Ep. 370: The Gift Wrap, feat. Nick Volpe

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, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 370. I am Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And I'm returning again with friend of the show from Dark Bear Jiu-Jitsu, Nicholas Volpe. Nicholas, my friend, what's up? Speaker 2: Oh, you know, just getting ready to uh enjoy the holidays and excited to to chat again. How are you doing? Speaker 1: I am also doing well. This episode should go out in the middle of the holiday season and we had been on a call the other day and you suggested you had a holiday related topic that you wanted to talk about, which I thought this would make an amazing episode. So why don't you introduce it? Tell everyone what we're discussing today, Nicholas. Speaker 2: We're doing none other than the gift wrap. It's a holiday essential and I purposefully withheld teaching the gift wrap when I went over side control and the back for my classes just so I can fit it in thematically with the holidays. Speaker 1: An amazing holiday technique for your family and friends, but also an amazing Jiu-Jitsu technique. Now, I don't want to assume that everyone is all up to speed on what this is, even though it's probably a pretty basic thing. Let's start from the first steps. How do you describe the gift wrap? How would you introduce this and explain it to someone who's unfamiliar with the language or the idea? Speaker 2: Yeah, it's essentially a modified side control and I am forcing my partner to wear their arm like a scarf. And I think that's kind of how I usually introduce it to classes and for people who have never done Jiu-Jitsu, never seen it, they always get a little puzzled like, you're gonna make somebody wear their arm like a scarf, but once you see it, it makes a ton of sense. Speaker 1: I love that explanation. That's not only a really strong verbal cue, a great external cue that explains what you do to your opponent's body, but also it's thematic, right? I mean, we're in that cold winter weather. Speaker 2: We stay on brand. You got, you got it. If we're gonna do it, we're gonna do it, you know what I mean? Speaker 1: Now, the gift wrap, if if I were to try to explain what it is and why you do this, where this comes up a lot, basically what you're doing, if we want to be pedantic about it, is you are wrapping your opponent's own arm around their own neck. And this is super powerful because anyone who's listened to this podcast before or has talked to a martial arts concepts person has probably heard of this idea of crossing the center line and how powerful it is if you can force one of your opponent's limbs, like their arm or their leg, across the center of their body, basically meaning their spine. If I can force you to pull your own arm across your body, it really screws you up. First of all, because it takes that arm out of play. Second, because it gives me an amazing control around you. When I get that gift wrap grip on you, it's really hard to get out. And also, it holds you in this inferior angle. It's gonna be really hard for you to turn back towards me and face me when I'm gift wrapping you because your own arm is forcing you to turn away. So unless you're willing to pull your own arm out of the socket, you're not gonna be able to turn back towards me and face me until you escape the gift wrap. Speaker 2: Yeah, and it also does a few other things. One of the reasons that it is so strong of a control is that if you start to get really good at it, you can add a little bit of a spinal twist and you start getting your partner, your opponent out of a strong athletic position. And now, even if they are bigger or stronger, they can't throw their strength and weight around the same way because you are forcing their body into a pretty weak structure. So, as somebody who doesn't like to move a lot, I want my partner, my opponent to do all the work and I want to do very little. The gift wrap is a great way to force that to happen. Speaker 1: Yep. It it's pretty close to a game over position. If you get someone in a gift wrap, it's real hard for them to get out and recover. If I take top side control on someone, it's a great position, but there's still a very real chance they can get out of there. However, if I gift wrap them, I mean, that's dominant. That is really dominant. I'm not even sure how I would encourage someone to escape the gift wrap if they get stuck there. My main suggestion would be don't get there in the first place. It's a terrible position to wind up in. Speaker 2: Yeah, honestly, I don't, I'm sure somebody better than me has a a good way to escape the gift wrap. Once it's kind of set in, I don't have a great one. I give the same advice as you do. If you're in it, you're it's already too late. Don't get there. That's usually my answer as well. But the thing about it is because even if they start to move around, one of two things is gonna happen most of the time and I might be jumping ahead a little bit, but there are submission options that I like to do because I I love the gi. I mainly do the gi, so there are some cool choke options. And it just usually forces somebody to expose their back, which is what I want. And if we go back to the beginning of the year, back in February, there was a BJJ Mental Models camp at Princeton Jiu-Jitsu that I attended. And we were just kind of one of the sessions we were chat, it was fantastic by the way. If you haven't gone to a camp, I highly, highly recommend it. But in one of the sessions, we were just chatting about what our game plan is, how do we come up with the game plan, and if you're more experienced, how did you come up with it previously? And for me, it was always get to the back. I want back exposure. I want to set in rear naked, I want to set in bow and arrows, like those are the types of things that I like to do. And so, you start thinking of all these ways to access the back and create back exposure from positions where it might be traditionally more difficult to get to the back. The gift wrap is the answer for side control. It's that has been for me. It's gonna really open up that back exposure or they're gonna kind of stay pinned because they don't want to give their back, but by not giving their back, they're stuck flat and now you have them controlled in side control still. So it is very, very powerful for just a couple of those reasons. Speaker 1: Well said. Now, with the gift wrap, what are the indications to you that it's gift wrap time? What are you looking for where your opponent positions their body in such a way that it signals to you that now is the time to move to the gift wrap? Speaker 2: Anytime that they themselves cross the midline with that near arm, it's gift wrap time. And I will try to force it by doing a Kimura or an Americana from side control, top side control. Because most of the time, people are gonna reach over to defend their own arm, and that is my bait to get that gift wrap. They are reaching across for me. I don't have to use strength or effort to force their arm across. So that's a great time to do it. If you start playing around with some type of collar choke, uh, paper cutters or can opener chokes, people tend to do something to defend their neck. That's another great time to just kind of shuck their arm a little bit further across their midline or get control of it and uh, then you can start accessing the gift wrap from there. So those are the ways I typically do it. I'm sure somebody could just grab, you know, two on one and push the arm across, but you are really signaling to your partner what you're trying to do and it might be a little harder to set in because they're they're more aware of it and they might start, you know, panicking before they the trap is really set. Speaker 1: Well said. To me, the gift wrap really shines when your opponent goes into defensive mode on the bottom, especially bottom side control. You brought up a great example when they're defending a choke or an arm lock. Their reaction will often be to bring their arms in, maybe bring their hands up to protect their neck. And that gets them into the position either where you can just lock the gift wrap or if they're not quite there yet, you can maybe drive your chest into their arm to force it to the other side and then get the gift wrap. If you were to just try to force someone into a gift wrap, it might be too obvious and they might be able to time you. So, for those reasons, I think that you've got a good point. The gift wrap is something that comes up when your opponent gets their body into this particular position. That's when I like to do it, is when I see my opponent going for some sort of defense, meaning they're bringing their arms up and they're maybe they're trying to block their access to their neck, but basically their elbow comes off the ground and I can get my chest to their elbow. That's to me the sign that I like to do it. If I can get my chest to say the back of their tricep or their elbow, now I can use my own chest to drive into them and force their arm across their body and get the gift wrap. That's how I like to do it. If you were to sit there and try to force a gift wrap on someone when the timing isn't right, then yeah, it might be just a bit too obvious and they might be able to get their hand to the ground. They might even be able to use your energy to create space and escape. But such a common problem in Jiu-Jitsu is, hey, I got to side control, maybe I got to mount, and my opponent is just shelling up. They are doing what Rob Bernaki calls taking your ball and going home. So their their number one focus now is just, I'm gonna defend. You know, I'm just gonna sit here and I'm not gonna let you arm lock me or choke me. Beginners often get very frustrated when that happens because they're sitting there and they they want to get that arm bar or they want to get that cross collar choke and their opponent just won't let them do it. This is a good time to start thinking about switching to the gift wrap because when those arms come up, you can now start pushing or forcing that arm across their body with your chest, for instance. Once you lock them into that gift wrap position where their own arm is around their neck like a scarf, now it's a lot easier to go back to submissions if you want to do that. Speaker 2: Yeah, and using the the chest on the elbow, like on the tricep is a great anecdote, something I do all the time. When I go for my arm lock, I'm really going for that arm lock. It is not just like a, oh, look, I'm going for it. I'm I'm getting two on one because I need my partner to respect the threat of the submission. If they don't think the submission is real, they're probably not gonna defend it the way I want them to. So if I'm gonna create a dilemma, I'm gonna get two on one and there's a good chance that I get this submission or I really, you know, get deep into it and force a lot of energy for you to defend, or you're gonna bring that arm across for me. Either way, I get what I want. So I'm pretty happy with it. And then once they do bring that arm across, not only do I put my chest on their tricep to hold it there for that moment so I can grab their wrist, but once I do that, my chest is now gonna wedge under their shoulder because I don't want them to put their back flat on the mat anymore. So I use my chest now behind that shoulder blade to keep them on their side and again, one of two things is gonna happen. They're gonna stay put because they're going into that defensive, take their ball home type of thing, or they're gonna keep moving forward and rolling and give me the back that I really want actually. That's what I'm trying to get to the whole time. So I can again take steps to force the position I want and not really give my partner an opportunity to go anywhere else. Speaker 1: Yeah, when you take a position past the guard against someone, so side control or what have you, the person on the bottom at that point, they want their body to be at a 45 degree angle relative to the floor. Um, specifically what they want to avoid is being either directly parallel to the floor, meaning I got both my shoulders down, or I'm chest down. They want to avoid that. But they also want to avoid being 90 degrees perpendicular to the floor. Because the problem with doing that is it really exposes the top arm to attacks and even the neck. So you're right that when you start trying to attack that gift wrap, people will often try to change the angle of their body either to free that arm or make it less useful to attack for you. One of the good places where so many attacks come up is if you can force them to get perpendicular to the floor. And it can be hard to do that unless you put a wedge underneath them. You see the same thing with the uh, tea bag Kimura, where if when you start getting that, people will try to put their arm to the ground so that you can't twist behind their back. And that's why when you do that tea bag Kimura, you often use your own knee to wedge against their the back of their shoulder so they can't do that. Same thing often happens with the gift wrap where once you get this thing, the gift wrap is only workable if you have control of their elbow on the arm that you're gift wrapping. So, people might try to defend it by going shoulders down to the back down and then then putting their elbow onto the ground. If they can get elbow onto the ground, then your gift wrap is kind of weakened quite a bit, right? So that's why you use your chest against the elbow or the tricep. If you don't do that and they're able to put their elbow back to the ground, then you lose the gift wrap. Now the funny thing is if even and this is why I like the gift wrap, even if they do that, even if they put their elbow back to the ground, they're still in a really awful position. That's the beauty of it because like I just said, when you pass someone's guard, they now want their body to be 45 degrees to the floor. If they are parallel or perpendicular to the floor, they're gonna have a bad time. So if you go for that gift wrap and they try to defend by pinning themself, by putting both of their shoulders back on the mat so you can't get their arm, cool. You just pinned yourself in bottom side control. I might not have the gift wrap anymore, but I'm still in an amazing position. So, it's that beautiful dilemma that you talked about, right? Either we can play this gift wrap and I can take your back or arm lock you or whatever, or if you try to insist on pinning yourself, putting both of your shoulders back onto the mat so that you pin yourself and now I can't get that arm, cool. Now I've got you in a full chest to chest pin. That's also awesome. So win no matter what happens. Speaker 2: Yeah, and the nice thing about that is it's repeatable. They, I go for the gift wrap, they pin themselves by putting their shoulders flat on the mat, they get their elbow tight to themselves. Okay, well, now I'm gonna use my hips to trap that arm and I'm gonna re-attack that far side Kimura. And that's and now we're just gonna repeat the process. Are you gonna defend the submission and give me the gift wrap or are you gonna get submitted? And we just keep going back and forth and it costs me so little resources. It's not a lot of like mental load because I'm just doing the same two, three things back and forth over and over again. And it's very little effort physically because I'm just kind of switching my hips a little bit or I'm just wrapping my arm around their neck or across their body. I'm not doing a ton, but they have to work really hard to either get their shoulders back on the mat or explode up and away from me and that's gonna be super hard to do. So, if you again, you like to be lazy, you don't want to do much, maybe you had too much to eat around the holidays, I always do. The gift wrap is a great, it's a great thing to kind of play with and just kind of watch your partner's movements and where how they like to defend things because now that'll queue you in into what to do next. So you mentioned that they try to bring their elbows in and pin themselves. Well, that might be a good time to start setting up can opener chokes. If they, you know, you have that gift wrap and you're grabbing their wrist and they pull their hand out, well, maybe just grab their, you know, near side lapel and now you can start setting up some type of Hitman choke or bow and arrow or other other things. If you monitor their defenses and their reactions the first two times you try something, the third time's probably not gonna be very different and it might give you a really good insight into what your next step should be. If you can't go back to the gift wrap or if you want to again, set it up so that, oh, I know every time I do this, they pull their arm across, their neck is exposed, I can start setting up a Hitman choke or a bow and arrow or can opener or whatever it is. Speaker 1: Yeah. Another great thing about the gift wrap is it has incredible versatility. There's a lot of techniques in Jiu-Jitsu that only work in very specific contexts, in very specific situations, like maybe they're you've got to be much bigger or much smaller than your opponent or maybe you've got to be doing this in the gi. The gift wrap works everywhere. I have never sparred with someone who was too big to gift wrap. It always works. It does not require the gi at all. You could do it gi, no gi. It's effective under any rule set, including self-defense and MMA. In fact, one of the people that I know who loves the gift wrap and taught me some great details of it was Rafael Lovato Jr., who specifically uses it in an MMA context because if you mount someone, for example, and they shell up, if you gift wrap them, you can force them to turn over onto their belly. So now you've got back mount, right? Where they are belly down on the ground and you are mounted on top of their back. Terrible position to be in in Jiu-Jitsu and MMA. It is an incredible position because of all of that versatility. It doesn't require any attributes. You know, some of these figure four arm lock type things like the Kimura can be trickier for small people because especially in the gi, you've got to have some degree of strength if you want to maneuver the person's arm. You don't have to do that with the gift wrap because unlike with the Kimura, you're getting a figure four on their arm and you're not trying to twist their arm anywhere. You're just holding their arm in place where it is. You don't have to overwhelm them or overpower them past that point. So it is an incredibly versatile technique. It's also really easy to use and really simple and easy especially for beginners to just quickly pick up and adapt. And this is something that I'm really starting to think about a lot now recently. I um, heard Dave Camarillo talk a while ago about Judo in MMA and why you don't see much Judo in MMA. And the answer that he gave was like, look, you can make it work. You can do Judo in MMA. But the thing is, to get good enough at Judo that you can make it work in MMA, you're gonna need like a decade of practice. Whereas you can teach someone a basic single leg and double leg and get them pretty capable as a takedown person right off the bat, right? So I think there's something to be said about techniques that are low lift and easy for people to get immediate rewards with. And the gift wrap has got to be one of the best at that. You know, you can teach a day one white belt the gift wrap and they can start using it the same day. Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's it's low risk. What's the worst case scenario? You lose the gift wrap, you're still in side control. The absolute true worst case scenario is they escape your side control. But if they're able to escape your gift wrap and your side control, then they can probably just get out of your regular side control. So, not really a factor there. But again, if they get out of the gift wrap, there's really no harm. You're basically just where you were. So, it's really easy for people and for students to try it and practice it under resistance, on someone who's not cooperating. And that will give you really invaluable feedback and you get really good at it very, very fast. Speaker 1: Yeah. Now, what would you say are the most common responses that your opponent is gonna put up once you start trying to gift wrap them? And this is again, like I talked about earlier, this one's a little bit tricky because the gift wrap is actually a position where I don't have a good escape from it. If you get stuck in a gift wrap, you're kind of screwed. But I would like your perspective on what you think your opponent is likely to do when you try to gift wrap them just so that you can be ready for that. Speaker 2: My students know exactly what I'm gonna do, so my answer might be slightly biased in that way. Most people will just immediately try to pull their elbow out. They're gonna try to get their elbow to their ribs. It's doable if you're very strong or if I have a poor grip, but it's very hard to do. But that's usually the first thing they're gonna try to do is just kind of extract their elbow. The other thing that people tend to do that I want them to do because I'll give them a little nudge in that direction is they're gonna turn. They're gonna start turning away, expose their back to me. And I give them that nudge. The way I do it is I don't just hold their wrist when I have that gift wrap. I will try to advance it up to their elbow and now I have incredible leverage to force them to turn. And so they kind of have to go with it or want to go with it to relieve that tension and that will help expose their back. I never like to be the guy that like quotes Sun Tzu in the Art of War, but I'm going to more or less quote him. If you give your opponent an escape route, they will take it. And so if I allow them to go somewhere, they're probably going to do it. And if I know where they're gonna go, I can beat them there. So if I know if I grab that elbow and kind of start turning them or doing something to allow them to turn, they're probably gonna take it because it's just human nature. It's very easy to just jump straight on that back. But those are the two more common responses is elbow extraction or exposing the back. Some of my students kind of play that possum. They keep their hands really close to their neck because they know a punch choke is on the way, so they don't want that to happen. So they kind of just try to stay like you said on that 45, not let me get my free hand under their arms and into their neck. So they kind of just hang and wait for me to move a little bit and they try to find their opening based on where, you know, everyone's weight is shifted and where there's the least amount of tension. So sometimes I think doing nothing is actually the better response. And then maybe that's bad advice. I guess I don't have a great answer for once it's locked, but instead of panicking and trying to do all these things and wasting a ton of energy, just hang out. Hang out for a moment. See, kind of assess what they're trying to do, where they're trying to go, what's their free hand doing, where are they turning their weight, and that might give you an indication as to where they want you to go and you could not go there. You could try to do something else. Speaker 1: Yeah, very well said. Man, just touching on this again, it is such a hard position to fight out of because you are locked into this position where your arm is across your body and you're sort of forced to look away from your opponent. Again, people who listen to this podcast will know right away, we're talking about crossing the center, we're talking about breaking alignment, we're talking about dominant angles. You've basically locked your opponent into the bad end of all of those things. Conceptually, it's a very strong position. You're right that I think probably the thing that many people will do is like you said, they'll try to free their elbow because that kills the gift wrap. Probably the the easiest way to do that is again, like I said earlier, for them to try to pin themselves, which isn't the end of the world if they do that. People will sometimes try to turn away and give up their own back. I encourage this, right? That's often what you want them to do. I mean, it is possible if you overcommit your center of gravity that when they roll, you can wind up bonking your head on the mat or something because now they can force you to go with them. But other than that, you know, just be mindful of that. Generally, don't try to fall head first in Jiu-Jitsu. Avoid those positions, right? Speaker 2: That's good life advice in general. Don't hit your head on the floor. But that's why I keep my chest behind their shoulder blade because it's gonna it's like a good cue of attaching my chest to their shoulder blade. It's gonna be near impossible for me to get that overcommit and get my head across their center line where they can kind of reverse the position or force me to face plant, eat the mat. So that's something that I tell my students, you know, attach your chest to their shoulder blade and you'll never really have that problem. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a very good cue because especially with beginners, it's very common to see them overcommit when they're playing top side control. They lean too far forward and this opens up things like barrel roll escapes for the person on the bottom. And with the gift wrap, yeah, you're tethered onto them, but they're also tethered onto you. And if you give them your center of gravity, they can roll you over. Now, because the gift wrap is so dominant, if they roll, you can still just follow them and and stick on them and take their back. But because your hands are occupied, if you're leaning head first onto the mat, I mean, you might eat a shot to the head as your your head connects with the canvas. Generally, I discourage people from being in situations where they could be landing head first on the mat. So, you know, avoid that. But your cue is a great example. If you keep your chest behind their tricep or to the the back of their shoulder, then you're not gonna get into that position where you're leaning so far forward that you're gonna face plant. That's an important thing, especially if the person is bigger than you because if they're bigger than you, their body probably has, you know, much more circumference and that means if you try to roll over top of them, it's gonna be a bigger fall for you. So it is important, I think, to at least be mindful of that, but once you develop that awareness, it's super easy to stop that from happening. Speaker 2: Yeah, and the fun part about the gift wrap is we've talked about all these things that you can do to your partner and the the ways that you have these control points, but all of that is just with one hand. We still have a second free hand that we can kind of do whatever we want with. And that's what makes this so strong is that all of this control that we've talked about is just good body positioning and one arm. And now the second arm is, you know, that's where you're going for the finish or to really exert incredibly strong control. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, that's really the power of the gift wrap. Like when I think of the gift wrap, normally I use both my hands. I do the classic figure four gift wrap, but you don't have to. You can do it with one hand. And that's an amazing trade. Whenever you're trying to hold a position on someone, you always want to be thinking about, what is the trade value of this position? What am I giving up and what am I forcing my opponent to give up and who's getting the better deal out of this? This is important because sometimes you're committing, you know, one or both of your hands, but you're actually not getting much in exchange. And so it's technically a bad trade if your opponent has more than you do. You know, if you're committing both of your hands and you're not getting much control out of it and they can still move around, not a good grip. But with the gift wrap, even with just one hand, you can hold their own arm wrapped around their neck like a scarf. That is an amazing value to get for just committing one of your hands. I mean, I can't think of many situations in Jiu-Jitsu where you can commit just one of your limbs and get that much control for doing so. Normally, you have to commit your whole body to be able to hold someone in position like that, which I think is why the gift wrap is so important, right? I mean, if you want to hold someone in mount, for example, or back mount. Speaker 2: Yeah, you said mount, you know, I need my legs and my hips to cover their hips, to control their hips. My arms, I personally am usually trying to get under their elbows with my arms. Like it requires all of my body. Even something like you can think of any number of positions where you have two on one grips to create some type of disparity or polarity in, you know, to create a favorable position. Most of the time, I have to give more of myself to a smaller part of my opponent's body so that I can create an advantage. The gift wrap is the opposite. I get just one arm and I can control so much of their their body or essentially their half of their body with just one arm. I don't know of anything else that is as strong, like you said. Speaker 1: Let me ask you a kind of a a coaching question here to get your opinion. I don't know if there's a right answer on this, but I'd love to know your thoughts. So, there's been a lot of chatter around the community recently about fundamentals in Jiu-Jitsu and what what is a fundamental? What makes for a good fundamental? And I've heard a lot of different answers. I guess the traditional answer would be you carve out a handful of positions and techniques and we call these fundamentals. So at many classic gyms, that's gonna be things like closed guard would be considered a fundamental or the arm bar or the triangle. I actually challenge this approach to defining the fundamentals because it's completely arbitrary, right? I think that whatever we call fundamental should be something that is immediately useful to beginners and broadly applicable kind of across the board, right? Whereas a lot of the stuff that we teach beginners, so for example, the pendulum sweep or the scissor sweep, I would say that there are far easier, higher percentage ways to sweep someone than doing these. So I challenge people defining those as fundamentals. I've heard other people say that, you know, maybe fundamentals should not be techniques, but they should be concepts or ways of thinking. How do you think of fundamentals? And I ask because as we have this conversation, it really makes me think that maybe we should consider the gift wrap to be one of the most fundamental things we teach people because of how broadly applicable and easy it is. But I'd love your thoughts on kind of where this fits into the journey. Do you agree with me on this or do you have a different way of looking at what a fundamental technique would be? Speaker 2: No, I fall into the camp of fundamentals are probably closer to concepts. It can't be a fundamental if it's a niche aspect of the sport or of the martial art, right? That's that's just not what a fundamental is. So, the ability to pin somebody is a fundamental, but it's it's the concept. There's a bunch of different ways to do it and they the pins arise from all these different areas and scenarios. And the gift wrap is a way to pin somebody. So, I personally am a little bit more on the conceptual base if I can give you an idea of like, hey, cover their hips and shoulders. I don't care how you do it. That's that's how you pin somebody. Keep their back on the mat or stop the chest on the mat. Cover hips and shoulders and you have now pinned somebody. That is probably closer to a fundamental to me than explicitly showing somebody a traditional, you know, Jiu-Jitsu side control. Speaker 1: Yeah. I just think of the things that many people consider to be fundamentals and I I can just think of so many examples where those techniques don't apply or maybe there's caveats around them. So, as an example, if you consider closed guard to be a fundamental, I mean, okay, I can understand the argument, but I could also point out that with closed guard, there's a lot of situations where that's not gonna work so well for you. I mean, if you are giving up a lot of size to your opponent, it can be very hard to play closed guard effectively against someone who's much bigger than you and doesn't want to be there. A lot of other techniques, the cross collar choke, something that many people treat as a fundamental, that's pretty restrictive in terms of where you can use that. First of all, you have to have the gi and second, the cross collar choke, especially from the bottom, is quite limited in the fact that both of your opponent's arms are free. So, they can actually just punch you while you're trying to choke them. That's also not a great thing. But the gift wrap always works. I really struggle to think of a situation where I would tell someone, you don't want to do the gift wrap under this rule set or with this type of opponent. Can you even think of such a time when you would tell people like, don't use the gift wrap under these circumstances? Because to me, like regardless of size disparity, strength disparity, rule set, your focus, whatever, I mean, the gift wrap is pretty much always a good thing. I'm sure there's examples of when it's not, but I can't even think of one. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there's some crazy size difference where it's like, hey, you're not gonna be able to hold this gift wrap, like don't even bother trying to reach across their body. But those are, you know, those are outliers. I don't really, yeah, I don't know. I was trying to think of one as you asked the question because I I knew what question was coming, so I was trying to prep an answer and I, I don't really have one. Yeah, honestly, I think people should probably reformat their fundamentals to include the gift wrap. It's not something that had really crossed my mind as like gift wrap as a fundamental, but it does check a lot of the boxes of maintaining a dominant position, covering the hips and shoulders for pins, crossing somebody's arm against their, you know, their midline, you know, spine twisting or or taking somebody out of an athletic position, creating dilemmas, forcing better dominant positions like exposing the back or yeah, it kind of does everything pretty well. And so now I'm really starting to think that I think the gift wrap should be in everybody's, maybe not day one, but like week one, month one, definitely, fundamentals curriculum or or courses because it's it's super good. It's so good. Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean, if you can get a gift wrap on somebody, you don't need to finish them. It's such a powerful position that if you are, I mean, let's say this is a self-defense situation where you don't want to rip someone's arm off or choke them unconscious and cut off blood to their brain, right? Even in a self-defense situation, if you get a gift wrap on someone, you can just hold them there all day. I mean, there's really, I mean, I guess the only thing I could conceive of is if you're not careful, maybe they can bite your hand, but even then, I think that it would be very hard for someone to do that when you're twisting their own arm across their body, as long as you're aware that that's an option. So, I really think that as we talk about, you know, what we teach beginners, I want beginners to get stuff that they can start applying right away. And there's a few techniques that fall into those categories. One of them I'd say is the single leg takedown. Even more than the double leg takedown, I think the single leg is so versatile that we should really consider it to be like a base level fundamental technique because it is so broadly applicable. And I think the gift wrap is right up there as another one. I mean, I could argue against pretty much anything that people in Jiu-Jitsu call fundamentals. You know, if you wanted to say that an arm bar is a fundamental, yeah, okay, but it's also not easy to get an arm bar and you've got to have pretty decent control on someone before you can even reliably submit them. So there's a lot more you got to learn before you can start racking up arm bar wins. But a gift wrap, I mean, I could put my dad in a Jiu-Jitsu class on the first day, he's never trained a day in his life and show them a gift wrap and he could probably hold someone there without much training at all. So, I think that that class of technique, like basically true plug and play, you can use this anywhere, anytime, it's easy, it's low lift. I think that if we want to, I mean, if we consider tech fundamentals to be a form of techniques, which is again debatable, I think there's an argument to be made that the gift wrap is right up there. Speaker 2: Yeah, even conceptually, like I said, it it hits a lot of boxes of things you want in a roll or in a good position. I don't have to go down the laundry list again of all the things that I think it it does well, but it hits a lot of conceptual parts as well aside from just the technical aspect. But you mentioned self-defense and I want to touch on that for just a moment. The reason I really, a lot of my game plan or the the things I like to do in Jiu-Jitsu stem from a self-defense, MMA background. And the gift wrap is very, very strong. You said you might not want to hurt somebody. You might just want to restrain them until the cops get there or until somebody can break up whatever is happening. The gift wrap is super good for that and a a sneaky way of doing it. And this is something that my instructor, Professor Marcio Bittencourt has shown me and he's done to me, so I know it works because he's half my size and I I was fully 100% stuck. He got that gift wrap. And like I said, sometimes I'll move my point of control from the wrist up to the elbow and kind of encourage the person to turn belly down. But I force them to stay belly down with all of their weight on their own tricep. And then I can actually remove my own arm and if I can keep good forward pressure on the like between their shoulder blades, their arm is probably stuck. And now they are just kind of stuck with one arm trapped underneath them in a really uncomfortable position and both of my hands are free to do whatever it is I need. And it's um, it works, you know, obviously for sport grappling if you wanted to do that as well. You'll definitely build aura points if you just kind of hold your partner down with no hands. Nobody wants to be caught on camera like that, I'll tell you. But it is nice for self-defense as well. And if they do pull that again, the first thing somebody's gonna do when you try when you remove your own arm and now all that weight's on just their arm under their neck, they're gonna try to extract their arm. And the second they extract their arm, they're giving you all the space in the world to replace that that, you know, that gap with your own arm. And now you can finish a choke or you can threaten the choke in a self-defense. Hey, you have it locked, you don't have to apply it, but like, hey man, just take it easy. And if they start getting wild, you could just kind of give a little bit of a squeeze, let them know what's about to happen. If they don't calm down and they gave it to you. I didn't need to force it. I don't want to force anything. I really want you to be the one to give me what I want. I want all the effort on you. I want to be super lazy and I want to be fresh because in that self-defense scenario, even in a competition, there may be a moment where I need that energy for a really hard scramble. I might need that effort or that energy to put all my effort into a submission or a thing that I'm trying to do. And if I wasted all of it, trying to force your arm across your body or do something to hold you in place because I don't have good body positioning and I don't have the arm across the midline or all these things, I'm I might not have that energy to complete that scramble. And I know everybody's had that match defining scramble where they, you know, won or lost because they established a a dominant position after whatever happened. I want the energy for that and I don't want my opponent to. So if I could be super lazy and and not have to put a ton of effort into maintaining or advancing dominant positions, all the better. Speaker 1: I love how you brought up being able to hold or submit someone without using either of your arms. I mean, this is the real reason to become a black belt, right? It's not prestige or anything. It's because when you get to black belt, you can do ridiculous nonsense like submit people without using your hands. And that is really the true goal of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in my opinion. You're absolutely right though, to think of the gift wrap as this position that ties the other person out much more than it tires you out. It's a very asymmetric position in that way. And and I love these positions where your opponent has to spend an outsized amount of energy while you can just kind of sit there relaxing. There's a lot of positions that are very dominant, but they do require massive amounts of energy. I mean, for example, I would consider back control to be one of those. Obviously, it's a dominant position to be on someone's back. But it's effort. Yeah, it takes a lot of effort. And one of the downsides to being on someone's back is they don't have to spend that much energy to defend. So yes, it's a dominant position for you, but it also does require you to use energy. So you've got to actually work to finish that thing. On the other hand, some other positions require your opponent to spend much more energy than you. And these are always good positions. If you can make your opponent work harder than you, that kind of asymmetric effort really matters, right? Because then you're winning by just by default, right? The longer you stay in that position, the wider your victory becomes because they're burning through their stamina while you're not. Another thing about the gift wrap too that is so great is there's so many different types of attacks that you can do from there. It's hard for me to predict if you gift wrap me, what you're actually going to attack me with because you got so many options. And that matters. The harder it is for your opponent to predict what you're gonna do, the more likely it is that you're gonna succeed, not just because your intentions are a bit harder to read, but also because you've just got way more options. So, again, picking on back control again. I mean, obviously an incredible position, a super dominant position, but in addition to the fact that it takes a good amount of energy to maintain back control, the other downside is, especially in no gi, it's really obvious what kind of submission you're gonna try to go from there. I mean, yes, technically there are options. You can arm bar someone from their back, but I mean, we know what's gonna happen, right? If you get on my back, there's one submission you're gonna try to do on me in no gi and that's the rear naked choke. In the gi, there's maybe other options. You might go for a bow and arrow or something, but either way, I can narrow down the likely outcomes to a pretty small list. And that makes it pretty easy for me to defend your back attacks, even if you're really good at them because there's very little I have to do. I don't have to burn a ton of energy to protect myself when you're on my back and the likely options that you're gonna deploy are pretty minimal. The gift wrap is not like that. If you gift wrap me, I have no idea what you're gonna do to me. You could Kimura me, you could arm bar me, you could wrist lock me, you could even triangle me. Man, you can arm triangle me, you can Ezekiel choke me. There's so many things that you can do from there that in addition to the fact that this is a terrible position burning my energy, I also have to start trying to read like the future. What are you gonna do to me? I don't know. So that makes it way harder to defend from a position like that. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, 100% is all very true. As somebody who, like I said, actively seek out the back as my primary submission end point. One of my purple belts, Dom, who's who's also my closest friend, it's so hard for me to choke him. And even though I've been doing this for ten or whatever, how many years more than him, the defense to rear naked chokes is pretty easy. Now, you do get individuals like Andrew Tackett who start doing these arm in rear nakeds and they're fun to do. But like I said, the number of options, super, super small. That gift wrap, my number one, punch choke. I'm gonna look for it every single time because it's just it's a strong finish and nobody likes it. Nobody likes that punch choke. It's it's super uncomfortable. If you just get your your knuckles onto the opposite side of their trachea, onto their the blood vessels, the carotids, what are they supposed to do? Speaker 1: Well, the nice thing about that choke is whether you get the choke or not, they will definitely move. Like if you want to get them to move, especially to give up their back, you go for a punch choke from the gift wrap, they will definitely start moving their body to try to get out of that, right? So I think punch chokes are very underrated in Jiu-Jitsu. People often look at submissions and their their value just by finishing percentage. And I think that's a mistake because there's a lot of submissions where the value isn't just that you can end a fight with it, but it's that by forcing them to respect the threat, they go into a worse position. And that punch choke from the gift wrap is a great example like that. Even if you don't finish the punch choke, the value is still there. And again, super low risk. What are they gonna do? Are they gonna wrist lock you while you try to punch choke them, gift wrapping them? It's not gonna happen, right? You can do it all day long. There's no risk to you. Speaker 2: Yeah, and again, I could just keep working away, chipping away at this punch choke, which was one of the things you said. They're gonna be moving a ton. They're gonna be squirming and fidgeting trying to relieve this pressure on their neck. I don't have to do anything, but they're expending a ton of energy. So I just keep doing it and doing it and doing it until they get incredibly tired. And is it the most exciting Jiu-Jitsu to watch? No, but I'm not I'm not a competitive athlete. I don't get paid to put on shows and performances. I'm there to improve at the things that I like to do and the things that work best for me and my body and my capabilities. And obviously, teach my students to to do the same things for them and their bodies, but in my personal Jiu-Jitsu growth, that's all I'm trying to do. I'm not trying to make these big flashy movements and these crazy things. I just want to do the stuff that works for me. And the gift wrap does and the punch choke does and I'm gonna wear you down. That's all I want to do. Wear you down and eventually you're not gonna have the effort to fight off one of those other submissions where I maybe I do now jump the back for a bow and arrow. You don't have the energy to fight it or it's much easier for me to grip fight, win the grip fight because your arms are so tired from pulling at my arms, trying to defend. That's that's that's Jiu-Jitsu to me is is creating those kind of strong advantages and and disparities in effort. I forget who it was, but somebody who had come on the show kind of talked about stamina as like a health bar. And I want to keep my health bar super high and I want to slowly chip away at theirs. This way when the time comes and something has to happen, we got to make a movement. I have all the energy to attack and they have none to defend because attacking and and I was listening to something someone talk about like war game theory and offense needs to be three times stronger than defense in order to have an effect, to break through, to punch through. So, if I don't have the energy to make that attack because I've been using it to hold you down this whole time, it's very unlikely that I'll be successful. Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, people often say Jiu-Jitsu is like chess. Well, look, on the topic of games, I don't know about war games, but I do know about video games. And I'll tell you this, to me, Jiu-Jitsu is not like chess. It's like Dark Souls, right? You're gonna die. You're gonna die a lot. That's how you get better and you have to watch your stamina bar. If you run out of stamina, you can't fight effectively anymore. So you always have to watch your stamina bar. That's one of the most important lessons as you get more experienced in Jiu-Jitsu is regulating your own intensity so you don't burn yourself out, right? There's no athlete in the world who is so good that they have unlimited cardio. Speaker 2: No, and my students, you know, I can do four, five, six rounds in a row with all of them, you know, individually, uh, fresh, you know, I could shark tank myself with my students and come out of it not very tired if I'm trying and they look at me like it's magic. And it's like, no, man, I just know how to make you work a lot harder than me. And keep coming to class, keep learning, keep applying the things we're we're doing and and looking at these concepts and don't be afraid to fail. Don't be afraid to try it and the person gets out. That's important information. That's important feedback on how to improve it for the future. And that's again one of the reasons why I like the gift wrap because you go for an arm bar and you you mess it up, something happens, they escape. Now they're smashing you. And now you're probably in a really bad spot. So people might not be as inclined to attempt the arm bar on somebody who's resisting or in a in a real roll because the consequences of failure are much higher. There are no big consequences to failure for the gift wrap. They just aren't gift wrapped. There's a very strong chance that you maintain your dominant position. So it encourages people to try it over and over again. And you I guess said it however many minutes ago, you can get really good at it really fast because you apply it constantly against somebody who's, excuse me, resisting and not cooperating. Speaker 1: Yeah, well said, man. You know, something you mentioned earlier too was, you know, you don't care if your Jiu-Jitsu is flashy or exciting. I would say that in the case of the gift wrap, in terms of boxes it checks, it's even fun to watch. You know, there's a lot of stuff in Jiu-Jitsu that's not really fun to watch unless you really know what's going on. I mean, if you were to take a lay person and have them watch someone hold someone else in an inside Sankaku, it's gonna be boring. They got no idea what's going on. But when you see someone wrap someone else's own arm around their face like their little brother, right? It's hilarious. It's objectively hilarious to watch people have to deal with this. So I'd say even in terms of spectator friendliness, the gift wrap checks that box too. Speaker 2: You could be and this, you know, you didn't hear this from me, all right? Because I don't want to be blamed for anything. But when you get that gift wrap and you get them to turn just a little bit and you go into a neon belly and you put those that knee on their floating ribs while they're on their side. Speaker 1: Ooh. Speaker 2: It's brutal. I legitimately was debating with myself, should I even mention this because one, there's an opportunity for people to get hurt. You're putting a lot of weight on something that is pretty weak, floating ribs, not very strong historically. And you will definitely not make friends like that. But it's too good not to mention. Speaker 1: Well, man, especially for competition, right? That is an option. There's a lot of almost like a a torso twist that you can do to people from the gift wrap if they start turning away. Who is it? It was um, I think it was Omid Khorshidi, who's been on the podcast before and he talked about rinsing the spine and disrespecting the spine. And I I he said rinsing the spine. What does that mean? And he said the way he described it to me is like, think of your opponent's spine like a wet washcloth. And when you're grappling, you want to get the water out of it. What do you do with a a wet washcloth? You tighten it and you twist it to get the water out. Rinse their spine. And I thought, man, that is a a brutal way to think of how to bring someone's posture, but it's accurate, right? So many of the ways that we break posture alignment is by twisting the spine. And in this gift wrap, if the person is in a gift wrap and they start trying to turn away, like you said, you can kind of do a side knee ride on them where you dig your knee into the side of their ribs and ooh, it's not good. I mean, again, not gonna make you friends in the training room, but in competition, why not be aware that this thing exists? Speaker 2: Oh, if you get this and you really, and I mean really drive that knee into them, I wouldn't be surprised if you made people tap, whether they intentionally tap or they just kind of verbally tap by yelling. I won't be surprised whatsoever. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's great stuff. Well, Nick, I got to ask you here, you know, it is the holiday season and if people want to want to, I don't know, give the gift of the gift wrap, what are the resources that you would recommend? Do you have any favorite videos or courses or instructionals that come to top of mind on this stuff or do you think it's intuitive enough that most people can just play with it and figure it out? Speaker 2: Well, I was certainly not prepared for that question. I don't know of any must watches. I'm sure there are, like for all things Jiu-Jitsu, I'm sure something exists or a ton of incredible coaches and athletes out there who put out content. I'm sure there's somebody in the BJJ Mental Models community that is an expert in gift wraps as well. But I do think it's pretty intuitive. I think if you even if you've never seen it before, you could probably just YouTube it or Google it or ask the best answer is to ask a coach, hey, can you show me the gift wrap? Can you kind of show me a couple of submissions that work from there? And then workshop it into the things that you like to do. I think that's the best way to learn something is to integrate it into the way you like to approach Jiu-Jitsu and and uh, find how and where it fits in. But yeah, off the top of my head, I'm I'm struggling to think of something that I like, yeah, you gotta watch this. But who knows, maybe I'll put out a a video on Instagram for people to check out about it. That's not a bad idea. Speaker 1: I was gonna say, you should record something. I'll promote it and share it out and blast that out. Let's do it. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I'll I'll record something. I'll get something for the holidays. It'll be a thing. Speaker 1: Fantastic. Well, if people want to learn more about you, follow you or check out your gym, Nicholas, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 2: It's Dark Bear Jiu-Jitsu. You can find us on Instagram. We are always welcoming and a visitors. So if and there's actually been a few people who have listened to the last time I came on and was like, ooh, I want to go check out his gym and have come and they were all super, super nice. So, anytime somebody wants to stop by, we're always happy to have them. But Dark Bear Jiu-Jitsu is the best way to find us. Speaker 1: Fantastic, my friend. Well, I will put links to all of that in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. I'll also put a link to our stuff. We're also easy to find. It's all at bjjmentalmodels.com. We got tons of full length episodes like this, plus mini episodes that just cover individual concepts much more quickly. They're all completely free. Our newsletter is about 15,000 subscribers strong now, so you definitely want to get on that too. And again, all completely free. Where you want to level up with us, that's what BJJ Mental Models Premium is for. We got three different tiers there. The base tier, which is what most people are in, gives you access to the world's largest audio library of Jiu-Jitsu content on strategy, concepts, tactics and the like. If you like audio style courses, if you like more conceptual discussion, if you like Audible and Masterclass, this is the product for you. One of the most popular in the world for a reason. You can also go up to our coaching tiers if you want direct rolling reviews from some really elite level coaches. And you can even go to our pro tier if you want expanded coaching or if you want support on your business. If you're trying to get your business off the ground, we can probably provide some lightweight, easy, low effort on your part support to get that to happen. So please do consider checking all of that out. It's all at bjjmentalmodels.com. But again, I'll put a link to our stuff and also to Dark Bear Jiu-Jitsu in the show notes to make it easy for people to find. But Nicholas, man, thank you for doing this. Really fun, really topical conversation. Great holiday chat, great way to close out the year of 2025. Thank you so much for coming by and having this chat with me. Speaker 2: Oh, no, it was a pleasure. I always love talking Jiu-Jitsu, especially things that, you know, I I like to do. So it's uh, it was super fun. Thank you as always for having me and hoping to come back soon. Speaker 1: Love to have you back. And thank you to the listeners as well. It's been a a really weird year as everyone I'm sure can imagine, but everyone in the community has made it so much better for myself and for everyone else involved. Thank you so much for being part of the BJJ Mental Models community and we will talk to you soon. Happy holidays.