E186 | Assertiveness Over Aggression: Finding Your Mat Identity

Episode Transcript

0:00 Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figuero-Martinez of DFM Coaching and today we're going to be discussing amping up your aggression or implementing your assertiveness. I find, and this is not a blanket statement to everyone, I've felt this myself, if you've gone through some issues coming up and maybe you have confidence issues, if you are maybe pushing back against cultural norms, if you've gone some through some kind of a trauma, bullying, you will sometimes see students who have come through that have an issue implementing aggressiveness on the mats. This is not a blanket statement, this is just some stuff that I've observed or I've gone through myself, and some people may not fall into any of these categories and they may have an issue with assertiveness or aggressiveness based on something else.

1:15 When I look at the Jiu-Jitsu landscape and we are trying to get people to be more aggressive, aggressive sometimes has this negative connotation and whether we want to actually focus on that word or not. In the sport and in the art and anything related to what we're doing, it is labeled aggression—you're trying to impose yourself on someone else. You're trying to negate their responses and attacks and forward momentum, and that is often done by being more aggressive. I would like to turn—change that around a little bit and if you're having issues with amping up the aggression, let's start by addressing—let's calling it being more assertive. If we were having a conversation and I was running all over you in this conversation, at some point you would need to be assertive.

2:09 Assertive is a word that's a little safer, we can identify with it a little bit more, it doesn't have the negative connotation that aggressive does, especially if we're coming from like the corporate world or work. Being aggressive at work isn't necessarily a good thing and often it's deemed as a negative and if you put that on someone, it's not a positive attribute. Now, is that same person doing the same act and we label it assertiveness? Very different. It means that something is occurring and they're responding to that and addressing it, that assertiveness just gives that implication. When it comes to the sport, if we approach it from the assertive standpoint, we can kind of view it as, "I have just as much right to what I'm doing in the sport and where this round is going as you do."

2:44 I'm not necessarily taking over and being a bad training partner by being aggressive quote-unquote, but assertive means that I'm at least being a cooperative training partner while still trying to impose what I'd like to get done. So if we're going to change the wording, and sometimes words really do matter with some of us, me included, let's go with assertiveness. Let's try to understand what that might look like. I remember I was teaching a kid and he was the sweetest kid, genuinely sweet kid, loved having him in the program. But he was really, I don't want to say passive, but he was really, really kind when it came to rolling. And when you're talking about rolling, sometimes you want them to not have a mean streak, but get after it a little bit.

3:27 And I had this decision to make as his coach, whether I wanted to make him quote-unquote more aggressive, or if I just wanted to let him be and he's enjoying Jiu-Jitsu, he's enjoying how to approach it, he was paying attention, he was attentive, he was coming to class, he was a—a bright light to have in—in the program. So my ultimate decision was I'm going to leave it as is. He's doing the things that I'm wanting him to do, he's kind teammate, he's kind to other people. At this stage, I'm not going to address that aspect. Like when he rolls, he's rolling well. He's not letting people walk over him, he's not letting people like dominate him, so I I let—I let it go.

3:50 And then there's sometimes when I have a student who's an adult who might come into it and they're tentative about doing their offense, and they don't know how to push forward, how to um impose a game that they're trying to—to play, and they're constantly on the back foot. They're constantly playing defensive, they're in a shell, they're not moving forward. I've had a couple of students like this and over time, working with them, you start to get them out of that. And if you're coming from a place of trauma, bullying, or whatnot, sometimes it takes you a bit. Sometimes you feel like, "I I don't want to be the asshole," or, "I don't want to be," because you don't have a great relationship with assertiveness or aggression.

4:27 And so you kind of view it as a big negative and you don't push towards it. So now you're looking at everything from a really defensive lens, which is great to some extent, like if we're talking self-defense, I don't necessarily need you to be aggressive, I do need you to be assertive, and I do need you to be defensively aware enough to keep yourself protected and then escape from the situation when possible, opposed to being aggressive when you could have escaped and then maybe putting yourself in harm's way because now you want to be—well you want to impose. So like the time and place does matter.

4:54 So one of the things that I started doing with some students was, "I want you to own the last two minutes of the training session." You can be—you can play whatever game you want for the first four. We have six-minute rounds. Last two-minute rounds, I want you to impose yourself. I want you to get aggressive, I don't care if it's a guy that you're rolling with, I don't care if it's a higher belt that you're rolling with, I don't care if the person's older. Four minutes you can play however you want, maybe you're super defensive and that's your—your go-to. Those last two, those are for you to be aggressive. Be safe, be respectful, be kind, but it's time to be aggressive and assert yourself into those two minutes.

5:36 You get to work hard now, you get to push the pace, you get to push, you get to pull, you get to amp up your game. Sometimes that helps, having that permission to go. Because sometimes especially when you're maybe an upper belt and you're still struggling with it, you don't want to— you don't want to dominate someone who's a belt or two below you for the sake of dominating for six rounds, trying to will yourself to that position, or you may not even have it in you to do it for a full round. You might feel guilty or whatnot. So shaping it in this scenario of, "Hey, you got to play the defensive, you allowed them to play, you were a good training partner for four rounds. You're not going to stop being a good training partner, but for that last two, you are less concerned about how they feel and how they're going to feel about the round, as long as you're still safe, you're respectful, you get to amp it up now." It is your two minutes to do however and play the game however you'd like.

6:00 Sometimes I have told people to—yes you can start from a defensive position, like some people like to start on their on their butt or bottom of side control or bottom of half or whatever, but you need to work. I don't want you to sit in the position too long. If you're sitting, sitting in the position for more than thirty, thirty seconds to a minute and you could have worked out of it, I'm going to penalize you. I'm I'm going to look at you, you're going to notice that I'm, "Okay, that's," you know I mean, I've noticed that you're sitting there too long, you're camping too long. So don't sit in the position, put yourself like give yourself a little that—that restraint of, "I'm not going to sit in familiar territory just because it's familiar to me."

6:41 I need to work out of this, and working out of it can be whatever you want. It can be completely disengaging, it can be gaining an underhook to work yourself up, anything outside of just sitting in a position and camping is a plus for me. I'll accept it. It's hard though sometimes, it's hard especially also when you're dealing with maybe cultural norms and in some situations sometimes women don't feel necessarily comfortable amping it up with guys, and sometimes some of these asshole guys get their feelings hurt. I'm going to tell you right now, you—you have just as much right to training, assertiveness, aggressiveness, winning, as they do. Their feelings do not matter here when it comes to that.

7:30 Do not dumb yourself down, do not water your game down, do not lower your levels because you're worried about some guy who may or may not have the right confidence level to do what we're doing, and when he loses against a woman or he gets submitted or swept or whatever, his feelings get hurt. It happens more often than I even realize and when I am talking to women about training, that tends to be a big one. Like we don't have time to dumb ourselves down, we really don't. When we're in a training session and we're in a class setting at the academy, we're all trying to get to our best. What sense does it make for the guy, if this is you, to get butt hurt over getting submitted or swept over by a woman?

8:04 She has just as much right to win that round as you do. You shouldn't beat yourself up about it, just start asking questions. You start understanding why am I getting swept here, why am I getting beat, why is this happening, why is that happening. Understand the game and that we're all trying to get better and the—the better I understand their situation as a whole as a teammate, then the better I get. So our job is to assess and drive that assertiveness and push, like the best rooms that I've been in, Rough Hands for example, was a great room to be in, and I'm talking about rooms outside of my home gym, where when I was rolling, the women were at it.

8:44 Like there was no, "Hey, I'm trying to save a man's ego here." No, they were assertive and aggressive and hunting. I loved it. Like that—that room felt like a room where everyone mattered. You sometimes come into certain rooms and there's this weird vibe and it's not even intentional sometimes, it's just a byproduct of something else. And you have people who are the aggressors and you have people who are a little more laid back or timid, and there's a genuine divide and there's an undertone of something going on. When you're in those rooms where it's known you're going to be in a room full of killers and it doesn't matter man, small, young, old, and they all play the game and they play their game with confidence, assertiveness, like you can be defensive and still be assertive and still have moments of aggression.

9:34 You don't have to be like passing the guard rough every time, you don't have to be amping it up every time. I I am not. I try to—I'm just funny. Um I had this conversation with my black belt one time and he had told me, and again I've said this story once or twice already, he told me because he saw that I was more lay and pray a little bit. And it wasn't that I wasn't aggressive, I'm I'm I've been a guard passer since day one, so it's just I am very calculated. And I think it's I was being too defensive in his eyes and he told me, "What kind of lion do you want to be? The one that hunts or the one that has the food brought to him?" And I was very cordial, I didn't—I just kind of laughed at the—the analogy or the—the comment, the—the question.

10:14 And in my head I was just like, "I'm eating either way, uh it doesn't really matter, uh like why?" You can be defensive and assertive. You can be like when I play video games often times, I don't have the time to—to develop the skill set to play online games all that well, like shooters, there's people on there, I get on, I got on not too long ago, and actually many years ago. And a friend of mine says, "Hey, you should hop on, it's cross-um platform and blah blah blah, Xbox you can play with PS5 and so on." I jump in, I was in this room in this game all of five minutes, I got wrecked. I was like, "I'm never coming back to this again." I'm forty—I'm forty something at—at the time, I don't have the time to develop the skill to be this super aggressive player.

10:55 I've always played online games a little bit of lay and pray, like sniper. I like setting up traps and booby traps and sitting somewhere and it's just a little easier, I don't have to be as skillful. If you're a hobbyist and you're doing Jiu-Jitsu, maybe you don't have the skill set yet to really like develop this super offensive, assertive, or aggressive game, that is okay. Don't feel like you need to be those things, you can lay and pray and you can set up traps and you can play from the guard and you can set up these—these timing sequences where they do this, you're going to do that, and then you once you do this, they're going to do that, you understand the game. Maybe you're older and you're again not going to be aggressive per se, but you can be assertive in that my guard is going to be what I'm going to rely on, when they push this pace, I'm going to do this, when I set this up, I know they're going to do this, more than likely, and then I'm going to do this.