Ep. 344: Ankle Lock Strategy, feat. Jake O'Driscoll

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I have huge news. She actually did it. We're pleased to announce that Beatrice Jin, top-ranked women's competitor in North America and long-time BJJ Mental Models premium community member has published her first ever course with us, exclusive to BJJ Mental Models. It's called Stop Being Nice. It's a three-part audio series designed to solve real mindset problems that regular folks experience in Jiu-Jitsu. If you struggle to be aggressive and competitive in Jiu-Jitsu, you'll find the solutions here. If you're already a BJJ Mental Models premium subscriber, you've already got access, and if you are not, good news, you can get it now and get your first week free. Go to BJJMentalModels.com and check it out today. Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to BJJ Mental Models episode 344. I'm Steve Kwan. BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. Also an Australian Jiu-Jitsu approach today, because from Essence BJJ in Perth, I've got my friend Jake O'Driscoll on the line. Jake, how's it going, man? Speaker 2: Yeah, really good, thanks, man. Thanks for having me back on. It's always a pleasure to to get on this podcast and share some of my thoughts, so thank you for having me back. Speaker 1: I'm glad to have you, sir. You and I have collaborated a few times. Both you and your charge, Adele Fornarino, we've produced a bunch of content together. You've of course been on the podcast here before and we did a whole premium audio course on how to operate as a professional within the sport of Jiu-Jitsu. That's something that both you and Adele have attributed to being a driver behind the successes that you've had. But that was a few months ago. Why don't you give everyone a quick update? What have you been up to? Speaker 2: Yeah, so we just continued with that and we just, you know, specifically with Adele, just focused on what she wanted to achieve and where she wanted to go and just refining the process. I was able to pick up a couple more athletes to to start helping and working with. So I've been lucky enough to go away with Dante a few times to one championship. You know, Brianna, which is a very close friend of Adele's and and mine as well, work with her through IBJJF No-Gi Worlds, UFC and just Gi Worlds as well, which is a little bit different. It's not something I've I've done before, but that was really cool. Keith and PJ as always doing their thing. They're pretty active competitors. They've got a lot coming up. And then just picking up a few other athletes too that might not be as well known, but are definitely going to be well known soon. So that's been really cool and just really refining the process of what I'm doing and, you know, having some more avenues on supplying that to the the public, I guess. It's not something that I've I've had before. So just trying to get that going. So Heath Pedigo actually really helped me with that and and really gave me some good conversations on what I should be doing and and what not. So just trying to get that done. Speaker 1: Nice, nice. Now, something that I know you've been working on and you suggested this is the topic today was concepts and strategies behind the straight foot lock game. Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: Which I really love talking about. I personally am a big fan of straight foot locks. The main reason being that I train primarily in the Gi, and so my ability to do anything kind of twisty and rotational is quite limited. But straight foot locks, I think have really kind of come back into vogue. For a long time as I was coming up in the sport, straight foot locks were kind of looked at as this thing that didn't really work. But that's mostly because when people thought of straight foot locks, they thought of just a very traditional classic straight ankle lock where you, you know, go into like Ashi Garami and just wrap your body around the person's leg and try to guillotine their ankle. And although that does work, it's quite limited in its breaking power and it's also somewhat easy to escape. But of course, with all of the variations that have come up in the last few years, that area of the game has exploded quite a bit. We've talked to folks like Chris Wojcik on the podcast a few months ago, who of course popularized the reverse Aoki lock, which a lot of people like myself call the Wojlock. I'd love to hear what you've been working on and what both what you have been teaching and also what you've been using, because people might not be aware, but you're also quite an active and successful competitor yourself in Perth. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I've uh the straight foot lock's been something that I've focused on a lot through my whole career. Um it's just something that came naturally to me. I actually have my own version of what we would call the Wojlock. It's not so much a reverse Aoki. We don't actually free the heel at all. I did speak to Chris a little bit about this and then now that he's uh become super popular with it, which I I think is absolutely amazing. Anytime I post a video, someone will always be like, "Oh, it's a Wojlock." I'm like, "Yeah, it's a little bit different, but that's okay." Same with Mateusz, you know, I got a lot of time to spend with Mateusz Szynalski, so we went over a lot of straight foot lock stuff and the way he likes to maneuver the the uh the ankle, sorry, and what he's looking for. So I've really been able to to talk to a lot of the guys that are at the top of the straight foot lock game and just try and pick their brain and and add into what I like to do. I do some things a little bit different, which is I think is really cool. You know, I don't believe I'm an innovator. I think that's the most detrimental part of my game. I don't actually think too much about creating new techniques. I I'll steal them if I can, for sure. I think that's, you know, one of the best things about our sport. But I definitely don't sit there looking at like, "Oh, where can I create something new?" But in terms of the straight foot lock, man, a lot of people do look at it as a very devastating finishing position, but I think what it it does more than anything is it it has so much control of the legs, but also it has the ability to get you to any other position that you want to go to. So if I take a straight foot lock and I can get you to maneuver in a certain way, I can take your back, I can pass your guard, I can sweep you, I can mount you, you know, I can use it to wrestle up. You know, it actually has so many more avenues than just the submission. So that's one of the reasons I love it. You know, I try and tell my guys or girls, whoever I'm coaching, that you should have a couple of these positions in your game where you can maneuver to more advantageous positions. So if we think about that, the front headlock is another position like that. I can take your back, you know, I can take you down, I can pass your guard with it, I can mount you with it, you know, it has so many other applications to it than just the finish. So that's what I try and look for with the straight foot lock and it's it's really been working well for me and my athletes as well. Speaker 1: So what kind of finishing mechanics do you use here then? Because you talked about how you don't slip the heel like Chris Wojcik. Maybe I'll actually explain this a little bit and Jake, you're probably much more knowledgeable about this than me. So I will leave it to you to correct me. I've actually, and I know we've talked about this, I've actually been off the mats for quite a while because I had a shoulder injury last year and I've been rehabbing after surgery. So I am a little bit out of the loop here. But the main difference, the main distinction that Chris Wojcik kind of brought into the game was when attempting a heel hook, if the person hides their heel or they bring it to the inside, he has a variant of a straight ankle lock that he calls the Wojlock, which basically has the heel loose. And it applies a tremendous amount of pressure, but that's very different from I guess what you would consider to be a classic straight ankle lock, which is usually where you've got some kind of pressure sort of behind the Achilles. If you're not doing the the Wojcik method, what exactly are you doing this a little bit different? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I maneuver my, so if we think about the straight foot lock, I've got like a a grip over the ankle, kind of like a a front headlock position. I don't keep my arm uh parallel to the the heel. I actually take it diagonally across the calf and then I lock in like a figure four rear naked choke grip. When I do that, I look to push the knee into itself, so the hip kind of locks into place and the foot comes off the floor a little bit and the the heel and the the side of the foot actually connects to my ribs. So it's more like outside heel hook uh kind of a Steema pressure with a straight foot lock grip. So that's where I would actually differ a little bit from the Wojlock, where he does free the heel, I don't. Again, something that I spoke to Mateusz a lot about. He does something very similar, which I mean, for me this is all great, you know, like I've used the Wojlock, I think it's amazing. I don't think, you know, one is better than the other. I just have more success with this position and I feel so much more control from there. So the finishing mechanics of it too are very similar to how I would finish a guillotine, where we're kind of like crunching the inside, crunching. I'll be attempting to to take the shin to the chest to close that gap. I'm trying to take the toes towards the groin to to close that gap and you really get a lot of pressure across the shin, the outside of the foot, but also if someone holds on too long, the knee. And I think that's the most important thing because a lot of people when, you know, you look at Adele's match with Fion just recently, Fion took the break in the foot and continued the match. You know, if if that was in the knee, uh or a snap of the shin, I'm not sure she would be able to. Now, I don't want to go and say that she couldn't because Fion's amazing, but from my, you know, experience, most people are more likely to tap when their knee goes than their foot goes, especially at the highest level. So what I'm trying to do with the straight foot lock is take it to a place where I can submit high-level people because they're worried about their knee or their shin snapping compared to, you know, tearing a ligament in their foot. Speaker 1: That's interesting. So you're also attacking the knee here. And I'd I'd love to know how you do that because, you know, you mentioned an Estima lock. An Estima lock is a fucking nasty submission, but Speaker 2: Yes. Speaker 1: I've always thought of them as kind of like a a flash submission. Normally when you see this, it's someone puts their ankle in the wrong spot and the person basically just grabs the foot and just kind of folds it over into itself and if you don't move quickly, you can get really hellacious snapping pressure on the ankle fast. So to me, when I see the Estima lock, it's often kind of a flash submission. It kind of comes out of nowhere. It's sort of like a, you know, a flash guillotine where someone just puts their head in a in the wrong place for the wrong second, the other person snatches it and it's just over right away. But when you say that you're doing a an Estima style straight ankle lock, are you doing this like from the bottom or from a grounded position? Because normally when I see an Estima, it's often the person who is doing it is standing when they do it. I'd be curious to know exactly how you set up and get into this position. Speaker 2: Yeah, so I should have probably clarified that before. So when we were speaking about the Wojlock, I just assume that we were talking about being from 50/50. So this is actually a a position I get from 50/50. So very similar to what Chris Wojcik is talking about, that to hide the heel, to not get inside heel hook from 50/50, you know, you're going to straighten your leg, you're going to turn your toes away, you're going to make it difficult for someone to create height and expose the heel. Well, that gives me the perfect position now because the toes are actually facing away from me, the heel is connected to my upper ribs, it's in my armpit, you know, it actually sets themself up perfectly for me to attack this submission. So then if we think about it like that, I do get like Estima kind of outside heel hook pressure because of the way their toes are are pointed and I don't have to hope that, you know, they they put it across my waist to get the Estima lock. I can set it up by faking me the inside heel hook or by just setting it up myself. So if someone's got a really good positioning on the 50/50 legs, they're crossed and it's difficult to expose the heel from there, you can actually take your outside arm underneath their knee to create like a wedge and then that'll give you the space to set up the straight foot lock grip. Now with the straight foot lock grip, again, most people aren't really worried about being straight foot locked from 50/50, they're more worried about being inside heel hooked. So they will turn their toes away and give you that position to to finish. Speaker 1: Interesting. Now, the thing that really sticks out to me here is talking about attacking the knee joint as well as the ankle joint. So, I mean, we've talked about the the three-joint rule here on the podcast before. When you're attacking a limb, an arm or a leg, you've got three primary joints that you need to control. So in the case of the arm, you've got the wrist, the elbow, the shoulder. In the case of the leg, you've got the ankle, the knee, and the hip. If you want to submit someone with reliable control, you normally need to immobilize all three of those joints. And then depending on the submission that you're doing, you can kind of choose which of those joints you're putting the breaking pressure on. So, again, for the arm, you know, if you're attacking the shoulder, you're probably talking Kimura or Americana. If you're attacking the elbow, you're probably talking armbar. If you're attacking the wrist, you're probably talking wrist lock. But if you can throw multiple threats at your opponent at the same time, the more breaking mechanics you can kind of apply in a single submission, the more likely it is to do something really devastating. So the traditional challenge with a straight ankle lock has been that some people will just eat the straight ankle lock and keep going. I mean, I am not competing at any sort of high level here. I mean, I don't compete at all. So for me, I am definitely not going to try to eat a submission. But I know that for a lot of people, if it comes down to breaking the ankle or and tapping or continuing the match, they will choose to just continue the match. So I like the idea of also attacking the knee while you're going for an ankle lock as well. But how exactly does that work? So I'm I'm just trying to visualize this. You're in 50/50, you're setting up kind of like an Estima lock style grip. And we should maybe explain what that is, but you're setting up that grip on the foot and you mentioned that you push into the knee. How do you get enough pressure to do damage to the knee from that position? Like what exactly is the thing that you're doing that makes the person think, "My knee's going to go and I might have to tap right now from this weird ankle submission." Speaker 2: Yes, so when I talk about driving into the knee, what I mean is like if you imagine that I've got the rear naked choke grip, so I've got the straight foot lock grip and my second hand is on the shin, I actually push the knee towards the hip. So the the knee goes backwards, so that the hip socket actually locks. And this is something that I I got from Mateusz Szynalski, which which basically locks the leg in place so that all the pressure will now go towards the knee because the hip's not as mobile. Now, the leg positioning I actually took from Owen Jones. So Owen Jones doing the, I mean, Owen Jones, uh what he he said it was X-legs, you know, Dante uses like a reap, so they're very similar. But because I do a lot of Master One, I can't reap. So I actually take my inside leg shallow on the hip and my outside leg actually crosses over the top of that ankle. So now I've got like X-legs on the hip. I've got my my hips and my knees inching the knee itself and then I have the straight foot lock grip on the the ankle. Therefore, we have all three points of contact that you were talking about. So when I am able to turn the corner like I'm in a guillotine and hips up, ankles down, driving, bridging off the the pressure there, you're going to get that nice bite in the knee and people will really start to feel it. Now, the ankle and the shin will go first. There's not too many people that I've I've allowed like people have allowed to go towards their knee. They'll feel the pressure early, but definitely it will put pressure in the knee as well. Speaker 1: Interesting. And just to confirm, I mean, again, I'm kind of trying to visualize here because you talked about an an Estima lock. So and you talked about like a rear naked choke grip. So I'm presuming you've got kind of that Estima style figure four grip on their ankle, right? And so then your hands are kind of pushing into their knee or I guess their upper shin to try to lock that hip in place? Speaker 2: That's right, yep. Speaker 1: Got it. I like that a lot because that is the main weakness behind the traditional straight ankle lock. It doesn't do a great job of locking the hip. And again, just for people who might be kind of newer to this, I'll try to explain in simpler terms. So when I talk about the traditional straight ankle lock, this is where you get into Ashi Garami. So basically you're wrapping your whole body around a person's one leg as if you were in a single leg X-guard type position. And then you basically just guillotine their Achilles. That's the traditional straight ankle lock. And the issue with that move is that although yes, you can get breaking pressure on the ankle, you control the ankle and the knee, but it's very hard to really control the person's hip effectively from there. There's a lot of things that the defender can do to clear their hip or move it, such as, you know, putting on the boot and trying to peel your foot off of their hip. There's ways that they can get out. So you see a lot of escapes from a classic straight ankle lock that involve the other person trying to rotate out or get up and base. And all of that happens because it's just hard to control the other person's hip there. And if you're controlling their ankle and their knee, but not their hip, that's probably not going to be good enough to hold a good person in place. So many of the more modern foot lock positions do something to lock the hip in place. And you don't always need to pinch onto the hip directly if you want to lock it in place. Sometimes, by putting pressure onto the knee, you can kind of force their hip into the ground and that makes it hard to move. Another submission that does this is the Kani Basami ankle lock, where you kind of stomp down on the person's upper shin. And what that does is it drives the kind of the upper part of their leg into the ground and it makes it really hard to move the hip, even though there's not much technically holding the hip in place directly. Just by proxy, when you put pressure on the person's knee, it forces the hip to the mat. And so it achieves the same thing. So this is something that I I know Rob Bernacki talks about a lot. I'm not sure if uh if you know him or not. But something that Rob talks about is the difference between direct control and proxy control. So direct control is when you're just grabbing and controlling something directly. Like if I guillotine you, I have direct control of your head. Proxy control is where maybe I'm not touching you directly somewhere, but I can still control that part of your body by moving other parts of your body. So this is a great example you bring up of how if you pressure down on the knee when the person is grounded onto the mat, it can put force down that holds their hip in place and prevents them from moving even though you might not be actually putting a lot of locking pressure directly on the the hip itself. I hope that's a good explanation. It's kind of hard to do this through audio, but feel free to fact check me or rip this apart if I'm doing a poor job, Jake. Speaker 2: No, you're doing it that's perfect, man. That's perfect. And it's one of those things that it's it's different. So a lot of people, you know, it's one thing that I I usually teach a lot at seminars or master classes or a lot of the time it's actually my my highest percentage submission when I roll. I feel super comfortable in 50/50. It's a position that I've spent a lot of time in. It's a position I really believe in. So it's one of my go-tos. It's actually the one that I get asked about the most. So when I roll with someone, I might get to that spot and whether I submit them or not, you know, it's usually a pressure they haven't felt before or they they're not so sure of, so they'll ask, you know, how did you do that or or what happened? So it's not something that like has really been seen too much and I think that's why the Wojlock really took everyone by storm at the moment because, you know, you get to 50/50, most people attack the inside heel hook or they're going to try and attack the toe hold on the opposite leg or they might try and get like a lateral knee bar or something. Those are kind of the three that you're looking at that are like, "Okay, that's where I'm going to go." So to be able to have that straight foot lock variation in there actually plays like a a massive role, like I said, because not only do I have control now, it's very easy for me to access back to their inside heel hook and the other submissions we just spoke about. If you stand up, I still have control. It's very comfortable for me to go to to back side or to invert underneath, which is something, you know, Lachlan Giles really innovated and and made it really mainstream. So one thing I like to do too with the athletes and myself is like have moves in my arsenal that, you know, they're very efficient, but you also don't lose anything if you miss them. So if I take a straight foot lock grip on the from 50/50 and you end up escaping that straight foot lock grip, I I usually don't lose the position. You know, so it's very comfortable for me to go, "Okay, well, now I can switch to something else and I haven't really used much energy." So the more we can put those types of techniques into our game, you know, you'll start to find that you have, you know, a little bit more cardio, a little bit more strength, a little bit more time to make decisions and it's not because you're on the assault bike for, you know, 20 minutes. It's because you're more efficient with what you're doing and you're you're creating more dilemmas for your opponent. Speaker 1: Now, something that many people have talked about, I think the first time I really heard anyone discuss this in Jiu-Jitsu was John Danaher, talking about getting tunnel vision or myopia, where you're in a situation in Jiu-Jitsu, usually one that involves a submission, and you get so focused on the submission that you kind of blind yourself to all of the other opportunities that might be right in front of you. And this is a very classic mistake that people make with foot locks. As soon as they think they're in something that's kind of like a foot lock type position, their brain goes to the place of, "I got to finish this submission and not let them foot lock me." But if you think more holistically about the foot lock game, there are a lot of places where you can pivot out of going for that ankle lock and into a different position. You mentioned this earlier that you can use the threat of a straight ankle lock to advance position by either getting up and sweeping or even taking their back. A mistake beginners are way too likely to make is this myopic view where they see the ankle, they grab the ankle, and they're not going to let go of that ankle no matter what, even if they're actively losing the position and there's there's no chance of getting the sub anymore. A big breakthrough for me on the ankle lock game was when I got less attached to the idea of getting the submission and started looking at ankle locks as a way to basically fake out my opponent and switch direction. So one of my favorite things to do for a straight ankle lock is I'll threaten it and then while the person is distracted with whatever I'm doing, I'll just use that as an opportunity to leg drag them and get up. And many people, even very good black belts are constantly surprised by this because we are so trained to think of the the leg lock game as this totally separate thing that sometimes people develop these blind spots where they forget, "Oh shit, there's there's other Jiu-Jitsu stuff too." You know, you can go back to old school get up and pass and pressure. You aren't committed to be permanently affixed to that leg lock game. So what kind of stuff do you do there? Because you talked about different types of back takes that you can do from there. When you're threatening the foot lock, if you choose not to go for the submission there, what other positional advancements do you use to kind of transition and and get to the back or get up or do whatever you like to do? Speaker 2: Yeah, so I talk about this a little bit now more with the the athletes because we're trying to add it into their game coming forward is like the leg lock game at the moment is very much like attack the legs, it doesn't work, attack the upper body, that doesn't work, then wrestle up in that sequence. And I think that's why a lot of leg lockers are not having a lot of success as much as they used to because the defense has has increased, but the strategy hasn't changed. So what we're trying to get through to the athletes at the moment is like, yeah, you may have, you know, the best leg locks going, but don't use, you know, your upper body attacks or your wrestle ups as your full back plan B and C. Use them in conjunction. So a lot of the time like let's say I get this straight foot lock grip, it's quite easy for me now to unlock my legs and bring that ankle quite high in my armpit and it's difficult for you to now stand up. So, you know, I can use that to sweep from 50/50 quite comfortably. I can use that to bring myself underneath into like a waiter position to get to the back or sweep up. Like you said, the leg drag is there as well. So to use that to bring it across body and start to leg drag. I can keep the position, bring my own leg cross body to like an outside Ashi now where I have control of the leg and the knee. Therefore, I'm able to smash pass a lot better. You know, a whole function of options that we can add from here. And you know, it's something that I'm considering making series on. It's definitely on my Patreon, a lot of this stuff, but really just showing how we can use it to affect both Gi and No-Gi and also IBJJF or ADCC. So one thing, you know, with ADCC is the ability to score is quite difficult. So having something like a straight foot lock grip actually gives you the ability to transition to a score because of the ability to control when we get the person on the floor. You know, like if I hit like a scissor sweep from closed guard in ADCC, the chances of me holding that person down for a score are very, very low. But if I'm able to really come up with that leg and hold it nice and high, you're probably going to turtle, which is going to give me that opportunity to now score through the the back take. There is a lot there. It's it just takes a lot of time as well. Like people try and stay away from 50/50 because they feel like it's a stalling position. I don't think so. You know, I definitely think you can use it to stall like any kind of position, but you can also use it to advance your position and attack a lot. One thing I talk about a lot too is in 50/50 because it is a joint position in terms of you have the same options that I have. What we're doing now is where we're turning it into more of like a a mental game where you have to decide what percentage of offense you're going to use compared to what percentage of defense you're going to use and I have to do the same. Now, that I believe then that my offense will trump your defense. So what I mean by that is if I'm in closed guard, I actually really don't have to worry too much about defense, right? Obviously, you can drop for my legs or obviously you can, you know, Ezekiel if you're that kind of person. Speaker 1: I am that kind of person, unfortunately. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, so the chances of me getting submitted from there from bottom closed guard are quite low, right? So you know that you're in a complete defensive mindset and I know that I'm in basically an offensive mindset. We're not really trading. But if I can get you having to choose between offense and defense at the same time, that comes down to a decision-making process. And that's one thing that we do with the elite athletes a lot is make their decision-making process a lot faster with higher percentage decisions to make. And the best way to do that is to have to make you make more decisions than you want to, which is what we can do in 50/50. Speaker 1: I love that explanation. In Jiu-Jitsu, so many of the positions that we attack and defend from are asymmetrical. That's really one of the main philosophies behind Jiu-Jitsu that kind of makes it different from a lot of other martial arts. We're always looking for asymmetric positions where we have an advantage over the other person. And that can cover up a lot of deficiencies in technique, right? I mean, if I am a if I am mediocre for my experience level and I'm sparring with someone who's pretty good for my experience level, if the fight is just completely open and fair, I'm probably going to lose. But man, if I can figure out a way to get to like mount or back, I can really threaten the person even if they're technically better than me. And that's one of the cool things about asymmetric positions is you've got those advantages. Most positions in Jiu-Jitsu are asymmetric except for a few. And the one that really comes up is right in the name is 50/50. That's one of the only truly symmetric positions where it's perfectly mirrored. You can do everything to your opponent that they can do to you. There is no distinction. And that adds a lot more things to consider when you're playing that position. Because it's ultimately going to come down to who is better than the other person from there and who can, as you mentioned, outwit the other person, who can play the mental game and the strategy better. Again, if I'm mounted on top of someone, even if we both know that they're better at Jiu-Jitsu than me, if I still manage to get on top of them in that position, they're in pretty dire straits. Whereas from 50/50, it's really going to come down to who's actually better because we are playing from a perfectly mirrored position. And I think that might be why 50/50 sometimes gets this reputation as like a stalling or a do-nothing position because since it is scary, many people will just go on full defense mode and they will play 50/50 with no effort to attack. Their number one goal is to not get submitted and to eventually get out of 50/50. So if you come into that with this gambit that, hey, I am really good at attacking from here and I believe that my ability to finish is going to be better than your ability to defend and I believe that your ability to attack is not nearly as good as my ability to defend. If you can get into that situation, it's a great attack position. But I always love exploring this kind of mental fake out side of Jiu-Jitsu. So what do you do there? You deliberately go to 50/50 and from there, what kind of things are you doing to try to fake the person out? You already brought up some great examples of not falling into this kind of classic trap of plan A is submit, plan B is get up. But what other things can you do from there to try to turn this into a a fight that is less symmetric and gives you more of an advantage from that position? Speaker 2: Yeah, so just to touch back a little bit too on what you talked about the mount or the back or something like that. Those are such dominant positions as well that when we start to get deep into a match or we start to really get into a test of wills with our opponent or what not, you know, if I know I can't submit you, a lot of the time people just go, "All right, well, I just don't want to get submitted." And they'll shut up shop. And that makes it really difficult to get to mount or get to the back or to get to any type of exposure because people just won't accept those, you know, major positions and neither should they. But a position like 50/50, because they have the option of the or the ability, sorry, to submit as well, they're more likely to accept a position like that when they're tired or they're starting to break a little bit or when they're, you know, not feeling the rhythm of the match than they are slowing down on on getting their guard passed or something like that. So that's another point that I like to add as well is that the fact that the chances of them accepting that position more than accepting a mount or a back or, you know, some kind of deep guard pass, etcetera, is more likely. So that definitely helps as well because I'm able to get to the position more than I would normally. But in terms of like what kind of strategies I put in place, number one is defense. So I spend a lot of time in 50/50 defense, just making sure I understood all the attacks from there and just making sure I'm super comfortable whether my legs are are locked, whether they're unlocked, whether they're triangulated, whether the person has, you know, 90/10 as Lucky would say, whether the person, you know, has their knee to the inside and to the floor. Like just going over it as much as possible so I can get the reactions from there. Once I know that I'm I'm relatively safe, that really gives me the freedom to start to attack without consequence. And that's where that mental game comes in. So one thing that I really like to do that a lot of and it'll be very difficult to talk about, like you said, without video, but one thing that I really like to do that a lot of people don't do is I use my outside leg. So for in 50/50, we both have an inside leg, that's the one that's crossed. The outside leg would be the free leg. I like to use that high in the armpit, but I use that as an off balance to kick the person to their less dominant hip. Now, what that means is, you know, in any guard position, off balancing is key. If I said to you, "Hey, we need to sweep from De La Riva," you'd know you need to off balance. Or if I need to sweep from closed guard, you know you need to off balance. But in 50/50, we don't off balance because people just, "Oh, we're in the same spot." No, that's wrong. I can off balance you from 50/50. If I can off balance you from 50/50, I can free my inside leg and get a better position. I can look to come up from there and I can look to enter those positions like the waiter and etcetera that we already spoke about. So my outside leg will cross body into your armpit and really push you back to base out on your hands. If you're basing out on your hands, you can't attack my heel. Therefore, the offense defense ratio goes up in my favor. Speaker 1: I love that, man. I am always looking for ways to take people out of balance from every position. We don't explain this concept enough in Jiu-Jitsu. It comes up in other martial arts like Judo, where really off balancing people in Judo, that's probably the single most important concept in the whole thing is getting Kuzushi and being able to off balance people. In Jiu-Jitsu, I've noticed many coaches kind of downplay the importance of attacking things like the person's base and they just talk about the technical steps. So even to this day, many people teaching you how to do an armbar, they won't really talk about, you know, philosophically, how do we keep people vulnerable? They'll walk you through hand placement and foot placement and make it seem like there is an instruction manual for completing an armbar. Whereas even from a grounded position, you can always off balance a person. If you can take their feet off the mat, that is a great way to off balance people. And I want to talk to you about that in a little bit because that's something you mentioned earlier. I love the idea too of using your feet to push them away by their armpit because that is going to make it really hard for them to to keep their arms engaged in the fight. It also elongates their body in a way that makes it harder to defend. You also talked about the relationship between offense and defense. We had an episode with Mike Israetel a while back and he said that in his opinion, defense is three times easier than offense. Now, I don't know where he got that from. I can't fact check that for truth. But conceptually, I think there's a lot of wisdom there. Defense is a fundamentally easier thing to do than offense. And I'm sure that anyone who's trained Jiu-Jitsu for a while has probably encountered this. I mean, if you are, you know, a a senior belt, what you probably have discovered is a white belt is easy to submit because they haven't worked out their defense yet. Once someone gets to blue belt or purple belt, you're still going to beat them quite easily, but they get a lot harder to submit. And that's because they've had so much practice just getting attacked that they've developed a decent defensive framework. And it's really easy to just shell up and deny the other person offensive opportunities if you're not interested in playing the offense game at all. I mean, this is kind of a Priit Mihkelson thing. If you focus entirely on defense, you can shut down a lot of stuff. It's not necessarily going to win you matches, but it can really frustrate your opponent. So to your point, Jake, your offensive abilities need to be much better than your opponent's defensive abilities if you want to succeed in a in a neutral position like 50/50. How do you work that? How do you train that offensive style of your game and and especially the strategies from there? One of the things you talked about is trying to off balance people even from grounded positions. Any other ideas you can share on how you can sort of keep people off of their game to make it easier to attack from these positions? Speaker 2: Yeah, I think, you know, one of the relations that or relationships people have from 50/50 is they fall in love with like hand fighting. You know, if they can hand fight their their feet or they can use it defensively to stop, you know, the person from getting to their feet, they'll really hold on from there. But I think a better way to do it is actually to use your feet as hands. So then you have four options, not two. So what I mean by that is using your feet to strip grips, using your feet to off balance, using your feet to cut angles, using your feet to create distance, all these different things that I can also do with my hands. So if my feet are working at the same time my hands are working, I can play offense and defense at the same time. If people only understand how to defend with their hands, you know, by hand fighting or holding on, grabbing their head, grabbing their own leg, you know, you've basically taken out your ability to attack, but also you're just stagnant in that position. So what I like to do as well is just sit in these positions. You know, we do a lot of 50/50 in the gym. One because I it's my favorite position and, you know, I believe in mastery and mastery is just getting repetitions over a long period of time. So we'll do a lot and I'll just start 50/50 with my legs split so that I I have to defend with my legs. I can't defend with my hands. And, you know, if that means I get caught, I get caught. It is what it is. It's not a big deal. But I learn how to, you know, use my feet to help me toe slip or heel slip or create distance, you know, or bring the legs to the opposite side. All these different things, you know, which base I like to build up if I want to stand up in 50/50. You're only going to get these reads if you put yourself in the position as often as possible. Now, 50/50 is also a position that you can do every single day with no like kickback in terms of your physical fatigue. So what I mean by that is if we want to wrestle, it's going to be difficult to wrestle every single day and do Jiu-Jitsu. You know, so some guys and girls will wrestle once or twice a week max, you know, unless you're actually a wrestler. But in terms of 50/50, I can do that every day on top of the my training load at a good intensity and not be like, "Oh, man, I'm so tired." Because it's not a physically imposing position. So therefore, I can build a skill set, skill develop and add more time to my training sessions without getting more fatigued. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's well said, sir. An underrated aspect of this position is how effective it can be because it doesn't require a lot of intensity or strength or attributes. I've got this guy that I train with and he's, you know, an older guy, a smaller guy, and he terrorizes much bigger, better people than him from 50/50 because once he can get there, he can hold them there basically forever and if he's good at it, he can just dominate that game. And this is different from a lot of other positions. So as an example, closed guard. We talk all the time about how in Jiu-Jitsu a smaller person can beat a bigger person, but I mean, let's be honest, if you've got two people who are equivalent in skill and one of them is 100 pounds and the other one is 300 pounds, closed guard ain't going to work. It's just not going to happen, right? There there's a ceiling. Whereas 50/50 is a position where a smaller person can truly hold and control a much larger, much bigger person. Like I said, this little guy that I know, he's probably, you know, late 60s now by this point, but he's a, you know, well, well into his a third or fourth stripe on his black belt. And if he gets people into 50/50, he can control someone who outweighs him by almost 100 pounds just in that position because the the bending of the leg at that 50/50 angle, it takes a lot of the strength away. And if you are able to hold that position confidently, it doesn't really matter how much bigger or stronger the other person is, which I think is a hugely under appreciated aspect of that position. How well it scales up against people who are bigger and stronger than you. Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely. And that's the thing, it takes away that aspect, right? Like I don't have to use strength from that position. I don't have to worry about getting crushed, you know, as long as I understand the the mechanics of the position. I don't have to worry about you crushing me and smashing me and and what not. And then again, I always have offensive options from that position. So it's very difficult, you know, if you don't understand, you know, a guard or you're passing and the person on on bottom has some physical attributes that you don't have. Like you're trying to pass someone that's super flexible, can be so difficult and dangerous. Like it's one of those things that, yeah, a lot comes into it. But if we put each other in 50/50, then that gets taken out. So I love the position. I could, you know, if I could do 50/50 forever, I would. If you start me in 50/50 in every match, I would love that. But uh unfortunately, that's not how it is, but it's definitely something I look for. Speaker 1: Yeah. Training that position too, it takes you on a whole psychological journey because as you mentioned, when you first start playing 50/50, the threat of leg locks there is so scary that the first thing you're probably going to learn to do is how to defend. So people who are new to 50/50, as you mentioned, they'll play this game like a staller. Their whole thing is going to be how do I hide my heels so that I basically don't get submitted and that's their number one goal. And this is kind of a a natural way that people's Jiu-Jitsu skills develop. One of the first things they learn is how to defend and not get submitted. But then at a certain point, the purpose of defense is to give people confidence so that they can start going on offense and they can take risks being confident that those risks are not going to get exploited against them. So again, with 50/50, much of the time when people start trying to learn this, their whole thing is going to be how do I hide my heels and my ankles so that I just don't get submitted. And that's where this position gets the reputation as a staller position. But once you start developing some confidence, you realize, "Oh, as long as I'm smart about this and I don't let the person latch onto my ankle, I can uncross my ankles. I can start, as you said, using my feet like hands." I love when I'm playing 50/50 to put my feet like into the person's armpit or against their bicep to stretch them out and take their arms out of the equation. I never would have done that when I was starting out because I was so afraid of getting submitted by exposing my ankles. But once you develop that sensitivity and you find the sweet spots where you can put your feet and not get attacked, you can start to use this as a a more offensive position and that's when like you said, you start using your feet like hands. That's really a common denominator of almost every position from the bottom in Jiu-Jitsu. Once you start getting more advanced at these positions, you start trying to think about how can I use my feet like hands. Open guard is probably the most obvious example of where the difference between a beginner and a skilled player is a skilled player is fighting like an octopus. They're using all of their weapons together at the same time. Whereas kind of a beginner, they're more upper body focused. They're thinking about their hands and they're not really focused on what's going on with their legs. Same thing from 50/50. Your legs are often a better weapon from 50/50 because your hands are so far away from the other person, right? I mean, you can use them to attack the ankles, yes, but other than that, your ability to reach forward towards the person is quite limited. So a lot of the smart things you're going to do involve using your feet like hands. So I really like that explanation. Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. And again, it's one of those things that it's so adaptable to a lot of the game, you know, and a lot of every rule set. You know, there's some positions in Jiu-Jitsu that favor one rule set over the other. You know, 50/50 can work for, you know, majority of the rule sets that I've looked at as long as you play it properly. So definitely is one of those positions that I think the Gi kind of took a little bit away from it because, you know, without the the threat of the heel hook, it can be a little bit difficult to get any kind of attack exposure, but then also when you wrap the lapel around the the leg, it's it's so difficult to escape from, you know, so I can understand why it it started to get a bad rep, but at the same time, you know, that's just a part of the game, number one, but also at the time, that was the strategy being used to win. You know, if we think about, you know, the NBA or the NFL or whatever, any of these high-level organizations, there's always periods in time where, you know, the the structure of the game favors a certain play. You know, like back in Shaq's day, it was throw the ball into Shaq and he's going to dunk it down. You know, now people are shooting three-pointers. The game changes. So I think 50/50 is one of those positions that's definitely changing and there's a lot more options from there now and you're starting to see it and something that I could definitely hope that people want to see more of, so I can teach more of it. Speaker 1: Here's something I want to ask you, touching back on what you described earlier. If we look at kind of upper body attacks, which I guess we could call traditional Jiu-Jitsu, kind of, you know, the classic game of we go from guard to we pass to mount or back control. I generally think of that as, you know, classic Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. This is a game and a system that has evolved for, man, it's been like 100 years at this point, right? And that doesn't even get into prior developments back when this was part of Judo and Japanese Jiu-Jitsu. But the modern Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu game is quite solidified and yes, there are new things that appear here and there, but generally speaking, most of the classic stuff always applies. And this makes it easier to teach in a lot of ways because we've built systems and simplified concepts and governing ideas that make it much easier to learn classic Jiu-Jitsu. I mean, that's a big part of what BJJ Mental Models is. We try to talk about simple ideas that have outsize value in the sport because you can use them all over the place. And what I have found is that when we're talking about that classic Jiu-Jitsu, it's pretty easy to come up with some simple ideas that give you big wins because there's 100 years of work in the lab to refine the sport and it's kind of solidified a bit. Again, I was asking Rob Bernacki, does he believe that you can do the same thing with the leg lock game? And his answer was, not yet. And the reason why, according to him, is because the leg lock game is still so new and so rapidly evolving that it just kind of changes its shape every year. It's not consistent enough to be able to say, "Hey, here's some things that are pretty much always going to be a good idea." It's so dependent on the specific position you're in and what you're trying to do and what the meta is. And so the challenge that many people, myself included, have with leg locks is to really get good at leg locks, you've got to do an unbelievable amount of study. You have to kind of be aware of everything and you have to spend a lot of time watching instructionals, studying tape and workshopping all of these techniques. And if you're a Jiu-Jitsu professional like yourself, that's doable because you have that time. However, if you're more of a hobbyist and you know, you're training two or three times a week, I think this can make it hard for people to learn leg locks because there's this expectation that you have to study and invest so much of your time. So what I often see is that kind of hobbyists tend to gravitate more towards the classic game. And I think that might just be because it's easier to teach. Since, I mean, you know, you and I can sit down, I can come up off the top of my head with like dozens of just little quick hit bits of wisdom that someone can take to their Jiu-Jitsu and just use all across there. But when you get into leg locks, it gets a little bit more difficult to say like, "Here's just a generally good idea that's going to apply regardless of the position." I'd like to know your thoughts on that and if you agree. I mean, you do a ton of coaching of very high-level athletes. Have you found any of those quick hit concepts that you tell people who are playing the leg lock game that are just almost always good ideas or do you agree with Bernacki that this is still very much in flux and it's hard to pin that down? Speaker 2: Not necessarily, you know, I don't want to say I don't disagree because I'm sure there would be parts of it that if we both sat down and chatted, I could definitely understand a lot better and and agree with. Definitely I I feel like when it comes to like even we talk about the leg locks, but you can talk about it in any essence of of what you're doing. Like time is the most important thing for all of it, you know, so the reason that I think hobbyists have to they learn more of a fundamental game is because we we coaches are are teaching that, right? And like you said, it's easier to teach, but the thing is it depends on the the coach, you know, we've all been shown a certain way and me and you have spoken about this on podcasts before and I get a lot of heat for it. But, you know, I don't feel like the coaching as the majority is as efficient as it could be, which is why we have these outliers in coaching when they do something different and they have a little bit of success, like your, you know, your Greg Souders or I mean, Danaher, Danaher is obviously the obvious one, but Greg's probably the one with the Eco approach is getting a lot of attention at the moment that people really gravitate to it because it's different to what's happening. But it also comes down to the individual coach. Like I don't really teach I like to say and I I don't want to toot my own horn, but I like to say I don't really teach any moves that are like white belt moves or blue belt moves. Like I want to teach you that if you do the move correctly, which is most of the time you're not going to do because you're you're fairly new, that you'll be able to submit the black belt with it. You know what I mean? It's not about whether you you can only do this at white belt to blue belt, etcetera. In terms of like concepts that I think are fundamentally important with, you know, the the leg lock game, obviously if we talk about heel hooks, pointing the toes is number one. I reference that to very similar to like turning the thumb down in an armbar or tucking your chin in a rear naked choke. Like those things, you shouldn't have to teach every single class. Those should be common sense things. Pointing the toe should be common sense like a common sense thing, right? But one thing that I really like is the concept of the knee line. When I talk about the concept of the knee line, people think about where my hips are in relation to your knee if I was attacking you. Actually, Eddie Cummings described this really well that, you know, that's not always the most important thing. If we imagine and I hope I'm not plagiarizing him here, but I'm not sure he's around, so maybe. But this is actually on one of his original DVDs. So if anyone wants to check it out, go and buy it. It's on Jiu-Jitsu, little plug for them. But if we think about an inside heel hook, right? My heel is if I imagine a line from my ankle to my hip, okay? A straight line from my ankle to my hip. My knee in an inside heel hook will be on the outside of that line. If I can bring my knee from the outside of that line to parallel or the inside of that line, the chances of me getting heel hooked decrease significantly. And if we look at an outside heel hook, my knee would be on the inside of that line. If I can bring my knee to the outside of that line, same thing, the chances of me being heel hooked decrease significantly. So before I even talk to people about like, you know, the different leg configurations, hand fighting, leg pummeling, inside position, all this stuff. If you just understand that and you just train that for a an extensive period of time, your defense will increase significantly. Just like when Gordon and and John started to talk about cross hand fighting. The ability to use your cross hand to stop a rear naked choke compared to using the same side arm trying to pull the forearm down. I'm 100% sure most people that use that concept have increased their rear naked choke defense significantly. Now, it's not saying you're always going to be able to defend from there, but your chances of defending go up. So that's the concept I like to use the most when I talk about inside heel hooks is that ability to slip the knee on either side of that line. Not the knee itself, like outside of the the configuration, but just that imaginary line. And that's something I go into depth about in in seminars and things like that. But that's something that, you know, I took from Eddie Cummings a long time ago when I first started looking at heel hooks and it's stuck with me ever since. And following that concept or principle, whatever you want to call it, I've had success with with leg lock defense to a high level. Speaker 1: Yeah, I love that, man. Another concept, and you mentioned this earlier in this chat, was the idea of keeping their feet off the floor. I first learned this from my brother, actually, and it really changed the way I play a lot of bottom position stuff. Of course, we all know that if you can take away someone's base, you can make it hard for them to do pretty much anything. But having base is a requirement to really play a lot of Jiu-Jitsu. What is base? Base is your ability to kind of push or pull or generate or absorb force off of a surface. So if you're going to have base, that means you've got to be able to kind of push or pull against something. Often that means you've got to have your feet on the floor or your feet connected to your opponent if you want to generate base with your feet. So if you can prevent the person's feet from touching anything, it's really hard for them to do a lot of escapes they might want to do. I first started using this as a guard passing strategy because I realized if I just never let the person put their feet on me or on the floor, they were kind of in this pretty helpless position and I was probably going to get the pass. But what I realized after talking to my brother is even from positions on the bottom, and you mentioned this earlier, even from like ankle lock configurations, what a lot of people will often do is they'll kind of go into this like ankle lock that looks kind of right, but the person's foot is still on the floor and that allows them to do things like, you know, base out or put on the boot or just stand up. And if on the other hand, you just keep their feet floating so that it's never on the ground, it really kills their ability to get out of that position because, I mean, if your feet can't connect to anything, you can't really use them for anything. So I think that's another good concept, especially if you're trying to go on the attack, but I mean, you tell me if I'm wrong on that. Speaker 2: No, I I think you're completely right. You know, anytime that we can get some form of elevation, you know, you're really taking a lot of power and drive away and then obviously the ability to off balance and move through positions helps a lot. It can sometimes work in the opposite way too if you don't cut the right angle or you're a little bit shallow on on the positioning, you might lose it due to the fact that the foot is floating a little bit. But again, then the more time we spend in these positions, the better. And I just think that whether you're doing normal Jiu-Jitsu drilling, Eco, whatever you want to call it, it's all about time, you know, and time under pressure. Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah. Well said, man. Well, as we tie up this conversation, I just want to ask you here and also give you the opportunity to plug. What resources would you suggest people look at first if they want to really dig into how to be a more effective straight foot locker? In particularly, I want to talk about your Patreon because I think that's probably an underutilized resource out there. But I'm going to turn it over to you to maybe explain that and any other resources you may be aware of that you want to promote. Speaker 2: Yeah, I really think that the people that are are doing really well with the straight foot locks, you know, they're the ones to really try and study. So Mateusz Szynalski is probably top of that list, I would say. Chris Wojcik is really good. If you're looking at Gi guys or you're looking at that kind of thing, Isaac Doderlein, who was just on the UFC BJJ show, you know, he's got an amazing straight foot lock, so does Mikey Musumeci. There's so many resources out there. I think one thing though too, don't get pigeonholed in terms of like there's one way to do things, you know, I think that's a it's a big thing. Just because you've been taught it one way doesn't mean you're not open to other ideas. Very similar to me with my straight foot lock variation. I still spoke to Chris Wojcik, I still watch like I still bought his DVD and watched it, studied it, watched his match footage. When I was with Mateusz, I was very lucky to spend quite a bit of time with Mateusz, same thing. It wasn't about like who's was better. It was about what more I could learn. I do a lot of straight foot lock stuff, so you there's a lot on my Patreon, so definitely check that out. I'm running a camp in a couple weeks where I I'll teach a straight foot lock. I'm starting to do it a few more seminars on it and things like that. So if anyone wanted any of that stuff, you're more than welcome. Private lessons as well. You can hit me up. We can do it over, you know, Zoom or or anything like that. You know, there's a lot of resources, man. We're so, so lucky these days to have that many resources and that ability to basically Google, you know? Another guy, I don't know his name, but Limmy or Lima BJJ, is that the guy? You know, he created that outlaid. Speaker 1: Less Impressed, More Involved. That's Jake Luigi. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's right. So he created that database, you know? I'm sure there's a a million things on there about straight foot locks. Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Speaker 2: Well, I'm going to leave it then to the listeners to go and explore those resources. I would suggest that if people haven't checked out your Patreon, they do that. And I also want to maybe use this opportunity to talk about the different types of options that people have out there for content. Still to this day, when people want to grab some new info packet out there, one of the first things they do is they try to find like an instructional to buy. And I'm not going to disparage those. There's a lot of incredible instructionals out there that deliver a ton of value. But people, I think, should think more about subscription services that they can use to learn and generate content. And I of course, I talk about things like Patreons like yours, Joseph Chen's. There's a lot of great Patreons out there with incredible info that are probably not being used by people as much as they should. Um Lachlan, of course, Submeta, one of the best in the game. I know that for a lot of people, they're wary of subscriptions because they like the idea of like I buy it once and there's no obligation. But I can tell you being on the other side of the fence here that often subscriptions are a better investment for the average user, right? I mean, if you were to go and sign up for like a year of someone's Patreon or even Submeta, that year of access is probably going to be less than the cost of like a Danaher instructional and you're going to get a lot more out of it, right? When you sign up for a subscription, you're not getting just one instructional, you're getting probably everything that person makes. And also with the understanding that as stuff evolves and changes, you're getting new content too. When you buy an instructional, many of them, unfortunately, because of the speed of development in the sport, they're only relevant for a year or two and then they just go on the shelf. Whereas if you take on a subscription, then you have access to this constant flow of new information. It also often lets you build a relationship with the instructors you really respect in the sport, whereas you're not likely to get that if you, you know, just buy a one-off DVD or digital instructional. The other thing too is for much of of the population here, if you really want to see Jiu-Jitsu grow and you really want to make sure that the teachers and the coaches who are helping you are successful, subscriptions are often a more reliable source of revenue for them than instructional sales. I often encourage people if they want to, you know, start a Jiu-Jitsu business. One-off sales are a challenge because the sport is still very small. The market just isn't that big. But subscriptions make things much more viable for your favorite creators and coaches. So I always encourage people. I know there's subscription fatigue and everyone's like, "Oh God, it's like another subscription. What if I forget to cancel?" But that's an easy thing to work around. Just set a reminder for yourself. The other benefit to subscriptions too is you can try it and if you don't like it, cancel. Probably you're only paying for a month or two. Whereas if you bought an instructional, I mean, I don't know about you, Jake, but there have been so many instructionals I bought where I watched like the first 10 minutes of it and I thought, "This guy's style just isn't working for me. This is not my thing." And now I'm out like 100 plus dollars because I bought this instructional that I'm never going to use. Um subscriptions, I think, are a much more modern and efficient take on learning Jiu-Jitsu and they often tend to support the coach better as well. In a sport like this that is growing where there's still so few opportunities to monetize, I really think that everyone should consider like finding a a creator that they like and supporting them through a subscription. So all of that is to say that if you want to learn the leg lock game from Jake, check out his Patreon. I'll put a link in the show notes. There's my plug for you, Jake. Anything I missed or any other places that you want people to follow you on, like Instagram or other social platforms? Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm I'm always on Instagram, man. I'm pretty active. So it's Jake_EssenceBJJ. That's probably where you'll find me the most. And then if you're ever in Perth, you guys are always welcome to check out my gym, Essence BJJ. Yeah, I I'm pretty active. You know, I definitely always have coaching spots available, not always month to month, but, you know, we do do mental programs which runs for about six weeks and yeah, any any of that stuff, man. Patreon's definitely a good option to check out as well. So yeah, just send me a message and I'm happy to help. Speaker 1: Amazing, sir. Well, again, links in the show notes to make it easy for people to find all of that stuff. I'll also put our stuff there too. We're easy to find. Everything we make lives at BJJMentalModels.com. The main podcast is all completely free. Unlike a lot of other shows out there, we don't really talk about news or current events. Everything we talk about is through the lens of what's a lesson we can give people that will make their Jiu-Jitsu better today. Hopefully, we've done that here. And if you like this kind of stuff, we've got hundreds of other free episodes in the queue that should all be just as useful. So hit those up. If you don't want to listen to 400 hours of me talking, we also have mini episodes that get to the point a lot faster. And again, you can find those at BJJMentalModels.com. Our newsletter is now well ahead of 13,000 subscribers, so I definitely recommend catching that too, which you can also sign up with there. And the big thing I always want people to consider is going premium with us. Um BJJ Mental Models Premium is our subscription. It's how we pay the bills here. It's the single best way that I can help people beyond just creating content for them, but to actually help with um transformative aspects of their Jiu-Jitsu game. The reasons you'd want to sign up, first of all, you get access to the world's largest audio library of Jiu-Jitsu courses on concepts, strategy, tactics, the kind of stuff that transcends individual techniques. If you like Mr. Jake here, we actually are just in the process of releasing a course that we did with you on how to be a professional in the sport. Highly underrated aspect of being successful, right? There's a lot of people out there who think that if I want to, you know, make a living out of Jiu-Jitsu, I just need to be good at Jiu-Jitsu. Turns out that being good at Jiu-Jitsu is only one of many variables to making a career out of this. So Jake really gives us playbook on how to deal with things like sponsors and social media and conduct and how to get opportunities. Just a really great conversation that we had, Jake. A five-part series that we've published there. It's included in our premium service. We also offer direct coaching. Um you talked about Brianna. Brianna Saint-Marie is one of our coaches. So if you go up to our coaching tier, that's the kind of caliber of athlete who's going to review your footage. So we've got a bunch of stuff there too that I recommend checking out. And of course, if you are a Jiu-Jitsu gym owner, we also have a pro tier where we can help people with marketing services. That is probably the fastest growing area of our sport. My big focus this year and next is how can I help people be more successful in terms of making money in the sport and building a career out of it. We're always so focused on the nitty-gritties of technique that we forget, people got to pay the bills. There's way too many amazing Jiu-Jitsu athletes out there who are so generous with their time and they just don't get compensated in turn for that. And I want to help create opportunities for people in that boat to to make that money so they can do this more sustainably. Again, end of rant. All of that is at BJJMentalModels.com. So please do check it out if you haven't already. Link in the show notes. Jake, as always, man, I love these chats with you. I think you're you're just such a great mind for kind of a more holistic approach to learning Jiu-Jitsu. Not just the technique, but like how do we make this a a job? How do we make this something that we can actually use to shape our entire life? So thanks as always for doing this. I always love having you here, man. You're always welcome. Any closing thoughts or wisdom you want to share before we tie this up? Speaker 2: No, I obviously always appreciate your time too, man, and and having me on and and letting me rant a little bit about some of my thoughts on Jiu-Jitsu. It's a great platform to be involved with and and I appreciate all the support. So. Speaker 1: Well, thank you, sir. I appreciate it too. And of course, I always appreciate everyone hanging out here with us each and every week. So thank you as well to the listener. We'll talk to you in the next one. See you soon.