You Aren't Learning In BJJ Class (& How To Fix It)

Speaker 1: How much jiu-jitsu are you actually doing? Now, many people go to training all the time, but if you actually break down the amount of time that you're on the mat and you are actually rolling, learning, doing jiu-jitsu, you may be surprised. And the reason why I want to bring this up, Joe, is recently I was uh reading a bit of something about productivity, but it was about writing. And this is called the stopwatch effect. Now, writers famously procrastinate. And they talk about writing more than they actually write. And I actually believe for many jiu-jitsu people, it's the same. Like, oh, I train all the time. You're like, yeah, um how much actual rolling? Oh, you know, we do like at least one five-minute round at the end of class. You're like, I don't think you actually got much rolling in, you know. And then also even if I think to myself, when I first started learning how to drill and do specific training, I was like, wow, I can only do a certain amount of reps in five minutes. And you don't always get given five minutes. The coach might go, two minutes you, two minutes you, okay, next. Okay, next. And so um and funnily enough, we were just talking before, you were saying that you prefer to um spend a bit more time on a thing to to cement it in. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I prefer to do positional work over rolling. Yeah. In a class. Like if we've only got an hour, it's like, let's do positional because otherwise it's just a like a really insignificant amount of time on a technique. Speaker 1: It's kind of token. Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it's exactly that where no one really learns it. We fuck around for 15 minutes and it's like, all right, let's roll. And then you're in some totally irrelevant position. Speaker 1: Yeah, it doesn't it's not it's not structured in a way that makes that uh idea or those techniques stick. Yeah. And I think that's probably a big problem as to why people tend to go to class and then be like, fuck, I don't I don't remember anything after all that. Speaker 2: Yeah, it's interesting you say that. I'm thinking about one one guy that I train with that like he's just always walking off the mat going to get a drink. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: And you're like, why are you drinking all the time? Like, it's not even that hot. We're not working that hard. Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's just it just eats into his working time. Speaker 2: Actual jiu-jitsu. You know, like the clock's on, we're drilling right now. Or the clock's on, we're rolling. Your partner's waiting for you. And you're like, I can see I can see it's just a habit that's probably formed over a long period of time. Speaker 1: Yeah. Speaker 2: You know, or there's or there's other people that like talk a lot and they want to have a conversation and the timer goes off and they keep conversing. Speaker 1: Yeah. And you're like, let's just cut it down. It's it's kind of it's kind of wasteful, right? Yeah, yeah. So the the stopwatch effect is um a so this is in the context of writing, but I believe that you can apply this to your jiu-jitsu. Now, obviously, you're in class, you can't necessarily do this. But you could have someone do it for you, see how you go. Essentially, what they have to do is they have to set the stopwatch and then write. As soon as they are not writing, they have to stop the stopwatch. And that's okay, they can stop writing. But here's the key thing. If you've sat down for two hours, how many minutes are you actually spending writing? And that was the question. They were saying that actually it's less than 20%. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: Because people maybe they write a line or type a line and then they're thinking, delete, go back. Like, you know, and I'm not saying that, you know, obviously all those minutes need to be filled with furious typing for it to be a good process. But when we actually start to break down um for example, you've probably experienced this, Joe, where the coach has showed a technique, you've gone through, you've started to drill, or you've done positional work, and then someone asks a question and then the coach kind of gets sidetracked. And you're kind of sitting there. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: And you cool down a bit. Yeah. You're like, oh, fuck. You're like, oh, I'm feeling a bit I might stand up. And then you know, and then suddenly you've lost five minutes of an hour. That's actually a fair bit. Speaker 2: It's a lot of time. Speaker 1: You know, it's a lot of time. It's 7 1/2% or whatever the bloody hell, right? So here's the thing, folks. How much jiu-jitsu are you actually doing? Cuz let's now take this to rolling. So when you're rolling, imagine how much of that time are you actually moving? Because I know my worst jiu-jitsu or when I'm being stally or not doing good jiu-jitsu is when I'm just holding someone down. I'm literally just like trying not to get too tired. I'm using gravity and my strength to restrain them. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: That is not good jiu-jitsu. And what is interesting, I've observed this when um they were doing the high heart rate uh low heart rate work at uh B team, that they weren't it's not that they weren't allowed to hold positions, but they hated the high heart rate stuff cuz they had to stay moving the whole time. Speaker 2: Right. Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Like to keep their heart rate up, they weren't able to actually be efficient and hold get the back and you know, like no, you got to keep your heart rate in a particular zone, which meant it was different jiu-jitsu, right? Yeah. And I have found this myself in terms of like when I've kind of said to myself, all right, I'm going to wrestle at every opportunity, cuz that's what keeps me moving. Yeah. If I get a body lock, it's just hug of death and it just slow and it's not you know, that's not really my best um way of practicing the skill of movement in jiu-jitsu. Speaker 2: I mean, ghee ghee's hard to keep moving in, isn't it? Speaker 1: It is true. Yeah, yeah. For sure. But I I guess it's also having a partner, you say, right, we're let's move a bunch, right? Yeah. Cuz you can have a partner who might get you in deep half and then just hang on to your leg and you're like, fuck, I'm getting stuck here or worm guard or whatever it might be. But here's the thing, you also need to have it think about like when you're doing a technique, you you you I'll get you to speak to this joke, where the the coach will put the timer on and you're practicing the technique and then your partner goes, no, no, it wasn't like that, it was like this. You're like, no, hang on a second. And you go back and forth. Time's ticking away. Then you put your hand up, hey coach, come back. Coach comes over, shows you this thing. Beep, beep, change. You're like, I did one rep. What the fuck? Like, you know, like, did you get a chance to practice the skill? Speaker 2: That can be really absurd. That moment it's so fun. It's just like, this is silly. What are we doing? Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I um yeah, I I mean, I I battle with that myself as a coach these days, like just cuz cuz sometimes it happens and you realize, oh, fuck, I either like guy wasn't listening, right? Sometimes that's the thing. Hey, fucking you should listen. Or I just didn't explain the drill properly, or I made it a bit too complicated, and the instructions weren't clear, you know, or I assumed some prior knowledge that, you know, just can be a lot of things. But I but I really do find like if you if you do a good job of coaching and you communicate well and you've thought about what you're going to teach, you really minimize that. Yeah. And that's when you walk away and you're like, that was a very productive training session. Speaker 2: Yeah, well played. Speaker 1: Everyone was doing everyone was moving, everyone was into it, the questions were good. Speaker 2: When you run a shit session, you're like, I get shit questions back. People are not moving, you know. You're walking around the room, you're like, this isn't the highlight reel of the class that I had thought of in my mind. Speaker 1: I'm not at peak masterful jiu-jitsu instruction right now. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, look, there can be some user error in there. For sure. Of course. And so it it is it's not just the coach to be blamed, you know, if the student was just fucking, you know, a million miles away for various reasons. Speaker 2: So tell me, with this stopwatch effect, like, so obviously like, I get where you're going with it. But the, you know, like with the with the writing analogy, it's like writing as a task is like writing is the actual physical writing is just one facet of it. Like the thinking and the contemplation and the fucking mistakes is all part of it too. Speaker 1: That's true. Speaker 2: So how do you so like say you've done that timing thing of it and you've come out with where you're actually only writing for 20%. What does that tell you? Speaker 1: What you don't know is that your rash guard is shrinking your balls. That's right. Your T levels are declining because of the plastics in your rash guard. I have a solution. The sponsor of today's show, Alchemical. They deliver natural fibers, we're talking hemp, organic cotton, bamboo, with lightweight rashies and organic materials in your ghee that do not stink and they feel amazing. You got to try it to feel the difference. Go to alchemicalfightwear.com and use the code bulletproof15 to get 15% off your next order and stay strong. Okay, so I have a I have a take on this. There's kind of two two things I think we can benefit from as jiu-jitsu people. One is going in with an idea of something that you're working on. So the best writers have a bunch of notes, they're incredibly prepared, and so when they're writing, they've they've already done they're not sitting there thinking about what to write. They've looked at their um they've looked at their writing from the day before and they're like, right, this is the next step. Or they already have notes uh and and little like uh cards about, oh, this character does this or X, Y, Z. And so, yeah, there is a creative process there. But the preparation takes out the decision-making. It kind of flows better. And I believe that's true of jiu-jitsu. If you've come in with an intent, that's going to make it much easier for you when you get tired. You're like, oh, that's right. I'm going to stand up. I'm going to wrestle today. Like just saying that to yourself and you say your partner, come on, let's stand up. Because sometimes you know how it can be like you're both tired, fucking someone accidentally hits you in the balls. And then you start someone makes a joke about it and then it's like the the roll just gets off track. Yeah. Whereas if there's a particular intent and you're like trying to achieve something and your coach is also pushing you or like driving the session, I believe that I'm not saying that's necessarily the best jiu-jitsu, but it's more productive in terms of skill practice. Yeah. That's that's what I'm going to say there. The second take on this is that it is worthwhile and I think this speaks to your point about uh specific training to separate certain like skills training and development, whether it's games or drilling or whatever you're into, and then sparring and and specific uh like wrestling drills or whatever it is, not drills like specific training but maybe a little bit more open-ended. Like start with someone on the single leg and it goes where it goes. But every time you reset, you start on the single leg. Yeah. And and so Speaker 2: Yeah, so you're letting them roll, but it's like from a like from a um a preset position, give allowing them to get reps there. Speaker 1: A constraint, you might say. Oh. And so as a result, you have to you like everyone knows what they have to be doing at that time. And even if you suck at it, you got to do it. Yeah. And and I think to even though it might sound strange, you might not have the power to do this, cuz obviously you just go to class, you go to do whatever fuck your coach says. That said, if you think about your week and you're like, right, there is one time in the week where I can control my training, say it's an open mat, and you're like, I just want to work on my double leg takedown. So you find a partner or you find whoever you like, hey, I want to start, I'm I'm just I'm trying to work on my double legs. So you're going to roll, but you're going to every time you get an opportunity, you're going to practice that. And I think even though there's a lot of fun in just going open mat, not thinking and just doing it, um having something that you're working on and then implementing that by your own kind of uh decision-making will mean the jiu-jitsu is better and you're actually practicing the fucking skills. I think if we were to look at any standard jiu-jitsu class, there's a lot of fluff in there. Yeah. And when you look at a professional room, the fluff goes. Like if you look at a top room like an Atos or a B team or I I don't know, I've never been in the room at um Dan Her's or King's Way, but I I know some people who are in those rooms. You know, like what I know of at least at Absolute, Locky asked everybody to be warmed up before the class started. Like warm up wasn't part of the class. You had to be ready. Yeah. And he also had something for you if you didn't bring your own, but there was this kind of responsibility given to the people like, you need to bring it something you're working on. And and man, it it made less time harder because you were so fucking it was more as much as it was physical, it required more thinking. Speaker 2: Yeah, right. Speaker 1: And I I I think that's possibly why this isn't more common because people are just like, I don't know what to do. Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's not um I was thinking about that the other day. I had to cover a class and I was like, oh, maybe I'll just tell the guys when we get in like, hey, just you know, you got 30 minutes to just work like work on something you want to work on. And I was like, putting myself back in their shoes of like, no, you show up to class unless you've been told you need to bring something, you're not thinking about what am I going to work on today? Cuz that's what the coach tells you. Speaker 1: Yes. Speaker 2: So you really do need to empower students to start training like that, right? And thinking in that way. Yeah. Um I mean, I know I found it personally very hard, you know, when I used to drill with Adam, he'd be like, what do you want to work on? I'm like, I don't know. So it's a skill, right? To to to think like that. Speaker 1: Yeah, and and it's just a different a different way to approach jiu-jitsu. But I think also it's another it's just another form of accountability. You know. It's the same thing if you're at the gym and you time your uh your rest between rounds. If you don't, you might get on your phone and then you see somebody talking some shit about someone else and you're like, oh, spicy. Scroll, scroll, scroll, 10 minutes goes by, oh, fuck my next set. You know, you know what I mean? And so I think this idea of like trying to cut the fluff out and being like, no, I'm not going to get caught up in a conversation with so and so about the UFC. You know, like not in between rounds. Like let's let's do the thing while we're doing it and then save the chat for later. So I I believe that just by having a little bit of forethought and a little bit of accountability in the session, you will actually do more better jiu-jitsu to make those few training sessions that you get count. Speaker 2: I like that. I like that too. I guess one one closing thought I got is that when you don't do something like that, when you don't show up with intention, it's not a big deal. But when you do that every session, three, four times a week for six, seven, 10 years, it's a fucking big difference. Speaker 1: It's huge. Speaker 2: And it's not like you have to be that person all the time. Speaker 1: No. Speaker 2: But it's like having periods of intentionality goes a long way. Speaker 1: Make it count, folks.