#369 Learn BJJ 10x Faster | 3-Step System

I suck at Jiu-Jitsu. I do I suck less. Speaker 1: In front of me is the three-step secret to mastering Jiu-Jitsu. It's actually a way that you can 10x your Jiu-Jitsu progress. You can learn Jiu-Jitsu 10 times faster or more. And I know that that sounds impossible. I know that that sounds crazy. But to understand, I need to first take you back 18 years to when I started training Jiu-Jitsu. And when I started training Jiu-Jitsu, the system of getting good at Jiu-Jitsu was this: repetitively drill. And that was actually brand new. It took years for people to adapt to this idea. And this is how the idea worked. You come up with a move that you want to get good at. Let's call it a knee cut. And you know that you need to get better at hitting knee cuts. So you'd find a video instructional and you would see, "Well, how does the best guy teach knee cut?" And he would teach you how to do a knee cut in his second language, and he would teach you exactly how it was taught to him on day one, even though he had made a lot of tweaks to it, even though he had made it his own. He still shares to you the step-by-step process that was taught to him. So now, what you're required to do is drill mindlessly for the next 18 years and hopefully, you can be as good as that guy who showed you the knee cut. And for a long time, this was the method. And I remember when my coach even had us doing positional spars. This was brand new at the time. People weren't doing these things. You literally learned Jiu-Jitsu most of the time through a VHS tape or a DVD if you were rich, and then you would just watch it and then fight your buddies. And that was what Jiu-Jitsu training was for most of us. I claim that I started training Jiu-Jitsu 18 years ago, and I tell you guys this all the time. It's actually a blatant lie. I actually started training Jiu-Jitsu when I was eight years old. But this was Jiu-Jitsu in our garage learning from the Gracie in Action VHS tapes. And so, for me, as a 32-year-old now, that is um, it's a long time. It's like 24 years, dude. And so, with all of that said, I have experienced the method. I have trained in every method of Jiu-Jitsu that exists. But on top of that, 10 years ago, I started my first Jiu-Jitsu school. And I started to get good at Jiu-Jitsu as a purple belt. I was definitely good enough to have my own school, but the problem was, I had never taught Jiu-Jitsu. And I mean, I had taught some beginners classes, but I definitely had never coached Jiu-Jitsu. I had never taken somebody from a day one white belt and figured out how to get them to blue belt. And then take them from that and one day hope to get them to black belt. I had no idea what the process was. And so, I started experimenting. I started to say, "Well, how can we get this group to blue belt? How can we get this group to blue belt faster? How can we get this group to blue belt faster and make them even better than that last group?" And this process started to change things. This process of refinement, and it came to a boiling point about seven years ago. This is actually right before I was promoted to black belt. And I came up with this simple system that sits in front of me right now. And I have tweaked and added to this system over the years. But since writing it down in a notebook on my way to Florida, on my way to Pans seven years ago, when I go, "What are the things that are happening for our white belts that get to blue belt very quickly?" Because I was having white belts get to blue belt in six months or less, and it was starting to become this consistent thing. And yes, they were super dedicated to Jiu-Jitsu, they were in all the time, but there was something different. It wasn't just that. It wasn't just show up, it wasn't just live training, and it wasn't even just the questions that those people were asking. There was something more. There was a secret framework that was happening, and it was happening organically, but once I got it down on paper and I realized that it was an actual system for getting good at Jiu-Jitsu very quickly, then we've just been perfecting this system over and over and over. And for me, this how to master Jiu-Jitsu system, and really, this is the how to master any position of Jiu-Jitsu in six weeks or less system. I have charged hundreds of dollars an hour to teach this to people over the last six or seven years. But today, I'm going to give it to you guys completely free. And so, without further ado, let's go ahead and look at the system of how to master Jiu-Jitsu. And so, like I said, and as you can see on our board here, there are only three parts to this system. And the first part and point number one that we will start with is focus. And I've told you guys about focus so many times on the show. But it is unbelievable how often people come to me, whether my students, whether people from other gyms, and they say, "I am not getting better at Jiu-Jitsu." And I ask them this simple question, "What have you been focused on?" What's interesting about that is if they're actually not getting better at Jiu-Jitsu, 90% of the time or even more, they go, "Um, half guard. Yeah, yeah, I've been I've been focused on I I've been doing some Kimura stuff from side control. Um, and then I've been work I've been I've been focused on knee cuts when I'm on top. And then, um, spider guard too if I can't get to half guard." And so then, I'm like, "Wait, wait, wait. So you're focused on nothing. You're focused on getting better at Jiu-Jitsu as a whole. This is impossible, my friend. Or if it is possible, it is the slowest method for getting good at Jiu-Jitsu." There's this analogy that people love that Jiu-Jitsu is human chess. And of course, there are some similarities between Jiu-Jitsu and chess. Now, here is here is the big difference. When it comes to chess, there is one set of rules. With Jiu-Jitsu, the rules and the strategies change per position. The same things that matter when you are playing open guard are not the same things that matter when you are defending yourself on bottom from mount. Yes, we can have principles. We can understand that the goal of the top player is to get around the guard. The goal of the top player is to get to the neck, right? Is to get to the head, to get their chest onto your chest and flatten you out so they can ideally submit you, okay? So yes, that's the goal. But still, I'd have way less to worry about from open guard. I don't really have to defend my neck a ton from open guard, right? Our my legs are in between us. Now you get to mount, I really need to defend my neck. The game that we're playing, yes, it's Jiu-Jitsu, but the rules just changed. The strategies just changed. And so, when people have this thought process that maybe, maybe I'll just focus on everything. What you are guaranteeing is you will not get good at anything. You're hoping for this just organic growth to your Jiu-Jitsu, and it is not going to happen. The thing that you can always see when it comes to the best guys, there are two things. One, they have a focus. Two, they ask a lot of questions about that focus. Those are the two things. It's not mental toughness. It's not that they're, you know, doing extra cardio. It's none of those things. The thing that you will see, and coaches can agree with me in the comments or disagree with me, but the thing that you will see that people that get good faster than anybody else get good at one thing at a time. And so, point number one, being focused, the question then becomes, how? How do we choose a focus? I think that this is the reason that people never have a focus in Jiu-Jitsu. There's a million moves. There's 50 positions. We did, I did 28 guards on the guard tier list, and there are still people saying, "You forgot about this guard. You forgot about this guard." Are you expected to just focus on guard and get good at guard? There's 28 different guards. There's 30. You can't get good that way. So here is what we do instead. Instead of just saying, "Well, I want to make my Jiu-Jitsu this create a character, and that guy that's 6'4" has really good triangles. I mean, I know I'm 5'4", and we have nothing in common physically. He's more flexible than me, he's faster, he's stronger. But I want to build a game like his because his looks cool." Doesn't make sense. You have to acknowledge where you are at now. What I am focused on this month is not actually that relevant for you if you're a white belt. I am a black belt competitor. I'm focused on something for a specific reason. And honestly, I'm focused on it a lot longer than a month. It's actually a lot more boring what I do now than what I'm going to have you guys, especially as beginners, do. As you get better, you're going to need to do the boring stuff really well. But we'll get into that. Now, let's say you're the guy saying, "Well, coach, how do I choose something to even focus on?" It's actually a really, really simple method. All I want you to do is take your next week of rounds. If you have a great memory, you can actually just use last week's rounds. But if not, if you're somebody that just feels like, "Okay, well, usually I'm just letting Jiu-Jitsu happen to me." All we're going to do is we're going to start with some observation. You're not going to solve your problems yet. We're not going to add new moves yet. I just want you to pick a focus. And this focus, we talk about the end goal method a lot, is actually not going to be that. I'm not telling you to pick a submission. We're looking at Jiu-Jitsu positionally right now. This idea is about mastering one of the positions in Jiu-Jitsu over a period of time. And so, how we look at this is look at your rounds over the next week. Maybe you train three times, you get 30 minutes per session, 90 minutes of total Jiu-Jitsu. I want you to try your best by percentage to say what position, whether because I wanted to be there, or whether because they forced me there and I'm not good at stopping it. What position was I in most of the time? That is the simplest way. There are other ways to find focus. You know, sometimes you look at your actual division of Jiu-Jitsu, your age group, your weight, your belt level, and you say, "What is the common position there?" For example, you coach enough Master 4, Master 5 black belt tournaments. IBJJF obviously is is those divisions, but if you coach enough of those, what you will find is that lapel deep half guard is king. Every Master 4 or 5 guy does lapel deep half guard. I swear to you. All of them. 100% of them. I review matches for BJJ Mental Models, and when I'm reviewing a match for Master 4 or Master 5, a lot of times, I just watch the match and I can predict who wins by who gets to deep half guard first, as long as they didn't get taken down to get there, right? It is that is the meta in that division. But lower it to adult. Is that the meta there? No. No, no. Totally different. So let's say you're a Master 4 guy, Master 5 guy, and you suck at passing deep half. And you're getting put there all the time. That's what the game is in your, you know, in your division. There's your focus. It's not hard. If, you know, you it's like, again, this is choosing your focus has to do with the individual because we have different goals too. We have different starting points and different places that we want to end up. A competitor, a lot of times they get this feedback a little easier because you get swept, you lose a match, and you go, "Okay, well, I didn't know how to stop that sweep. I didn't know how to beat that position." And a lot of times that is the method to finding something new, of course. When we're competing, it's so easy for somebody to go, "Oh, well, you know, it really wasn't it was really the ref's fault, um, that that happened. I really didn't even I actually technically, I didn't even lose to the guy. It was really like the ref screwed up and he gave him points." And so you hear that, and that is a guarantee that you will not find focus after a tournament. The reason is because you're choosing excuses over choosing getting better. People do this in the gym. "This guy only beat me because he's strong. This guy only beat me because he's fast. This guy only beat me because he gets to train four days a week, and I only get to train three days a week." Whatever it is in your head, a lot of times, if you changed that, if you got the victim mentality out of your head, and you went into, "Well, if I were to take responsibility for what just happened, because I was the one on the mat doing the Jiu-Jitsu, if I could be better in one spot, would that have made a difference?" Right? And that is your these are just simple questions to choose, "How do we find something to focus on? How do we decide what should be the thing that we dig into?" And I know I'm spending a lot of time on just choosing a focus first. Once we have a focus, you are going to be getting better so quickly, but we have to choose one, and it should be the right one. Speaker 2: So, I'm going to let you in on a little secret that big cotton does not want you to know. Don't even get me started on big polyester. But right now, we are in the middle of a secret war. It is between hemp and cotton. One of them shrinks, isn't durable, and holds bacteria. The other is hemp. 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Speaker 1: And so, our methods are first, if we have, you know, we look at like, really, I just kind of kind of call this the 80% rule. And so, first thought here is where are we spending 80% of our time rolling, okay? So like, a lot of times for you, the simple answer is like, are you spending 80% of the time in bottom side control? For a lot of people, yes. Yet, what they decide to do is go, "Well, I'm going to work my guard retention. I'm just going to get so good at my guard retention, and no one's going to pass me." And I know a lot of coaches are like, "Yeah, that's what you should do." Wrong. You've got to fix where you're at right now. You fix bottom side control, and then when you get your guard passed, you are able to get back into guard. That's the start, that's the end of your guard retention is your escape of bottom side control. Right? And so you see it at high levels where people get completely get their guard passed, but they don't get held there for three seconds. It's not their guard retention. It is their ability to escape bottom side control and not let you hold them there for three seconds. That comes from being in bottom side control a lot. As you get good, you actually have to force yourself to spar these type of things because your retention does get good enough that you don't get your guard passed. But how bad would it suck if you have white belt bottom side control, and you have black belt guard retention, and you're going with a black belt guard passer, and he passes your guard, and he's just a blue belt on top side control, and he still submits you? Because you did not just go with the lowest hanging fruit. You're there 80% of the time, work that. The other thought here is it might be a step past that. It might be, "Well, I'm spending 80% of my time in bottom side control, but every single time I get there, it's smash half guard. They have me in smash half guard, and then eventually they get me into bottom side control." Ah, maybe we maybe our focus actually should be that kind of anchor point, right? That one thing in common that all this bad stuff starts to happen. So, again, you're able with this idea of just observing your Jiu-Jitsu for a week. If you're a competitor, observe some of your last competitions. I in 2024, right at the end of the year, um, and then in 2025, right at the beginning of the year, I had two losses. Both matches I was ahead in, and I was feeling a lot better than the guy. I was in my guard in both matches. One, I got my back taken and lost. The other one, I got almost passed, got an advantage scored on me and lost, okay? Two totally different things that happened. But something interesting. I re-watching those, you know, out of frustration, filled with hate in my heart, and I see, "Huh, there was a precursor. There was a precursor to the same like the same exact thing happened, and then I lost both times." And the precursor was, I was playing, um, like knee shield, and I let my top arm be underhooked. And I would do this all the time because I like to try to like do the Mir lock, I like to set up a lot of different triangle stuff. And I go, "With my body type, I know some people get away with this all the time. But I'm not very tall. I'm not very long. With my body type, is me allowing somebody to have that underhook allowing them to get too close to me?" So I started to make some tweaks. I started to look at it and say, "Well, is this this is this when when I do get my guard passed, when I do get my back taken, is this why?" And it seemed to be a huge, huge thing. Another piece, and these are again, this is a skill. Everything we're going to talk about is a skill, meaning you're going to try this stuff on day one, and you're probably not going to be great at at it, right? The better that you get at this, at choosing a new focus, at seeing the holes in your game and deciding that you're going to spend time on them, that you're going to fight in those positions, and then what to do with the feedback that you get, those are the other two points that we're going to talk about in a second. But once you have that focus picked, it is so much easier because now you can go, "Oh, well, all my questions should be about that. All the YouTube videos I watch should be about that." But on top of that, once you choose the right thing to focus on, that is you also choosing to ignore the hundred other things that you could focus on. And that is an absolute superpower because so many of us struggle with Jiu-Jitsu ADD where we are watching something on Instagram, we're like, "Oh, we'll try that tonight." One, most of the time you don't even remember that move. You don't even remember what you were going to try tonight. But two, a lot of the times what ends up happening is you end up going, "Well, I'll do this this week, and then I'll do that next week, and then I'll do that next week." And the problem, and this is, I think I probably said this in episode one of the I Suck at Jiu-Jitsu show. This is the problem facing the Jiu-Jitsu community. It is not understanding the importance of the drive home or the post-Jiu-Jitsu shower. Or both, depending on who you are, right? So one of those two things is the secret to being good at Jiu-Jitsu. When we reflect, you have that post-beatdown clarity where you are sitting there and you're like, "Man, I mean, yeah, I got absolutely thrashed tonight. You know, my neck is broken, my ribs are broken, my arm is broken. But what a what a ride. What a great time. I loved what I did." Now, if you choose to roll randomly, you choose to roll without observing, and you choose to not have focus. Then what ends up happening is you drive home, you're in your shower, and you go, "What happened in my rounds?" Well, one million things happened in my rounds. Now, if your focus is closed guard, if your focus is bottom side control, if it's top side control, whatever your focus is, you can now go back in your training, you had a focus, and now you're on your drive home. Now you're in the post-Jiu-Jitsu shower, and you're thinking to yourself, "Huh, they kept underhooking me from my side control in that scenario." Why can you think back to that? Well, because you were actually focused. You actually chose to focus. There's this idea of priorities. You hear that a lot. Maybe this is just like an American idea. But what's interesting about priorities is they don't exist. By definition, it is a priority. It is the top. It is paramount. And so, again, if we choose to focus on something, we are choosing to throw out everything else. We are choosing that we are going to now try to get better at this. But then we also get to see how we get better at this. Let's take a quick commercial break, and I'll bring you back for point number two. Speaker 2: Okay, so you only have one to two days per week to train Jiu-Jitsu. Can you still be a competitor and win? Well, with Zero to Hero, you can. Oh, that's not what you have. You have three or four days a week to train. Oh, well, then you would just need Hero in Hiding. That is easy. You could be a great competitor. Oh, you want to try to be the best competitor in the world? You want a professional level? You you need to go Hero Mode. Well, the beauty of all three is all three of these six-week Jiu-Jitsu camps that will teach you exactly how to prepare for your next tournament. All three of them are free and included in my new ebook, The Competitor's Journey. This is where I take everything that I have learned from the last 18 years of competing in Jiu-Jitsu, the last 10 years of coaching competitors, and I apply it into three very simple six-week Jiu-Jitsu training camps that you can take and apply to your Jiu-Jitsu training right now for better success at your next tournament, less injuries, and even a better mindset. All you need to do is go to simplifyingjiujitsu.com/comp, and you can download The Competitor's Journey absolutely free. Let's get back to the episode. Speaker 1: And we're back for point number two, which is simple, and this is everyone's favorite point. Fight. So we start with focus, and now it's time to train, right? Well, yes, it can be. But sometimes you are such a newbie in that position that we're not ready to fight just yet. Sometimes we need some more information. Sometimes we need an instructional. Sometimes we need a YouTube video. Sometimes we just need advice from our coach about that situation, about that idea. And this is the most beautiful part of focus is it allows you something that you can keep going back to and you can keep saying, "Well, I'm supposed to be focused on bottom side control. I don't know what I'm doing yet. So I should ask questions about bottom side control. I'm supposed to be focused on bottom side control. I am flat all the time. I know I'm not supposed to be flat. Coach, how do I get unflat from bottom side control?" "Oh, wow, that's oh, I should build frames and I create these angles." "Coach, how do I build frames and create these angles?" Once you start to get that, once you start to get those answers, and for some of us, if you're a purple belt listening to this, and you do suck at bottom side control, I guarantee you've asked those questions. You just need the focus. You need the second part of this, okay? But first, and this is the method to actually getting good at Jiu-Jitsu, no one can argue this. There's no there is zero argument when it comes to this. Um, but there are only two things for getting good at Jiu-Jitsu. Only two, okay? First, understanding, whether that means understanding what the fight even is that I'm in, you know, in this specific position. And or sometimes understanding a technique, understanding a concept, but understanding. And a lot of people believe that that is all that there is to getting good at Jiu-Jitsu. But that is not the case. A lot of people believe that if I listen to an instructional of somebody very intelligent, and I can regurgitate that information back, then I now understand. But this is not the case. You do not understand until you can explain it back differently. If you need to use the same language that I used to teach what I taught you, then you don't understand it. You understand one perspective. But is that it? Is that all that there is? And so, first is understanding. The second thing that we need is quality reps. Those are the things, understanding repetition. And yes, there are different types of reps, and that's what we're going to get into next. What is getting reps? Is dead pan drilling useless? Is it useless? And dead pan drilling, if you don't know, is when I teach you a move step-by-step, and then you grab a partner, he gives you zero resistance at all, and then you just repeat that move step-by-step. There are even worse versions of this where we do moves that don't even work step-by-step, like the closed guard arm bar that a lot of us warm up with, where we just grab the sleeves and throw our leg over the head and don't control the shoulder line at all and don't have any understanding of how to actually get an angle for a closed guard arm bar. But, hey, we warmed up, we threw our legs really wide, and that's cool, right? We created these cool angles. It looked like Jiu-Jitsu. Is that a quality rep? Here is another question. How many of those closed guard arm bar reps where we're not really doing an actual move, we're just throwing this angle, and the bot the guy literally on top is bending down each time that you hit the arm bar, so you can actually be deep enough on the arm, because he even can recognize that it's not realistic. It's almost worse than dead pan drilling. It's like, I have to be helping you to do this move incorrectly. And how many of those reps compare to one live rep in the gym of hitting that closed guard arm bar where you had real feedback, where you created a real situation that actually hit? But then, here's the other question. Does that rep, let's say that that rep did have more value than whatever 10 dead pan drilling, 100 dead pan drilling reps. Does that rep have equal value to hitting it live in competition? See, this is my question. I'm just asking you guys. I don't know. But I'll tell you my thought. I'll tell you what I believe is no. There is even more value in hitting a rep live in competition than there is hitting it 100 times live in training. And I know people will want to argue that with me. People will want to be like, "No, I no, science doesn't say that." Whatever. But here is the truth. Jiu-Jitsu is, yes, it is physical, it is mental, but Jiu-Jitsu is also emotional. So many of us tie emotion to our Jiu-Jitsu every single day. You get frustrated when you lose. You get happy when you win. You are ecstatic. You actually have a better day when you performed well in the gym. We tie so much emotion to Jiu-Jitsu. You will always tie more emotion to the competition. And my proof of this theory, this crazy theory I have that a competition rep is more valuable than any rep, is that I as a competitor had had times where I would hit certain things occasionally in the gym. They really weren't my best thing. It's just something that I would it's just a little part of my game. And for whatever reason, I showed up to a tournament, match one, I hit that move. And for whatever reason, that became one of my competition moves. Like, between match one and two, it's like now a huge part of my game. And if I'm hitting it in match two, it's like, "Oh, yeah, this is all I do now. This is my whole game." And it is because the emotion tied into competition, that feedback is just so much more real to you than any of the other feedback that you get, right? And so, now, let's talk about reps. So the first type of rep that we looked at was just our dead pan drilling. And I think when you first start, when you're first learning the mechanics of something, I do think that there's value in drilling something dead pan. Now, when's the last time I really drilled something dead pan without real resistance? It's been a really long time. It's probably been 10 years. It's probably been since I was a coach. Not something that is a big part of my game anymore. And so I can also say that I know a lot of other black belts that have gone through the same cycle. We like understand, if you if you know a guy who's done Jiu-Jitsu 12 years plus, he has repetitively drilled. Don't let him lie to you. He has repetitively drilled because 12 years ago, that's all we were doing. That was the super secret method was drill things over and over. Drillers are killers. And it rhymed, so we all we all bought in, right? And, um, before we move on from drilling, it's like drilling can be good. Dead pan drilling can be good. Here is the biggest problem with it. Is one, there's probably a point of diminishing returns. Um, meaning like drilling it perfectly three reps versus drilling it perfectly 1,000 reps. It's like, you probably at a point started to just wear yourself out for no reason, started to just do this move over and over and over again for no reason. And so, I just think that so often you see guys drill for long periods of time and never really hit that move. And so then you just go on the question of like, was that an efficient use of time? Right? We we all get to dedicate a certain amount of time to Jiu-Jitsu, right? For a lot of us, like two or three days a week, right? Two or three hours a week when you really look at it. And you go, "Well, if I'm spending 30 minutes of that time drilling something, I better be hitting that thing." Or else, is there real value to it, okay? So drilling is one. Now, let's look at CLA, the constraints led approach, Eco, whatever you want to call it. Here is the thing about like on that same topic. We talked a lot about principles last week and like the principles of learning Jiu-Jitsu. If you have someone creating these CLA games that understands Jiu-Jitsu deeply, then it will be so valuable for you. If you're forced to create these games on your own, and you actually aren't very good at Jiu-Jitsu, and you don't have an understanding of it, you're going to probably create games that aren't as relevant. You're going to try to create scenarios that aren't as relevant. But again, um, that's something that I really picked up from, um, Greg Souders when he was on the show last year, was this is a skill set. Being able to run a class this way is a skill set. It is not just a list of games on a wall. Because that's my question when it came to like when Eco first came out was like, "Oh, this makes so much sense to me, but where do the games come from?" That's what's matter that's what matters to me because these are these are concept-based games, like these are principle-based games. If the principle is stupid, then the game will be stupid. And so, yes, there is danger, but you also go into that thought of like drilling versus CLA. You get so much more realistic resistance. You get so many more realistic reps, but is it too much resistance? And this is when we add our other way to get reps. And that is designated winner. And of course, Josh is going to talk about designated winner. He invented it. Here's the thing. I was at a seminar not long ago, and guy was asking me stuff I teach. He was asking me what I should, you know, what I should wanted to show. And at one point, he's like, um, I said something about like, "Oh, I could teach designated winner." And he like kind of like And I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "We do that all the time here." He's like, "We we've got so many ideas on that." And so, yeah, it wouldn't even probably be helpful for my guys. And then he started to try to teach me what designated winner was. One, I'm like, "How did he even hear about this if you didn't hear about it from me? What are we even talking about?" Two, "Bro, I invented this. Don't talk down to me. Who are you?" And so, yeah, I digress. But here is the thing. This is what designated winner is. And this is again, this came from, like I said, we have this method of getting good at Jiu-Jitsu. Designated winner was another observation. This is something that black belts do all the time. Here is the black belt version of designated winner. I am so much better than everybody I roll with. I can choose something to hit repeatedly, and then I can go into a round against a white or a blue belt, and then hit it repeatedly, and get live resistance reps, because they're never going to beat me. I am always the designated winner. I am a black belt. I am a god to this lowly trash blue belt. Unless they're of course, you know, better than you and thrash you. That's always bad. But that is how a lot of black belts train. And it's actually not a surprise that your coach ends up getting better faster than anyone in the gym using that method. Because that method of getting reps against the right amount of resistance, and the right resistance has so much more value than getting no resistance at all. And so, here is how designated winner works. Um, we're going to talk about positional sparring in a second. But basically, all designated winner is is a positional spar where we have a starting point and an ending point, okay? So we start from De La Riva, we end on the guard pass. The top person is the designated winner, meaning he wins every time. The bottom person gives resistance. And maybe we can define that resistance. A lot of times you'll say something like, "Give me 20% resistance." And what is 20% resistance? If, you know, your partner's a moron and they can't figure that out, say, "Just frame me. Don't even grip me right now. Just build frames, use your feet, use your hands, just build frames, and I'm going to try to pass. Once I pass, then we reset back to that original position, same thing." Every single time, the top person wins. What this does is it takes the fear of losing, because we're trying to add new stuff right now, right? We're not ready to go live because I haven't been able to add anything yet. So I'm trying to add this these new thoughts to this game, right? I'm trying to add these new thoughts to my guard passing. I just watched the greatest guard passing seminar of all time on YouTube completely free, and now I understand chest over chest to a small degree, and I need reps. But I can't just walk in and start to do this on good guys. I need to ease into it. And so, having that right training partner that gives you the perfect resistance. And I know people have not heard of designated winner, might even be saying, "Hey, we do this at my gym." Yes, that's what I mean. This is an observation. So many people do this at their gym, but there's no language connected to it. There is no name. A lot of us just call it drilling. But you just know how to drill. You know how to give the right resistance. Designated winner allows us that control to say, "Okay, we're going to we're going to positional spar this, but you're not giving me real resistance." And the other thought is like, as we're doing these positional spars, maybe we increase to 40% resistance. And so sometimes like I'm trying to pass you, you're just defending, and I even like put myself in a triangle. As the bottom person, you're not the designated winner. You are not allowed to win. So what do you do? You just pause. You give the top guy time to think, right? And that time to think that is three seconds, and then they escape, okay? Then same thing happens. You'll notice that their time to think goes from three seconds to one second, right? They're able to process it so much faster. It gets down to a half a second before they go into that move. And so then my question to you is, is that actually you seeing yourself get better at Jiu-Jitsu? Because I think it is. But limited resistance is still that. It is still not real. And so we do need to be able to up our resistance to full speed. And to me, I think that people think that that needs to be live training. But I think first, before we go live, how do you spell positional? P O S I P O S I T I O N A L. Yeah, that sounds right. We positional spar. Yeah, that looks good. Um, that's a solid word. And so, here's the thing about positional sparring. Same thing. We need a beginning and an end point. So many people say, "Yeah, we're going to positional spar De La Riva," and then they just do a live round. Like you get passed, and they keep going, and there's a back take, and they keep going. It's like, "Oh, no, you did one rep of De La Riva." Let's take that five minutes and just do as soon as there's a pass or a sweep, like first score or submission. We just reset, same guy on top, same guy on bottom. The reason that this is so helpful is because both guys are actually getting better at the same time. This, when I first started teaching Jiu-Jitsu, this was how I was getting valuable reps to be able to compete, because how am I supposed to teach day one white belts how to play De La Riva for me to be able to get good resistance for purple or brown belt Jiu-Jitsu, right? For purple or brown belt competition. You can't. But what you can do is you can start to get reps. And in those reps, their De La Riva guard start to develop way quicker than if I'm showing them, "This is what you could grip, you could grab here, you can do this." They're just getting harder to pass with De La Riva. Then when we switch top to bottom, they get the perspective of, "Oh, so this is what the top guy should be doing." And so it gives you both perspectives, but it gives you the most valuable reps, and you can get a lot of them. You can take those 30 minutes of training where you would have just done live rounds the whole time, and you may have seen De La Riva guard three times. And you could positional spar De La Riva in a way that you get reps of De La Riva guard 100 times by tweaking your training method. Just from, "I want to show up and roll live to no, it's not about showing up and rolling live. It's about me getting better at Jiu-Jitsu." And the way to do that is to choose a focus and then get quality reps. And then we're going to look at point number three next, and that is what to do with all of this information you're going to be getting from the right focus and getting the right reps. What to do with all that feedback? Speaker 2: Okay, guys, so I lied to you. I am a liar. That's my bad. So, my friends at BJJ Mental Models, they were going to send us a new course, but they keep messaging me saying, "Hey, too many people keep downloading the Rob Bernacki course to move on." I mean, they're giving away an $80 course completely free just because they love the I Suck at Jiu-Jitsu show, just because they love I Suck at Jiu-Jitsu show listeners. So if you go to BJJ Mental Models.com/suck, you get to get Rob Bernacki's seven-part course, Jiu-Jitsu for Imbeciles, completely free. This is a conceptual approach to Jiu-Jitsu learning and to all the things that make Jiu-Jitsu work. It'll take all those moves, all those random techniques that you know, and allow you to kind of systematize them into a format that has been proven. And again, this is completely free because the people at BJJ Mental Models love you guys. So if you go to BJJ Mental Models.com/i suck, you will be able to download this free course from Rob Bernacki, and I am telling you, it is going to change the way that you look at Jiu-Jitsu. Speaker 1: And we are back. And now we're at our last point, point number three, and that is feedback. And the thing is, we get constant feedback in Jiu-Jitsu, but most of us only judge the feedback of submission wins and submission losses, right? In competition, in the gym, that's all we think about. I did good, I got a submission. I did bad, I got submitted. And this is a fine metric. You know, this is the metric that we decide who wins and loses in Jiu-Jitsu. So this is cool. But this is not the metric that good people use to judge whether or not they're getting better at Jiu-Jitsu. Why? Because I can play a game, you know, and like people talk about like, "Oh, you should play your B game in the gym. You should play your C game in the gym. Play your A game." No, all of that's stupid. Here is how it works. You get to choose layers of your Jiu-Jitsu, okay? So at a certain distance from guard, we all have an option on bottom, right? When you're at the end of my feet in my guard, I have an option. I can, A, try to get grips and tie you up into a guard there. I can, B, let you get to the next layer of my guard because I'm better at knee shield, I'm better at half guard. I like to get under the legs more, right? Or, C, I can just suck and get my guard passed really quickly, right? And you can skip a bunch of layers. But in each position, there are layers to it, right? We talked a lot about this in the guard tier list episode is that it is more valuable to have somebody if you're playing guard at the ends of your feet. The reason being is because they have to beat the ends of your feet to then deal with your shins and your hands. So basically, if you go, "Well, I'll just play half guard." You allow the top player to not have to beat a specific thing. They don't have to beat your feet. They can just walk right into half guard. And maybe you have a good half guard, but how much better is your half guard if the top player wasn't even focused on half guard? He was just focused on stuffing your leg, and then you're in your good position. These are layers, and they're constant. They are like, you know, you go from smash half, and then you go into like quarter guard, and then you go into mount. And these all have bits of offense and bits of defense from them, okay? So, if we have that thought process of it's just about submissions and that's it, then we ignore that we're spending all this time in sucky spots. But we're happy about it because like, "Oh, well, I kept both of my hands at my neck, and I didn't get submitted today, so that was a win." And this is not to say that if that is the only metric that you can pay attention to, like maybe you're brand new and you go, "Literally not getting submitted is the biggest win that I could accomplish." Then do that. Then you you're getting it, right? You have a metric that you know, "Man, I I got submitted 20 times yesterday. What if I only got submitted 15?" Right? And that is the value of a metric. Is you know where you're at, and then you can actually see yourself getting better at Jiu-Jitsu. How? By no longer having to no longer having to get submitted 20 times. You're getting submitted 10 times. Really, in theory, you're now twice as good at defending, right? If you start to get down to zero times, you have gotten so much better at defending. We still don't have offense. We still don't have anything else. We're probably at some point, once we're getting to, "Man, I never get submitted." We need to change our metric. We need to change it to maybe my guard's still getting passed a lot. I want to keep that from happening next, right? And the thing with, yeah, with your feedback is so often, it's just too easy to get in the mindset of, "Oh, did I win today? Did I lose today? I'm great. I suck." That is not that is not the method. If you are training with somebody who's really good, if your coach is really good, if your coach never loses a round at the gym, and there are a lot of coaches like this, right? That none of their students can really, unless they're letting something happen, can really ever beat them. And if you see a coach like that, I guarantee you if you ask your coach, like, "Hey, when you're going into training on a typical just like regular session at our gym, do you just think about submitting people?" They're like, "Nah." "Do you think about styling on people?" They're like, "Nah." What they will tell you is like, "No, usually I come in, and I want to hit arm bars tonight." Or for the next month. And it's, you know, it's not like they need a bunch of thought. They're going to get those opportunities anyway. But they get to kind of like organically place arm bars into their Jiu-Jitsu game. And it's not their A game, it's not their B game, it's not their C game. It's just their Jiu-Jitsu game. They find that when they do their normal Jiu-Jitsu stuff, they create situations where arm bars become available, and then they take those arm bars. And for that coach, maybe he hits one arm bar the first week. Maybe then he hits three the next week. Maybe then he hits 10 the next week. He is seeing himself get better at arm bars. This is why feedback is so important. And so like the first thing with feedback is of course to have the right metrics. But then after that, the second thing is to use those metrics and let them help you decide what you should be working. Let them help you decide whether or not you're actually getting better at this. So, again, we talked a lot about like, um, this kind of thought process as it pertains to designated winner. There's something that you'd always hear people talk about that used to train with Rickson. They would say, you would show up to training one day, and you would be like, "Man, I did really good with Rickson today. He only arm barred me twice in the round." And you would be like on cloud nine. Then you would start talking to everybody afterwards, and they would be like, "Man, you know, I did pretty good with Rickson today. He only arm barred me." He only arm barred me once. Yeah, he got me like four times. Then the conversation would get deeper and they would be like, "Wait, which arm did he arm bar?" And they'd be like, "Ah, my left arm." Like, "Man, I think that's his weak side of the arm bar. I think that he was literally only here to arm bar everybody's left arm." Why? Because he was so much better than everybody that it was hard to find a metric of himself getting better. It was hard for him to decide, "Oh, I need he knew he needed quality reps. But then he goes, "Well, what do I need reps on? I can arm bar everybody's right arm." And so like, I guess I could just get 100 reps of that. Or I could find this other spot that maybe, you know, I'm not as sharp at. I find this other bit, and yeah, he's still murdering everybody still. But that thought process is just that he found metrics. He found a way to say, "Well, I'm Rickson, whether I, you know, at the beginning of class and at the end, how do I know that I got better with it?" Having simple metrics. And so, the other versions of feedback that we might get might not be our own. Sometimes the most valuable piece of feedback that you get is your coach going, "Hey, I saw you were escaping bottom side control." Or you rolled with your coach, you're like, "Yeah, I felt you escaping bottom side control." Sometimes that is the feedback that we know or that we care about. Here is a little warning on that though. So many people come up to their coach, and they say, "Hey, coach, what should I be working?" And that's I think a lot of the people that hear the focus thing. That's something you would be surprised that I didn't tell you to do. I didn't want to say, "Go to your coach and see what he thinks you should be working." If your coach has something that they've told you to be working, then work that. If they have said specifically, "Work this," you should be spending a very long period of time focused on that. But most people go to their coach, say, "Hey, coach, how do you know what what could I be working on?" And their coach says, "There's 250 people here. There's 30 or 40 people in each class. I roll live with these people. I don't roll with you ever. Do you think I'm watching your rounds and deciding what to roll what you should be focused on? Do you think that's what I'm doing right now?" It's not. Even if your coach is like, "Oh, just worry on work on bottom side control." That's just a generic answer, right? It's best for you to know how you're rolling, to know what your metrics are, to observe your own rolling. So then you can always go back. You can always fall back and say, "Well, this is me getting better at this because now I can actually hit an arm bar on the left arm. Now I can actually hit a guillotine. Now I can actually escape bottom side control against white belts." And then, "Well, what's that next metric? I wonder if I could escape bottom side control against blue belts. I wonder if I could just I mean, I can't. Maybe I'll just survive," right? Then you have this next goal that you can work on. And just by changing the Jiu-Jitsu thought process from wins and losses, it opens up that you're whether or not you're getting good. When we just look at wins and losses, it's just like, hopefully I'm getting better. I'm not really sure. You know, hopefully we're all getting better. I'm not really sure. But when you have specific metrics, you can use specific numbers and say, "Well, I know that I'm hitting more submissions per round. I know I'm hitting this pass that I've been trying to add more per round." And you're able to really, really get so much better at Jiu-Jitsu. Now there's one more version of feedback. And this is to test your understanding. So we talked about how the goal of Jiu-Jitsu, the goal of getting good is to find things to understand, find good coaches, find good perspective, and help you understand, and then get really, really good quality reps. Now, there is a third thing that you can do that will actually test whether or not you're getting quality reps and whether or not you're understanding. And it is this, can you teach it? And this is the last part of feedback that I look at is the feedback from your students, okay? And this is, I know you you're not a coach probably. You don't have students. You don't get to get that feedback. Now, let's say you're brand new. You're six months in. You're a brand new white belt. And you have spent the last three months working on bottom side control. You're starting to grasp some of the ideas. Something that would be so helpful for you, and I know that this can be we'll we'll talk about balancing this and not being douchey with it. But pulling somebody to the side who also struggles with bottom side control. And it doesn't have to be you really teaching it. It doesn't have to be like you doing the step-by-step thought process. But you being able to communicate your perspective of side control is one of the most important things to show whether or not you understand. Because when it comes to how good people think about grappling, they don't think about techniques. They don't think about step-by-step moves. And there was no point that I told you, "Hey, add this one technique into your game," right? They think about their ability to accomplish important tasks, and the more that you can simplify what that important task is, the better you're going to be at Jiu-Jitsu. The better you're going to be as a coach, and the more you're going to be able to accomplish that task, right? If I have to think of bottom side control as build a frame, turn on my side, scoot a couple inches this way, then get on my shoulder, and then get my knee in front, versus I can think of bottom side control of if he doesn't control my head, I can turn towards him. If I can turn towards him, I can turn my hips towards him. If I'm on my side, I can escape side control. That is how you should be able to think about and explain the fights of Jiu-Jitsu. Yes, it will take you forever to get there, but this whole thing is just a loop. It is you choose something to focus on. You get quality reps of that thing, and then you find the right metrics to show whether or not you are getting good at that thing. And then, once you start to get good at that thing, this is the most beautiful part of this whole method. Let's say you're a brand new white belt. You suck at everything. You can't even seem to get any better at any one thing. So what you do is you spend the next six weeks trying to get to actual blue belt level in something. Of course, we're using bottom side control escapes because you're a white belt. What other choice do you have? And so what that would look like would be you gaining understanding about bottom side control. You getting quality reps. At first, it's probably just drills. Then, maybe we start to do designated winner. Just give me a little pressure on top. You know, and let me get some escapes. Then it starts to be positional spars. Try to hold me down. Try to submit me and see if I can escape and get back to my guard or get back on top, right? And we're able to ease into that until a point that we can actually grab a blue belt, have them start from top side control, and us escape and do that consistently. That really is your indicator on if you're, you know, not just one blue belt, but if you can do this with multiple blue belts, you're probably blue belt level at that move or at that position. Here is the beautiful thing at being blue belt level at bottom side control or any other position. You now know what it feels like to be blue belt level at bottom side control. And so you can start to say, "Well, what if I took guard and tried to get to blue belt level at that?" Because I know what it at least in this one space, how much understanding and how much skill a blue belt has here. Why? Because we really used the right metrics, and we were we observed ourselves doing Jiu-Jitsu, and then we did the right things to observe ourselves getting better at Jiu-Jitsu. And so, that is all I have for you guys today. This has been the secret formula to how to master Jiu-Jitsu. Obviously, this was brought to you by Mastering Any Position in Six Weeks. There is so much more information on this thought process. In Mastering Any Position in Six Weeks, it's broken down to be seven mini podcast episodes where you just watch one and you work on and focus on things for that week, and then you watch the next one the next week. But then, it's also made to be used over and over and over again. And so it can be watched repeatedly. And that is available at simplifyingjiujitsu.com/six. And that is all I have for you guys today. Be sure to check out Mastering Any Position in Six Weeks if you liked this, because it is this kind of stuff on steroids, and it will give you just such a clear picture to getting really good at Jiu-Jitsu really quickly. But besides that, that's all I have for you guys. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And if you did, feel free, give us a comment. If you hated it, of course, give us a comment. We'd love to hear from you. And if you have a hot take, be sure to drop it at 951 hot take. That's all I have for you guys today. I hope today's episode helps you guys suck just a little bit less at Jiu-Jitsu. Have a great day, guys.