#368 You Learned BJJ All Wrong!

Let me ask you a question. What if the thing that you've been told is the foundation of your jiu-jitsu is actually the thing keeping you stuck? What if the problem is not your effort? What if the problem is not your discipline? What if the problem is not your toughness? What if the problem is the model that you have been given? Because if the model of teaching jiu-jitsu is broken, no amount of effort will change that. No amount of effort will fix it. You can work harder, you can train longer, you can train more, you can shrimp more. But you'll still feel like you are running in place. Now, I want you to really think about this. How many times have you heard it? Focus on the fundamentals. Master the basics. Just keep shrimping. And you go, "Oh, okay. Okay, coach. Okay, cool purple belt." You trusted it. You followed it. You repeated it. Maybe even you repeated it year after year. But deep down inside, something did not click. You roll with somebody who's better than you. And it feels like you're not even playing the same game. Why? Because they are not playing the same game. They are looking at jiu-jitsu completely differently than you. See, most people think that jiu-jitsu is about collecting techniques. But the best people in the world, grapplers, the best coaches in the world, they are not thinking in terms of techniques. They are not thinking in terms of step one, and then I got I got step two after that, and then step three. That is not what is happening. Guys like this, they're feeling something. They are recognizing something in the moment. They are problem-solving in the moment. Because jiu-jitsu, as much as we want it to be, as much as it would be easier if jiu-jitsu was a collection of techniques, jiu-jitsu is not a collection of techniques. Jiu-jitsu is a series of problems, and the people who win, the people who are good, are the people who solve those problems faster, cleaner, and with less effort. So let me challenge you on this. Let me push even more. What if there are no fundamental techniques? What if the whole idea of focus on the fundamentals was just this made-up story that we tell beginners so things feel more organized? But what's actually fundamental in grappling? It's not a move, it's not a technique. It's the mission. Can you accomplish what the task is that matters right now? Can you flatten your opponent? Can you control their hips? Can you connect your chest to theirs? Can you take away the space? Can you take away the ability for them to move? Those are fundamental. Those things are fundamental. Everything else is a tool to accomplish those tasks. And here's where it gets dangerous. Because if you start to believe that there's this group of core techniques that are the foundation, you're going to spend all of your jiu-jitsu life collecting those techniques. Move after move, class after class, you're always there. You're going to actually become a jiu-jitsu human library, but you will not become a jiu-jitsu problem solver. And the moment things don't look exactly like those techniques that you drilled one step after another after another, you freeze. But you watch a good black belt. He doesn't freeze. Even the first time he gets put into a new position, he doesn't freeze because he's not attached to a move. He is committed to an outcome. So today, we're going to do something different. We are going to break the pattern that has poisoned our jiu-jitsu community for years. We are going to destroy the idea that jiu-jitsu is about memorizing techniques, and we're going to rebuild it around something real. Something that actually works when somebody is fighting back. We're going to talk about tasks, we're going to talk about language, we're going to talk about concepts versus techniques. Once you understand those three things, you're going to you're going to stop having to remember what to do next. You're going to stop feeling so freaking dumb on the mats. And you'll start knowing what has to happen next. You'll start knowing this is the mission that needs accomplished. And when that shift happens, jiu-jitsu is going to open up for you like you have never seen before. If you are a black belt listening to this and you say, "Yeah, I feel like the victim of a thousand moves. I don't feel like I am a black belt in jiu-jitsu." This episode is going to change jiu-jitsu for you. It is going to simplify jiu-jitsu in a way, your jiu-jitsu, not mine. I'm not going to say, "Do what I do. Just be like Josh." It's like, you probably can't do that, right? You probably don't have near as much time on the mats. You probably don't have the same flexibility that I have. You know, you're probably not as funny as I am. You're probably not as handsome. Um, sorry, I trained. Oh, yeah. The thing is, though, you have your own unique game. The problem is, you probably don't even know what your unique game is. You're probably even at black belt going, "Well, I guess I play half guard." But let me tell you that that is actually not your game. As much as you play it and you think it is, it isn't. It is a way that you accomplish your game. And that is where we're going to make that shift. But maybe you're a white belt listening to this. Maybe you're going, "Well, I don't even know the fundamentals. I don't even know any fundamentals." Good. We're going to be able to give you an approach to jiu-jitsu that is going to make a difference that you are not going to be able to believe. Let's get into it. I suck at jiu-jitsu. How do I suck less? Okay, guys, so we're going to start this episode out with the myth of fundamentals. This is something that I have talked about on the podcast for years now. And it's really hard because if you listen to the first 100 episodes of the show, when we were doing a ton of interviews, one of the biggest questions that I would ask, and it was always at the end, is like, if I was at a seminar and I raised my hand and I said, "Hey, how do I suck less at jiu-jitsu?" How would I do that? And everybody's answer, not everybody, but a lot of people's answer was the same. The most common answer that I got was focus on the fundamentals. And if you listen back, I will always push back on those questions. I'll always say, "But what are the fundamentals?" And a lot of times there would be a big pause of like, "Ooh. That's a good question." Or someone would say something like, "Yeah, closed guard arm bar." It's like, "Okay. So when you say fundamentals, does that mean somebody couldn't know jiu-jitsu, somebody couldn't get good at jiu-jitsu without the closed guard arm bar?" No. That's not true. There's plenty of very, very good black belts that will tell you, "I never hit closed guard arm bars." But it's fundamental, right? Well, what about the triangle? Is the triangle fundamental? Do you have to be able to triangle? I have some really high-level wrestlers that are now black belts in jiu-jitsu that weigh over 250, and they can't triangle, my friend. They are not good at triangles. So are they not good at jiu-jitsu? Are they not real black belts? I promise, you're not going to get on top of them anyway. So it doesn't really matter. Is that real jiu-jitsu? So, here's the thing. I have been on this quest for fundamentals pretty much since the podcast started and even before then. And I think I used to have that idea of like, "Yeah, there's fundamentals out there. There are these fundamental techniques. The first six weeks of jiu-jitsu, you should learn this, and you should learn that." I don't think so. Anymore, I start to realize that some reps actually provide absolutely no value. And it's just very hard for people to accept. There's going to be people that are that are going to be coaches in the comment section that are going to be like, "Oh, well, you don't know. My beginner's program is really good." I'm like, "Bro, it's not. Your guys are terrible." And it's okay. All beginners are terrible at jiu-jitsu because there isn't actually a good place to start. Jiu-jitsu is a whole thing. Meaning, if, yes, you don't need a closed guard triangle. You don't need a closed guard arm bar. But if you cannot get up when your back touches the mat, then you're probably not good at jiu-jitsu. If you can't start to escape the position, then you're probably not very good at jiu-jitsu. And this is where I think so many people get it wrong is they think that, okay, I'm going to show Americana from mount, one of my favorite moves. And that's going to help these guys. But the truth is, it really doesn't. If we really really boiled it down and you said, "Well, what are the fundamentals in your opinion, Josh?" Because it's just still going to be opinion. We're going to talk about building like kind of your own fundamentals program. We're going to talk about all these different things. But what would be if you made me give you like, "Well, what would be the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu that I would make sure that people learn if I was teaching beginners?" And this is something I actually don't do much anymore. I have beginners coaches, right? We all stay very conceptual. We have a really good formula for doing it. But if you made me work with guys that have zero context of jiu-jitsu, would I start them with technique or would I start them with concepts? Well, here's the thing. I would start them with the ability to be held down and stop that from happening. A guy is in side control and a guy is in from mount, right? And there are all kinds of techniques we could teach to accomplish this task. Right? I could teach you to bridge and roll from mount. I could teach you to shrimp from mount, do the elbow escape from mount, right? I can get to half guard, get to butterfly guard. And it's like, but here's the problem. Is there any even any value in learning to get back to guard if you don't know anything from guard? It's like, "Well, now we got to learn guard." Well, should we add some techniques? Should we look at how to you know, that's the problem is when you start to get into the weeds. Everybody has this idea that the beginner's curriculum is this simple thing that they're going to do. And I've talked to millions of coaches. That's an exaggeration. But I've talked to a lot of coaches. And the ones that get hung up on the beginner's curriculum never seem to get a solution to it. And this is not to say that there aren't some that are definitely better. But it is more to say that it's not a single technique or even a grouping of techniques that make those programs better. It is your ability to teach people to accomplish the tasks that we have to accomplish over and over and over. And so that is why fundamentals in grappling are just so hard to, one, they're so hard to find, they're hard to explain, and they're impossible for us to agree on, is because what are the tasks that are even fundamental? I think if you broke it down from top to bottom, one of the most important tasks, and if you've listened to me for any period of time, you know that I think that distance is the most important task as a top player to learn to be able to accomplish. Can you get your chest over their chest? And then eventually your chest to their chest. If you don't understand that concept, I have an hour and 15 minute instructional called the greatest guard passing seminar of all time, and it shows you how to apply that concept to every guard that you would deal with. But I don't show you a bunch of techniques about like, "Oh, pass the guard this way, pass the guard this way, grab this, grab this." The concept was the same over and over and over and over again. And then there would be these little problems that would come up like, "Oh, well, they're framing me." Okay, well, here are three ways to deal with frames. And now you get to go, "Well, which one is the one that applies?" Right? This whole mindset shift, though, is when you start to recognize that jiu-jitsu is not just a piece of paper with a bunch of words on it that say, "Cross collar choke, arm bar, triangle." And then you go, "Well, once I know all these moves, then I will be a blue belt." And this is the problem with guys that want to like train jiu-jitsu on the sideline, that don't want to do reps, but they want to listen to what John Danaher says in an instructional. They want to listen to what the coach says. And they're like, "Oh, yeah, now I get it. Now I understand." So now this is the second part of this, and this is to me, this is the part that causes the problem. And that is the language of jiu-jitsu. And I think we could probably do a 10-part series on the language of jiu-jitsu, but we're just going to keep it tight right now. So you have to understand that jiu-jitsu is the art. Jiu-jitsu is what we try to pass down to each other. But grappling is the action. Grappling is the ability to accomplish a task. For instance, if you take me and you throw me in a high school wrestling program and you say, "Josh, you've got to beat kids in wrestling." One, I would need to learn the rules. Two, I would go, "Okay, what understanding do I have of being on the feet that will help me put kids on their back?" Right? I don't say, "Okay, well, I better learn a bunch of wrestling techniques. What are the what are the best high school wrestlers doing right now? I should play the meta." No, that would make no sense. What I do instead is I say, "Okay, I'm good at not getting taken down. Maybe I'll start with that. I'll make sure that I have all of my thoughts on like, I can't let this kid get to my leg. I can't let him get to my hips." Right? And then I need to think of like, "Well, how can I get to his legs? How can I get to his hips? Is it off of a bad shot? Is it off of, you know, do I have more reps from turtle? You know, am I better at getting on top there?" But I would really be grappling, right? I'm not doing jiu-jitsu. If we're wrestling, I'm just grappling. And I'm using whatever jiu-jitsu moves I've learned that can would be legally used. But the whole idea that it's like, you got to learn techniques, like, when you cross over to other grappling arts, you will find that it ain't like that, bro. I did combat wrestling nationals once. Um, so, uh, it's not like combat jiu-jitsu, it's not striking. Combat wrestling is like if you added submissions to wrestling. Um, and it was still very focused on the takedown, it was still very focused on top position, but there are submissions, so you can tap people out. Um, and when I did it, I've never wrestled a day in my life. Um, and I think I had four matches, and all three guys that I beat, I lost in the final like a bum. Um, but all three guys that I beat were very accomplished wrestlers. High-level collegiate wrestlers, Sambo, I don't know if you get belts in Sambo, but really high-level like national champion Sambo guys, all kinds of different arts. And I was a jiu-jitsu guy then, you know, not that I'm not still, but I was all in on the on the jiu-jitsu. I think I just got my black belt. And in those in grappling with those guys, I was like, "Oh, Sambo isn't BS. This guy had some legit stuff." Yeah, he wasn't as good when we got to the ground. But I kind of thought he was going to suck, and he was tough. And it was this whole realization that like, I've learned the art of jiu-jitsu, which is awesome, and it's beautiful, and that's what I want. But to assume that that is all that grappling is right now, maybe it isn't. And so now let's just talk and we're going to start to look at kind of some thoughts on technique first, okay? So, 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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Every technique that you've ever learned, every technique that your coach has ever showed you, every technique that I've ever showed you, every single one was first done live. And then tried to turn into language. A lot of times it was done live for years. And then tried to turn into language. Now, I want you to understand this. We're trying to take something that we learn to do by feel. You learn to do by the touch that is happening to you, all of the visual cues that are happening at once. And you try to put all of those things together to say, "This is the technique," or, "This is the the um thing that needs accomplishing," right? This is the task that I need to accomplish. When you start to recognize that, then you're just going, "Oh, well, I bring my knee across the body, you know, between the legs, and that is my knee cut." And so you go, "Oh, now we have the knee cut, and it has been this technique has been passed down to me." Someone taught me how they accomplished the task of getting past the legs and getting their chest to their opponent's chest while they're on top. And it was a knee cut. It was a specific technique that accomplished this task. Does that mean that every guard is knee-cuttable? No, it's has to do with the situation that you're in, right? Sometimes you're in a guard that the knee cut is not available. Maybe we need another option. The whole thought, though, is when we can start to shift what jiu-jitsu looks like in our own head. And um in a second, we're going to look at the three rules to do that, to make that shift from I know a million moves to I understand what the actual goal is. Because like I said, this is actually going to be different for you than it is for me. I'm not going to give you a, "This is Josh McKinney's instructional on the conceptual approach to jiu-jitsu." The beauty of concepts is they evolve. I get better at saying them, right? I can get more clear and more concise. Take what it took me an hour to say and maybe say it in five minutes. Took me to take it take what took me five minutes to say and say it in 10 seconds, right? The more that you can do that, the more efficient you are as a teacher, the more efficient you're going to be at explaining what is actually happening. Um, so the problem for so many people occurs, though, they get in this mindset of, well, if this move worked, then that's what I need to be doing. I just need to do this move. It's all about this move. And then when it doesn't work, then they go, "Well, what is the new move to add?" And so often, you end up getting into the weeds and you stop remembering that you should be accomplishing an important task this whole time, right? Um, like a good example of this would be if you are playing knee shield. There are a million moves available from knee shield. But if we really simplified what knee shield does, it keeps the guy away from us. If we don't use our knee shield to keep the guy away from us, it doesn't matter what techniques you know. You missed the fundamental task that needs accomplished. And so you get your guard passed. And the better the guy you go with, the more he sees that knee shield as not a huge position, but like that knee is in front of me, and if it wasn't in front of me, I would be chest to chest. And if I was chest to chest, I would almost be past this guy's guard. I would be well on my way to doing it. And so now, let's look at the three rules to relearn the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu. So, like I said, you were probably taught by your coach, by whatever coach you learned from, that there's like five moves, and you got to master these five moves. And this can be a great way to look at jiu-jitsu because then you don't find yourself adding a million moves. You just get really good at accomplishing those five moves. And this is not a concepts versus techniques episode. We'll talk a little more about that idea in a second. But really, this is learning what thing is useful for what time. And that is the big thing that you're going to have. So, the three rules to relearn the most important fundamentals in your own jiu-jitsu. First, is you have to learn your coach's or your gym's language. This is the most important thing that nobody does. And not only do they not do it, but it actually causes problems later on in their jiu-jitsu. So often, people refuse to learn the language that is being spoken to them. And that language is different in every jiu-jitsu school in the country, in every jiu-jitsu school in the world. The way that we describe the finish of the guard pass, if you get all these coaches together, there will be a lot of overlap in elbow knee space, in flattening, in having your chest connected to their chest. But these are the ways that I explain these things. These is the this is the verbalization that I use for my students to understand this. Your coach may use a completely similar like ideology with different words around it. Your coach may view it completely differently than I do. But it's so important at first to just learn one language. You don't need to learn everybody's jiu-jitsu language. And I've I've given this challenge on the podcast before, is maybe the teaching isn't great at your school. That's not uncommon. Maybe the teaching's terrible at your school. And so what you can even do is you can start to look at a different coach, look at a different, you know, like, I know the easiest person when it comes to jiu-jitsu language to use to explain this ideology is John Danaher. So he used a lot of like scientific language to describe what is happening in jiu-jitsu. And some people would rather learn from John Danaher than anyone else in the world. Why? Because they almost already spoke that language. And so then it's so easy for them to start to apply techniques and ideas of jiu-jitsu to that language because they already knew what a fulcrum was. But when you're high school educated like myself, it's like, man, is it really that valuable for me to try to figure out what the fulcrum in this arm bar is when I don't know what fulcrum means? Probably not. It's probably not near as relevant, right? But if I can start to grasp that, man, how much I can pinch this guy's shoulder with my legs and what way I can use my legs to control his shoulder and then how I can define it more like, what way can I use my legs to touch his armpit and in between his ear and his shoulder, control those two spaces. What ways can I do that? Well, that's how I hit arm bars, right? I don't think about the fulcrum. I think about keeping his arm immobilized so then I can bend it in a way he doesn't want me to. That's what I think about. And I hit a ton of arm bars. And then I have a deep understanding of what it takes to immobilize an arm. And I can explain this through language. And it's like, when I, okay, so I gave that example of um I talked about having a um guard passing instructional on or or uh seminar that's free on YouTube. I talk constantly about the idea of chest over chest in that in that uh seminar. And I explain it literally as many different ways as I know how. In hopes that someone won't just understand the one sentence that I said, but understand the entire perspective. Because let's say I teach you an hour and a half seminar on that idea of chest over chest and um what it does and how it flattens people and how important it is. And then in the middle of like you're in a competition and you are not chest over chest on this guy. I don't need to explain to you an hour and a half of what chest over chest is and how valuable it is and why you need to focus on it this way. Instead, I just go, "Get chest over chest." Because you now have a deep enough understanding that all I have to do is say that and you know the language. It's easy to understand what having your chest over someone's chest is. So, yes, you can know the language. But if you can't explain it back differently, you don't understand it. If you have this idea of you're the best guard passer in the world and you're going to teach me how to pass the guard, if you can't give it to me multiple ways that make sense, then you probably don't know it with that much depth. So often we learn and I this is like one of my biggest complaints when it comes to how things are taught in jiu-jitsu. So often, you get a guy who is a white belt, learned a collar sleeve triangle choke. And then they've spent the last 12 years mastering it to just the most insane degree. And then you ask them about it, and they will show you literally the step-by-step move, word for word, what was taught to them 12 years ago. Even though they have innovated on this so much, they don't know any other way to explain it. They don't they only know it by feel. They only know how the move feels when it's right. And this is the next step. So the first step is we need to learn the gym's language, learn our coach's language. The next step is we need to start defining our own game. Not the game that we were taught. Not the words that were taught to us. So often, we believe these lies in the jiu-jitsu space forever. There is this thing um in the book Good to Great called the Stormtrooper effect. And um Jim Collins talks about, you know, growing up, his brother said something along the lines of, "How cool would it be to be rich one day?" And he's like, "Yeah." He's like, "Cuz then you could buy yourself a Stormtrooper costume." And so Jim Collins focuses his life on becoming rich one day. And he does it. And then he buys himself a Stormtrooper costume. And then he looks at it and he realizes, "Why did I care about getting a Stormtrooper costume?" This doesn't make sense. It's just like the the journey that I went on, I really thought that this was going to be this valuable thing. But so often, we have this mindset of like, I'm going to get good at this move. I'm going to get great at this move. And you get the Stormtrooper effect. My all my wildest dreams will come true when I master the cartwheel pass. But I don't realize that the cartwheel pass is stupid. The cartwheel pass doesn't make sense. I put too much of my own like, "Oh, I want to be good at this, and this will solve my problems." It's actually so much easier to go like this and to just look at the rounds that you win at first. Okay? So, hopefully you win some rounds. If you're brand new, you start to ask yourself this question once you start winning rounds. But you say, "When I win a round, what is something that happens every single time?" And you know, it may be what, okay, it's not every single time. What happens 80% of the time? It might be as simple as you win rounds when you get the guard pass. But if you don't get the guard pass, you never win rounds. And so then you start to ask yourself, "Well, when do I get the guard pass?" And you try to define it. And you say, "Well, maybe it's these grips. Maybe it's this pass. Maybe it's this." But it starts to register to you that in all the passes that you do, your right hand is holding your opponent's lapel. And you're pulling it and you go, "What? Huh? So when I get that grip, I tend to win more." And so now, we're starting to get some definition of what our game is, not in the form of, it's a knee cut. Cuz it might not be knee cut. It might be knee weave. Right? But the hand position's the same. And so I give myself this accomplishable task. And like I said, it's different for everybody. And when you start looking at jiu-jitsu this way, we start to look at jiu-jitsu conceptually, you're going to feel stupid. You're going to be like, "Is getting to the head even that important? Is hugging him this way even that important?" But that's why you get to experiment. That's why you get to say, "Well, maybe it has nothing to do with holding that lapel." Right? And then the second question. We start defining our game. So we first ask, "When we win a round, what seems to be the most basic but essential thing that has to happen for us to win that round?" Right? So we get the guard pass, we get the sweep, we set up our spider guard, whatever it is. The most the most essential thing for you to win that round. Now, you ask yourself the second question. "When you lose a round, what is the most common thing that happens for you to lose that round?" Is it that your guard gets passed? Okay. So let's take even a further step back. Is it that they get both grips on your pant legs? Like cuz that's where a lot of guys feel struggle, right? They get they feel like they get passed cuz the guy controls their ankles. Do you have an answer for that? Maybe we just start to focus on not letting guys control our ankles, right? You start to realize like, "Oh, coach was right. I just shouldn't get there." And either way, whether we're winning and we're trying to deconstruct, "Well, what what big things happen when I win?" Or we're losing and we're trying to deconstruct and we're saying, "Well, what big things happen when I lose?" Now, I think that it's probably easiest to apply this to winning. So let's just go back to let's say that you are winning some rounds. And so we're starting to try to define, "Well, what is my game? What is my offense?" And we're going, "Well, I'm hitting I'm winning when I get to side control. I'm winning when I get to the back." Whatever. Now, I'm going to actually stick with those same partners. And this is um step three. 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 can be a great competitor. Oh, you want to try to be the best competitor in the world? You want a professional level? You need to go Hero Mode. Well, the beauty of all three of these 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. Okay, so the first step to relearn the most important fundamentals is learn your coach's or your gym's language. The second step is to start defining your game, right? And um start defining your own tasks that you need to accomplish. And now, the third thing is you need to learn to accomplish these tasks with less physicality and less movement. Here's physicality. Physicality is anything diminishable that you try to apply to your jiu-jitsu. Your strength, your speed, your even your cardio. If your jiu-jitsu game is based off of missing a million moves and you're just having better cardio than people, then your jiu-jitsu game sucks. You need to be removing physicality from your jiu-jitsu as much as possible. And I've had I have this conversation every time I talk to somebody who's been on the mat eight to 10 years or more and is 40 and over. Every single time. We have the same conversation, and it goes like this. I'm frustrated, Josh. Really? Why are you frustrated? I feel like I'm getting worse. Really? You're getting worse? Tell me about that. These young guys are coming in and they're just beating me here, and they're beating me here, and they're passing my guard so quickly, and I just can't do anything about it. And so a lot of times, their answer is, maybe I should do more dead hang on on the pull-up bar. Right? Cuz it's grip strength, probably. No, maybe I should get more flexible cuz that young guy's more flexible than me, and that's why he that's why he can beat me. So often, physicality is the only solution that people can comprehend for some reason. I don't know why, but it is. That is not the answer. Physicality can always be helpful to your jiu-jitsu, especially as a competitor, and it can even be helpful to, you know, gain strength, learn to protect your body a little more, gain flexibility, protect your body from injuries a little more. You know, we can I'm not saying don't exercise. But the idea that you're going to solve your jiu-jitsu problems with physicality, it doesn't work. Here's why. Cuz no matter who you are, time always wins. Time beats all of us. It doesn't matter. Maybe you maybe you last four or five years longer than most other people, but you will start to get frail. You will start to get weak, and then you will die. Before you die, try to still be good at jiu-jitsu. The only way you're going to do that, though, is by starting to remove physicality from your jiu-jitsu right now. Right now. I'm 32, and I'm lecturing you that on lecturing you guys on this, and I have been since I started this podcast at 26. I've been lecturing you guys on remove physicality from your jiu-jitsu. Why? Cuz I watch so many guys quit jiu-jitsu because they get discouraged. They get discouraged because they built a game of jiu-jitsu. And they filled huge holes in their understanding, and they filled huge holes in their technique, and their concepts, whatever you want to say. They filled huge holes with physicality. And when that physicality diminishes, those holes reappear, and you start to go, "I'm getting worse at jiu-jitsu." So, learning to say, "I beat this guy, I passed this guy's guard going with 100% strength. My next goal is to be passing this guy's guard going at 50% strength." And once you can do that consistently, and you can accomplish that task at less strength, then your next goal should be 25% strength. Why? Because how else can you even show to yourself that you're getting better? Right? We talked about this um a few weeks ago, this idea of metrics in jiu-jitsu. So often, we struggle because we just don't know that we are getting better. We have no metric to check if we are getting better at jiu-jitsu. And to me, the solution of this, the easiest metric to check is if you can beat somebody, can you remove physicality, notice yourself removing physicality, and still accomplish the same task? You can go from if it took me 100% to 50%, it's like, well, I just got so much more efficient, right? I can do this move so many more times. I can miss it more times. I am better at jiu-jitsu now. And you should be looking at this in every single position. You should be as you get good, you should be so willing to spar bad positions because I promise, you're going to find holes in your understanding and your defense that you use physicality to keep people from getting you, right? And then you go with somebody who's just as strong as you, who's a little stronger than you, and you just get totally murdered. One more note on physicality. Somebody was asking me, um, basically like, when you're going with a big guy, do you feel like you're you're being forced to go harder? Like cuz somebody who tries to be really efficient. Um, and honestly, uh I mean, there's a level of big guy that I feel like I'm trying to stab in the neck with a knife just so I can get on top of him or something, but in general, I am thinking about using even less physicality when I'm going with a big guy. And the reason being is because it really doesn't matter if I use it. Most likely, if I try to do something athletic against a big guy and strong against a big guy, and we match strength for even a couple seconds, I start to get tired. And then when we do that again, I'm like more tired. And then it's like, man, this guy's he's just as freaking big, right? He's using 50% of his total strength to beat me in this move. I'm using 100% of my total strength. I'm going to get tired. Now, for me, being able to actually like be so over the top on that physicality thing and just constantly being like, I'm going too hard. I need to go less. I need to go less. I need to go less. This mindset shift changes your jiu-jitsu game. It was shared with me by Sean Williams. Um, done episodes called the greatest jiu-jitsu advice I've ever gotten. And it was Sean Williams talking um just to a a group of us about Roger Gracie. And he said, "How how what was the um Roger Gracie's best training partner when he won weight and open class of worlds, every match by submission?" None of us knew. And he says like a 180-pound purple belt was his best training partner. And I ask him, "Roger, how are you beating the guys that are training at the best schools, training with the best guys?" And he said, "Oh, I just uh I just removed my strength." And he's like, "What do you mean?" He goes, "I just use timing and technique and weight distribution." And he's like, "So and I don't understand. What do you he goes, "Well, well, then if I can do the technique on somebody that's going hard and I can do it without any strength, he goes, "Imagine if I used my strength with it." I was like, "Yeah, that makes a lot of sense." And for me as a coach at the time, I was a purple belt, and I just started teaching. So this has been 11 years ago. And um I was having this trouble as a competitor. I'm only training with my white belts now, right? Brand new white belts that know nothing, that are doing the old head hug from my closed guard all the time. And so it's like, man, I'm not getting I'm not getting very good reps. Well, what I started to recognize was it was just more important for me to learn pacing, to learn to remove physicality. Okay, I can, yeah, I can sweep a guy who does something dumb like hug my head from my closed guard. But can I sweep him easily? Or am I using a ton of strength and I like, he shouldn't even be doing that, right? He's ignoring the fundamentals of jiu-jitsu. You're not supposed to do this. How often do you see that? How often do you see a coach be like, "Yeah, this is the this is the rules of jiu-jitsu." And then a really good wrestler comes in, and then they'll be like, "Hey, man, you need to uh play off your butt so you can learn jiu-jitsu." And it's like, "No, you told him that because no one can sweep him because you guys don't actually know how to sweep people." Somebody with just a little high school wrestling experience can hip heist and get up. And yeah, to me, learning to remove physicality is the only answer. You're never going to beat there's always a younger, tougher wrestler coming in that wants to prove that jiu-jitsu doesn't work. Always. You're not going to out-physical. You're not going to out-tough these kids, and you're not going to do it in the long run. If you can't do it now, so learn to do it efficiently, learn to do it effortlessly, learn to do it while talking massive amounts of trash. The other thing, learn to accomplish the same task with less physicality, learn to accomplish the same task with less movement. What does that mean? If it takes 10 steps for my jiu-jitsu move to work, and this was like, this was my hang-up when we did the tier list video of guards, and I was talking about lapel guards, is most of them take so many steps to get into. Once you're there, they are incredibly overpowered. The problem occurs that if a move has five steps to get there, that's five places that a guy has to counter, he has five chances to beat you. If a move has three steps, ooh, he has less. You start to get good, and moves feel like they have one or two steps, right? You're trying to like, ideally, be able to accomplish the tasks that we talk about that are important. Uh, you know, however we're looking at it, like accomplish the task of passing the guard. You should be able to do it more efficiently over and over and over again. No matter who you're going with. It shouldn't be, well, I have to pass this way if I'm going with this type of guy. I have to pass this way if I'm going with this type of guy. I have to pass this way if I'm going with this type of guy. This pass works on him. This pass works on him. The problem is that is not a great way to look at grappling. Your goal should be to to be able to be thrown into any submission, or not submission, holy smokes, that's crazy. Position, thrown into any position and know how to grapple your way back to what? Your game, not my game. For me, that's what I think about. Is like, we talk about bad positions all the time, how important they are to be working. You work bad positions, and you keep looking as the coach, you know, as a as a brand new guy. You keep looking at, okay, well, even just surviving, it took 100% strength to survive. What if I could survive with 50% strength? Right? You start to get good, you go, "What if I can survive in these bad positions like 5% strength?" And these guys just can't do anything to me. That is the goal. So, now we'll just look and we'll finish with just this quick thought. Holy smokes, I had way more notes on this than I thought. Um, so we'll finish with the thought of concepts versus technique. And so, 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 BJJmentalmodels.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 BJJmentalmodels.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. And so, let's first just uh address the elephant in the room. It's actually really hard to find a good conceptual coach because it's very hard to take something that we do by feel and explain it verbally. You know when like your wife's obviously mad at you. You don't know why, but she's obviously mad at you. And you say, "Hey, honey, what's wrong?" And then she's like, "You wouldn't get it." Or, "Nothing." Like, "Well, I don't I don't know how to I don't know uh how I'm supposed to respond to that. I don't know how I can help in this." Right? But if the language was like, "Yeah, you did this, this, and this." I'm like, "Okay, well, now you've been very clear about the language." So, why doesn't your wife ever do that? Right? It's because feelings are hard to verbalize. Why do you get mad at your wife for stupid reasons sometimes that you never would in any other in any other situation? Why is that? Because feelings are hard to understand sometimes. It's like that for all of us. And physical feelings, where you touch me, what I feel that makes me react in certain ways for in a jiu-jitsu match is very hard to explain sometimes. This is why like, it's so important if you're trying to be good as a coach, that you don't get married to ideas. I've seen coaches share something that was cool six years ago, and then I go to their seminar six years later, and they're doing the same thing. And it's like, bro, everybody knows this now. It's not very helpful, and you haven't even evolved in how you're sharing it. You're acting as though it's the exact same thing, like there's been no evolution in this move or this this position over six years of you teaching it. That's craziness. And so, it's like I said, it's hard to find an instructor that's actually conceptual, that actually can explain things and help you understand. What you can do, obviously, we talked about those three steps for you to basically turn your own game into concepts. But first, learn your coach's language because that is what your coach's concepts are. Your coach's concepts are just the list of ideas that they have people follow. The list of rules that they say, "Well, if a technique doesn't work, it's probably because you didn't accomplish one of these things that I told you about, one of these things that I said was essential." And at first, the only way to do that is just to sit and listen. It's like I just, you know, we have I have a two-and-a-half-year-old now. How did he learn to speak? He just listens to us and then yells sometimes, right? And that is that is how we learn the language of jiu-jitsu. You just listen. You understand like, "Oh, if coach keeps saying this word that I don't understand, you ask." I went to this big business conference this year, and um man, it was a ton of fun. But I'm not a businessman. I'm a jiu-jitsu guy, right? And so, of course, I'm trying to learn these concepts that they're applying and apply them to my jiu-jitsu businesses that I run. But the biggest thing that I think was like, uh the thing that made the most sense to me, that really, really like expanded things for me, was when I started to go like, "Hey, I don't know that word that he just said. I should look that up." That made the biggest difference for me. Like literally, I was obviously trying to learn these big concepts that they're sharing, but they were still a little too over my head. They were still a little too smart. But there were certain things that weren't too smart. There were certain little, yeah, there were certain little concepts that weren't too smart, and I could go, "Okay, a lot of times it was just a word," right? It was just like, "Okay, I don't know what I don't know what EBITDA is," right? I'm like, "What does that even mean? I should I should Google that tonight," right? And so we would get out at freaking 10:30, and then I would be on Google for 30 or 40 minutes just going, "Hey, that one guy said this. What the heck does that mean? What is that word? I don't know what this means." Learning the language allowed me by like, I think it was a four-day thing. By day four, I could speak to these guys about things. Because I just learned their language. I just learned how they talked. And I was not smart enough in the room to contribute yet. I wasn't smart enough in the room to dig into these deeper concepts, to see to hear things that nobody else is hearing. It wasn't there. I was just smart enough to go, "Well, I don't understand the language. I should probably learn that first." When you do that, when you make that decision in jiu-jitsu, it will change things for you. When you decide, "I just want to learn the language." Coach is going to use terms that you don't actually know. You just let you let him say it all the time. He talks about elbow knee space, elbow knee space. And it's like, "Yeah, yeah, elbow knee space, got it." But maybe your coach has a deeper understanding of elbow knee space than you can comprehend. And he can explain that to you, but you just don't ask because you know the word, but you don't really know what it means. You don't really understand. And that is what we're talking about today. We are not talking about, you know, this really isn't a concepts versus techniques episode. This is an understanding episode. Why? Because here's the thing about techniques. We love to act as though now, right? The big thing with techniques now is that they don't exist. They're stupid. They don't make sense. There's no such thing as a technique. Here is the problem. Teach a concept to somebody that doesn't have any context. You can't. You cannot I can't teach you to pass every guard in jiu-jitsu if you've never experienced the guard. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter how clear my language is. It doesn't matter how smart I am. You've never experienced the guard. You don't have one, you don't have the emotional emotions tied to, "I would do anything to learn how to pass every guard." I would do anything. Because you've never been frustrated by every guard. You've never been stuck in spider guard for the entire round, only to get swept or submitted at the very end of it, right? You've never had that happen to you before. So you don't have enough context. The beauty of teaching techniques is I can teach you proven methods to accomplish the tasks that I'm telling you to accomplish. And I can teach you how to do it with very little resistance, and then increasing resistance through designated winner, and then full-on resistance with positional sparring, and then hopefully you can start to apply these things into your actual live rounds. But all of that is to say that techniques give an incredible amount of context. And so, um the most important part uh about techniques is that they allow you to break down the whole of jiu-jitsu into smaller parts. And that's what we talked about in the beginning of this episode, is that I can't just show you escape from bottom side control because then you got to learn the guard. And I can't just show you the guard because then we're sweeping, and then you got to learn top. Jiu-jitsu is this whole thing. The problem occurs when we go, and this is how you're taught. It's just how it is. You start with a move. We all probably start with a different move from a different place, but you start with a move. For me, maybe it's smash half guard. I think that'd probably be the most efficient thing for you to start to learn because you're actually in a guard, so there are actual sweeps. I mean, not great, but there are moves that work. Um, and then you are very close to side control. So then when you start to learn side control escapes, you can learn to fight back to at least half guard, right? Um, but that's still still totally to me. That's still just my personal preference. What typically happens is you just start getting moves thrown at you three a night, three a night, three a night, three a night for years and years and years. And you become the victim of a thousand moves. You go, "Okay, I know 30 ways to pass this one guard." Does knowing 30 ways to pass a guard actually help you in any way? No, you need to know a way that actually lets you pass the guard. You need one way. You just need to actually grasp what that is. And if you are the victim of a thousand moves, we're going to just finish with this. We're just going to reiterate those three rules to relearn the most important fundamentals. First, learn your gym's language. You can learn John Danaher's language second, but learn your gym's language first. If you feel like you already know it, then it's time for you to start defining your game. What are the tasks that are essential for you to accomplish, for you to win 80% of the rounds that you win? And then third, learn to accomplish those same tasks with less physicality and less movement. Can I take my 10-step move and lower it to eight steps? Right? That's two chances of defense that I just eliminated, right? That should be the mindset of refining our game. And if you keep this mindset of removing your physicality, of looking at jiu-jitsu as tasks to accomplish and not moves to master, you will start to master moves in a way that you have never been able to expect to happen before. The reason is, is because when you start to get good at accomplishing the same task over and over, you end up hitting the same techniques over and over. You end up in the same situations where you find these new ways of like, "Well, I could hit a triangle from here. I could hit a sweep from here." And that application done over and over and over is actually how you get good. So many people learn to get to like purple belt level in a move, and then they go, "Well, what if I added a new move?" And I got to purple belt level at that. And then I added a new move, and I got to purple belt level at that. You should be trying to get to high-level black belt in a move. If you could do that in a task, if you could do that, you are going to be so much better at learning. Cuz that is what this is. This is a process of learning, and you get better at it as it goes. I'll have students that will complain and be like, "Man, I feel like I've been getting better faster than ever, but when I roll with you, it feels like you're getting better faster than me." Well, it's like, "Yeah, because I'm better at getting better." Because I've done it for years, and it's a method now. It's not just a, "I hope I get better. I hope I get better at jiu-jitsu today." It's defined. What things am I accomplishing? Could I be more efficient at them? Yeah. Okay, then I'm better. What things am I not accomplishing? Better start accomplishing those, right? Simple things for me. Like, I'll learn sometimes recently, I realized that um I feel like very ambidextrous, like almost every position in jiu-jitsu. I found a place that I was significantly worse at, and it was just because I was on the other side of the position. And it was the most frustrating realization because it happened like four different times over the course of three months where I would lose this great position because I was on the wrong side. And I didn't it didn't click. And then as soon as it clicked, I go, "Oh, I just need to positional spar that side as much as humanly possible. Get as efficiently as as efficient as I can at accomplishing that task." And it's made a huge difference. I was able to do that in just a few weeks. Yes, it takes a long time. The more you do this, the harder it becomes to see where your holes even lie. But at first, if you start to do this, you're going to see massive holes in your jiu-jitsu game, and it will make a massive difference for you. And so I know I had so much packed into this episode. It really was um pretty chalked full of concept versus technique, jiu-jitsu understanding, and everything in between. Uh but just to reiterate to you guys, there are no fundamental techniques. You need to learn the language of jiu-jitsu. You need to learn what the tasks are. And it is not concepts versus techniques. These two things can be very helpful to each other. Your job is to find the balance. Any obsession too much into one side, I promise, it has a point of diminishing returns. Your job is to not throw everything out and say, "Oh, I don't believe this way. I don't think this way." Your job is to turn over every stone as a martial artist and say, "Is this the way to get better? Is this the way to get better?" Because it's going to be different for you than it is going to be for me. And that is all I have for you guys today. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you hated it, hit me with a hot take. 951 hot take. Um and besides that, I hope that you guys have a great rest of your day. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. And I hope that today's episode helps you guys suck just a little bit less at jiu-jitsu. Have a great day, guys.