The Reason People Don't Improve In Jiu-Jitsu (Episode 406)

What up guys? Welcome to the Chewjitsu podcast. Today we're going to get into some ideas on why people in jiu-jitsu don't improve. Um, it's some ideas that I've talked about with you guys on the podcast before and one of the the jiu-jitsu goats, one of the greatest of all time, uh was talking about it recently and so I figured it would be something to bring up because it's it's important. Nothing sexy about it, of course, but uh it it's important and so, you know, there's uh there's an importance to repetition. What some of you guys are new, obviously listening to the podcast, but if you're a long time listener, it'll be information that we've gone over, but you know, repetition of information is important. Sometimes things don't stick with you the first time around, right? Like if you guys learn a technique, sometimes the technique doesn't stick with you the first time. You see it again and then all of a sudden it's like for whatever reason, that time is when it's stuck. I remember having that experience uh with butterfly guard. I remember the first time I kind of got exposed to it. I liked it, but it just wasn't clicking. And then my coach went over it again some, you know, probably about a year later and then that second time, boom, there it was. Um all of a sudden it was just like this position just felt right to me. And so we'll talk about some ideas on why people don't improve and how to improve. How to structure things around so that you can get more from your your training and uh to make better use of the wide world of information that you have at your fingertips as a uh modern human being uh in today's world. So been uh thank you guys for being here. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this podcast happen. Athletic, A T H L E T H C. They make mints that are basically microdose THC mints that come along with other cannabinoids to help create a different effects in your body depending on the situation you're looking to. 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So if you're a military uh man or woman, you can message them and email them on their website, you can get a special discount. Uh they also have free orders over $100 and you can get a discount with us if you use the the promo code Chewjitsu 10 for 10% off the order. C H E W J I T S U 1 0 for 10% off. Um and if you guys want to check them out, it's at athletic, A T H L E T H C.com. Also big thanks to our buddies over at Epic Roll. Epic Roll is one of my favorite jiu-jitsu brand companies out. I've been with them for a long time. I would love I absolutely love their no-gi stuff. Um I had one of their gis recently when I was at Indy, but I didn't need it. Um just had it as a backup, but I get my gis and my rash guards made through them at the gym and I love their rash guards personally. I think their rash guards and their shorts to me it's some of the best in the business. I've worn I've worn all sorts of different companies. 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They also make functional mushroom products with Reishi and Lion's Mane that have other uh supplements in to sort of to help again create certain effects, you know, rest, relaxation, stress management, all that kind of stuff. And so again, if you want to go to their website, go to charlottesweb.com, take a look through the different products that they offer. And if you find something that you like, you can get 30% off the order by using the promo code Chewjitsu 30, C H E W J I T S U 30 for 30% off the order. Um and again, my recommendation with any of this stuff, if you decide the supplement route is just try it for yourself and see what you think. Um I've used all the supplements and everything that we talk about here on the podcast and, you know, they work great, but I always tell people sort of, you know, test it out for yourself and see what you think because everybody responds to things differently, right? So what you need might be different than what someone else needs and you might feel something different than what someone else feels. I personally like the Charlotte's Web products as kind of in they're in my toolkit for recovery. You know, as an old guy who's not old but getting older, I'm always looking to make sure that I'm recovering as best I can and it's one of the things that I keep in my arsenal typically at nighttime to help me recover better. If you want to check them out, charlottesweb.com. Also, if you guys want to support the podcast directly and become a Patreon member, you can do so by going to patreon.com/thechewjitsupodcast. And when you join up, you'll have access to the exclusive perks that we offer there. And on top of that, you'll get, you know, the content that we produce uh on the back end. And there's a lot of good stuff. Everything from specific podcast extras that we don't release anywhere. You have access to send Eugene questions for the podcast if you would like. And we'll obviously give you a shout out if we use your question. And then on top of that, you get access to some recordings that we've done like seminar recordings. And Eugene even created a warm-up routine, stretching routine specifically for jiu-jitsu practitioners that we used at some of our camps. And if you guys want to get access to that and more, check it out at patreon.com/thechewjitsupodcast. And uh again, we're going to talk a little bit about focus later on. Um one of the things I give away on my website is a ebook and a video called Focus Jiu-Jitsu. It's free if you want it. It's at my website chewjitsu.net/join. And when you join up, you will get access to my daily email that I send out, which goes through everything from like books and ideas, uh dieting ideas, nutrition ideas, lifting ideas, training ideas, anything that I think might be useful to you guys. It's it's mostly focused on jiu-jitsu, but you know, I go off in the weeds with all kinds of stuff. And then you get the ebook and the video for free and you can unsubscribe at any time. But the ebook and the guide, the video guide go through 12 different strategies on how to improve and improve faster with your open rolling. So a lot of you guys don't have time for excess amounts of uh specific, you know, drilling and you don't have control of your training. And so this is a way to get more from your open rolling at the gym. You can check it out at chewjitsu.net/join. And so with that guys, so with that said guys, let's get into this podcast. What up guys? So um, you know, recently I was coming across an article and it was by one of the jiu-jitsu goats, you know, greatest of all time, Hodger Gracie, which for me like, you know, there's a lot of good jiu-jitsu guys out there. He's one of the best. And when you look at how he did things, a lot of things to like be impressed about. You know, he had his run in 2009 where he basically submitted everyone with the same damn collar choke from mount, um just about, right? All submitted all of his opponents, both his weight and the open weight, best black belts in the world. And his game was relatively always pretty basic, pretty simple, right? Fundamental jiu-jitsu. Like you could be a white belt and look at what he does and be like, okay, I kind of know what he's doing. Whereas sometimes you can watch some guys where they have a more complex game and you look at it and you go, what the hell did they just do? Not to say that there's anything wrong or better from one to the other, um but for me, I'm kind of like a an Occam's razor kind of guy. I'm looking for like the simplest solution to the problems. Um I like complexity and I have bits and pieces of it in my game, but I don't do it just, you know, for for just for complexity's sake. I don't really care about chasing novelty. I'm more of one of those guys that like gets geeks out about details and small adjustments to what you already know that you can implement tomorrow, right? And we'll talk more about this in a second. But in the article, Hodger Gracie was sharing kind of his thinking as to why people don't improve in jiu-jitsu. And his idea was that basically, most people don't study techniques and positions deeply. Um you know, I'm paraphrasing here, but basically instead, a lot of people are rushing around from one thing to the next, one technique, one position to the next, and they get a case of this shiny object syndrome. You know, where, you know, you're you're doing something, then all of a sudden you see this new thing, oh, that looks cool. Let me go chase that. You see this all the time in like small businesses, in businesses in general, where, you know, you have something that's working and you can continue to push that and work at it and get better at that thing. But then for some reason you want to chase this new thing because, you know, maybe, you know, you're like, I'm going to go make some Tik Tok videos because that's getting real big right now. Even though it has nothing, it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with you. Um you can also think about people in general do this all the time where they're really good at something or they learn something or whatever. And then they're like, well, I want to do what this guy's doing. So they get into that thing. Not to say that it's it's always wrong, but um opposed to going deeper into what they're doing. And this sort of issue with techniques and with sort of information, it's an issue because with things like Instagram and Tik Tok, there's a horde of desperate grapplers trying to get a little attention. You know, and they'll post up any old bullshit if they think it'll get a little of attention. This is why you have things like hot takes and social media techniques where, you know, it's like a move that doesn't actually work, but it looks cool and um this is something I fight against personally because I refuse to do like a hyperbolic hot take that I don't agree with, even though I know I would get a ton of views if I did it. I mean, imagine you take me and say, okay, all of a sudden Chewy says some crazy stuff online. I'd get so many views for it. But I'm not going to do it because I don't believe in it. And then also too, it's why I don't post any techniques that I don't believe in because I again, I want to make sure that everything that I I share with people is something I use or can use or I know is proven to work because if you guys come across me, I want you to know like I'm I'm delivering you the goods. I'm giving you the good stuff. It may not be the coolest stuff, it may not be the sexiest stuff. Like we're going to get into some ideas here in a minute that are super useful, stuff that I do all the time and what I recommend people do, but it ain't sexy. It works though. Um but you get this and you get all these people chasing the the views and everything else. And by the way, if any of you guys are in that boat where you're making content and you're chasing pointless metrics like views and follower counts, I would tell you it really doesn't matter as much as you think. I mean, there's there's a reason to get views and stuff. Um but again, like let's say I'll give you an example. I have a young guy that I know who sent me a message and he was like, man, dude, I've got so many views on this this viral video that I did. Um it was a short form video on Instagram and he's like, dude, like I didn't get any followers from it. Like I got a few but not many followers, but it had like a million views or something. And I was like, yeah. I was like, well, why would anybody follow you for it? It had nothing to do with you. You know, it was like you posted some crazy video, but it had nothing to do with you. It wasn't like you gave them some information or it was just some random stuff to pop up in someone's feed, right? And uh so again, just letting you know from someone that's been doing this stuff for over 10 years and has made a living, made a good business on the back end doing it, that stuff really doesn't matter that much of the views. The views and the the follower accounts, those have like become unless you know what you're doing with it, has become these vanity metrics that the machine, the social media machine because you got to think the social media, the only way that they work is if you keep producing content. And so you've got this army of content day laborers who basically never get paid any money. They make almost nothing. But they keep producing content left and right and they're busting their balls to do it, but they're not getting paid to do it. But you know, they're getting some views or something and it makes them feel good, right? And there's even, I remember reading about this when they were, you know, kind of they were doing some unearthing of the different platforms. The platforms will do this thing from time to time to create it and turn it into a slot machine essentially where some of your videos they will artificially boost them. So this way you get more views relative to you on some of your videos. And so it creates this effect of intermittent reward where if you post this video up, all of a sudden this one gets like a lot of views, oh, oh, that felt good. Oh, neat. Someone's paying attention to me. And so you get back on the the the treadmill. So, just letting you know that there's a lot of stuff out there. And some of it's good, some of it's not, right? But either way, it creates a distraction for you, right? Everybody's telling you that this is the new meta, this is the new position you have to know, so forth, so on. Well, Hodger believes that like, you know, people chase these newest techniques without diving deep into a particular area of their game. And either as you know or you'll find out, what takes a technique from like okay, you know, it's okay, to brutally effective where you hit it on everybody where someone knows you're going for that technique and they can't stop it. Can be something as small as a subtle grip change, um or an adjustment of body weight, understanding how to place your body weight three inches to this side or that side, which turns it into basically something that's incredibly difficult to deal with. And this is honestly, and also too, this whole process, by the way, of unearthing those details and actually owning those positions and really going deep can take weeks, often months, sometimes even years. And that's not sexy. That's not the thing that people want to hear. They want to hear like I'm going to do this thing and then boom, instantly it's going to work, right? We want that fast, we want the fast results. We want the uh we want the pill that we can swallow and make everything better. We don't necessarily want to have to like grind it out. But this is personally why I tell people, especially like casual hobbyists and people who aren't able to train all the time, right? Because you may be super serious about this stuff, but like when I say that basically casuals, it's not to be derogatory, right? Because you can be a damn good competitor and you can actually be really damn good as a hobbyist in jiu-jitsu who trains a few times a week. Nothing wrong with that, right? So it's not meant to be derogatory. I know sometimes people in certain circles will like talk down to the people who aren't training all the time. I'm not that's not what I'm getting at. What I'm saying is is that a lot of people train, you know, one to two to three days a week. And in those cases, with that limited amount of time, you don't necessarily need to be super well-rounded. At least to a degree, right? Because you need a certain level of knowledge with your escapes and your defense and you want to have a top and a bottom game and it's always good to have a, you know, you know, experimenting from different positions and stuff like that. But you with your limited time are going to be better off diving deep into a position to be to be effective with, right? Now I'm saying if you're a beginner, you're still learning stuff, but you know, if you've been training for a few years, you start to kind of get a read on your game and the things that you're good with. And it's at that time you want to go deeper. It's um it's like this idea with books. I have a lot of books in my like sometimes I do videos where I've got my bookshelf behind me. There's lots of books. I've got books all over the place. I like reading. That's something that I do for enjoyment. I don't sort of do it as like um sort of some weird competition/dick measuring contest. I just enjoy reading books. That's what I like doing. And so it's one of it's one of my leisurely things. Like one of my hobbies, I guess you would say because like someone was asking me about my hobbies and I'm like, well I I converted some of my hobbies into businesses, right? So there's that. But one of my hobbies is um is reading and keeping a commonplace journal. You're familiar with that, Eugene? Speaker 2: Yeah, we talked about it. Speaker 1: Yeah, so that's like one of my hobbies. I enjoy doing that. And so the books are around just because that's my space, right? I can't have books all over the place, so they're in my office and my studio. Speaker 2: And and commonplace journal, which you explained is kind of like where you you find these ideas, you kind of put them all in this journal, something, you know, then inspiration, things that are useful. Yeah. Speaker 1: That's it. All the information that you come across, you have some catching system for it so that you can retrieve it for later, right? Because otherwise, what the hell's the point of digesting this information if you can't do anything with it, right? Like if you read a book, now maybe you're reading like a a science fiction book and you're just doing it for enjoyment. But like if you're reading something or watching an instructional or whatever, you're probably trying to extract that information so it changes you. Speaker 2: Yeah. It's kind of hard to do that if you just passively read it. Is that the way you do it? Like so right now I'm studying for an exam. I'm trying to study for this kind of, you know, pretty big exam and I'm like, I haven't studied, studied in a long time and some stuff I know, some stuff I'm trying to memorize, but like what are you like how do you like to digest information? And that could be a book, that could be an instructional, that could be Speaker 1: I do it the same way. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: So like, you know, if I like let's say if I'm well first off, if it's a little different. If it's a book, I'm I'm highlighting, I'm like, you know, dog dog earing the pages. Speaker 2: I don't like doing that. It's just like I can't like I like to keep my I don't know, man. Speaker 1: Destroy those fucking books, man. Speaker 2: Do you know why probably? Because I used to collect comic books and I still do to some capacity. I get those omnibuses, those collected editions and I'm like very like gentle with them. And if I get something for my kids, I'm like, be careful, don't, you know, bend the pages and stuff. And I don't know why. I've always done that. I think I always try to really be um even with books and stuff, just like really careful with them. But like I get it, like you want to like you want to use them. Speaker 1: Like look at this stuff. Like this one's like the pages here. Like I've got tabs hanging out. I've got here. We go to different sections like there's writing everywhere in it. Like to me if you're just reading Speaker 2: Is that uh it's peak? Speaker 1: It's peak. This it's a real good book. I like that one. Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm reading it right now. Well who's the author? Um Speaker 1: Um it was Anders Ericsson with uh Robert Pool. So Anders Ericsson is one of the guys who came up with like the big idea of deliberate practice and he's the person that Malcolm Gladwell and a lot of guys um incorrectly came up with the 10,000 hour rule. Speaker 2: Yeah. Speaker 1: Um because it's not 10,000 hour rules. He he actually he actually addresses that in the book. He's like, it's not 10,000 hours. It's probably more likely like way more than that, but it's kind of like 10,000 hours of deliberate practice is kind of like a certain level of competency but beyond that like that kind of thing. Speaker 2: Right. I'm actually listening to the book right now, which again, he has some great ideas, but again, audio, I'm listening to it, but I'm also driving a lot of times and so it's like hard to get some of this information for really studying. So you have to be in a place where Speaker 1: So how much so then then it goes to that, how much are you actually getting out of that? How much do you remember? How much do you recall? How much do you act on? So the idea of the commonplace journal is you take that information and you catch it. So let's go to like for instance books, I'm doing all this stuff with it, right? Um and then I will sift through it and I will start to take the information, the ideas that I I wrote in here or came across and they go into the commonplace journal. I do a Google Doc um for the books that I'm reading. But you but even with instructionals, as I'm watching the instructional, I'm writing down ideas that I come across that I think could be useful. Um I'm also saving those in my commonplace journal and then I'm also paraphrasing in my own words because I think this is kind of the important part of it too. You don't want to copy people verbatim. Like when someone like you you you want to know what they're trying to express, but you want to put it into your own words because how are you you got to put it into your own vernacular, right? So for instance, let's say you're watching a John Donher DVD and he says, this is a closed system of wedges, right? Now, that might be how he thinks. Personally, that's not how I think. So I have to like take his verbage, right? If I'm watching that as an example, I'm just using an example because I I don't I don't speak or think like a um Ivy League philosophy professor, right? I have to put it into my own words so I understand it and I understand how to express it and how to remember it. And you want to do that same thing, right? When you're coming across something, you want to put it into your own words, not verbatim. You might copy verbatim, like I might have a quote in my commonplace journal, but then beyond that, it'll have my own interpretation of what does this mean to me? How do I see this as? You know, because now you're actually trying to work with the information. and that's the big deal, right? You want to make it, you want to make information more of an active process versus some sort of passive thing that you just kind of sift through and you read it and you kind of go on to the next thing because again, that that just goes back to we're burning through it, but what are we actually retaining? And, you know, that's a big thing for people. Oh, I can't retain information. Well, like how much are you doing using that information? And this is like a quote from Epictetus, um, you know, one of the ancient Stoics. He said, um, don't just say that you have read the book or read books, show that uh show that through them you have learned to think better, right? And that's like the difference is, don't tell me how many books you read, tell me how the books have actually changed you. And what's more valuable if you, let's say that you read 10 book or let's say you read 12 books this year versus you read one book multiple times and you acted on it and you saw a massive improvement in some aspect of your life. What's better to you? Reading a bunch of books and sort of having them on their self and having the look what I did versus, man, I only read one book, but man, I acted on everything in that damn book and put it to action. Big difference, right? Same thing for instructionals. What's better? You watch one instructional and all of a sudden you have this massive difference to your game where you're able to hit everybody with this sweeping series or this guard passing series, whatever it is, or to just watch have a bunch of instructionals and you like watch them casually in the background, but you never actually sat down with them. You know, and this is the thing like if I'm trying to extract information, I'm like, I'm I'm going through the information typically passively, you sort of easily once, but then I'm typically sitting with it again and again and as I go through it, I'm like trying to digest stuff. And this means that with most instructionals, I don't ever really I typically don't finish them. I'll come back around and and chip away at them over the course of years. With books, I finish them but then I come back around to them over and over again. Um you know, and again, this is sound advice. This this is 2,000-year-old advice to actually get something out of it, but it's it's perfectly fine and really useful now because again, information is helpful, but it only matters if you make a change. Like for instance, if you if you listen to this podcast and you come across an idea, one of the things I would recommend is you create a however you want to do it. I like having a digital folder that I can look up from any computer, my any device I want. Um create a file on like a Google Doc and a Google Drive, whatever it is that you want to do. And if you come across an idea, you save the idea. You just all you got to do is like say like you're driving or something, all right? Open up your your little thing, pop it up and you can go voice to text and just recite not exactly like we said, but whatever it is that you heard that found you found interesting and then try to like think about like what you would like to take action on so that you can do that later, right? And so this gets at this whole idea gets at the paradox of focus, which is to achieve more, you have to focus on less, right? And we can all kind of understand that on a really common sense level. We only have so much energy, we only have so much availability of focus and everything else that we have. We are all working with limited resources, right? Yeah. So what's going to be better to be like 20% across the board or to be like 100% in an area? And when you look at the best grapplers, this is the reason why and I've said this for years and um, you know, when I see someone who sort of confirms what I believe to be true and they have a damn good track record as well to back it up, like Hodger Gracie, I'm like, okay, hey, see, there it is, right? It's not just this bearded asshole, right? saying it. It's why you see so many people in grappling, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, judo, even boxing, they become synonymous with a particular type of technique, move, position, whatever it is. They use the same damn thing over and over again. They went deep in those positions and that is their positions. That's such an important thing to think about and for someone that is limited with your training, yeah, you're always going to be taking in new information, but when you're when you're training, you should be very focused and deliberate on specific areas. If you're going to go and get um an instructional course, I think instructional courses are fantastic. Again, make sure you're focused on a specific type of thing that you're looking for, like what kind of thing do you want for your game. Um this is also why I would tell you like if you get an instructional course, like stop watching everything for a while. Stop the consumption train. Delete social media, stop watching YouTube and focus on that thing that you're trying to dive into and develop. You know, this is this has been useful for me over the years and this is how I've like taken things over and over again for in in lots of different areas, business, jitsu, whatever it is and you take that information, you actually put it to practice. And you know, it's just a simple idea but again, that is one of the reasons why people don't get good at jiu-jitsu is because they're too scattered. It's one of the reasons why a lot of people struggle. I mean just and I again, I'm not trying to be your life coach, but I'm saying this is one of the reasons why I talk to people all the time where they're struggling with all sorts of aspects of their life, like their business, too scattered, trying to do too many things, their life, they're trying to do too many things, they're all over the place versus like getting rid of all the excess that you don't really need. And that does take some it takes some time to think about it and sometimes it requires a little bit of um it can be a painful process to like let go of stuff sometimes, but the benefit is is that you get more focused on what is going to be more important and more beneficial to you in the long run. And so Hodger's idea, which is something I agree with is that people don't improve in jiu-jitsu like they could because they're not as focused as they should be. And I I second that. You know, at some point in your game, you're going to have to get really dialed in on your stuff and you got to get focused. And so uh that is an idea to chew on today as we get started. The paradox of focus. You achieve more by focusing on less and you know, if you get nothing out of this podcast, I would tell you to sit down with yourself and really identify like your game. What is your game? This is something I was talking to my master's vault membership recently like, right, what is your game? What are you going to focus on? What is your goal right now? What are you chasing? What is it? You got to be specific about it because if you're not specific about it, you're wandering. And wandering has no destination. You want to have a destination in mind as to what you're trying to make happen. Not to say you'll ever you may never reach the destination, maybe you get to the destination so to speak faster, but you kind of want to know what you're after. It gives you a nice line of sight, it gives you a road that you're on rather than just sort of meandering about and then you kind of get to that point of wondering like, how come I'm not getting any better? Well, getting better like what are you trying to get better at? Like what are you measuring it as? Like what are you chasing? Those are really important things and when you do that, it's it's amazing how it happens. Um I'm sure you've had this experience Eugene where you buy a car and all of a sudden as soon as you buy that car, you see the car everywhere. But before you never saw the car anywhere. You know what I'm talking about? Yeah. Well, it it works that way with your game where if you get focused on a particular arm bar or, you know, sweep or takedown or whatever and you start to really zone in on that for a long period of time. I always recommend a bare minimum of at least four weeks. It's amazing how all of a sudden when you start looking for it, it just shows itself. Like you you don't know how it does it just it just comes you find it. It happens. And so this is the idea for you guys. If you walk away with nothing else from this podcast today as we continue to go on to it, really zone in. Find something to focus on. I give you guys if you want the free guide, I give an ebook away on my website at chewjitsu.net/join, which I you know always plug at the beginning and end of the podcast. It has a it's an ebook and a video guide to give you some ideas on how to get more focused, but again, focus on something for a solid 12 four weeks and then you know, if you're willing to, even go longer than that because I would tell you that a lot of the positions that are my A game stuff took it took like months and years to to really develop them and it doesn't mean you have to always stay there. You can bounce around a little bit, but you do want to give it at least a focus of like four weeks, maybe three months. You can you can make some really incredible changes if you do that. Um with anything that you do. And so that's the idea to chew on as we get started today. Speaker 2: When when do you think people and and you have your master's vault or or your vault where people kind of chat with you. When do you see most people start to kind of hone in on stuff? And is there an average time? I mean, like sometimes we have like we talk about, you know, we have the buffet belt, right? We have certain belts where like you're just trying to get exposed to everything. Yeah. And I I feel like if I had to guess and you can give me your opinion on this, I would say probably blue belt is where you start kind of figuring out what you like. I think white belt, you're still kind of you'll you're going to learn stuff. Um but like at blue belt, you start to have some techniques that you're getting pretty decent at, pretty effective with. So like when do you see most people like start to be like, all right, let's just start to kind of hone in on these things or when they should do those things? Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to do it from the beginning. You know, you're going to do it from a I don't want to say the beginning, but you're going to do it pretty early on. Um, you know, because as a white belt, you're going to start to find yourself in certain positions and areas over and over again. Yep. You're going to find that you start to like certain techniques more than others. And so you're going to early on come across some stuff that's going to just seems like it fits or it's going to address a problem you have. Like, okay, for instance, like as a white belt, we always say that survival is one of the biggies. Okay? Getting into a position and not being submitted left and right and being able to defend yourself. Perfect. There's your focus. Let's say you're getting smashed in side control. Well, there's all kinds of great information on how to defend that and how to escape that. Most people ignore that because they just want to like again, it goes back to this overly competitive thing where they want to win, right? I want to versus like I want to go get on the bottom and get my face smashed so I learn how to defend this stuff. It's what you need though sometimes. And so, you know, it could be as simple as saying, man, I'm getting stuck in side control. Let me start to like look at all the, you know, side control escape stuff that I can find. There becomes your focus. Or, you know, you come across a triangle and it just sort of feels good. Oh man, triangle feels good. Let me focus on triangles. It's going to happen very early. I started doing it with kimuras as a white belt. I started playing around with kimuras and keylocks. They felt pretty good early on. And so I started digesting instructional content outside of the gym. This is 2003, so I was watching a DVD, right? You guys remember those? We like before they like we still say DVD, right? Um now, but it doesn't mean the same thing. But like back in the day when you would actually get a disc in the mail and you'd put it in, you'd have to sit in front of your TV and watch it, which I think was probably a blessing because it's like less distraction. Yeah. And I would sit there and I would I would do that. I would watch the videos and practice that stuff. Now, when I had a a roommate, we would literally practice with each other at home just going through the movements. And we would basically, we had this little system where every day we would come home from training, we would sit down and we would practice what we were we'd watch our DVDs, we would practice the moves over and over again and we would stay on like one or two moves the whole week. Amazing was that uh amazingly, I was able to hit a lot of that stuff that we started practicing back then and it got it like hardwired into my game. Now this like first instructional series that I had back in the day was like 12 or 14 discs. I never went through all of it. But I used a good chunk of the specific areas that I was looking for. So for me back then, I was a white belt, I was wrestling. I could take people down and get to side control. So I started looking for side control submissions. That's what my whole thing was around. It's like, I'm already getting them, I might as well like see if I can make something happen from there. And so it can start very early, right? I I think that taking some agency to your game and actually doing that can be very helpful. But but again, you kind of have to limit like the inputs and you also got to limit the amount of stuff you're trying to do. If you're trying if you're like have you have like 70 different hobbies, probably going to be tough to be good at one of them, right? So you kind of want to like limit it down a little bit. Um and you also want to limit the inputs. Like if you're getting a ton of different stuff from a ton of different sources, it can be super difficult to uh to get focused. But I mean, you can start really doing some cool stuff early on as a white belt as you kind of get the basics underneath of you. You know, after, you know, three to six months or so, you're going to have kind of your feet under you in jiu-jitsu and then you can start to like focus on different areas of your game and give yourself a little focus. Now, that focus becomes easier as you get to blue belt and purple belt where you have a lot more ability under you to where you can kind of put yourself into positions during open rolls and you have a lot more knowledge and a lot more skill to implement. Speaker 2: Yeah, I think you, you know, especially when you get a little bit more experience too, you start to kind of I don't want to say riff, but you kind of get to like sometimes you'll make stuff up. Like you'll go find certain positions by putting yourself into some different techniques or or different places and you'll find, oh, there like you said, oh, here's the arm bar again. I can get to the arm bar from here. then you start figuring out what's your almost like in some ways you can reverse engineer it. That's a way to do it too. Let's start in the position and how did I get in back out and then figure out how to enter in because a lot of times the entries are the most challenging part. You know, once you get into a position where you have the grip, you're probably almost there. For example, you know, so it's like how do I reverse engineer to get there? There's a lot of different ways to do that too. Like I think when you when you talk about hobbyists and you you kind of made a great point. When you talk about hobbyists, I'm a hobbyist. I train about two to three times a week. And I have to do things outside of the gym to kind of hone in that my techniques. So I know what I'm working on when I'm in the gym and I do that. I try to focus on those things, but then outside of it it's like like you said, let's look at some instructionals or let's write down some notes or let's look at people like you said, there's there's elite athletes, elite grapplers that are synonymous with certain positions. You know, you have like Marcelo Garcia, butterfly guards, one of his, X guard, things like that. He's very good at certain. So it's like if you're trying to develop those things, watch those people and see how they implement those things in live situations. Um which brings up the other point of like if a technique is bullshit or not, it's like do you ever see it get hit at the highest level? And if you never see it, like there's one guy that does all these weird chokes. He shows all these videos, these weird chokes I've never seen and I'm like, I've never seen this work. It looks cool shit. If somebody's not defending, they're just kind of like laying there, but like I've never seen it. But I've seen people hit the basic bow and arrow choke. you know, basic arm bar, you know, triangle. I mean like that shit works always. Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean dude this this weekend like I was doing basic collar chokes. I mean like basic jiu-jitsu 101 collar chokes. Like tapping out black belts who are actually that are relatively tough. I mean they're like you know there's always different levels to stuff but guys who like you know some of the competitors that were there one of them placed at Euros, one of them won several matches. He may have placed at Master Worlds last year. Some tough dudes, you know, and one MMA fights, you know, these are tough dudes and you can you can finish basic stuff if you know how to do it well. Speaker 2: Hodger Gracie is the most perfect example of that. Literally a what cross collar choke, X choke is what he does a lot of from out. Yeah, I mean like the easiest and some of it's just tweaks, right? Like I was actually showing um we had ghee class and I was teaching, you know, like a somebody was asking me about a basic X choke and I was like, well you you know the the casting movement of the wrist. Add that in and then you start to like, oh my god, shit gets way tighter quick. And it's just like simple things like you said, you find one tweak and then you start to implement that tweak and all of a sudden your position that was not working, all of a sudden now it's it's working. And then it gets you that excitement and you figure out well how else can I get to that position? So I think it's it it I don't know. like I think you have to spend time outside of just training as well to kind of hone in on on your techniques. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's useful to reflect a little bit, right? Like what's happening? Yeah, yeah. And then try to figure out, okay, like what's happening and then look for ideas around that, right? So like what positions are you getting to? What techniques are you already working with? What areas of jiu-jitsu just sort of seem to happen for you? Um that that whole thing, right? You know, you can very you can very easily find places to go with jiu-jitsu. A lot of people say that they they don't know what to focus on. I'm like, well, like I can easily ask you, well, what positions are you already getting to? What positions do you find yourself in in the gym all the time? There you go. There's those are some good starting points, right? Whether whether you're getting put in positions or you're actively going for them for no reason, you're just kind of doing it intuitively. That that's a good place to start. Speaker 2: So as the young as the young folks say, if you're spamming a position. So let's talk about the other side. spamming is like kind of just hitting the the same thing going to the going to the well over and over. Yeah. That can be a problem too. And how do we have the awareness or how do you recommend people have the awareness that maybe they're doing something too much and their game is not evolving or maybe when are you ready to try to go and work on different avenues of your game? Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you know, there's no perfect science to this, right? I agree. But here's something to think about. One is if you're going into a spot and you're always getting like, you know, let's say for instance, if you um this was a problem for me at one point when I was a uh a lower belt. I was hyper fixated on top and submissions and I had no guard game. Get me on my back and I was a fish out of water, it was dead and just done. So, obviously I had to work on my guard game. That was a clear example. I was I was deficient there. Um there were other times too where my game was very hyper fixated on a certain area and I wasn't expanding. See, there's a difference because you can play the same position but you can be expanding that area, right? That's perfectly fine. So something that I'll do now a lot of times is if let's say something's working for me and I've been doing this and I feel pretty successful to the point where I feel like I can do it without having to think too much about it. It's pretty efficient, pretty easy. Well, then it becomes, let me tinker with it. Let me, like let's say for instance, let's say I got a really slick arm bar. I might get to that arm bar and I might let allow it to be loose to a degree. So this way the person can escape and I see, well, where does this arm bar lead? Where does it go? Or let's say that I'm getting really good at a particular mount submission from mount. Well, then I'll be like, okay, I'm going to go to mount again, but I'm just going to use a different submission this time. Or, you know, let me say that I'm I'm wanted to look up an instructional. Well, let's say that um I've got a really good back mount. Well, I could look up an instructional that has back mount stuff. I've already got the back mount position nailed down, so then adding in some more stuff to the back mount's not going to be that difficult. It's easy to expand. But if you said, okay, like, you know, I've got a decent full guard and half guard and then I go and buy this instructional on like inverted De La Hiva, not to say it couldn't work, but it might be difficult because you have no experience in that position. Now, you can get that experience and you can get that position online, but it's going to be a more difficult struggle for you, especially if you're not training all the time. You know, if you're like a young person who has no life responsibilities, they have no kids, they have no family, they have no job, they can do whatever they want, right? They they have a different place in life. But if you're, you know, got limited time, you'd like to basically make use of what you've got already. So if you're saying, if you're looking for information, you kind of want to say, well, I'm already strong from these areas or I have some experience with these areas, why not build off that? Why not expand off that versus trying to develop something brand new? And that's a really easy way to keep your game expanding and not getting too stagnant, but at the same time not having to completely change everything you're doing and getting into that frustrating phase of where, okay, this thing was working for me and now I'm going to this completely different position that I have no experience with. Oh man, this isn't working for me anymore. There's times to do it for sure, but there's a lot of value in working in specific areas and just continuing to expand in those areas or areas that connect to it. So, let's say that you're playing let's say single X. Single leg X or you're you're getting really good at ankle locks. So like I really like ankle locks and whatever. It's not hard to shift from a single leg X to a full X. So then you can get into X guard and then you can get into sort of like these inverted X positions. Pretty easy to do, no problem. Um and so those are some ideas, right? Those are some ideas on how you you take what you're already using and instead of saying you have to do something completely different, you just kind of shift a little bit, you expand. But at the same time, if you find that you're just really inefficient or really deficient in certain areas and you're just getting crushed in those areas, it's a good idea to go there and fix those so that you can come back and work on other areas. Speaker 2: Yeah, no, that makes sense. It's a great point. Like if you're really deficient somewhere, I think that just tells you, hey, there's a red flag there and I, you know, I got to work on that. That's that's a great point. I think that's a if yeah, if you play your A game and then somebody takes you out of your A game, you end up you constantly end up somewhere where you're not comfortable or if you really avoid a position. I mean, nobody wants to be mounted or bottom side control, but if you're like, hey, I end up there and if I end up there, I don't have no idea what to do or how to get out, then you probably know, all right, this is probably something for me to work. Speaker 1: Yeah. And you know, the cool part about it is no one really most people don't like going there. Most people don't like doing all the defensive stuff, but you know what's really damn cool when you learn how to it's for me it's like almost like a it's like a a trick. You know, I can lay on my back, I'll let people pass and for the most part, 99 times out of 100, I don't feel any threat from anyone if they pass my guard to side control. I I feel fine. And I can sit there and defend, they never actually get dominant position because I use my iron squirrel technique. and then get out of it and then, you know, then I'll just roll with them normally. And that's a cool thing to have. That's a cool thing to have where you never have to roll with any sort of fear that you're going to get absolutely crushed if you get um put in side control. That's a cool thing to have that you want that for your game. And so, you know, if you're struggling with like a defensive part of your game, you want to go there. It's like um as a purple belt, I was having trouble with triangle chokes. I was getting caught in them a lot in competition. And so my coach, he put me into a triangle position every time I rolled for like a month. Anytime I rolled, I had to start in a triangle choke. And I was digesting like I was looking online for assistance and, you know, um asking people questions about how to deal with triangle chokes. That's what my whole focus went around. And I developed this really good ability to deal with triangle chokes. I remember going into a black belt tournament some years ago and I remember a guy caught a loose triangle on me and I instantly sort of in my head, I almost like sort of laughed. I was like, not today. You that's not that triangle's not anywhere close enough to try to actually finish me. And again, that came that literally started off as just a four-week focus and then after that I never got caught in a triangle in another competition again. Like just four weeks. Four weeks of like hyper focus on something. It's amazing how that works, right? And I I obviously I got caught in triangles in the gym, that's a little different, but in competition, I was able to escape them if they got on me. And so again, those are it's just a simple idea. It ain't nothing sexy about it. But that's what it that's what it actually looks like and we all know this level of focus and and like attention to detail on something specific is really powerful. We know it is. But you're allowing yourself to be sort of pulled constantly all over the place. And I know that people will say, well, I've got this going on that one. And I understand that. I got stuff going on too. We all do. And even as like a guy like I I don't I don't just get to sit and do jiu-jitsu all day. That's not what I do for a living, right? Like it's it's part of what I do, but like it's not the only thing I get to have to do a lot of other stuff. Multiple businesses, kids, family, the whole whole thing, right? Sure. But a lot of people if they were honest with themselves just have too much entertainment. I mean, it just is what it is. You know, you're binge watching shows on Netflix, you're um you got your phone hooked up to social media and you're freaking like flipping around on it at random times during the day for no reason because you're I mean we can we can call it what it is. You're you're you have an addiction to it. Um not everybody does, not everybody does, but again, a lot of people do. And again, addiction sounds so terrible to say it that way, but what I mean by it is is something is negatively affecting you and you can't stop. Right? That's that's addiction. There's dependency. Dependency like we all like a lot of us have a dependency on caffeine, which seems to pose no real hardcore health risks to us. Um but we we use it all the time, right? There's addiction though, which is posing like negative side effects to you. And again, a lot of people don't they don't realize they've never looked into the studies, they've never really like most people have never done like a 30-day like completely not use social media on your phone. So they don't realize how much different your thinking is, how much clearer your mind is, how much more time all of a sudden you have and how much energy you get from doing it because of the fact that you aren't just stuck in this thing where you're constantly taxing your brain because every time you flip your phone up, fiddle around a little bit and then go to another task, your brain's having to work out. It's it's having to fight that again. Um and that's a lot of that's a lot of wear and tear on your brain so to speak because it's constantly switching from one thing to the next, one thing to the next opposed to being able to like fixate on one thing deeply for a long period of time. And um it's just again and I always talk about this and I always rail on this and I'm I'm sorry guys. I I know I do this all the time. Um but if I get to like one person, then good, right? I I actually had a guy send me an email recently. He was like, hey, I I did it. Like I went on a like a information diet as I called them, right? And he's like, dude, it's so useful. I did it for like three weeks and I don't really want to put it back on my phone, right? Like he's like it just feels good to like not be constantly, you know, stimulated from someone's propaganda garbage on like, you know, social media and it's also given me clearer like thinking and I don't feel as exhausted at the end of the day because my brain feels pretty sharp still. So if I get to one person then good. Speaker 2: All right, I have a question about social media. Yeah, yeah. This is an interesting one. Let's this is very open-ended and I want to I'm curious. Since we were talking about social media and jiu-jitsu, how do you feel like social media has impacted jiu-jitsu? Could be good, bad, whatever, it could be a little bit of both because we have exposure, a lot more exposure to different people and different things, but however, there's there's also, you know, pros and cons. So overall, like what's your opinion on like how's it impacted jiu-jitsu? Speaker 1: I mean, there's the good side of it. Um I think YouTube is useful because you can search it. Speaker 2: But what if we don't let's let's not do YouTube. Let's just do like Facebook, Instagram, Tik Tok kind of stuff. Like those are more of the short form. Is there benefit to short form, you know, for jiu-jitsu? Speaker 1: Short form at least in my opinion, a lot of times leads to like sort of masturbation, right? Like sort of so like basically it leads to this masturbatory nature of like where you see something, you think it's cool, you save it, you never do anything with it. Now, it can be useful to like observe because sometimes you'll see matches and stuff like that and and those those can be useful sometimes. The rub especially with the way that the social media platforms are designed right now, maybe six, seven years ago, I think uh Instagram and those things were a little bit better because like what would happen is is if you found someone that you liked that was giving you good information, you followed them and the feed would constantly feed you their stuff, right? What it is now though is it's algorithmically driven. So if you make a post, let's say that you have 100,000 followers on social on like Instagram or Tik Tok. I'll say Instagram because Tik Tok's a little it's a different animal and I don't I don't really mess around with it. Instagram will give you like a very small percentage of your of your followers list, a very small percentage will see it unless you pay to get it out to more people, okay? So it's pay to play. But if you put out something that is provocative, that is hyperbolic, that is whatever, that basically sort of excites something in them and it gets a lot of engagement, it will push it out into the algorithm, right? And so what happens is is that the people humans are good at climbing ladders, right? That's what they do. You put a ladder, you put a game in front of them and they want to climb to be the best of it. And so people human we watch our children do this. They just figure things out without you don't have to tell them the rules, they figure it out. It's no big deal. You just they just figure out how to do things. Well what happens is is that people get on these platforms and they start to figure out, well, this is what the machine wants from me. So that's what I'm going to post. Now, it may go against their own morals and beliefs, it may go against their own sort of whatever, but they just post it. Like I've talked to guys before that like would on that do social media content, they're like, yeah, I don't really like posting it, but trying to get engagement. You know, and so it leads to this hot bed of everybody saying just crazy stuff. You know, it's just like everybody's saying crazy stuff. You'll get these blue and purple belts that'll just say the craziest, wildest stuff because they're just they're just desperate for attention. You know, it's like um it's like some person wearing provocative clothing, you know, just to get some eyeballs on them. And so I I probably sound old saying this, but I think there's some benefit to the short form, but I think what's happening more and more now with the short form stuff is that you see less useful information and just more stuff that's just primed to give you engagement. Right. Now you now you can do this thing where on your on your Instagram feed and things like that, you can basically turn off suggested reels and stuff where it'll only feed you stuff you follow and that's useful. Kind of like makes it like Instagram was maybe like, you know, seven years ago where you didn't have to see everybody's garbage and you got to see what you actually followed. But I I I think that short form is typically a I think it's a net negative because one, it's typically incentivizing just provocative engagement type stuff, not actually like helping information. And I think that a lot of times it leads to this shortening of attention spans where like when you like I I've done this and I do this because I find it interesting. I watch people when I'm out like at airports. You know, and you can watch them use their phone. And I do it because again as a guy who posts stuff on social media, I'm like, how do they use their phone? You know, because again, I don't I don't really play on social media. I play YouTube a little bit, but I don't really play on Instagram much. It stays off my phone most of the time. So I don't sit there and scroll. But you'll see people and you'll see how they engage with stuff and it's just and you know, the information that's coming out is showing that it's like this is hurting people's attention span. You know, and so you like think you're losing your ability to focus on things long-term for these apps. It's like I don't think that's a good thing, you know, personally. So this is why I choose not to engage with it. I like to make I I produce content that I again, I produce content that still isn't I don't think it's terrible. I don't want to go that terrible route, but at the same time, I don't personally like to engage with short form content. I don't like it because of those facts. I don't think it's good for us as as a as a positive and it's not going to be helping my attention span or helping my brain or anything else. So I don't want it, right? That's that's me. It's it's like a it's like cheap cheap calories. So, that's my old man, my boomer boomer chew take on it. Speaker 2: All right, boomer chew. Speaker 1: It's it's the correct take, but it's my take on it. Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, no, no, no, I agree. I I think uh it can definitely mess with your there are some positives that can come from it. Like I think you can get it can spark some ideas or like maybe give you some interest. Oh, that looks interesting. And then you can Speaker 1: And there's some people that do good content by the way. I don't want to say it that way because like there's a few people that I follow on Instagram and they do some terrific content. Yeah. Um and like you said, it does do some sparking of ideas and things like that. That's true. Speaker 2: And I think that's good. And and so it's what you do with the the spark, right? What do you do with that spark, that idea? Do you go, all right, well let me go dive into it deeper, not just finding the next spark because you can find sparks all day. It's just what do you do with the with the spark that you get that kind of is interesting to you. Speaker 1: Yeah, do you do you fan the flame or do you let it fizzle out? Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah. Um Chewy, what do you think uh is for you? This is interesting. I mean just for me because you kind of talked about posting content and and things like that. What do you consider metrics that are good for you? Like if you make a piece of content, when you look back at that content, it's not the views, um what is it that kind of tells you that's that was that resonated with people? Speaker 1: Well, that's more of a business question, but it really thinks about like think about it this way. Well like first off is like what's the goal of the content? Right? Like what's the goal of it? Because you got to think about that. Like you should be putting out content with some intention, you know, not just like let me go like something out, right? Because I feel like I'm supposed to. You want to put out something with some intention, right? Views can be good. Views can be very good. Um obviously YouTube is more of a watch time thing and I I I focus on I think longer form views are higher quality than lower than long than short uh short form, right? So I would rather have a thousand long form views than like a million short form. Because like short form views mean like absolutely nothing, you know, um personally. But it depends on what your goals are. Are you trying to, let's say if you're doing a product review, all right? Well, we did a product review. Did anybody buy the product that you were reviewing? Did anybody come tell you a couple months later that they love the product that they've been using? Um if I do a Q&A, does someone message me saying how much that actually helped them? Um does the person that I sent the video to who asked the question, did that help them? Um when I like post some stuff that's very sort of exposes some vulnerabilities about me and share some different things that like are very intimate details about stuff that and I'm doing it to try to help someone out. You know, like there's one video, there one video I did last year where it was like I went into some deep stuff, some some painful stuff that happened in my life and I got the video did poorly from the sake of like just pure views. Like I think it got like maybe three or 4,000 over the course of like the first 48 hours, which isn't much for me. But I had probably a dozen emails sent to me from people who had the same thing. I'm like, well, that really struck a chord with people. I'm glad I made that video. That really helped out a lot of people. That's great. You know, um if you're running a business, does it get people to, you know, join your thing, buy your thing, come become a member of your thing, join your, you know, your um newsletter, whatever, you know, whatever your goal is. It depends on your goal. Those are the things that really matter. You got to think about like the end result that you're trying to reach. Most people put out content and there's nothing else to do beyond that. It's like, hey, just pay attention to me, please and I'm desperate for attention. Look at me versus, hey, like this is just the starting point. Um that's kind of what the content stuff is, you know, and if you understand how to use it as a business, you can do cool stuff where you can help people out a lot and you can make a good living on the back end, but you got to know what you're doing with it. Um and it does not require you to be over the top to the point where you have to sort of like sell your soul to make videos. You can still be whoever you are and you can give people really good stuff and you can help people out and you can do it the way you want to do it and still do just fine. Even if you're not making like a bazillion views for every video. Speaker 2: Yeah. Getting some comments like uh on YouTube if I get some comments like that was helpful. Like thank you for that. That those are good. Those are things seems like that's kind of the same idea. You're getting emails and things like that, but like if I post something like just getting some feedback on it that's positive, I think it shows me that people enjoyed it and it was it was helpful. And the other thing I try to think about and maybe you do this as well is like would I want to watch this video? Is this something I'm interested in? Because you want to make stuff you're interested in too. I mean, obviously people are going to ask you questions about different things, but like was it something I enjoyed? Because some videos like you said and I've had the same experience, um like I'll make a video I'm like, this is this is going to not do well and it does well. And then you make a video like this video is going to be awesome. Oh my god, I'm excited about this one and it just doesn't do shit and you're like, ah, it's like you can never have a read. You just never know sometimes. It's just what resonates with people. Um but like I think making things that you're proud of and if you get feedback, positive feedback, I think is I think it's important. Speaker 1: Yeah, it's stuff that like, you know, that's like integrity, right? Because if you're putting stuff out there that you're happy with that that you feel proud of, that's a good thing. That's like your integrity. Um and I think that's generally a good thing. You know, like why do you want to like put out like for some like someone was sending talking to me the other day there's like, hey, thanks for being one of the jiu-jitsu guys who's not a complete asshole or something. And like I know, I already know, like if I was more divisive online, I would get more views, I would get more attention. But it's not who I am, right? And I'm not going to be that way just to satisfy the algorithmic overlords. I'm not going to do it, right? I'm going to be who I want to be. And again, I you can do just fine and I think that that's the thing where um I've seen I've seen this more and more with younger guys. Like there's a young guy that I know who's he's a he's normally a pretty chill guy, but some of the content I saw him put out recently was very like I watched it I was like, oh, this is weird. It's like he's just trying to be like a hot take guy to get attention. And I it reminds me I I'll tell you this thing. So I remember years ago, this is like probably 10 years ago with Instagram, you could watch it where you would watch some Instagram influencer person and you could scroll because this is something I did years ago is I would like I would when I was studying these different platforms when I was getting online, I would study how these people got big. And I would go to the beginning and I would watch and see how their content transformed because a lot of times who they were in the beginning shifted into someone else, right? Um and you know, these different things happened. And you would look at say like um some influencer, man or woman. And you'd look at the beginning and it would just be them whatever. And then all of a sudden like they would post a a picture with like maybe some less less clothing on, we'll say it that way, right? And all of a sudden they got a lot of likes. Uh? And then you would just notice this thing where less and less posts were about the other stuff and more posts were just them with less clothing on. And then it became that became the thing, right? Oh, here's just here's look at me half naked. Look at me with my shirt off. That's it. That's all I'm going to post because that's what gets attention. You see that same thing happening now where it's just like, okay, like again, people are going to play to the the game that they're in if if because they think that that's what they have to do if they want views and stuff. And that's okay. But you don't necessarily have to do that. And I would tell you from the content creating side of it, not saying you can't make money and things like that doing it, but like if you're just the king of the hot takes, people are not going to come to like come to you as like the person who like, I want this person to like show me the way to help me out. I want to go to this person's thing like they're just going to see you as this this sort of loud obnoxious person who talks about stuff. You know, um you know, there's people that get away with it because of their abilities and skills, but if you're some person who hasn't really done anything and your only claim to fame is that you've got a bunch of views on Instagram because you talk stuff, you talk garbage about stuff, then it's a little different situation, you know. Speaker 2: Well, you're just a type of an entertainer at that point. Speaker 1: It's what it is. You're just entertaining. Which can be good. I mean, entertainers are paid more than educators. I mean, you know, but I'm just saying that like you're going to be kind of a dime a dozen because everybody's doing it, you know. Speaker 2: Well, and what's your integrity about it? Like, do you believe in what you're saying? Are you just saying it just to to ruffle feathers? I mean, what what it is? Like it's it's it's funny to me to like there's certain people in jiu-jitsu and they come off a certain way on social media, like either not nice or or kind of very divisive and then people meet them, oh, they're a lot nicer in person. I'd rather be and like you I've heard it from you all the time like like I've had people that have met you and they've told me like Chewy's like the same dude. You know, and that's what you want, right? You want to be yourself. Like you don't want to be like that's what I want to do, yeah. Speaker 2: I'm an asshole on social media but I'm super nice in person versus I'm super nice but I'm an asshole in person. You know what I mean? It's just like you be yourself and be consistent. But I think some people, like jiu-jitsu people are very like they have this line in the sand that they draw and this is the way they are and then people meet them they're like totally different. Good or bad and I'm like, I don't know if that's the way you want to be or if that's the way you should be if a lot of your life is on social media, you want to try to be yourself in that way. And then you can be proud of who you who you are. I don't know. I mean that's just me, right? Like I'm not a Speaker 1: I mean there's no wrong way of doing it. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying like, you know, you have people chasing views and and and follower counts and instead of chasing stuff that actually matters because like I I know a guy he posted like he has, you know, X amount of millions of views on his Instagram and he made like like 30 bucks. You know what I mean? Like means nothing. So like, you know, far as like the views and stuff. I mean, you can do some stuff with ad like or uh like brand deals and stuff, but in a space like jiu-jitsu, like you know, there's not as much money in that stuff. You know, if you were if you were doing crazy stuff in like the tech industry where you could go get these big sponsors that want to like give you like really expensive like gadgets and pay you like like a lot of money for sponsorship deals. That's one thing. But like a lot of the jiu-jitsu space, I mean like I mean there's just a lot of the companies don't make a ton of money because it's the the the ecosystem is still relatively small. Speaker 2: Yeah, for sure. Speaker 1: All right guys, hopefully you enjoyed the podcast. Um a quote to leave you guys today with. I I got this from a newsletter. I can't remember where I got this, but I'll have to see if I can find it later on. But um the idea I wrote it down. I was like, that's a good one. Kind of going back to sometimes like when I'm like listening to something or reading something, I'll just jot it down into my common place journal like, oh, I got to get this. Um but it's it's a kind of goes fitting to what we just talked about. It says success comes down to doing the obvious thing for an extraordinary period without convincing yourself that you're smarter than you are. And so like again, it's to me like I I read that and I'm like, okay, you do the obvious thing that you know you need to do for a long period of time, right? Like focusing on a thing, it's obvious period of time, right? And then not convincing yourself you're smarter than you are. So we don't need to get into endless complexity or think we've got everything figured out and stay relaxed and stay open-minded and you just keep doing the thing you know you need to do. Um everything that I can think of as far as jiu-jitsu, business, whatever, anything that I've done in life is is pretty darn simple as far as like what you do. It's it's the simple thing that you know you need to do. Whether you're trying to build a relationship with someone, you're trying to get your jiu-jitsu better, it's all the same. You can try to like you can try to skirt around it and come up with some special neat ninja hack. But at the end of the day, it's the uh the basic fundamental stuff which tends to continue to work forever and ever and you can take in new ideas all the time and test things out to see how they work, but at the end of the day, it's usually the simpler stuff, right? The simpler stuff tends to continue to work. So, hopefully that uh sticks with you guys. So uh guys, appreciate you for being here. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this podcast happen. Uh if you guys want to check out one of our sponsors, Athletic, they're one of our uh sponsors that we have. They make microdosed THC mints that have other cannabinoids along with it to produce different effects in your body. So they have three products. They have flow, power, and rebound. And each one of those is a little bit different as far as the formulation goes to help produce a different effect. So for instance, like the rebound formula, um it has two milligrams of THC, which is very minor, no big deal. Um and then from there it has 12 milligrams of CBD and CBC. And this sort of blend of them is designed to alleviate stress and soreness, reduce inflammation and support overall recovery. And so, um it's one of their products. If you guys go to their website, if you're a military um person, man or woman, you or a veteran, you can send them an email to get an additional discount. Um but if you go into their website and you want to save a little bit of money, use the promo code Chewjitsu 10 at athletic, A T H L E T H C.com to save 10% on the order. And you can also get free shipping, I believe on over orders over 100, at least at the time of recording this. And so, um you can check that out if you want to on their website and check out some of their products. I've used them, they're they're fine, they're great. So, um again, it's like as someone who doesn't want to be like I don't necessarily enjoy being drunk or ultra high or anything like that. They're they're fine. It's not crazy, but you will feel your like mind kind of mellow out a little bit. At least I did whenever I use the flow or I use the rebound, I feel like I sort of just chill out a little bit and they can be fun to use during different types of training. Also thanks to our sponsor Epic Roll. Epic Roll bjj.com is the website. They make everything from gis and rash guards to t-shirts and just anything you could think of jiu-jitsu related, great stuff. Again, if you guys have heard me talk about them, I I've talked about it all the time. I love their shorts and I love their rash guards. I think they're great quality. They they're super comfortable. At this point, it's kind of the only it's my stuff, right? I get my jiu-jitsu stuff branded and they make them for me. Um but it's the only no-gi stuff I I really wear and it's partly because I feel so good in it. It's comfortable, it fits good. Um and I like the quality. And I've had my I've had my rash guards now with them when I originally got my prototypes made. Some of my rash guards are going on like six years old and they're hanging in tight. They're hanging in great. And so again, I'm not saying that yours is going to last as long as mine, but um mine good quality, they're hanging in there. And so if you guys want to check out their stuff at epicrollbjj.com, you can use the promo code Chewjitsu 20 for 20% off the order. Also guys, if you want to support us, you can check out our sponsor Charlotte's Web. Uh they make CBD products as well as CBN products as well as functional mushroom products like Reishi, Lion's Mane and all these different things. And again, they're one of the companies where their supplements sort of for me broadly fall under sort of the recovery element of things. Uh you know, the older you get and the more you're training, the more you're trying to do anything you can tweak to get some recovery out of your system. Obviously, diet and sleep, those are important, stress management's important, not doing too much, that's a great thing for recovery. So you kind of take the the stress off you a little bit. Um but beyond that, you can start to tweak to get little extra percentages out of things like supplements. And I like the products that they make. If you go to their website and you find something you like, just use the promo code Chewjitsu 30 for 30% off the order. C H E W J I T S U 30. And I always tell people with their stuff and any of this stuff, even like the athletic stuff, try it for yourself. Don't take my word for it. Like, you know, go see what you actually think about it. Test out the products, see if you you get a positive effect from it. Um over the years I've got given a lot of CBD products to people and a lot of times they come back and they're like, hey, Chewy, like what was that? And I'll direct them there so they can check it out. So if you want to get some guys, go to the website at charlottesweb.com, Chewjitsu 30 at checkout. If you want to support the podcast directly, you can become a Patreon member at our website or Patreon website, patreon.com/thechewjitsupodcast. When you join up, there's a bunch of different exclusive offers there, uh exclusive perks. Um you guys get access to us to ask questions and obviously we'll give you a shout out on the podcast if you do. And then on top of that, you get access to the uh library that we have with everything from recorded uh seminars to uh recordings of special uh stretching and warm-up routines that Eugene's put together because he's a PT, he's a black belt in jiu-jitsu. Figure a lot of you guys would like to feel a little bit better and not be so damn crotchety and like stiff. Um you know, it's this is another one of these simple things, right? Again, a lot of people say, man, I really don't want to feel tight and like jacked up all the time. I'm like, yeah, like do you do any cool down stretching? Do you do any stretching at all? Do you do any mobility work? It doesn't take very long. I mean, you could do like a really good routine in like 10 to 15 minutes. Um like that could really make a big difference. Um as I've shared with a lot of people, I don't I'm been doing this stuff for like 20 some odd years. I don't feel broken. I feel pretty damn good. Part of it is is that over the years I've worked with Eugene for specific issues that I've had and I continue to do a lot of that stuff just all the time, either with my lifting, on my lifting days, I kind of incorporate it as a warm-up or even sometimes at nighttime after I'm done training, I'll take a hot shower and I'll do my cool down stretches and stuff like that when my body's nice and warm. It doesn't take a long time, but you can get a lot with a little if you know what you're doing. And Eugene put together a good routine that goes through some basics for you. Uh if you want to check it out, it's at the Patreon website, patreon.com/thechewjitsupodcast. And last but not least, if you guys want to get my Focus Jiu-Jitsu ebook guide and video, you can get access to those. It gives you 12 different strategies on how to improve a little faster in jiu-jitsu with the ability to make more with your open rolling. So most of you guys have no control with your training. So open rolling is going to be one of the keys and making the most with that open rolling is going to be one of the keys. It'll give you some ideas on how to focus your training so you get more from that rolling time and so you can improve faster because as we've just talked about on this podcast with you for an hour, one of the keys is going to be to be focused and how do you what are you going to focus on? It'll give you some ideas. It's a perfect accompanying it with this podcast. And so if you guys want to get that and then join my daily email, uh the crew, you can do that by going to my website at chewjitsu.net and you can get the ebook, you can get the video and you can unsubscribe from the email at any time or you can join the thousands of people that enjoy reading it every day. And so guys, I appreciate you for being here. Thank you guys for your time. Talk to you next week.