Ep. 354: How Goals Evolve, feat. Thomas Rozdzynski

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 Jijitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jijitsu, 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. Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 354. I'm Steve Quan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jijitsu approach, and I'm rolling again with my friend Thomas Rozinski. Thomas, how's it going, man? Speaker 3: Steve, good to hear you, good to hear from you, good to be on the show again. Speaker 2: Happy to have you back, sir. Now, you are no stranger to this podcast, but it's been a while, so why don't you go ahead and just give yourself a quick intro just so that people remember what you're all about. Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, my Jujitsu journey has started in uh 2000, around year 2000, uh starting with Carson Gracie Senior. So, going deep roots of Carson Gracie, that's where we started and over time it has evolved in various directions and today I have an academy in suburbs of Chicago, running uh kids and adult program here and there's a lot of passion behind all of this. So, again, thanks for having me on the show, having this chat. Speaker 2: Always happy to have you, my friend. Now, last time you were on here, we talked about how to maximize student success at your gym. And this is always kind of a tricky conversation because there's two sides to this coin. There is what the student can and should do, and there's also what the coach can and should do. And those two things are obviously very related, but they're not always the same. What I thought would be a good topic today based on our chatter beforehand was maybe talking about student goal setting and perhaps most importantly, how those goals can change over time. When you are new to Jijitsu, when you're a white or a blue belt, you may not have been through this process yet where your goals have evolved and become fluid. But for anyone who trains for an extended period of time in the sport, they will see their goals adjust and change as they age, as they take on other life responsibilities, as they get more experience in the sport. And that's a journey that we all go through. The only people who don't go through that journey are the people who quit. So, I would maybe turn this over to you as a guy who runs a a pretty successful academy. What does that look like from your perspective? I mean, is there kind of a generalization of how you see the student evolution of goals or is it something that's completely different for every individual person? Speaker 3: I think it's a tricky topic, all of this. And it boils down to the simple fact that we are all different humans and we are different individuals, we have different personalities and we have different objectives really why we join Jijitsu and why we want to learn Jijitsu. So, identifying some of these things for a student early on, I think it really sets them on a path of success. However, I do agree with you that having active conversation with the coach or instructor or professor, whomever is guiding that path is is extremely important. So, it is a two-way street in a sense of coach, instructor is providing the tools and the vehicle and the path perhaps in which the student might be taking this. However, a lot of those actions and what needs to be executed does fall into the student. So, working together is is really important. Now, as I mentioned a second ago, identifying what our objectives are is really, really important. So, I would say most people join Jijitsu to lose weight, to perhaps be healthy or maybe learn self-defense. Those are the, I think the main things that people start Jijitsu. Now, as time goes on, those things typically change. So, this is where we get really into Jijitsu itself and we we start into achieve certain objectives and trying to achieve certain goals and who establishes those goals is really important. As we continue growing, those goals will change, they will adjust, even take take different pivot points. So, really continuously thinking what I'm trying to get out of this is really important. And for somebody who's been training for a month, you know, maybe five months, it's going to be very different than somebody who's been training for three years or five years or seven years. So, I think all these things identifying them and just having a broad conversation with yourself and with your coaches or instructors is is important. Speaker 2: Yeah, that's well said, especially the part about having that conversation, which I think is probably not done nearly enough in the sport. It really feels like for most people who start Jijitsu, they just drop in and start training. And there isn't really an upfront conversation about, hey, why are you here? In fact, when I started training, they didn't even really give me much of a primer on what Jijitsu actually was or why you would train this versus other martial arts. I had already done some research on my own, but generally the goal there was, let's get a ghee on this guy, let's throw him into the the class, give him his free trial and see if he sticks around. And he'll figure it out or he won't. And I really wish in retrospect that there had been more time put on discussing goals. Why are you here? How can we make this a successful experience for you? Here are the kinds of things that you should know before you start a what is really an intimidating and scary martial art like Jijitsu. That kind of information tends not to be provided. Again, when I started out, I had not put a ton of thought into my goals beyond just what I really wanted in the next few months. And the longer I trained, the more I realized that my goals evolved and took on a very different shape over time. Maybe that's something that you can talk about. I'd love to know personally how your Jijitsu goals have evolved and changed, going back to your white belt days and how that's changed to where you are now. Obviously very different, but what is your journey look like from a goal setting perspective? Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree with you, Steve. When I was starting, there was no such thing as goal setting or even a conversation. You kind of signed up and you kind of showed up and if you didn't, nobody even thought twice about it. So, very different environment, you know, 25 years ago than what we see today. But again, I think we are smarter today and and I think as this vehicle of Jijitsu continues evolving, we have an opportunity to impact people. And we often talk about it, how can I do more with less, you know, and this these are the opportunities where we can understand how we can evolve this from a student perspective. How can student or what can student do to really make this better? And you're right, when I was starting, there was none of this. I showed up and my journey is interesting, at the same time very similar to many others out there. I was overweight, I call it fluffy Thomas, and you know, working out was not an objective. And I honestly, I didn't join Jijitsu to lose weight per se, that was not the goal necessarily, not something I was hunting, but the weight came off. It came off by itself and then it became this healthy obsession of of just being healthy and and and I got into running, which really helped me with the conditioning factor and just being fit and being engaged into active lifestyle as the Jijitsu continued. But then goals changed. Like I I think even we look at this and many many I think can relate to this out there right now as they are starting, maybe maybe first week is this week and or maybe they've been on the mat for a month or two. Jijitsu is a physical activity and we do get tired. Whether we like it or not, we do get tired. We move, we exercise, is it active. So, the way how our body reacts to it, the first week or first month is very different than how our body will react to it a month from now. So, having the same approach, mental and physical, it's probably unrealistic. So, setting specific goals that we can achieve certain things and keep that in mind and being smart about it, being intentional about what we do and how we do it, I think is important. So, and similar to my story, my goals have changed. And you know, after a year, things were different, my body was different, I was different, I was thinking differently, you know, and then time went on and then a blue belt came along and things like competition or even training, the amount of training that I was doing has changed because the circumstances have changed, my body has changed, I have changed, the Jijitsu has changed me. So, and as this went on, things have adjusted and they continue adjusting and to this day, again, 25 years later, like things are still changing. So, it is a very much so fluid approach and it should be as such. We should continue evaluating it just like we need to do in life. Speaker 2: When I started Jijitsu, like I presume many people, I started with goals that were maybe a little bit short-term. And when I say short-term, I mean they were the kind of goals that would keep me occupied for a year or two. So, learning how to defend yourself, maybe get into a little bit better shape, build a bit of confidence, that kind of thing. And those types of goals are often very important for getting people in the door, but if you want people to stick around, there has to be a progression path that will keep them motivated and keep them interested beyond the point where those goals stop having as much value as they used to. So, for example, learning to defend yourself. I mean, cool, once you get to blue belt, you probably have a pretty decent handle on that. Of course, you can always be better. But for most people, for their goals, if their goal is learn how to defend yourself, blue belt's probably good enough for most day-to-day use cases, right? So, what then keeps you invested and interested? Well, some people will go down the route of competition, and that's great if that's your thing. But everyone is going to age out of serious competition eventually. I mean, yes, you can still compete into your later years for sure, but competition is in many ways a young person's game and you're not likely going to be a full-time pro competitor when you're 50 years old. So, again, these are things that you age out of. Also, just the changing life circumstances of growing up, having kids, getting married, taking on more career responsibilities, all of these things change the relationship that you have with what might have otherwise been considered a hobby. So, in the case of, you know, my life in Jijitsu, I started this as a hobby and when I took on Jijitsu, I wasn't married, I didn't have kids. It was a lot easier for me to just live in the gym if it was what I chose to do with my free time. So, I did. These days though, I have a lot less free time. It's a lot harder to just invest heavily in as much Jijitsu time as I used to. So, my relationship with it has to change because of the other things that have happened in my life. And that's been kind of an interesting side of my journey is evolving beyond just kind of these small, shorter-term goals, like I want to learn to defend myself, into kind of more longer-term goals about, okay, what kind of contribution can I give back to this community, right? And this is a very common path. I'm sure you've experienced this as well where people when they start Jijitsu, they've got kind of these small personal goals, but if they hang around to black belt, usually by that point, they're talking about like what's my legacy? You know, how can I build something that will live beyond me? That kind of stuff. And I find that to be one of the patterns that I you generally see with goals over time. Is they kind of get bigger and more amorphous and more about community and less about you personally as you get older. At least that's been what I've observed. Speaker 3: You know, I I would agree with you 100%. I think more more skill we gain and typically we'll do that as we continue training, then I think we start seeing the opportunity to impact others with it. And then gives us this feeling of being useful, being impactful and paying back to the community for all the things that they the community has done to us or training partners or whoever's on the mat in the training room. I think those opportunities take place. I I would often encourage students to actually think about how you can contribute earlier. We don't have to wait until the black belt to be a leader. In fact, leadership comes in many shapes and sizes. Like we we don't have to be an instructor to help others. Now, you know, we have a certain skill, certain amount of experience and certain amount of things that happened around us that we've witnessed and sharing that with people who are just starting, with the students who are just starting, could make a huge impact on them. And I think a lot of that didn't exist back then in the day in the day. I think today the community and guys and girls that we surround ourselves with are by far more open-minded and and I think that's why the impact is being made in such a great way. Speaker 2: Yeah, very well said, man. I should clarify that when I talk about belts, I kind of just use the white, blue, purple, brown, black belt line as as a generally understood time frame. This is not to say that people who are earlier on in their journey can't have these lofty community-oriented goals. In fact, to your point, I think they probably should. I am a a big believer that people should start teaching and communicating about Jijitsu as soon as possible. I don't believe in this whole thing about how like only black belts or brown belts can teach. I think that's really damaging to both the teachers and the students. So, when I talk about belts, I'm mostly just giving a time frame, right? So, when we say blue belt, we can assume someone who's been training two or three years. When we say black belt, we can assume someone who's been training 10 plus years. But I have observed kind of that general trend of these goals kind of becoming bigger and loftier as as time goes on. And I think part of that is just because you'll eventually outgrow the the purpose and the time frame of those short-term goals that you set individually. Now, you mentioned earlier that this is a practice student should get into and this is an area where many coaches honestly fail their students. They don't really have these goal setting sessions. And I mean, there's still this joke about how, you know, beginners, white belts, you barely even know who they are, you don't even bother learning their names until they get to blue belt, right? And I I think that's a really crappy attitude in a lot of ways, but it's one that's still very prevalent in Jijitsu. There are just so many new white belts coming in the door that many coaches will mostly disregard them until they have an idea of who's going to stick around. I personally believe that's the exact opposite approach that you should take. I think that you should try to create an environment where everyone feels like there's a reason for them to stick around, rather than just waiting to see who survives. But I bring this up because I don't know many people who sit down with students and actually have that goal setting conversation or explain to them what Jijitsu is and what the pros and cons are and what to expect to get out of it. At your academy, how do you guys do that? So, if a new white belt walks in the door and you're trying to suss out whether this is a person who you can help, what would that goal setting conversation look like and when do you do it? Speaker 3: First, let's take a step back for a second. I I think it's important to acknowledge that this is a difficult conversation. It's a difficult conversation for a few reasons. One is from a student perspective, and approaching a black belt or an instructor or even a higher belt, let's just say brown belt who's teaching a class, it could be very intimidating. Just asking questions, what should I do? What is my next step? Hey, can I ask you? Like, these are very difficult conversations for many people. I think martial arts in general, but Jijitsu specifically, it is a very intimidating environment. Like we are putting ourselves in compromise positions and for somebody who hasn't done it at all, this is brand new time for them with room full of complete strangers. That is intimidating, that is difficult. So, acknowledging that is really important. But also the other side of all of this, for an instructor who has 200, 300, 400, 500 students, touching every single new person who comes in is not easy. Like I think there is there has to be systemized way how we can, one, make ourselves approachable as instructors, but two, give students the freedom to ask questions. And I think both of them could improve in today's Jijitsu. There are many academies who do this very, very nicely and very well, but there are some who don't. So, I think this is where the conversation starts. Now, once the door is open in a sense of, let's have this conversation, I think it's really boils down to a lot of times to simply building a rapport with the student. And same thing with the from the student to the instructor. I think it's as much as important for student to understand what is expected of the student to complete, to achieve certain goals. I think it's also important that student understand what the instructor expects for, you know, for for them to move on, for them to be successful. I think it is a two-way street. And I'm not sure, I don't know, Steve, what do you think? Do you feel that there's a two-way street between student and instructor in general terms in Jijitsu? Speaker 2: Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, part of Jijitsu is just learning how to do the chokes and the arm locks, right? But beyond that, you have to be in a room where your coach is able and willing to accommodate your goals. And they might not be because different gyms have different focuses. I mean, if you wanted to be a full-time pro competitor and your gym just didn't have the network and the training accommodations to make that happen because they target more of a a casual family environment, you've got to sort that out. I mean, that doesn't mean you can't train with them, maybe that's a good place to get started or maybe you can train there in combination with other places, but at some point, you have to have that conversation about goals and getting on the same page. And it's not just a one-way street because I mean, like you said, there's no guarantee that the the coach is the best person to provide all of the answers and all of the solutions for the students. In many cases, the student may be better suited going somewhere else. And it's okay to have that conversation, right? I mean, if someone wanted to be a UFC or an MMA fighter, I would tell them like I am not the person to train you. That is not my experience in the sport and it's not something that I'm equipped to do. And I could refer people to maybe gyms that do want to do that stuff. And the sooner you have that conversation, probably the better. I think the challenge though is that many coaches either put off having that conversation or they just don't. Maybe just because there's so many people coming in the door and you know how Jijitsu coaches are, they they hate doing the sales process. It tends not to be a strong skill amongst a lot of Jijitsu coaches, so it kind of gets neglected. But I really do think that two-way conversation that you talked about is super important for getting the students and the and the coach on the same page and to create an agreement that yes, this is a partnership that's going to work. Speaker 3: I couldn't agree more. I mean, it is a conversation. I think that's the important part. It's a conversation. It's not a monologue of one-way street, right? We need to understand each other. And I think this gets more complex when we have more students and more instructors. Because now every instructor has to be accessible and every instructor has to talk to each other about what the students need and what they do. So, like one of the things that we we do in in my academy is that we have a chat opportunity when we can connect, you know, in a written form outside of off the mat and we talk about different students. Oh, so and so came up and they brought up this, this is point of struggle for them. So, if you run into that person, you know, just make sure that there's a point of awareness. This is what they are looking for. An open conversation between all the coaches to accommodate students, I think is important too. Like this is what creates this productive environment, right? And students feel welcome, they feel included, they feel as they are part of something bigger and ultimately, they feel that they we care. And I think that's important and at the same time difficult to find. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. I would guess for most coaches, if you sat them down and had them go one by one through every student in their gym and explain, what is this person's goals? Do you know what this person's goals are and why they're here? I'm guessing most coaches probably couldn't answer those questions. They probably don't know what the goals are of everyone in the room because they never had those conversations or maybe those conversations are out of date. Maybe the last time they had that was years ago and they're no longer in tune with what the student's goals are. And that's not to say that every gym absolutely must do this. I mean, there's a lot of gyms where the coach really takes very little interest in the goals of the students and they still manage to succeed. But if you want to maximize student retention and engagement and enjoyment, you're probably best off trying to get on the same page with your students about what their goals are. I think part of the challenge there is just the sheer volume of it. This is a lot easier to do if you have 10 students than if you've got 100. How do you deal with that at a certain scale? Because you guys have have grown to a pretty fair size. I'm guessing it's hard to just keep in your head, you know, out of all of the students, here are their their names and their goals and their timelines. You mentioned that you've got kind of like a back channel chat, but do you have any more formal way of tracking this stuff as well? Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, we track everything in our attendance system. So, everything from notes, specific desires that students might have, their attendance, their specific skills they are trying to achieve. All that is being tracked, you know, I personally make notes on specific students that I engage with and really make an effort to have more personal approach. But I think also there is a fine line between formalizing this and making this very system-like. But there is the opposite side of this is simply know your students. Like I understand that memorizing 500 different names is not easy. I do think that engaging with every student and try to get to know them. Oh, Leo, you were, you know, what are you doing? This is what you do for living. You have a family, you have kids, you know, you just had a birthday. Well, happy birthday to them. Like making little notes here and there and really understanding who people are, I think that's huge. But I think often times that's what's referred to as community in in Jijitsu. There's this fine line of us being friends, but at the same time, us providing a quality service to the students. And the reality is that instructor won't be able to remember everybody. I mean, that's that's that's the truth. Whether anybody likes it or not, that's the reality. However, we can be approachable, we can be engaging, we can show that we care and finding ways of allowing students to succeed and putting them in a point of success. I think that's really what wins and allows the people to feel included. Speaker 2: Yeah. One of the weird things about Jijitsu is that all of our training is done on the mats in the training room, but all of the goals that we would want to achieve through Jijitsu happen off the mats, outside of the training room. You know, if you want to learn self-defense, well, you're not going to use that in the training room. You're going to train in the training room, but you're never going to use it there. If you want to compete, you know, you won't probably be having those competitions in your gym. You're going to be doing that somewhere else. If you want to lose weight, again, that's something that really benefits the rest of your life. If you want to gain confidence, that's something that you carry with you everywhere. So, it's this weird thing where we train in a training room, but the results of those goals will be realized elsewhere. And I think that can make it difficult sometimes for coaches to keep track of this stuff because they don't just see it in the room. I mean, someone might be getting marginally better at Jijitsu or they might be working on some weaknesses in their techniques, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're moving towards the goals that they came here to solve for. I'd love to get your thoughts on that because that seems to me to be one of the biggest obstacles to making coaches really in tune with student goals, just the fact that they don't realize those goals in their training room. Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the difficult part, I think. But not necessarily limited to Jijitsu only. I mean, I I think the similar we can find similar examples in other sports, other activities where we there is an environment in which we train, but the skills get converted or visible outside of this. But again, this is where I'm going to bring this into this having a cohesive conversation with the students, you know, like if Bobby Joe is training and we are focusing on self-defense and managing the distance and protecting our head, you know, and obviously, yes, we cannot monitor what Bobby Joe does when they leave the facility. However, we can engage and say, hey, Bobby Joe, how are things going? How is this going? I remember this is what you worked on last last week or, you know, two days ago, you know, how is there improvement? Where are we going with what we have established as as part of the work that was supposed to be done? And and the feedback will give us a guidance. So, I think it doesn't have to be formal and it doesn't have to be like we are tracking every single thing. But I think the error comes in or the disconnect, I should say, comes in when we don't talk. Bobby Joe comes in, okay, here's the next class, here's another two or three techniques that we'll do. Okay, see you tomorrow. See you tomorrow. And tomorrow comes in and we rinse and repeat the same thing. We show two more techniques and Bobby Joe leaves. So, I think the creating a connection and creating cohesive environment where we can be approachable by the students and the instructor is willing to provide the feedback changes a lot. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's a well said point there. I'm going to say something controversial here and I don't know if people will agree with me or not, but my opinion is that many of Jijitsu's loudest advocates, they sell Jijitsu as if it were snake oil. And by that what I mean is they don't give you a complete or honest sales pitch of Jijitsu. They'll tell you the stuff about how, oh, Jijitsu will it'll toughen you up and give you discipline and get you in shape and give you confidence and you'll learn how to defend yourself on the street and you know, look, this sounds all well and good, but usually that is kind of just a stock answer that coaches give and it's not based on any real student experience. I mean, as an example, if someone comes into your gym because they want to learn to defend themselves, maybe this is someone who was previously assaulted and they're struggling with PTSD. And you look, you can tell them and you can say, oh, Jijitsu's going to make you tougher and it'll help you overcome your fears and but look, if you throw that person into a room with someone who outweighs them by 100 pounds and they just get mauled in their first class, they could come out of this being more traumatized than when they went in. So, I think many times when coaches, and I hear this from even really smart people that I respect a lot, people that I would consider to be really solid critical thinkers, they'll as soon as they start talking about Jijitsu and trying to sell it, they basically go into snake oil mode where everything is all sunshine and rainbows and it's the greatest thing ever and there's no downsides. Like it's it's just a pure plus, everyone should train it all the time, full stop. And I think that does a bit of a disservice because it fails to take into account the fact that people do have different goals in the sport, right? I mean, if someone's if someone's goal is primarily staying in shape and getting healthier and living a healthy lifestyle, and you train them in such a way where they're getting repeatedly injured from very early on, have you really solved their problem at all? I mean, probably not, right? In fact, you could argue that you've taken them in the exact wrong direction. And that happens in my mind because of a failure to get on the same page about goals. I think that the instructor may have in their head the sales pitch of what Jijitsu is that has been passed down from their instructor and their instructor. And we just we all regurgitate it. We all know the Jijitsu sales pitch about building confidence and discipline and all of that. But that is not a one-size-fits-all goal for everybody. And again, it's not just that it's suboptimal. I think that as the coach, if you're not having that goal setting conversation with people, you can actually do more harm than good because Jijitsu is not guaranteed to be a good experience for everyone, as much as we love to market it that way, right? If someone's goal is around safety and health, for example, and we get them injured, we've failed as instructors. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that because uh this is something I'm really passionate about right now, just the way that we sometimes oversell Jijitsu without talking about the caveats and the downsides and the things people might want to be concerned about. Speaker 3: Well, I agree and I think we need to ask ourselves, why does this happen? What's the core reasoning behind it? And I think ultimately when we look at instructors or academy owners or businessmen who have invested time, money and effort into running a business, they want as many students as possible. I mean, that that's really what the bottom line of all of this is why they want everybody to sign up, right? Now, understanding what service we can or cannot provide or which facility or which system will be better for this specific individual, automatically counters this because there are odds and actually they are pretty high that you might not be able to fulfill that need and that means that the person might not be signing up. So, creating that skewed environment of, yeah, of course, we can Jijitsu fixes everything, you know, it's it's very common in a sense, right? So, this is what I would encourage students or or prospects or people who are interested in this, really understand what is being offered and what you want to get out of this. If you want to run really, really fast, I don't know if Jijitsu is the activity for you. Like I'm being dramatic, but I think often times really this boils down to to very simple questions, asking questions, you know? Like we make a point, or at least I tell my staff to make a point to connect with the new students. If there is mom bringing a a child and five or seven year old, whatever the age is, connect with them, ask them, how is that child? How is school going? How is how are we doing on behavior? How are like all this provides a feedback and we can start working together on this. And it's not any different for adults. Why are you here? What brings you here? What really you want to gain out of this? Like I know that you want to be healthy and you want to have good life and you want to learn this Jijitsu stuff, but like what's your time availability? That's a big one. You know, I can come only every other week. Well, that kind of works against what we are trying to achieve here. Like the investment of time, investment of effort is important, you know? So, how can we help you? What can we do? Perhaps somebody wants to, you know, you mentioned it a moment ago, they want to get engaged into a competition scenario. And perhaps this is not a competition school. Are we really helping you or are we wasting your time? So, I think these things are important from both sides, but I think from student perspective is as important as it's from instructor. You have to ask questions. You got to make sure that you are in the right place, that people who can offer you want, if it's even available. And if it is, I think we have a starting point. And from there, we can continue working together. Speaker 2: Yeah. I like how you touched on the fact that you got to have that conversation because sometimes just getting the right answer out of the student is challenging because the student may not actually know what their goals are. A lot of the time people have a maybe a surface understanding of why they want to do Jijitsu, but their stated reason might not be the real reason and they may not have even realized that themselves yet. Often when people tell me what their goals are, I get emails all the time from people who say, you know, I've been training for a week or two weeks and my goal is to be a world champion. And I mean, that sounds like a I guess an obvious goal to set, but if I were coaching those people, I would really want to sit them down and unpack that because they're kind of skipping from the beginning of the race to the end of the race there. There's a lot of stuff in the middle that needs to be unpacked. Like why do you want to be a world champion? Why Jijitsu? If you want to be a world champion, why don't you want to be a, I don't know, a tennis world champion? What drove you to this? There's got to be something. When I started the sport, I probably would have said that I wanted to learn to defend myself, but really, honestly, if I reflect now with a bit more wisdom, probably it was more that I wanted to be seen as the type of person who could do this kind of thing. Right? It was probably more of an ego need because realistically, I mean, given my lifestyle, I wasn't likely to get into a situation where I need to, you know, pull out an omoplata in a street fight, but I was in a situation where, you know, maybe I felt I was lacking in some ways and I thought that, you know what, if I could be seen as the kind of person who does this cool thing, that would fill my ego and my sense of self in a way that I'm not getting in my regular life right now. And that's a very different reason for training than what I I would have actually said. And it can be very hard to get those answers out because sometimes, again, people don't know this stuff. It might only be through years of training that they actually realize what their reasons were. So, it makes it even more difficult from the coach's perspective to get to the bottom of this when the student doesn't even know themselves what their goal might actually be. Speaker 3: No, I agree with you and what you don't know, you don't know, right? So, and this is very much so a discovery process for many, many people. However, there are some things that we do know. So, let's just create a hypothetical situation. If if if I'm 20 years old and I am very active and perhaps I'm interested in a competition and I walk into the academy, the average demographic is in let's say 38 or 40. I mean, that tells me something. Is this the right place for me or do they train for competition? Like these things are very easy to identify. Perhaps, you know, I want my kids to learn discipline and self-defense, you know, and there's an academy that has only six kids in the entire program. Is this a place that I want to be? Like, I think we all have choices and we all have decisions that we have to make. And putting ourselves in the best position to succeed is important. What is being offered? That's one. But what do I want out of this? Is number two. And often times we don't ask these questions. We we simply don't. We we we just want to jump in and we just want to do it. Simply because we don't know. We sometimes I would even say we don't care. So, there's a certain responsibility level that we should carry and we should do things what's right for us. Speaker 2: Something that I've noticed is that with a lot of less experienced people when they talk about their goals, they're very specific time-boxed things. Like I want to lose 10 pounds by the end of the year or I want to get to blue belt or I want to win this particular tournament. But once you start talking to older people, especially once they get up to black belt, right? You get these much more lofty, general goals. Like I want to give back to the community or I want to use the power of Jijitsu to improve people's lives. Right? You see this kind of broadening of the goal and things kind of get a bit wishy-washy. So, I mean, it's one of the funny things. I know beginners always love to tease black belts about this. Like black belts always talk in this weird, almost spiritual sounding way. I mean, I know I know that I am guilty of this on the podcast where, you know, by the time you get to black belt, you're talking about Jijitsu life advice more than you're actually talking about technique. But there's kind of a reason for that. It's because the actual technique and the practice can only get you so far. And at some point it it honestly even becomes a little bit boring. I mean, I don't know about you, but when I was a white, blue, purple belt, I was constantly obsessed by novelty and chasing new techniques and I was trying to cram as much stuff into my head as I could. But now I try to focus on less. I try to focus more on the things that really matter and I try to avoid distractions. So, that is very much changed the way that I communicate about Jijitsu because I'm trying to think about less as I'm doing things instead of trying to cram like I've got a final exam coming up. Do you have you noticed any trends in that regard in terms of how people's how they speak about their goals or the nature of their goals as they change over time? Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I think again, you are right in the money. You know, I think when we start all of this, especially in the younger age, I think often times we have this perception where more I know, better I am. More information I sink in, more information I acquire, more I can do, more effective I'm going to be because I have a larger library, my rollerdex is much bigger. Now, longer we are on the mat, we we discover that it's not the amount, but the efficiency. And efficiency by design of itself, by definition of itself, is doing less with doing more with less, being more effective with what we do. The precision is really what matters. And this is where longer we train, I think more more we start talking about things like concepts, things like principles, something that can be applied in a multiple areas without changing. We don't have to remember 50 different techniques or, you know, 50 different options. We just remember this one principle and and it solves a lot of the problems. So, we are more thinking, troubleshooting versus memorizing things. And I think that's that's very much so applicable as we continue going going through this. I think this is why this ecosystem of learning now is so getting so much attention. It, you know, right or wrong, love it or hate it, it doesn't matter, but I think people are noticing that we can be smarter about learning and we don't have to memorize everything. There are some key components or common denominators across the entire Jijitsu, which makes things easier. And if we can make things easier, why wouldn't we? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think all of the emphasis now on educational best practices and motor learning that's coming into Jijitsu. I mean, part of that is because finally people are actually listening to evidence from other sports. But another part of that is a a reaction, a backlash to people being sick of the approach right now that we know isn't always ideal. I mean, when I was a a purple belt, I probably knew hundreds of techniques that I could never pull off against anybody. Like I I was a walking rollerdex of weird stuff that I couldn't actually do against a a resisting opponent. Whereas now, I probably only really know about half a dozen things in Jijitsu, but I can do them from almost everywhere almost all the time. It's a smaller focus. And that's not to say the other stuff is wrong or bad, but it's just it's not the piece of Jijitsu that I care about. And a big part of training the sport over time is developing your sense of identity within the sport. Who you are, what your Jijitsu looks like and how that reflects or patterns after your goals. And not enough people do that, I think in the sport, right? I mean, if you have goals that that point you in one direction, but the actual Jijitsu you're trying to learn points you in a wildly different direction, that's probably suboptimal. The best example I can give again is is safety related. If your number one concern is safety, longevity and health, well, you probably should not be doing the kinds of techniques that tend to lead to high risk, you know, and a high risk of injury, especially if you're not competing. On the other hand, depending on your body type, there might be some stuff that would just work better for you. And a big part of developing your identity within Jijitsu is finding that path and figuring out what the stuff is that you can do that actually aligns with your goals. Not enough coaches in my opinion have that conversation. Like we teach the bits of Jijitsu and maybe if we're lucky, we even sit down and we have the goal conversations, but do we link those together? Do we make sure that someone's training is actually tailored to the goals they really have? That's a tricky conversation and I I'd be curious to get your thoughts on whether that's something that you figured out a solution for. Speaker 3: You know, I think what's interesting about all of this is is the fact that if you look at a couple decades back, Jijitsu was taught as a one-on-one exercise. Mostly it was private lessons. And some of the OGs around speak very highly of that and this is all it was. There was no group classes, right? And then sometime in Brazil, they converted group classes to have an opportunity to cater towards a larger mass of individuals, right? But now we are this whole conversation is how do we get one-on-one with students? So, like it almost we got to ask ourselves, if the group classes really work well here. And I'm not saying that they don't because I teach them every single day, but there is there has to be some kind of solution halfway in between between all of this. We can't just come into one room, 50 different individuals and pretend that we are going to learn the same thing with the same efficiency to the same expectations as, you know, everybody else in the same room, right? So, like how do we make these adjustments? How do we navigate through this experience so I gain the most out of it? And the person next to me should ask the same question and how do they gain the most out of it? What do you think about that? Speaker 2: I think you're right. And I think that you're also right about what you said earlier, which is that for many beginners, they're going to be super intimidated to have that conversation because the idea of going up and talking to a brown or a black belt. First of all, for a lot of beginners, I mean, it's silly, but a lot of them are just really intimidated at the idea of talking to an upper belt. And many schools with their gym culture don't make this better because they kind of put more, I think, emphasis on the belts than they really should. But beyond that, then it gets even more difficult in terms of actually, how do you phrase that in the right way? I don't know. You tell me, do you guys have a solution for how you handle that? Speaker 3: Well, I think really being honest, I think it's really important. So, look, like I had this conversation sometime ago with somebody and they brought up really interesting point that stuck with me. You go to a personal trainer and say, I want to lose weight. The first thing, or one of the first things is they're going to do body evaluation and they're going to make you step on a scale. Now, that's one of the most intimidating moments for a lot of people. You wouldn't be wanting or you wouldn't want to lose weight if you were not concerned about it. So, stepping on a scale is the moment of truth. So, in Jijitsu, how come we step into the facility? We know we don't know anything. We know this is our first day. We know we are clueless. We know we're going to make mistakes, but yet somehow we pretend that that doesn't happen. So, like often times I have a brand new student on the mat and they they'll make comments like, oh, I suck at this. Like the response is, yeah, but you are here and you are here for a reason. If you knew this, you probably wouldn't be here. So, focusing on the important part that you know you don't you don't know this. You know that you want to learn new skill and you know that you are here in an environment that will make you successful is a step one of a beautiful journey. So, let's focus on learning, not what you don't know, but what you are what you're about to learn. And I think that's a game changer. A lot of people don't see it that way. Speaker 2: Yeah, very well said. Man, if I had one piece of advice for younger me, I guess part of it would be that you will never get to the point where you're satisfied with your knowledge and performance in Jijitsu. I mean, at least I haven't. You've been training a bit longer than me, Thomas, so you tell me if it changes at 25 years, but I've been doing this for a while and the longer I train, the more I'm convinced I will never get to the point where I actually feel like, hey, this is something I know everything I want to know. It's just it's impossible, right? And so beating yourself up over that is pointless because no amount of training will ever solve that goal for you. As they say, right? The the journey is the destination. The the journey is what matters. There is no finish line where you'll be able to check a box and, you know, I get a certificate that says you know everything there is to know about Jijitsu. It's not like that. Speaker 3: No, and I feel like longer you train, the goal gets farther away. You know what I mean? Like longer you train, more information there is to learn. What you don't know, you don't know. I I feel like even though we are very eager to learn things when we start, we are very information hungry. Longer we learn, we kind of like, yeah, there's more. Yeah, there's about 10 more layers on top of that. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting too. And again, this gets into goal setting over time because it changes people's perceptions of the sport as they go further in. When I was a a white or a blue belt, I mean, of course, I did not know everything there was to know about Jijitsu, but I at least could conceive of a time when maybe one day if I train hard enough, I will know everything. But now, God, the longer I train, the more I realize that goal is is further and further away than I even thought it was. It's impossible to know everything. The the growth rate of the sport is expanding faster than the ability to learn. It's like, you know, the the universe is getting bigger than we can travel through it, right? It makes it an impossible problem to feel like you, you know, know everything. And so a big part of goal setting is also choosing your areas of focus, choosing where you will devote your attention and by definition, choosing what you will exclude in order to focus on the part that is important. That's as much a a part of goal setting as anything else. It's what not to focus on as well as what to focus on. Speaker 3: Oh, absolutely. I would argue that's more important actually. The removing distraction points, I think is number one problem for a lot of a lot of students. You know, it is like you come in, I'm going to be working on the guard and then somebody brings their Instagram video and like, oh, I can fly. Oh, let me jump this thing. Like we are not achieving what we said we would, right? So, removing points of distraction is is huge. It's huge. And then creating some kind of realistic realistic measuring for all of this. I think that's another key component. Oh, I'm getting better. Like what does this mean? Like I often tell my students, I use this analogy. I want to be a good dad is not a goal. That means nothing. Just completely useless. Now, if I say, I'm going to read for 20 minutes, four times a week to my son for over a period of next two months, that will make me a good dad. That that's very different. And I think in Jijitsu, that's very, very much so difficult to do. One, because things happen and we we like having fun and Jijitsu shouldn't be work. It shouldn't be. This is where we we don't get paid, most of us, don't get paid for this. We are not professionals, so it needs to be fun. But if we want to grow, if we talk about growth of skill, then we do need to set some realistic things that we can measure in some way and we can have perspective as time goes on. Did we get better? Like did we actually get better? Did we actually improve things? And if so, I think this gives us the point of satisfaction and and allows us to get better and then I think this will keeps us in together along the fact that, you know, we can beat up or choke our our buddy who we hang out with. Speaker 2: Yeah, you bring up the importance of breaking down whatever your high-level goal is into something that's more measurable and achievable. I like the example you brought up about, you know, being a good dad. I mean, nothing against a big aspirational statement. I think everyone should have those as well. To have this kind of general, lofty idea that maybe isn't super measurable, but it's kind of like a north star that you can use to guide your behavior. I think those are important. But if you want to actually make forward progress, you've got to figure out a way to to break down that lofty goal into concrete actionable steps that you can take on a regular basis. Ideally, you want to be creating habits that are repeatable and sustainable and every time you execute on those habits, it should be one step towards whatever that direction was that you're trying to go in. Yeah. And again, that comes down to how people goal set in Jijitsu because much of the time when people set a goal, they either have the big lofty outcome in mind, but maybe they don't know the steps to get there or maybe they've carved out one or two steps, but they don't really have a goal or a direction they're heading in. And I think you got to have them both and they have to align together. Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I 100% agree. And I think that this is where these conversations between instructors and students really come in handy. How are you doing? What can I do better? You know, how are we engaging? How is your progress? You know, how is it are you having fun? Are you coming to this class? Change the schedule, you know, can I change the schedule? Do you think this would be beneficial for me if I did this? Like it doesn't have to be one-way conversation. It is really collaboration between student and instructor and that's really where where student becomes, you know, the most successful. Now, the question is, are we available? Are we willing to ask questions? Those are the two key pillars here. Speaker 2: Yeah, well said. Well, one more thing I want to ask you, Thomas, how frequently do we go through this goal setting process? Is this something that should be revisited every year or do you do it even more frequently than that or maybe less frequently? Speaker 3: You know, I often when I talk to my students, it's not the frequency, but it's the accountability that matters. There are some goals that can be revisited and it should be revisited once a month. I'm working on specific grips. I'm working on balance. Revisit in a month and see what happens. And there some need more time. We'll revisit in six months, we'll revisit in a year perhaps. But here's the trick. The moment we say we're going to revisit in a month and we don't revisit for three months, this is where the system falls apart. So, it doesn't have to be rigid as to every goal has to be set in a specific way. But write it down in a sense and even in a casual way, say, I'm certain day I'm going to revisit this and put a little thought into this. You know, how much did I train? What did I do? How many instructionals did I watch? How much did I explore on the X topic that I have committed myself to? Did I make any improvements? Did I record yourself? We didn't even talk about that, but that's one of the things that I encourage all the students actually to do. Record yourself. Ask, make sure that everybody is, you know, clear in an agreement that you're recording and all that. But record yourself. Film doesn't lie. It doesn't. It shows you what you did and you can pause it, you can zoom it, you can dissect it and you can really see what is happening. And it's a tool that I didn't have and we have it today in our in our hands. So, it's something that we can really, really use to gain benefits, to get better. Speaker 2: Yeah. Awesome, man. Well, as we tie this up, I always want to ask, any closing thoughts or things that are really important and need to be shared here, which we uh didn't cover in the conversation yet? Speaker 3: No, I think this was a great conversation. Hopefully this is going to be helpful. Hopefully we can benefit some of the guys and girls who are just starting Jijitsu and and hopefully we can create more open communication and and just more open community as far as the feedback and so more people can benefit from it. Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Well, goal setting can be a challenging thing. So, if people are struggling with this, I'm guessing many people have questions or maybe they need some advice. If people want to follow you for ideas or or reach out to you, Thomas, how do they go about doing that? Speaker 3: Instagram is probably the best way to get a hold of me. I answer to all questions, all messages, all the time. You can find me, my last name BJJ, R O Z D Z, if you just type that in, it'll pop up. And shoot me a line, shoot me a message, shoot me a DM and I'm happy to help you, I'm happy to engage and and, you know, some of the content that I post might be helpful too. Speaker 2: Awesome. Well, I will make it easy for people to find you, sir. I will put your links in the show notes. So, listener, just pop open your podcast player, go to info or notes or whatever it's called and there should be easy ways to contact Thomas there. I'll also put links to all of our stuff. We're also easy to find. Everything is at BJJ Mental Models.com. I always tell people, at the bare minimum, you want to get the freebies that we have on offer. We've got main feed, full length episode podcasts like this one that you're listening to right now. There's a ton of those. I mean, as of this recording about 354 in the queue there for you to consume, all completely free, no ads. Beyond that, if you want something a little bit quicker to to kind of get to the point to gives you concepts that'll immediately help your Jijitsu, check out our mini episodes. They're also in the same feed. And our newsletter has over 14,000 subscribers around the world. So, check that out as well. We send out some really interesting thought pieces every Friday, plus some really cool ideas and concepts that expand upon what we talk about here on the show. And of course, if you want to level up further with us, BJJ Mental Models Premium is the main thing that we offer. It is the world's largest library of Jijitsu audio content. Think of it as the master class or the audible of Jijitsu. If you like this particular format for learning and you want instruction that talks more about concepts, mindset, philosophy, strategy, that kind of thing. That's what we focus on. We're less about the individual techniques and we're more about the big ideas that'll give you outsized wins in the sport. We also have a whole network of premium only podcasts like Rob Bernaki's podcast, Emily Kwok's podcast. Again, those are all included as part of your premium membership. And if you kick it up to our coaching or pro tiers, we can even do a direct rolling review footage, so tape study like Thomas was talking about, we can do that for you. And we also have pro services if you are running a gym or another Jijitsu business and you need support on the marketing or sales side. We have built some awesome systems and processes that have done great work for us and other people in our community. So, if you want to access to that, check out our pro tier. If you got any questions about any of that, by the way, just shoot me a message on Instagram or email. Again, all of our contact info and all of the other stuff I talked about is at BJJ Mental Models.com, but I will put a link to that in the show notes too. Thomas, man, thank you so much for coming by. This is a blast. I always love chatting with you. You got such a great mind for kind of the the high-level why about what coaches should do. So, this is a fun chat. Thank you so much for doing this with me. Speaker 3: Steve, thanks for having me as always and yeah, thanks for the great conversation. Speaker 2: Most welcome, Thomas, and thank you to the listeners as well. Always appreciate everyone hanging out with us and we will talk to you in the next one. See you then.