kind of have to be a little bit of a psychologist a little bit and just or or a little bit good at just reading the room and reading vibes and and developing relationships with different people and kind of figuring out what they like. And it's tough. I mean, one thing that I like to do earlier on is try to build just a set of kind of broad functional skills and get everybody able to just do some very basic things, like able to hold people down, able to get up when someone else is holding them down, able to grip fight on the feet, just like some basic things. And then kind of giving more context and details on top of that once there's a little bit of a basic functionality in play. But it's like a this constant line that you have to step up onto that you're trying not to go over, but get right up on it and it's super tough. I don't know that I have a a super easy answer. Coaching is definitely the hardest thing that I've ever done and it's way harder than I ever would have guessed it is. And I don't know if I'm answering the question appropriately. And I think you just have to be honest with yourself and understand too that whatever I think now is super subject to change and I might feel pretty differently in six months because it's just a constant process of smoothening the stone and whittling away at your own your own pruning your own stuff, so to speak and and trying to improve your own processes. But I really think it's just very so much from person to person. It's just so hard, I think, to make a prescriptive claim about how to treat like a room full of people that all have different physical capabilities and personalities and ages and and genders and and just all that stuff. I think it's it's really hard, super tough. I try to develop the most relationships I can with the most people and not have it feel too exhausting on my own brain or my own emotional capacity, I guess. And I'm I'm trying to match that with what the effort that I get from people. So, I mean, I give everybody as much as I can in a class format, but as far as afterwards, you know, the people that I'm when they come up and ask questions, the people that are more engaged, I try to maybe give them a little bit more extra stuff if I can. And I just try to have as much a read on as many of the people in the room as I can and try to kind of fit things towards what I think is going to be a good fit for them. This stuff is on my mind all the time. Every single day I'm thinking about this stuff. Speaker 1: It's a good answer though, I think. And you've touched on one of the biggest challenges of being a coach, which is it is no longer just about what you do. You now have to help everyone else do things in a way that works for them. And that requires a level of taking yourself out of your own environment and looking at things from the perspective of others, which grapplers are often not accustomed to doing until they start coaching. Because when you are rolling and worried about your own performance, really all that matters is, is it working? Is what I'm doing working for me? Am I getting the results that I want? But then when you start thinking about how do you coach or communicate ideas to other people, you have to start thinking about how do I repackage this so that it helps them meet their goals? And does it even make sense? Is what I'm doing even aligned with what this other person wants to do? I mean, one of the coolest things about jiu-jitsu is its flexibility and purpose. So many people train jiu-jitsu and for completely different reasons, much more so than it seems with other martial arts, where some people they want to be high-level pros, some people just do it as a hobby, some people want to be coaches or entrepreneurs. And the sport can accommodate all of that. But it means that when you are the coach, you have to be mindful of the fact that everyone in the room may have different objectives and ways of getting there versus how you would have done things in their position. Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. Can I say one more thing? I think a lot of coaches, and I don't mean this as like a CLA versus traditional kind of thing. But I think a lot of coaches, they teach or they coach in a way where they think is how people learn or in a way that makes them just feel good. And not even that they're doing that selfishly. I think a lot of people aren't even aware that they do it. But I think a lot of people do stuff in a way that is satisfying to them and really makes them feel satiated and and happy and all that stuff. Or they do it in a way that they think other people learn and less about actually trying to take more time to figure out what is going to be the best thing for the other people. And it's a really hard thing to do, like you said. Speaker 1: Well, Drew, let's tell people where they can find you. If people want to check out your work or your content or follow you or ask you questions, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 2: Yeah, you can find me on Instagram at Drew Darce, D R E W D A R C E. I've gotten pretty bad at replying to DMs on there. So you're free to ask many questions you like. I might not get a super fast response to you. You can again that website DarceDynamics.com. I have a couple products on there. And then with you on the BJJ Mental Models Premium, I do that State of the Meta podcast. And then if you're at any PGF events in the future, you'll see me out there for sure. Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, I definitely suggest that everyone follow you and if they see you at a PGF event, please do say hi to Drew. We had a great chat with you and Brandon McCathern about PGF and what you guys are doing differently. I think it's a really interesting take on jiu-jitsu and just making it a more engaging, fun competitive environment. That was on our BJJ Today podcast on BJJ Mental Models Premium. So maybe I'll see if I can expand that out further. But yeah, I'll put all of your links in the show notes, Drew. I definitely encourage that people give you some time because your work is awesome. I think you're such a great mind for the sport. And if you want more from us, everything we make lives at bjjmentalmodels.com. Do check out the podcast. We've got full length episodes like this, plus mini concept episodes, plus our newsletter. All of those are completely free, no advertisements. So please do go nuts there. And if you want to level up with us and build on your jiu-jitsu game alongside us, check out BJJ Mental Models Premium. It's the world's largest library of audio content on jiu-jitsu master classes, strategy, tactics, philosophy, and premium pro podcasts as well. As Drew mentioned, his podcast State of the Meta is exclusive to BJJ Mental Models Premium. It is an awesome resource for people who just want to quickly keep abreast of the changes in the jiu-jitsu competition meta. That's also where Emily Kwok's podcast and Rob Bernacki's podcast live as well, plus some more. There's just a ton of great content on BJJ Mental Models Premium if you're looking to really delve into the conceptual side of jiu-jitsu. And the first week is free. So you can get all of that at bjjmentalmodels.com. I will include a link in the show notes. But Drew, thank you so much, buddy. I always appreciate these chats. Always so much fun and this is a cool one, great concept too to put in front of people. I think people will get some pretty quick immediate value out of it. Speaker 2: Thank you, dude. I'll talk to you soon for sure. Speaker 1: You as well and same to the listeners. Talk to you soon. Thank you so much for your time and we'll see you soon.