E191 | The Compound Effect of the Little Things in Bjj

Full Episode Transcript

David Figueroa-Martinez: Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing the compound effect of little things. So, as someone who's been around—I just hit 15 years. And I have watched many teammates, upper belts, people who I looked at in a certain way, get to black belt, and even world championships, or medalists at the worlds, or gone over to MMA. They've had big successes. And as a junior belt or a lower belt, I would wonder what got them there. I didn't quite understand all the things. I used to think it was pure athleticism at one point, then I thought that they just—they knew something that was very different than everyone else. And we live in a society where the pros just seem like they have something innately different about them.

And there's a lot of truth to that, especially athleticism. But like in jiu-jitsu, where you can actually overcome some athleticism with really pure, great, beautiful timing and technique—I don't discount it at all. Because I know plenty of people who have gotten the black belt who were not the most athletic people. They were not the most athletically gifted people. They were, some of them, nerds. They didn't play any other sports, they didn't get into anything else that was physical. And then for some reason, jiu-jitsu just kind of hit the spark plug that created this revolution for them. And I would sometimes think something like, "What's the secret? What's that the best tip that you ever received that made the difference for you?" There are none of those things. There are no secrets, there are no magic pills, silver bullets—none of that shit.

It is literally a bunch of really small things that, by themselves, you can consider them insignificant, but collectively, they put you in a different scope than other people. One of them—like, for example, I don't think there's a aha moment in the traditional sense where, "Oh shit, everything comes together and I understand everything." There's a tiny—there's a lot of tiny little aha moments where, "Oh, my foot's supposed to go here. My weight is supposed to be here. I'm supposed to do this a little different." There's a bunch of those moments. And you will have a huge amount of these micro aha moments for various positions that you're playing, various techniques that you're learning, and it's just going to be one after another. But often times, they are so spread apart that you don't always think about them.

One of them—which I think I've spoken about—was I had been doing knee cut all from white to brown belt. And apparently I was doing it wrong. And my instructor saw me once, he walked on, he told me, "Place your outside foot here." And instead of being at like my nine, which was what I was used to—maybe I had been taught that, or maybe I just misunderstood the technique and I was doing it wrong from the get-go on my own account, not because I was taught wrong. And I said, "Okay." And he's like, "All right, put it back." Bottom person nudge him forward, and my weight would come forward, I would have to rebalance. And then he said, "Put your foot here." Nudge him forward, and I was solid. Little things like that. You're going to have a lot of those moments. Not just at white, not just at blue, you're going to have them throughout the course of your jiu-jitsu career.

One for me recently was a different application to the North-South choke that I just got hit with recently by another black belt. I had never considered it that way. I had never felt it that way, I had never been taught that way. And here he was doing this, and I immediately afterwards—I tap, and I looked, and I was like, "So what did you do here? Why?" And he broke it down for me, and I was like, "It's a little aha moment." You're going to have these regardless of your belt structure. And in some ways, you're going to have them even more at brown and black belt. Because you're 10, 15 years in—me, I just hit 15—that your part of your brain thinks that you—you understand everything. You understand jiu-jitsu really well. But then the logical part of your brain says, "I know what I don't know." And I know what I don't know, yes, that I know there's a segment of this art that I haven't even shed a light on. And sometimes they're whole positions, and sometimes they're little minute details that I don't even know exist.

And you're just going to get hit with something—something someone does a certain way. And that person might be someone who's been a black belt for as long as you've been training. Sometimes it comes from someone who's a blue or purple belt that came from somewhere else or had a private lesson or a seminar with someone who picked up a detail that you had never picked up. And then you're going to get that little aha moment like, "Oh shit, this is going to revolutionize everything." One of my last aha moments—about a year and a half ago—no, a year ago—was the chest-over-chest passing application that I learned from Josh McKinney at BJJ Mental Models spring camp last year. That—it's revolutionized the way I pass. Never considered it. Maybe I considered certain elements of it because it's part of passing, but I didn't consider the way he applied it. And then I started applying it, and for the last year, I've been using just that. And the way I pass is so much simpler, it's more intuitive, it creates less energy, and it's been huge for me. You're going to have these moments quite often.

The other thing that's going to that has come or that was part of my ascension to black belt was minimizing and making small adjustments. When you are white to blue—segments of purple—you're adding, adding, adding, adding, adding. You're learning new shit, stuff you didn't even know existed, stuff that you couldn't have anticipated to exist, and then you want to add to your game or you want to add to a segment of your game. There's a ton of stuff—like, this is an expanding universe. And you start applying all—or applying your attention to all these different techniques. And then you get to a point where, right around purple sometimes, where you really find your jiu-jitsu identity and you start carving things out. You start throwing techniques that you don't really use anymore. Or you didn't really use on a serious level—it was something you added because you thought it was cool, or it had a—it was popular at the time. And then some time passes, and you realize this technique really wasn't for me, and I may have wasted some time developing aspects of it. So then you start tossing out whole techniques from your A-game. Not that you forget them, you just don't apply them to the A-game. It might be things that you teach people, it might be things that someone asks you about, and knowledge is back there in the head.

And sometimes they're just whole things that you're not—you may never play again. Or you play again later down the road. So, you start whittling things down. Whole techniques will disappear. And you'll have a solid—this is just a rough estimate, don't quote me—10 techniques. Just solid. If you're really good about minimizing things, you'll have even less, but the techniques will be applicable in more than one setting. Arm drags—more than one setting. Arm bars—more than one setting. Triangles. Collar drags. You can start applying them to different positions, and you don't have to learn a whole new technique. You're going to find a lot of that in your game from time to time. You're going to find yourself carving and whittling out what sometimes looks like—looks like a—not a detailed picture or a carving. You have a carving, you start carving it out, it looks like a man. When you want to get really detailed and you want to cut out like certain shavings and certain angles, your—your game starts becoming even more detailed in the nuances of the techniques that you have. Then there's a lot of detail in that carving picture, that. You are going to cut out so much shit. And that minimization and precision is going to make your A-game and your black belt game—the one that you're really going to be known for, we all end up with one—is going to be super fucking sharp.

The other thing that separated me from a lot of people was being consistent. I wasn't intense athlete. I liked to roll hard, I liked to compete at a certain point, but I was not someone who made jiu-jitsu my life. I was very conscious—and we all go through that stage where we're kind of addicted, especially in the beginning. But for the most part, I averaged three days a week, maybe four. And I found those days because I wanted to balance life at home, where if I was teaching, that was going to be a training day as well. I didn't want to come back for one or the other. I wanted to make sure that I wanted to maximize the time that I was going to spend there, away from the wife, on specifics. So if I was teaching three days a week, those were my training days. And there were moments where maybe I was on vacation or she was out of town or I was—maybe I had a light day at work, where maybe I added another training session here or there. But it was never more than three, maybe on a good day, four days a week. And that was just what I did. I was very consistent, though. I didn't have large gaps of—of not training. I didn't have—I was incredibly lucky when it came to injuries. I didn't have a ton of injuries. I had nagging things, I had both of my hips at different times after I turned 40. I had a high ankle sprain at one point. What else? I had a little minor neck injury at one point, my—I started—it was a little—my thumb and forefinger were a little numb, but that went away. So, I have been incredibly fortunate when it came to injuries. I have not had any surgeries, knock on wood. I did not have anything major that just took me away. I didn't have major life occurrences where I like lost my job or had a family member that was sick where I just had to devote to some—something else. I was incredibly lucky when it came to that. So, because of that, I was able to become very consistent.

There were times when I didn't want to train and I would take a day off here or there, but I never really took a week off. I would tell myself I would, because the time off is good, it's beneficial for the that are nagging you. But I didn't take time off, I just loved what I was doing. And I was doing it in a certain intensity that didn't require me to take these long episodes off. You have those training partners that go a hundred miles a minute for really short periods, and then they're gone for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then they come back and they repeat it again. I was the complete opposite. I was the—the tortoise, if you will. My game was very consistent, I wasn't super hard when it came to intensity of my training, I wasn't super hard when it came to the number of training sessions a week. I was just consistent. And you knew that I was going to be in the gym, you knew I was going to be training, you knew that I was going to be focused when I came to train. And I was going to do the things that I need to do to get better.

And I was also very specific about systems. My brain works in a way where I am—childhood traumas or military, probably a combination of both—where it's always trying to solve the puzzle and anticipating what could come next. So, when I'm out, it's constantly gauging threat levels and people and what they're going to do and why. When I'm driving, I'm the same way. It's constantly making systems out of the chaos that's in our life. Like, my boss or if it's an important meeting, I'm always trying to anticipate where it might go so I have answers for what might be asked. My brain is just wired that way. And I understand not all brains are wired that way, and some people are very whimsical, and they like—not having a system in place, it gives them energy, it makes them feel alive. I like to put things in their proper space and place and I like to have answers for the things that could occur. So, my brain is very like tree branch or tree root organized. There's a starting point, I'm going to hit this technique or attempt it. If successful, it takes me down this path, and I continue down. If it's unsuccessful, then I have an answer. And then it takes me down another path. If it's successful there, then I have this other thing that I want to do. If it's unsuccessful, then I have—so it's very this or that, this or that.

And over time, I was able to develop these games. And a great person to kind of look at is the Danaher series. He is very specific as to, "If this happens, that happens. This happens, that happens. When they do this, I'm going to do this." And he has these systems in place that allow his athletes to—after a while, they don't have to think about anything. They go from one thing to another and they anticipate what the most common two to three responses are going to be. And you're going to have outliers. But in genuine—like for jiu-jitsu, you have a solid top two responses to most things that you're going to do. And when you can solidify these systems, jiu-jitsu becomes a little easier. You start to anticipate things that are coming your way or you can present a problem knowing what the answer is going to be. So, if you can start to prime those systems, your jiu-jitsu is going to be a little bit easier. Even against the athletic people. Because I know if I pull that that that arm drag or that collar drag, they're going to do the same thing as everyone else. They just might do it a little faster, they might spring up a little more intense than I would anticipate, but they're going to do very similar things. And then I have systems for people who are more athletic. I have systems for people who are bigger than I am. So then I don't put myself in bad positions. If I'm going against someone who's faster and younger, I don't like space. So then I have a system that allows me to get in close and apply body weight and pressure and tie them up so that they can't move around much.

Also, I had a mindset that was very long-term. Infinite game style thing, if you're a fan of that. The idea—the concept being I am playing with a open-ended game. My goal is to never quit jiu-jitsu, if I can help it. To be around in the sport long enough to enjoy until I pass. I may not be rolling, I may not be sparring, I may not be actively teaching the way I am teaching now, but I want to at least coach, I want to at least be in the space where I can help people, where I can help people get better. Maybe drill, hopefully still teach in older age. But that's my—my mindset. I started jiu-jitsu at 30, so I had already had this mindset of like, "My prime years are—are waning." So, I'm looking at this long-term. Someone who starts in their teens or 20s might be looking at this more short-term. Naturally, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just the phase that you're in in life. So, because I had a more long-term goal-oriented vision of my jiu-jitsu, I didn't risk things short-term.

When you're not thinking long-term, maybe you allow submissions to to—maybe you delay tapping because you're thinking about the short-term embarrassment or the fact that you tapped to this person. I'm thinking long-term. If I tap early enough, when I know I'm dead the rights, it'll save my shoulder, it'll shave—it'll save my elbow, it'll save my neck, it'll save my back, whatever. It'll save me from any major injuries. And that's probably why I didn't have any. So, the long-term thinking is always going to be geared around safety, making sure that I'm okay, that I'm protected, that my partner's protected. And that my goals are going to take a while to flourish. I'm not trying to get to the next belt in 6 months, a year. Because I'm thinking long-term. And if it takes me a little longer but I'm getting there healthy, I'm okay with that. I'm—I'm perfectly fine with that. I want to get to a point where uh I at least when I was younger, I want to get to black belt and I did have a time period, I wanted to get there in 10 years. Started at 30, got it in the 40s. But that was my own timetable. But what I wanted most of all was I want to get to black belt healthy. I don't want to get there and not be able to enjoy it the way I want to enjoy it, simply because I was in a rush to take too many gambles with my health and my body. That then when I time I get there, I can't do some of the shit that I really want to do, like teach and help people and and travel and teach and you know what I mean? So, have a long-term perspective.

And then the other thing, I think for me at least, is having the mentorship mindset of wanting to help other people. I want to help as many people as possible. And my belief is that it enriches your experience because it's not coming from a selfish spot. If you're someone who your main goal—and I am not talking shit—but your main goal is competing and being the best in the world, or the best in the room, either. You don't have time to support other people. So then when you get injured, maybe you start to resent the fact that you got injured because what else are you, if it's not the best in the room or the best in the world? And you start to to fight against uh the fact that maybe I'm like, "What is my identity here?" For me, I, since I was a blue belt, I've been helping kids class, I've been helping women's class, I've been helping other other classes. I picked up a kids class, three to seven-year-olds, when I was purple belt. I had taught that all the way to black belt. I have given countless like talks to people. Stopped things from happening, I have helped people understand jiu-jitsu a little better by giving them just a little bit of feedback, a pat on the back, "Hey, you're doing this really good, don't quit. You're on the right path." And this has always been an aspect about me because, in my opinion, I'm going to enjoy jiu-jitsu so much better when I can help other people along with me.

This isn't a uh there isn't a set amount of seats at the head of the table. There isn't like so many black belts that can get handed out every year. At blue and purple and brown, that get handed out every year. My objective—yes, I want to get there. But it's not—I don't need to to get there and and and pull other people's back, and so I look good. Want to get there because if I can help you to become a better training partner and a better athlete and a better practitioner, you then push me. And if you're pushing me, then I'm getting better. And I think I took that from my first gym where we didn't have a lot of people. We—it was a small jiu-jitsu gym. In a small jiu-jitsu program. And a lot of it was you had to help people get better quickly. Because if you were competing and you were had these new white belts coming in, you needed them to give you good responses. So your job was to get them up to speed as fast as possible. One did that for me.

And so, when you have that mindset of like, "I want the room to get better," you feel better about yourself. You have more fun, you enjoy the the space that you're in more, because you're adding to it, you're not just taking. So because you're adding to it, you take more pride in the in the gym, the way it looks, the way people feel about it, the way other people feel about the gym that when they're having a hard time, and you step in and be like, "Hey, do you need anything?" Like, that is a massive part of just life in general. If you can be in a position where you can try to help out as many people as possible, life just feels better. You can endure the hard moments of when you get injured, or when something else comes up and you can't quite get to the mats because, hey, you understand life has a better better situation, I guess.

Um but it's all of these were like small things. None of them were about my athleticism. None of them were about being strong, none of them were about putting time into the gym and doing weights. All those things help. But I don't think that's what separated me from other people. I was just consistent, I didn't quit, enjoyed what I was doing, I loved being at the gym. I loved helping other people. And over time, you just do a little bit of time, and even when it gets really hard and you're like, "Why am I even doing this?" It doesn't last as long because you love the the people you're around. People love having you around. So, if like there is no magic thing that got me to black belt or gets any of us there. It's just a lot of lot of little things over time.