E227 | Dialectical Thinking in BJJ: Escaping Black-and-White Rules

Full Transcript

Welcome to Tapped In, my name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching and today we're going to be discussing dialectical thinking, I'm hoping I said that right. So, the definition being: holding two opposing ideas at once. Jiu-Jitsu has this habit, specifically early on, where we have these hard, rigid rules. Never cross your ankles, don't give up the back, items like that. Always keep your hands near your collars. So we have these really rigid ideas, and mainly they're—they're in place to kind of help new students with cognitive load.

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So when we tell you, let's say, put your hands near your collar when you're in the bottom mount or in an inferior position, what we're really trying to do is get you from extending your arms. That's really the purpose. It's not a hard-set, fast rule, but white belts, early students will look at it and be like, well that's the rule, that's what I'm supposed to be doing. That's the rule for the time period. That's the rule for that—for that initial stage. We just don't want you to extend your hands and get armbarred.

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We don't want you to expose the back because you don't have the—the skill set yet to defend well enough off of it, so we'll tell you don't—don't turn away. Don't—don't give up the back. Kind of like when people are like maybe knee-cutting, and if you watch competitors or if you've competed yourself, often times a good counter to a knee cut is turtling up. It—it negates any points that that person would have received for the pass, and because it's grappling Jiu-Jitsu specific rules, I'm not getting punched in the head or kicked or kneed in the kidneys or the back or the legs; it's a safe place grappling-wise.

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So it lowers—so like when you become a little bit more advanced, you'll—you'll do those things, but when you're new to Jiu-Jitsu, you're now exposing the back and you don't have the skill set required to really defend well enough to use that strategy. Another one that I could remember is don't cross your ankles when you have the back, because they'll—they'll hit this footlock on you by figure-fouring their legs. Fair. But when you get a little bit more advanced and you're aware, and you can sense when the legs are starting to move without even seeing them, you'll adjust. You'll open up, you'll untangle the ankles, and then you'll go back. And then when they forget about it, you'll cross your ankles again. I find that crossing my ankles gives me superior control than when I don't, so I do play with crossing my ankles from time to time.

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These are just rules that we'll give you because students early on want very easy, hard-set, black-and-white rules that will allow them to be guided through the initial stages. When you get here, everything is a threat, everything's a—a possibility of a threat, there's so much concern, the radar is going off left and right, everything looks like it's a trap. So then you're given these little lifelines of: don't cross your ankles, don't turn your back, keep your hands up by your collars. And those little lifelines or life—those life rafts allow you to at least center yourself in a position that you know, okay, I'm supposed to do this, I at least know that. I at least know that I shouldn't do this, and it allows you to sit a little bit more comfortably in these bad positions without everything going bad.

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It's not the hard-set rule that ends up being when you get a little bit more advanced. The more advanced people will have ideas of how to go around any of that, will know how to take advantage of the little things that you're doing, but we give you these things so that there's at least something to hold on to. It's tough. Like, Jiu-Jitsu is really complicated. And the answer that I often want to give anytime someone asks a question, and I've had to force myself not to necessarily say that, is: well, it depends.

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And I understand it is the most widely used probably phrase that any instructor will give. I can give you straight answers of what I do, but everything depends. Everything has a—a shelf life, or a—or a moment of like, well are you—do they have the underhook, do they have this angle, do they—at what stage were you in, are you competing, are you not competing? So there's context that matters greatly in every example or question that you have. And it's hard for us to give you solid answers, but often times when we are answering questions for newer students, we try to take away the "it depends" because the "it depends" then gives you more cognitive load than you can withstand.

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So we give you these rules, and then when you answer the question, I'll give you—I want you to do this. And sometimes, more often than not actually, I'll tell you the why I'm doing it, but there's a lot of context behind a bunch of different shit that I don't really want to get into because it's not going to make any sense to you. You're so worried about the one thing and you're only able to take in so much that we drive back, or pull back, how much, and we give you a more rigid response.

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"Hey, he's doing—he's doing underhook—oh, sorry—he's knee-cutting on me." Okay, so I want you to do the underhook. It's really base answers, pretty easy. They start to come down, you dig for that underhook, you can use that to leverage up. It's a common response to things, probably the—one of the easier responses that I can give someone who has that problem. But then they'll come back to me and they'll be like, "Okay, so I started doing the underhook and then they started doing this." All right, so I want you to do this when that happens. "Okay, should I just not do the underhook?" No, no, you should do the underhook. "But this happens." Right, that's Jiu-Jitsu.

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So every time—so I get frustrated sometimes, and this is going to be a tangent in connection, but not connected. I post a bunch of technique videos or segments of technique videos. I record techniques from my classes and I'll post them on Patreon for students to subscribe and use, and maybe if they miss the class they can review it, so it's up there. I have a pretty extensive library now. And I will post a segment of that three times a week on social medias, and it's anywhere from 30 to 60 seconds. And often times it's very specific to what I wanted someone to understand of the technique, and there's no context.

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So often times I will get comments from people who don't understand what rules are supposed to be for, or are still in that facet of stringent rules, and they'll respond with—usually a blue or purple belt, sometimes a white belt—and they'll respond with, "Yeah, but they'll just do this." Or, "Why would I do that, because this will happen." And even when I put context behind a video—like I had a video of you're in someone's closed guard and you use the collars as you stand up to straight-arm choke, fist-choke someone. It's like, "Yeah, but they're just going to do this." And there's the context that I even explained: like, let's say I'm down on points, it's the end of the round, or the round for the fight, and I just need to throw a Hail Mary. I often do this. "Yeah, but they're going to do this." It was like, you just missed the context of everything, though.

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So the context really does matter, and so I'll get these comments about certain things, and it's like, "Yeah, but they'll do this." Yes! Every technique that we employ or are subject to has a response technique that we can do. Nothing is black and white. Every technique—let me repeat that—that we do or we are—are subject to as the defending party has a counter or a response. There are no Jiu-Jitsu techniques that don't have something that someone can do to you in response. All of them have something.

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If I go for an armbar from mount, he can pull his elbow to the mat. If I go for an armbar from mount, he can stack me. If I go a triangle from—from the guard, he can stack me. If I go kimura from half guard, he can posture up and in essence kimura me. If I go for a—a arm drag, he can arm-drag me off the drag. I have a training partner who does that pretty successfully. Everything has a counter or something that can be used against you. That is Jiu-Jitsu.

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Early on, we are looking for hard-set rules, and those hard-set rules do not exist. When you get to a certain level of Jiu-Jitsu—let's say blue, purple mainly, some blue, specifically purple—and you really—I hate to use the word master, but master's the closest word I can think of right now—you start mastering Jiu-Jitsu at brown and black, and you understand that there are responses to everything and I can use those responses against my per—the person that I'm rolling with.

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I understand that I go for this kimura from bottom half, chances are they're going to try to posture up and kimura me back. So I stiff-arm, I throw the leg over, and now they can't quite posture up. So there's context. I understand where we're going, I understand that the kimura can work really great from this position, but I also understand that there is a counter to this spot that could be detrimental to me. So two things opposing are factual, and we understand it. And so as we get more and more comfortable and acclimated to Jiu-Jitsu, we understand that these things are going to happen.

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I like, for example, crossing my—my ankles when I have the back. I also understand that when I feel their hips and their legs start to move, chances are I'm going to have to uncross because they're going to try to footlock me. I also understand that if they do get that far, I can push the head forward and they can't bridge back to give the force they need. So we end up thinking more organically and from a broader sense that the black-and-white system that we were given as—as a brand-new white belt doesn't exist in Jiu-Jitsu at all. It doesn't exist because it depends.

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I might teach you—what was I teaching last week?—kesa gatame, perfect example. Regular kesa, you have an arm over the head, and you have an arm trapped so you have head-and-arm control on the inside of your rib cage. It's a great position. Jiu-Jitsu people don't like it. Instructors will also tend—tell their students: don't bother learning that position or using it, because people can take your back. Yeah, they can, if I do this wrong, just like anything else.

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I turtle away from someone who's passing my guard because I don't want to give them points in a competition. Yeah, they can take my back. So what? If I am well-versed in the fact that they can do that, then I can start using that even against them. So now someone passes my guard with a knee cut, I turtle up, I granby roll, we're back in guard. Because I understand the duality or the gray area that we're in. If I like kesa gatame, and I'm getting that in, it is a beautiful position to really punish people with, beautiful. I have a couple of students that are getting really good at it, and I—I don't discourage them from using it.

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I tell them as an instructor: this is what the position is, this is the most common issue with it. It doesn't mean that the position is—is—is flawed; it just means that the position has counters, just like everything else. Understand the counters, so that you can understand that two things exist within that same space. I can really punish people from there if I solidify the position, and if I make a mistake, yes, they could take my back. But let's solidify posit—or techniques within that moment of, "Hey, I'm going for this kesa, I sort of got it, they're starting to get out of the position that I'm—that I—that I want."

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Okay, so maybe I armlock the arm that I still have; that's an option. Maybe I go down and I go kimura lock on it, and then I roll through and I start attacking another position. Or maybe I understand that they're starting—the head is starting to slip out, I need to go to mount, or another very—another similar position. Or I solidify the grip on the arm, so yes, he gets halfway out, but he can never really take the back because my arms grip or the grip that I have on the gi sleeve or whatever is so strong that he never quite gets there and I can respond and rebound.

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There are no—that's going to be a double negative—if I say there's no hard-set rules, that's a hard-set rule, so: there are very few hard-set rules in Jiu-Jitsu. Everything's—everything changes, everything moves, everything shifts, everything has like this gray area that we can live in. And the sooner we understand the gray area—the fact that the position I love has all these strengths, but also has these—these—these weak spots or these areas where it can get countered—I can understand the position as a whole, and I can solidify the position better.

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Omoplata, for example. Omoplata is a great submission. What's the most counter—what's the most countered response to the omoplata? They just roll. I don't call that a—a—a failure. I understand the position as a whole, and I want them to roll. If they don't roll, then I submit them. And if they roll, then I come up, continue to control the arm, and I wristlock the arm that's between my legs, or they bring their other arm to safe guard and I kimura that leg—that arm. Or maybe they're really tight on both, and I go to mount, and I swivel the hips and I step over and I go to mount.

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That's the gray area. Our techniques are going to fail. There's a failure point in every technique that we have. Nothing is black and white—again, hard-set rule. And there's these areas that we're just going to have that are there, and if we're not aware of them, then they become problems. But if we're aware of them, then we can use them. That is the—the—the best model of thinking that you can have when it comes to Jiu-Jitsu, but it doesn't come till later. It doesn't come to the white belt, it doesn't come to most blue belts. It's hard because you're taking in so much information, and you don't—you don't know enough.

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But when you get to a higher level, all the black belts break literally every rule that we've given you, every rule. We'll intentionally want to seek them out and want to break them, because the gray area is where the creativity is. It's where I want to see, hey, what can I get away with here? If everything turned out bad in this spot, where do I find solace or safety? Where do—what angle do I have to cut in order to keep myself just safe enough from being submitted? And then we start diving into those positions, and we start enjoying that, oh yeah, there's—there's gaps in all this shit. There's gaps in everything that we do.

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So understand: throw away the—the absolute—and again, I know I threw out an absolute—throw away some of the absolutes. Enjoy the process. Enjoy—don't forget that there's a massive level of creativity in everything that we do. And you yourself will create something because of your body type, your temperament, your approach, your mindset that's going to be very probably unique to you, that I may not have even thought about in a—in a given position, and then you'll begin—you'll be able to exploit that. But that comes from living in the gray, understanding that there's two opposing thoughts or two opposing realities in any one situation, and that we could take advantage of both.

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Jitsu related, hit me up: dfm.: 2099

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