Mini Ep. 92: Momentum

Speaker 1: Hey everybody, before we get started this week, I just want to let you know, we released a new mindset course featuring Rob Bernaki from Island Top Team and BJJ Concepts. It's called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a resilient Jiu-Jitsu mindset. It's part of BJJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to BJJmentalmodels.com/beta. I will give you a free month, you can check out the course and if you decide that it's not worth your money, you can cancel, you won't have to pay a cent. I've already been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of Jiu-Jitsu content they've ever received, so I hope you like it too. Hey everybody, welcome back to BJJ Mental Models. I'm Steve Kwan and BJJ Mental Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jiu-Jitsu approach. And I want to use this mini episode to talk about momentum. A concept from physics, obviously very relevant to the martial arts, but sometimes not given the attention that it deserves in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Now, momentum from a physics standpoint, if we want to have flashbacks to high school physics, momentum is mass times velocity. Basically, something heavy moving fast towards you, that's not going to be a lot of fun. This is important to talk about in Jiu-Jitsu because we're often so focused on the concepts of body mechanics and leverage that we sometimes forget that momentum matters a lot too. We've talked about the importance of alignment in Jiu-Jitsu, but if you have perfect alignment and you get hit by a fast moving train, it doesn't matter how good your alignment is. That's a concept that we sometimes lose in Jiu-Jitsu, which again, in other martial arts is given the respect that it deserves. Momentum is an important mechanical concept in Jiu-Jitsu, and although in Jiu-Jitsu, common strategies involve slowing the game down and acting like a boa constrictor to take away your opponent's movement, if someone is moving quickly, especially if they're heavy, that's going to be an unpleasant experience for you. And no amount of body alignment and good physical mechanics is going to help you if you get hit fast by a big heavy object. So, let's talk about where people in Jiu-Jitsu often forget about the importance of momentum. Momentum comes up with moves that involve timing or some degree of fluidity, which is really more of them than you would think. When we talk about Jiu-Jitsu, we often look at moves in isolation, so we think about, say you're on bottom of guard, what are the steps that I have to do to nail that arm bar? It sounds great, but often when we teach these moves, we teach them in isolation, which means that you're doing said arm bar from a dead stop without any proper setup. What you find though, is that if you can get momentum on your side, meaning that you're moving, that initial momentum as you enter a move, makes it way more likely to succeed. And in fact, if you take a look at arm bars as they are done in actual matches, they're often done with some degree of momentum behind them. I think back to watching Fedor Emelianenko or Ronda Rousey hit arm bars in MMA. They did not do these beautiful slow textbook arm bars like we may be taught in Jiu-Jitsu class. They did arm bars with a lot of momentum and swing from their hips to really explode into that movement. And you can compensate for a lot of textbook technique if you've got great momentum behind you. So this matters because you will often hear people in Jiu-Jitsu talk about fluidity and how you have to be fluid. Well, what does that really mean? A big part of that means you don't stop moving. When you stop moving, you lose your momentum, and then you have to start motion again to regain that momentum later. And that means that if you're at a dead stop when you try to hit a technique, you're just less likely to have success with it. Whereas if you can swing into it from another move, it's going to be easier. This comes up a lot in stand up for instance, because momentum is so key. If you're doing a striking art, momentum is a massive part of it because you need momentum to generate power behind your punches or your kicks. If you're talking about a throwing art like Judo, momentum is a huge part of how you enter these techniques. Yes, you need Kuzushi and to off balance your opponent, but you also want to wind up and establish momentum as you go into the throw. It's just going to be harder to hit one from a dead stop. So I encourage you to think about this in Jiu-Jitsu. If you're ever at a dead stop, that's probably not a good thing. Beginners especially tend to get into this situation because they have to stop and think about what they want to do. And the more that you have to stop and think, the more that you are losing your momentum, and then when you attempt a technique, you're just not going to have that momentum behind it to make it just a little bit more successful. Sometimes you'll spar with beginners and you'll just feel like they're surprisingly effective at grappling despite the fact that they might not have a great idea of how to grapple. Sometimes that happens just because they don't stop moving. That allows them to keep momentum. And when you can keep yourself moving, you have that force behind you and any action that you can channel that momentum into is just going to be more successful. So my tip here for you today is think about momentum in terms of everything that you do in Jiu-Jitsu. Don't just do moves from a dead stop, figure out how you can chain things together and swing into the move. Bring the momentum from whatever the last move in the sequence was that you were doing so you don't lose that power as you attack the next thing. This is a really key foundational physics concept that helps a lot when you're grappling and if you want more of this, go to BJJ Mental Models. We've got mini episodes like this plus full length episodes, plus our newsletter, all of which are completely free and you can always level up with us at BJJ Mental Models Premium. It's one of the most popular subscription Jiu-Jitsu sites in the world. It's the world's largest library of Jiu-Jitsu audio courses on strategy, tactics, mindset, concepts, philosophy. If you like Audible and Masterclass and Jiu-Jitsu, you'll love BJJ Mental Models Premium. So you can get all of that at BJJmentalmodels.com. Thanks for listening and we'll talk to you in the next one.