Ep. 356: Safer Jiu-Jitsu Competitions, feat. Dr. Jen Case

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 BJJ Mental Models.com and check it out today. Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 356. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach, and I'm here today with Dr. Jen Case. Jen, how's it going? Speaker 2: I'm doing great. Thank you for having me. Speaker 1: Happy to have you. You're actually here as a community recommendation, and as we were chatting, you brought up a really good, timely topic of conversation here. It's probably worth unpacking, but before we dig into that, why don't you give everyone just a quick intro, tell them about who you are and what your work looks like. Speaker 2: So, I am Dr. Jen Case. On the Instagram, you'll find me under Dr. Jen Jiu-Jitsu. I'm a PhD, not an MD. My PhD is in nutrition and human performance. When I actually did my dissertation, I looked at the use of higher protein diets as an alternative to weight cutting, and I worked with the All Army Combatives team, and I helped those athletes make weight without going through semi-dangerous or completely dangerous water cutting practices that we've all seen wrestlers go through. So, I basically was able to show with my research that there is an alternative, and you'll get better results because my athletes did not lose any muscle, whereas the athletes that were doing the traditional weight cutting methods, they were losing performance parameters. So, that's my schooling background. I also have a Master's in Sports Studies, Bachelor's in Athletic Training, Graduate Certificate in Dietetics, and I'm also a certified specialist in sports dietetics. On the athletics side, I've been doing Jiu-Jitsu for 24 years now. I'm a black belt under Renato Tavares. I'll be up for my third degree at the end of the year. I've won IBJJF Master Worlds 13 times now, and also won Pans and International Masters. On the No-Gi side, I did do No-Gi on a whim last year, and I took third at the ADCC West Coast Trials. So, that's me. Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, thank you for coming by here, and that is a good segue into the topic at hand. We had been discussing a few different ideas that we could explore here on this conversation, and there's maybe some others that we could actually park and have you back on at some point in the future to discuss. But a very timely and relevant one is the current state of competition, Jiu-Jitsu competition, and the safety around it. This episode is being recorded on August 14th, 2025. We've got a bunch of episodes in the bank, so this one is not going to go live for a bit. But as of this recording, there was just an incident where someone passed away at an IBJJF tournament, which is getting a lot of coverage, understandably, because this is not something that happens often. It's very much a nightmare scenario in our sport. And even before this news broke, you had discussed the desire to talk about competition safety and some of the problems with how we compete in Jiu-Jitsu and why it can sometimes be more dangerous than we would ideally want it to be. It's a fascinating topic because ultimately this is a combat sport. There will always be some degree of danger around it, but that said, I have felt for a long time that the Jiu-Jitsu community is way too cavalier about the risk of injury and harm that can happen in these competitions. But before I go off on a rant here, I'll turn it over to you. Why don't you set the table for how we want to attack this problem? Speaker 2: So, I think, so for me the big thing that's really on my mind right now is the adolescence, and when I say adolescence, I'm meaning individuals under the age of 16 that are competing in the adult brackets. That's a really big concern, especially on both the male and female side. For me personally, obviously, I really hate seeing it on the female side because there's going to be a catastrophic injury, and that catastrophic injury is going to negatively impact the sport, which is really, it's sad to see one because you don't want to see anyone get hurt that bad, but also the sport is finally really growing on the female side. In the past decade, it's exploded, and if we have something like this occur and then Jiu-Jitsu falls into a negative light, it's going to really cut down on how many young ladies start to do Jiu-Jitsu, and in my opinion, it's going to make their lives horrible because life without Jiu-Jitsu is just bad. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. So, what have your experiences been like in this regard? What have you seen as kind of some of the problems that come up at tournaments and how widespread would you say these problems are? Speaker 2: Yeah, so, so far this year, I've done two tournaments. I ended up having to compete against teenagers, 13, 14-year-olds, and one of them, she was actually, she'd gone through puberty, so she had kind of a more of an adult build, but mentally, when I talked to her afterwards, she was still a child. I mean, an adolescent, like she was still figuring things out, and that's a big problem right there is that you are asking children, or adolescents, to make decisions in a split second as far as tapping goes that adults can fail to make fast enough and end up getting hurt. So, that that's a concern. And then what I experienced is myself rolling with these individuals, one of them, I ended up putting her to sleep. And, you know, I didn't do anything wrong, I just had the choke, and there was no one there to tap for her, and she did not tap soon enough. So, she went to sleep. Another one of the young ladies I went against, I was just doing a pretzel pass, and she did not release her closed guard and ended up getting her spine kind of twisted up, and she was holding ice to it throughout the rest of the day, so she had injured her spine. Because again, they don't know when to tap, and then at the adult division, there's no one there to call it for them, and that safety parameter that is really needed is no longer there, and that's the most concerning thing for me. Speaker 1: So, how does this even wind up happening? I mean, you've won over a dozen world championships across your career, and you're getting paired up in divisions with literal children. I mean, how does that actually wind up happening? You would think, like you mentioned, that at some point, someone would have looked at this and said, well, we can't run this event this way. Speaker 2: Yeah, so, it's been happening on the No-Gi side. And since I did only Gi for over a decade, and it was only last year and this year that I've started jumping back in to do No-Gi just for a little change up, and that's when I'm seeing it occur is in the on the No-Gi side. And it's in the advanced bracket. I don't, obviously, I can't compete in the lower two brackets, so I don't know on the beginner and intermediate how bad it is, but in the advanced bracket, even when the rules state that you have to be 16 or older to be in this bracket, they're still allowing the adolescents in, and it's it's worrisome. Speaker 1: To what extent is that the responsibility of parents? I'm just thinking as the parent of a child myself, right? If my kid wanted to enter a Jiu-Jitsu tournament, and due to divisional restrictions or not having enough competitors, they put her in there with someone who has been competing for decades at an elite world championship level, I would be extremely concerned just from a safety perspective, because I know how wrong things can go in competition. I just wonder, do parents understand the risk that they're putting their children in when they put them in that position, or do they think this is going to be just like rolling in the gym where it's all fun and games? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a big part of it is that they don't realize how dangerous potentially it could be. You know, because it is different when you're at a tournament versus when you're in the gym. When you're at a tournament, you're going much more intense. For me personally, I don't have the whole mentality of kill, kill, kill. Like I still see it as a game and I'm going to treat it as a game and follow the rules and that sort of thing. But you get the other, you get some athletes that get in there and this is literally their job. And so for them, it is much more important that they win because their livelihood depends on it. And I completely understand the intensity level that they need to go at because it is their job, it is their profession. And so they're going to go as hard as possible, and that is not what happens in the gym, right? Because when you're training, you take care of your training partner. If you don't have a training partner, you don't get to train. In a tournament, you don't take care of your opponent. That's not what a tournament is. You're out there to win, and you may have a different reason for winning, but at the end of the day, they're trying to win, and so the safety of their opponent is no longer a concern. And I don't know if parents, especially if you're not a Jiu-Jitsu practitioner yourself, I don't know if they realize the level of intensity that occurs at a tournament versus what occurs when you're in the gym. And myself personally, speaking with one of the parents of the adolescent I went against, I don't think they understood the severity of which an injury occurring to their child could be. Because when I started to talk to them about some of the different injuries she could have sustained, they kind of just were blank-faced. They didn't understand at all what I was talking about. Speaker 1: Hmm. Now, you and I had discussed this a little bit before we hit record, but maybe explain some of those risks just so that people know, especially parents out there or maybe youth athletes who are listening to this. What are the kind of injury risks that we would be especially concerned about for minors when they compete in these tournaments? Speaker 2: So, I'm going to first talk about potential connective tissue problems and then bones. So, connective tissue, as you're growing and going through puberty and your growth spurts and whatnot, your connective tissue has got a lot of give to it. It's got a lot of fluid in there because it needs, the fluid is what's going to help that tissue to mature and grow into fully formed tissue in your adult body, and it's got a lot of give because you're growing and it needs to be able to adjust to those growths. The problem is, is that puts a lot of laxity in your joint, right? So, you see these kids and you're like, oh, they're so flexible. It's like, no, no, no. It's not that they're flexible, it's that that joint has just got so much fluid and give to it that it's going to move around quite a bit. And the problem is, you can twist it, and these connective tissue that the kids have, because they're still forming, they're not nearly as thick as ours. So, it's going to twist around more, and it's also going to tear a lot easier because it's still forming and it's not nearly as thick and developed as ours is. And so, they get put in a shoulder lock, or they get put in an ankle lock or whatever it may be, and yes, they can go through a big range of motion that our aging shoulders cannot because they don't have those pain receptors. But as it goes through that full range of motion, it's going to get stretched and torn a lot easier and a lot faster than ours will because they're not realizing that everything is getting so tight because their tissue is still developing and there's all that laxity in it. So, that's a big concern there is that they're going to try and bend every which way, and it's just going to tear. And when it tears, yes, you can have surgery, you can get it repaired, but the thing is, is once you've done that to a joint, you increase the arthritis that's going to develop in the joint, and you just kind of set yourself up for having long-term just aches, pains, irritability within that joint. And when, you know, I'm 40 years old, and I don't even want to tap in my body, but you do that when you're 14 years old, that's like 70, 80 years of now having to deal with just an arthritic shoulder and all these problems that are going to come from it because you got twisted up and didn't quite understand what was going to happen when it got to the extreme. So, that's the fear on the connective tissue side. And the same thing, tendons, muscles, all of the connective tissue, all the soft, soft, stretchy tissue. That's what I'm referring to there. So, that's a concern. On the bone side, this is where it really gets scary. If you or I were to break a long bone, so that's, you know, the bones in your forearm, a bone in your upper arm, your tibia, fibula, all of those, if you and I break it, it just is a clean break. So, it's just straight through. Usually, it's just a clean break if you don't tap soon enough. When you're an adolescent and still developing, when that break occurs in a long bone, rather than being a nice smooth break that will easily fuse back together in six to eight weeks, they get greenstick fractures because the bone is still growing. It's not nearly as calcified as yours and I's are. So, instead of getting a clean break, they get splinters, like when you take a branch off a tree and you bend it, the splinters, that's the same thing that can happen within their long bone, and that's that's a worse injury than what we would endure, and it's going to take longer to heal if it heals properly. Also, within the long bones, at the beginning and end of your long bones, you have growth plates. And if a break occurs in that growth plate while you're still developing, that growth plate as it heals, it's going to completely calcify and close off, and it's going to close off early, which means that long bone is going to stop growing while the rest of you continues to grow. And so you could end up having a limb discrepancy in your arms. If you end up breaking the tibia, right? Someone puts an ankle lock on or something or, you know, whatever happens, and that bone gets broken through the growth plate, it can cause a leg length discrepancy, which is then going to cause problems throughout all of the joints in your lower extremity. And this is happening when they're, you know, 13, 14, 15 years old, and they've got a whole lifetime now of dealing with that. Speaker 1: Interesting, because this kind of flies in the face of a lot of the voodoo science that maybe a lot of people in Jiu-Jitsu believe. I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. Many many of the bits of wisdom that you will hear in Jiu-Jitsu that people will pass around are actually not rooted in anything science-based or evidence-based, but it's more just, well, my instructor told me this and he learned it from his instructor, and so that's just the way that it is. I mean, the example that I always make fun of is, I'm sure you have heard this when people say, well, if your elbow pops, it's only a problem if it pops three times. If it pops once, it's okay, but if it pops three times, that's when you got an issue. Have you heard that BS before? Speaker 2: Yeah, oh yeah. Yeah, I've heard stuff. And my favorite is whenever somebody pops a knee, and they're like, oh, if you can walk on it, it's fine. No, I blew out my entire knee. Everything but my MCL. I blew my ACL, PCL, LCL, and pulled the meniscus completely off the bone. I could still walk on it, but each time I walked, my tibia was sliding every which way because there was nothing left. So, yeah, that idea of, oh, if you could still move it, you're fine. No, no, no, not necessarily. Speaker 1: So, I bring this up because one of the pieces of conventional wisdom in Jiu-Jitsu I've heard many times is, oh, kids are resilient. Injuries aren't as big a deal with children because they'll just bounce back from everything. And what you're kind of explaining here is that that is actually not the case. I mean, they might have a wider range of motion just because again, they don't have those pain receptors and and their joints haven't fully developed yet, but that doesn't mean you should bend them backwards and tie them into a pretzel. It's definitely not good for them or okay for them if I'm understanding properly. Speaker 2: Yeah. Kids are resilient. I will, I'm not arguing that, but resilient in that, you know, if they fall down, they're going to get back up. There's a difference between your joints, you know, having cushioning, so when you fall over because you're still learning your movement patterns, and someone trying to take your joint and completely bend it the wrong way. That's not a resiliency that these kiddos have. The body is not meant to do that. Speaker 1: Do you feel that there is a difference in injury culture between Gi and No-Gi? Because you mentioned earlier that you first observed this personally as a problem when you got into No-Gi. Do you think there's a cultural difference between these two variants of the sport, or do you think it's just chance that that happened? Speaker 2: There is a difference between Gi and No-Gi. And I, you know, please no one take offense on either side. Both Gi and No-Gi are fun to compete in, but they are very different. In the Gi side of things, it's a lot more technical, so you have a lot more focus on techniques and precision and the artistry of Jiu-Jitsu. And on the No-Gi side, it's much more athletic. So, there is more of a focus on explosiveness and just general athleticism and aggression and all of these things, and not so much on finesse like you see in Gi Jiu-Jitsu. And so, I think because there it is a little bit more aggressive, more kind of the grrr type sport, you're going to see more injuries because, you know, that's just how it is. As you're coming at someone aggressively and you're really attacking a joint, and you got to slap the submissions on fast because people are so slippery, they're going to get out. And it's because of those kind of the need to hit things quickly and aggressively, it's kind of a perfect storm for an injury to happen. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. I think too, there might also be an argument to be made that the competition scene in the Gi is much more mature. I don't have data to back that up, but it does feel like the IBJJF has had kind of a long time to really get things, I don't want to say right, but they've had a long time to refine the rule sets and how they run tournaments, and they're clearly still not perfect by any stretch. I mean, in a lot of ways, Jiu-Jitsu still is this weird backwater fringe sport. It really isn't as popular as it sometimes it feels like it is when you're in the thick of it. But at least the IBJJF, especially in the Gi, has had time to kind of refine that. And, you know, for all the talk about is the Gi dead? Well, at this point in time, the Gi is still way more popular than No-Gi in terms of the number of people who train it. And that's not to say that anything is wrong with No-Gi, but just in terms of maturity, the Gi kind of has a head start there. Whereas the rise of No-Gi has been a relatively recent thing, and I wonder if maybe it is still just a few steps behind in terms of sport development versus where the Gi is. Speaker 2: Yeah, I completely agree with you that, you know, with the IBJJF being a long-standing organization, they definitely have honed in on what they expect from their athletes and what they will and will not tolerate. And so, I think that kind of stops a lot of the rabble-rousing, if you will, that you see on the No-Gi side, and that kind of takes out some of the aggressiveness. And with the maturity that you were talking about, I completely agree with that as well because with the Gi, that is literally a sport you can do for a lifetime, right? We got Master's Worlds coming up at the end of August, and you will literally see 70-year-olds still out there doing Jiu-Jitsu, going through the moves. They may use their cane. I exaggerate, but I've seen people walk up to the table with their cane, put the cane down, and go out and move around like they were still spry as they used to be. So, with the Gi, you do see a lot older individuals doing it, so you get kind of more of that maturity and the mindset of this is just a game, we're just having fun, we don't need to, you know, do anything crazy. We can do proper technique and trick our opponent into doing something silly so we win. We don't have to force a technique. We can just wait till they fall into the trap versus on the No-Gi side, it is younger individuals, and they are trying to make a life, an income, a job out of it, if you will. So, they're going to be a lot more aggressive because that's literally their meal ticket, and they're still growing up. Even, you know, I can think back to my 20s and 30s, you're still growing up, you're still finding yourself, so you still have a lot of a lot to prove and a lot of aggression and that sort of thing, and it's going to come out on the mat. And when you're in the heat of competition, it can be a very emotional experience, and you start to get amped up and stuff happens. Speaker 1: Yeah. And I mean, that is not to say that the Gi is all sunshine and rainbows either. I know a lot of people have completely jacked up their hands and their fingers from training in the Gi. And I specifically altered my game to prevent that from happening because it's very easy to get very grippy in the Gi. And next thing you know, you've got the hands of a 70-year-old person when you're 20 years old, which is not desirable either. So, that's not to let the Gi off the hook too much, but it does feel like at least some of the the kinks have been worked out there. And this actually makes me wonder, do people have the right perception of what Jiu-Jitsu is as a sport? I mean, for a lot of people, they get into Jiu-Jitsu because of how it's marketed and what they believe it will do for them. Craig Jones once said that Jiu-Jitsu has ruined a lot more lives than it saved, right? In response to the whole Jiu-Jitsu saved my life mantra. And I think he was probably joking a bit when he said that, but there is definitely a kernel of truth to that. I know a lot of people, and I've heard many stories of people who got into Jiu-Jitsu because they wanted to improve the quality of their life and get in shape and build confidence. And what they got instead was a vertebral fracture after two months of training, right? So, can we really claim that Jiu-Jitsu is improving the quality of people's lives when they're having those experiences very early on in their journey? And again, kids competition is a perfect example of this, right? Parents, if you listen to the marketing behind Jiu-Jitsu, it will only be sold to you in the context of the positives. Here's the things that you should put your kid into Jiu-Jitsu because of all of these reasons. And one of the reasons that people often bring up is safety, right? They will say, well, compared to American football or compared to kickboxing, Jiu-Jitsu is going to be safer. And I would intuitively think that's probably true, but that's not to say it's safe. And especially early in your journey, all of us, just due to inexperience, are prone to stupid injuries early in our journey because we don't know better, especially if you're a minor, because you don't have that mental maturity in addition to not having the fight maturity, the experience on the mats. What are your thoughts on this in terms of how we serve the public when we sell them Jiu-Jitsu, and is it really more dangerous maybe than we make people think it actually is? Like, are we are we overselling it and are we failing to disclose the risks? Speaker 2: I do, I think how it is marketed is impacting how people perform Jiu-Jitsu. I came up through traditional martial arts, and so when I started Jiu-Jitsu, I had more of the structure kind of from the traditional martial arts background. But right now, what we're seeing a lot of is people trying to equate Jiu-Jitsu, particularly the No-Gi Jiu-Jitsu, to MMA and to like, this is a real fight, this is, you know, to the death. And it's like, it's not. This is a sport. This is a sport that has rules, and you're supposed to follow those rules. And you're not supposed to sneak in dirty punches, and you're not, you know, trying to hurt your opponent when the ref is not looking. Follow the rule set. Learn the techniques. This is not life or death. This is a game. And I wish there was more focus on the fact that this is a game. This is a series of moves that you are learning, trying to put together in a way that it works for you so that you can get them to, you know, work in a tournament, work while you're training, that sort of thing. Jiu-Jitsu should be a cognitive endeavor as well as a physical endeavor. And if you're just coming at it like a bull in a china shop and just trying to crank things because you don't know what's going on, you're not approaching the sport correctly. And I think a lot of that comes from how we, you know, are are saying that the No-Gi is, you know, these big fights and super fights and all things like that instead of calling them matches because they it's just a match, it's just a game. It's about, it's, you know, that sort of thing. And then it's the gym culture. What is your gym stressing? Like, you know, in my gym, in the various gyms that I've kind of been at, I've been real lucky in my Jiu-Jitsu career. I've only had one bad gym experience. But what does your gym promote? Is your gym promoting the idea of learn the techniques? You know, don't use your strength right away. Learn the technique. Once you've learned the technique, then you can put your own pizzazz on it by going quickly or by using some strength or using your flexibility to get an upper hand. But initially, you got to learn the technique. But if your gym is not focused on learning technique, if it's only focused on winning, then that's when you're really going to be setting people up for injuries because they're not learning how to protect themselves by moving in the right movement pattern to safely execute whatever it is they're trying to do. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a good point. I mean, we often sell Jiu-Jitsu as this fight sport or fighting system, which it it is, but I mean, honestly, at the end of the day, it's a fighting system without strikes, and you can't slam your opponent, and you can't put your finger inside their sleeves, right? Like, there's a lot of restrictions on it. So, to really call it a fight, I think, is a bit disingenuous sometimes. And I think absolutely it sends the wrong message. If people think they're fighting, then they're going to do whatever they can to win, and they're also going to do whatever they can to avoid losing. And again, you mentioned this yourself very well, but one of the the red flags in gym culture is that focus on winning and losing in the gym. And you can kind of see this in a lot of instructors where they're walking around and they're trying to figure out who in the training room is winning and who's losing. And I'm like, God, there should be no wins and losses in the training room, right? The training room is a laboratory, a workshop where collaboratively we learn together. And the challenge is, if you take all your white belts and you convince them that, hey, this is a fight, this this is Fight Club and you are Edward Norton and you got to go in there and beat up all of these accountants or whoever you're rolling with, right? You set the expectation that the goal of being in that training room is to win, and having to tap out is a fail state. You do that, and a variety of challenges occur. One of them, of course, is the increased risk of injury, but also you get a lot of false positives where people might think, man, I'm amazing at Jiu-Jitsu, when really they're just big at Jiu-Jitsu. You know, they're they're just younger and stronger than everyone else, and those people will eventually hit a ceiling. You also run the risk of driving off a lot of people because if they're not naturally big or strong, and, you know, when they come in, they're going to be heavily discouraged because this is just going to be a meathead game instead of a technique game. And that doesn't even get into the fact that, you know, there's going to be a lot of people who saw your brochure or your ad, and they were sold that this is a place where they can learn to be the best, most confident version of themselves and get in shape. And so that, you know, mother of three shows up to class and immediately gets stacked on her neck and has to spend a week in the hospital, right? This is not, I think, in line with the vision of the sport. Something that one of my old coaches once said is that his number one goal in Jiu-Jitsu was to give people the benefits of the Jiu-Jitsu lifestyle and get them up to, you know, ideally black belt, but, you know, even purple belt would be good. You know, get them deep into their journey so that they can get the health benefits of this without getting catastrophically injured or hurt in a way that violates the spirit of that goal. And I would generally say that for most people, for the vast majority of people who train, if you are racking up serious injuries that cripple you, cost you time, cost you money, I mean, no matter how much you love Jiu-Jitsu, I don't know if it's really serving your life well if it's taking that kind of toll on you, especially if you just do this for fun, right? It's one thing if you are a world-class athlete and you are making a an educated decision that I am willing to let this person snap my ankle if it means that I can keep the match going. It's another thing if you're just a blue belt who's just rolling at the gym, right? It's a completely different experience. And I think that one of the best ways that we can serve the Jiu-Jitsu community is reducing the injury rate at white and blue belt especially. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, because, you know, and this kind of goes more into my background as a fitness coach. But the thing is, is when somebody gets hurt, the chances of them returning to whatever it may be, whether it's Jiu-Jitsu, CrossFit, you know, Orange Theory, whatever it is that they've decided to do as an adult for their recreational activity, if they get injured, the chances of them returning is very low. And then when they don't return to activity, they become more sedentary, which then just causes a whole downward spiral for their health and well-being as they get older. So, when you do get somebody in the gym, I think it's important that you take care of them. Now, it's not to say I'm going to coddle everybody and be their best friend, but if you are coming to the gym and you are willing to learn, and you're like, I want to try out this crazy sport with people sweating on my face, show me what it is. I think it's our responsibility as gym owners, as upper belts, as people who have been in the sport for a long time, to take care of them, to show them how to do things properly, to ensure that they are doing the techniques properly, to call them out. You know, if you see somebody that is getting out of control, you don't have to be a jerk, you don't have to call them names, you don't have to, you know, do any of that. I really do not like that when that occurs when you see it on Instagram when people are like just razzing and just just being mean to be mean to the new belts. Like, we were all there. We screwed up. When I screwed up, the internet wasn't around, so nobody could make fun of me. But it is important that when you see someone who's a little out of control to be like, hey, hey, let's calm down, let's dial back the strength, let's focus on technique, and maybe walk them through whatever technique they're trying to do because obviously they're messing up the technique somewhere if they're having to rely on going spazzy crazy to get it done. Speaker 1: I would ask just at a general level, in terms of what we'd like to see, and let's maybe break this into two parts. Let's talk about changes in the gym culture and also changes in the competition culture. Maybe starting first with the gym. What are some of the things based on your experience, both as an experienced Jiu-Jitsu practitioner and competitor, but also your experience in the sciences. What would you suggest that you would like to see get adopted into gyms from a cultural or even an an educational or training standpoint to make things safer for everybody? Speaker 2: I think the biggest thing would uh to see the upper belts tap so that the lower belts know it's totally cool to tap. And then to really emphasize the need to try new things, right? Because I have my A-game. I have my competition game, and when it's time to get ready for a competition, that's what I'm going to focus on. But I'm also a 24-year black belt, so or nine-year black belt, 24 years in the sport. When somebody's brand new in the sport, they need to know it's okay to try new things, and most importantly, it's okay to fail. And that's where I see that upper belts getting tapped by lower belts is a great thing. And, you know, whenever the other students see that occur, it shows them that everybody fails, they're going to fail, and it's okay. Embrace the failure. I don't think tapping is a failure, but for the purposes of this this analogy, right? Embrace the failure, figure out what you need to do, get better, right? And then take that mindset out into your world, right? Whatever your job is, try it. Attempt something in your job that you didn't think you could achieve before. Strive for it. Maybe you get it, maybe you fail. If you fail, it's okay. Failure happens. Brush yourself off, try again, right? And I think that the accepting that you're not going to be perfect, accepting that you're going to make mistakes, and that it's okay, will go a long way in reducing kind of that that risk of of injury, that mentality of win at all costs, that I can't lose type mentality because I think that's a lot of it too. It's not so much the I have to win as it is the I can't lose that's going to result in a lot of injury. Speaker 1: That's a a good point. It's funny timing. I just actually uh shot a a mini episode talking about loss aversion. And this is very much a piece of this, right? The fear of losing is so massive even when there's no stakes on the line, even when you're in the gym. And honestly, I don't think the belt system helps that much because when you are the black belt or the brown belt and they are a white or blue belt, the ego gets in the way of tapping. I mean, they could be a white belt who just happens to be an NCAA Division 1 wrestler, and you're still not going to want to tap to them because of the stupid belt. So, it's something to think about. The approach that I found really helpful is a gamified approach that Rob Bernacki from Island Top Team advertises, and he adopted it from Ryan Hall. And basically the idea is, regardless of the skill level of your training partner, to go as deep into trouble with them as possible and fight from there, to the point where you are legitimately actually threatened, rather than just styling on somebody. Because if if your expectation as the senior belt is you're just going to style on everyone, then, I don't know, when that blue belt does actually catch you in a toe hold, you're going to be too embarrassed to tap. So, the smart thing to do is normalize tapping to lower belts and less experienced people as soon as possible. And the way that you do that is by playing the version of the game where you go deep into their zone. So, I mean, there's a a guy that I train with. He's uh he's probably much more advanced now. I've actually been off the mats for a while because I'm rehabbing an injury. But when I would train with him, I mean, I would go as far into the deep waters as I could. So, I remember the last time I rolled with him, I was in his guard and I kind of let one arm dangle, right? So, basically I'm like giving him the arm bar, whatever setup, and I wanted to see what he would do. He tried to set up an arm bar. He didn't have it. So, I thought, okay, well, I'm going to turn to like an omoplata angle a bit and I'm just going to sit here and see what happens. And it's always funny to do this to white belts because they get they get so confused, right? Because you're a black belt and they're like, how am I getting this on this guy? But, you know, and then I let him kind of work. And I give him, I'm resisting. I'm just not trying to kill him, but I'm trying to make this marginally difficult for him. And I kind of get to the point, I just let him keep moving forward until it gets to the point where I feel like, okay, I'm actually in real trouble here, and now I'll start fighting. You know, it got to the point where he had me in a fully locked in omoplata and he's posturing up, and I'm thinking, okay, now is the time for me to start actually trying to escape here. And I couldn't, so I tapped, right? And like, that should be totally fine because if you're going deep into their area of strength and out of your area of strength, if you're putting yourself into the worst possible case, first of all, at that point it should be totally acceptable to tap. But also, as a black belt, that's how you get the best value out of training with the juniors, right? If I just play my A-game on them and blitz them in 10 seconds, nobody learns anything. But if I let them get to the point where now I'm actually threatened, and that might mean like they start on your back with a rear naked choke locked in, well, now we're actually both getting some degree of valid training because they have a chance, and I actually have to work. Um that's a much better alternative than one person just breakdancing on top of the other person and making them feel bad. Speaker 2: Absolutely. I totally agree. I think it's good too. I have kind of a funny story. I don't remember if I was a brown or a purple belt, but I was I was something, thought I was great, and I was going against a white belt, and it did not matter to me that this white belt was 6'4", I think he was around 230, 240, very athletic male. I was just like, this was when I was at the school, the one bad school I was at where it was like, you have to win. The upper belt always has to win. And anyway, so he catches me in uh the lapel trap around my sleeve in the guard, passes the guard, paper cutters me, and I had to tap because I had no way to defend. And I was so mad. I yelled at that kid. He ended up actually leaving the gym that day. I don't blame him because he's like, oh no, I I might have even been a black belt. I don't remember. Anyway, he was upset, I was upset, and I realized I was absolutely in the wrong. He did a great technique. I was so focused on not losing that I was mad at him, and I exploded. And I ended I found him later that evening because we were at a a tournament and talked to him and apologized and all of that. I say that because now I have stolen that technique from that guy and I use it all the time successfully. So, I think it's really important to roll with everyone and let them, like, don't let them, but like, learn from them, right? Explore, what are they doing? If they put you in a bad position, like, you know, when you're trying to escape that omoplata and you realize you can't, was it because you got too deep, or was it because they figured out something that's slightly different that works really well? And if it works really well, steal it from them and put it into your game. Speaker 1: Absolutely, absolutely. Sometimes uh white and blue belts have the best realizations in Jiu-Jitsu because they're coming at everything from the point of curiosity. It's all new and novel, and they'll question stuff. You know, they'll think, oh, what if I try this? What if I try this? Whereas I find once you get to brown and black belt, it's easy to get really rigid in your thinking and to be like, well, according to Danaher, at the highest levels, this is the optimal way to execute the arm bar, and so you just do that. Um and that's that's all well and good, but it can also prevent you from being exploratory. And I love training with, you know, white or blue belts because sometimes they'll challenge you and they'll say, why are you doing that, Steve? Like, why are you putting your hand here? And I'll think about it and I'll realize, I don't fucking know. That's just that's just the way I've always been doing it. I don't know if there's any reason. Maybe I shouldn't be doing it. I'm glad you brought that up. Now I have to think about this. Speaker 2: Yeah, I get that all the time when I'm teaching my ladies because I'll do things and not even realize. That's how I got I realized how much I use my head because I just do it without thinking about it too much. But then once I started teaching the ladies competition class and I'm trying to teach them the same things that I've gotten to work in competition, and then they start asking me, why am I doing this with my head or that? And I'm like, I don't know, was I? I have to go back through the move and see what I was doing because I don't even realize it. But it's great because then they draw attention to it and I realize how effective it is, and then I apply it even more. Speaker 1: Yeah. The head is highly underrated. I've said for a while that, you know, the big difference between a white and like a blue or a purple belt is when you get to blue belt especially, you start to learn how to coordinate your arms and legs together. White belts suck at this. They're always trying to just fight with their hands and they're forgetting what their legs are doing. Then when you get to like black belt or maybe late brown belt, you start using your arms, your legs, and your head. You realize I've got this kind of giant wedge, this big cinder block that I can use almost like a third arm to just pin people where they are or drive it into the side of their face. I think that's why when new people roll with brown or black belts, it just feels so much more vicious than when they're rolling with lower belts. It's because they're probably not used to having someone drive their head into your jaw, right? That's a very unpleasant experience. So, I guess another thing I wanted to get your opinion on. Any aspects of gym or Jiu-Jitsu culture that you think need to change? And I'll bring this up because there's one that I have heard my whole Jiu-Jitsu journey that I'm pushing back on pretty hard, and that is people saying you should never tap from position. I I've heard very good coaches say this, like, don't tap from position. It's not valid. Well, Gordon Ryan is tapping some of the best black belts in the world from position, right? It it absolutely is valid. But my bigger concern is safety, right? If someone is having a health crisis, like a heart attack or something on the mats, you don't want them to be like, well, I can't tap now because I'm not in a submission, right? You should be able to tap for any reason whatsoever, right down to, I'm just not feeling the vibe today. Like, if that's one of the most sacred things in Jiu-Jitsu is, you should be able to tap for any reason whatsoever, and the tap should always be respected. So, I'm a big believer, we do our teams a disservice by telling them things like, don't tap from position. Anything else about the Jiu-Jitsu culture or zeitgeist or the way that people explain things that you think we should push back on? Speaker 2: Yeah, I 100% agree. I don't think that phrase, you should never tap, should be said. You should never feel bad about tapping, right? Especially when I I've worked with a lot of ladies in Jiu-Jitsu and in the self-defense setting, and for some of them, they just get claustrophobic. Like, something has happened in their past where when they get into a position where someone is in their face, right? They're not in any physical pain, but emotionally they just can't take it. They need to tap. They need a minute. And I think that is absolutely fine. You're a tap, you've said, okay, you win, I can't do this. And I don't think they should be razz, I don't think anyone should be harassed about it. If you tap, you tap, move on, right? I think should be allowed to tap anytime, but shouldn't never be seen as a bad thing. So, yeah, complete agreement there with you on that. And I I think also, and I don't know how to do this, you know, throughout the whole Jiu-Jitsu community, but I wish there was more of a feeling of, let's all learn together, right? Because sometimes there's gyms that won't even let you cross-train. It's like, no, no, no, this is our sect, only us, you can only learn the technique here, you know, and this it's very segregated from the rest of the group, and that kind of starts to build a wall. And then when you go to a tournament, you're like, these guys are horrible, you know, blah, blah, blah, I must destroy them. Whereas if we could just like realize that this school is really good and they have their positive attributes, and this school is really good and they have their positive attributes. And on Saturdays, it's open mat, and we can cross-train, and we can come together as an actual community and learn from each other and share the knowledge and share the sport rather than feeling like we've got to be butting heads at all times. Speaker 1: Yeah. I love that. It's something that I I know a friend of the show Brennan Strumpel, he's the head instructor at Rochester Phoenix Martial Arts. He talked about this on the podcast with us and said that when he organizes tournaments, especially kids tournaments, he tries to make them bigger events than just the fighting in the matches, right? So, beyond just the matches, they expand upon that. They'll have a party afterwards, right? Maybe they'll go out for pizza, or they'll watch a movie or do something something else that kids would enjoy, right? So, the idea is, this is not some sort of like death match where all of the kids go and beat the hell out of each other and then it's over. This is part of a broader event where we all get together and socialize as friends, and part of that is we practice Jiu-Jitsu and we train and we compete against each other. But that's just part of it. Then we go to the water slides after or something like that. I don't know if you could float something exactly like that with adults, but I think it would be awesome if, you know, after granted, it's hard to do in a competition where you've got hundreds of attendees, but if afterwards people would go out for pizza or something or get together. I know people do that as a team, which is great. But to be inclusive of the other teams as well so that you don't other them and create this like us versus them, you know, foe rivalry enemy thing. I could see that being helpful, especially at beginner levels. It's not as bad once you get to, you know, purple, brown, black belt, and you're experienced enough in the sport that you've got perspective. But man, it's really easy to lead white and blue belts astray, especially. They buy hard into the Jiu-Jitsu culture. You know, they get a Jiu-Jitsu-pilled very, very easily, and it takes a while to kind of deprogram them from that. So, I think the idea of instituting that, hey, this is a friendly competitive game mindset is key to improving the safety profile of the sport. Speaker 2: Yeah, and Chuy, he's kind of doing that with his Jiu-Jitsu tournaments because he'll have the tournament one day, and then the next day he usually has a seminar in that same area. So, then you can come together after the tournament and learn from him and, you know, ask questions and that sort of thing. So, he is starting to do that with adults. Granted, if he did a pizza party, that'd be amazing. I would totally go. Speaker 1: But I didn't even think about it until you said that. He is helping to kind of bring the community together even more by the day after the tournament, let's have a non-aggressive gathering where we get together and we share Jiu-Jitsu. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: You know what? I might actually uh reach out to Chuy and get him back on the podcast to talk about that because that's a great idea, right? It takes the combativeness out of Jiu-Jitsu. We're not not really out of it, but it deprioritizes that in favor of looking at it as a sport, right? Because if you go and you get your ass kicked by someone, and then the next day, you go to a seminar and they teach you how they did it, that's kind of awesome, right? I would love that. If after an experience like that, I could go and maybe consult with that person and learn from them about how they did that. This is an amazing exchange of knowledge. And so if that's something he's doing, that's really cool. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Well, thanks a lot for this, Jen. As we tie this up, I just want to ask any closing thoughts or last words here on the safety side of Jiu-Jitsu that we didn't get to talk about yet? Speaker 2: I did have one. Yeah. It's okay to say no. If someone asks you to roll and you don't feel that you can safely roll with them, it's okay to say no. And on the flip side, if someone says that they don't want to roll with you, don't take it personally. Because, you know, there's there's some people at my gym that are really good Jiu-Jitsu athletes, and some days I may roll with them, some days I may not. Some of them I may never roll with, and it's not necessarily because they're a bad person or anything like that. It may be that our sizes are just too far apart for me to safely roll with them. My risk of injury is too great, and I just is I can't do it. It's it's it's not a reward risk type deal that I'm willing to engage in. However, if everybody at the gym is saying, no, I don't want to roll with you, maybe there's something about your game you need to work on. But don't be afraid to say no. I tell that to all the newbies that come in, the ladies that I work with. It's okay to say no. If there's someone that you don't feel comfortable rolling with, say no. It's okay. Speaker 1: Yeah. No is a complete sentence, as uh my friend Rob Bernacki would say. And I think that's important, right? It it's hard to say no if you feel like you need to defend that decision, but you require no defense. There's no argument to be made. If someone says no to a roll, the answer is no, and you move on, right? I mean, don't make it awkward, don't make it weird. We all say no for different reasons, right? People say no to me sometimes, not because of anything I'm doing wrong necessarily, but because my entire Jiu-Jitsu game is basically just turtle and memes. And sometimes people want to actually, you know, do real training, and they don't want to train with some guy who's just going to goof off for the whole round. That's fair. So, it it's always okay to say no for any reason, right? No is a complete sentence. Speaker 2: Absolutely. Speaker 1: Well, Jen, as we tie this up, I always want to make sure that we get a chance to promote your stuff. If people want to follow you or connect with you to ask questions, or if they want to learn more about your coaching and the other stuff that you do, where can they find that? Speaker 2: They can go to Dr. Jen Case.com. They can go to Dr. Jen Jiu-Jitsu. On Instagram, it's Dr. Jen Jiu-Jitsu, and on YouTube, it's Dr. Jen Jiu-Jitsu. Or just do a road trip, come to Charlotte Jiu-Jitsu and jump on the mats. That's the best way to get to know me. Speaker 1: Amazing. Well, I will put all of those links in the show notes. Probably pretty easy for people to remember the name here and find you, but if they're like me and they have the memory of a hummingbird, uh just pop open your podcast player and go to notes or info or whatever it's called, and I'll make sure that all of that stuff is just one click away. I'll also put a link to our stuff, which all lives at BJJ Mental Models.com. So, it's pretty easy to find. In terms of the free goodies, the podcast like this is completely free, which is great news for anyone who's interested in more conversations like this. Our newsletter and our mini episodes are also all completely free, and they all live there. So, please do grab those if nothing else. And I, of course, I always tell people go to BJJ Mental Models Premium if you want to level up with us. What we've built is the world's largest library of audio courses on Jiu-Jitsu strategy, concepts, tactics, all of that kind of stuff. If you like Audible and Masterclass, you'll probably like our approach. It's quite different from a traditional Jiu-Jitsu instructional approach because we tend not to rely on visuals. We tend to communicate through ideas, which often adds another flavor or lens on top of the instruction that people are already getting. We've also got amazing other benefits of joining like premium podcasts that are only available there. And we actually do rolling reviews and coaching as well as pro business support if you go up to our our coaching or our business tiers. So, please do look into that. That is how we support the show and keep it ad-free. All of that is at BJJ Mental Models.com. But again, link in the show notes to that and to all of your stuff, Jen. Thank you so much for doing this. I thought this is a really insightful chat and I appreciate you sharing your expertise on the matter. Speaker 2: Oh, thank you for having me. Speaker 1: All right. Well, thanks a lot to you and thanks to the listeners as well. Stay safe out there as we talk about injuries. Tap early, tap often, don't be afraid to say no, and we'll talk to you next week.