E198 | How One Jiu-Jitsu Class Can Change the Way You See Yourself

Full Transcript

00:00 | Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing how one class can change the way you see yourself. I tend to think that Jiu-Jitsu is for everyone, and I think that it doesn't matter if you're big, small, old, young, or everything in between. It's the one area in my life where everyone from so many different ways of life, professions, and parts of the community come together. You don't see it in a whole lot of different places, and so this is the one area that I can think of off the top of my head where a police officer is there, a registered nurse is there, a veteran is there, a single mom is there. So you get a good mix of everyone, and so my opinion is Jiu-Jitsu is for everyone.

01:10 | But when you first go there, there's this intimidation factor—everyone knows more than you. You are not sure of yourself. The entire experience is weird. You're on a padded room; when's the last time you ever did that, if ever? You are barefoot, which with Americans feels very weird. I remember stepping on the mat for the first time and getting there and having to take my shoes off and making sure—it's just weird for someone that does not, or I should say did not, do that very often. Now I'm just in flip-flops 90 to 95% of the time, but at that stage, it was a foreign concept. Being on a mat and wrestling with people was a bit foreign as well. So you're going to be nervous, and you're going to feel real out of place.

02:22 | Everyone who showed up that day whose first day is not—like it's not their first day—you are going to know far less than everyone else on the mat, and that alone can discourage a lot of people and can make people feel super uncomfortable. Because culturally, in my opinion, Americans live in an environment where we do not show our weak elements, we don't highlight the things we don't do well, we're constantly showing our best foot forward. And Jiu-Jitsu is one of those weird places where there's a hardcore honesty about what you are and what you're not.

02:58 | When you step on the mat, whether it's that first day, or you've been doing it for 14 years, or somewhere in between, it strips away any of the pretense, it strips away the image that you put on social media, it strips away the image that you put as a mom, as a father—it strips all that away. It doesn't matter if you're a CEO, a police officer, or some kid who's going to college. Your titles and that image that you brought in that the rest of the world sees gets completely stripped away. It's a genuine honesty that most of us don't see elsewhere, where you are going to be tested, and we get to see you for exactly who you are.

03:48 | There's no hiding behind, "Oh, I just sold this million-dollar house, I feel good." You get on the mat, the 13-year-old who's been grappling for 10 years is going to expose everything about you, and you're going to be wrecked. There's an honesty in that that you find really refreshing, and literally there's people who come in and they got all the muscles—all the muscles—and they look great, they look like they could be in an action movie, and they come in and they get wrecked by the skinniest of all athletes that you will ever see. They get triangled, armbarred, swept, mounted—this 125, 130-pound person feels like 300 pounds when they get on top of you.

04:36 | And you actually have to face the fact that all these accolades and what I've done with my body and the things that I'm doing on the outside in the civilian world don't translate here. The only thing that translates here is the amount of time you put in, how you study, and how you build your game. That is the only thing that matters, for the most part. There's other things like character, but for the most part, you are exactly who you are and everyone sees exactly what you are. There's a refreshingness in that that I think attracts people. I think it highlights more of us than we anticipate when we get on that mat for the first time, and it really puts us in a position where there is no hiding, necessarily.

05:32 | You can be completely honest. For example, it is really difficult sometimes when you're a supervisor or a leader; you don't get to sometimes be as open and honest about your shortcomings, and some people feel like, "Oh, I have to hide and I have to project a certain image so that I can lead these people." And then you come to Jiu-Jitsu, and all that goes off. You don't have to carry that in, and now you're a student, you're at the bottom of the rung, you are trying to work your way up, and you get to be the honest version of yourself that often times you cannot project or don't feel like you can project to the rest of the world.

06:21 | So I think that's one of the biggest things. I also think that everything in terms of skill development is earned and has to go through a progress or a process. You can't shortcut the line. Yes, if you have money, you can buy private lessons, you can go to seminars and get access to certain minds and certain athletes that you may not be able to if you don't have that spending money. But at the end of the day, you have to put in the work like everyone else puts in the work, and there are literally no shortcuts. The only thing that can separate you from someone else is your dedication, how much you're paying attention, how much you're putting in to your development, and how you are approaching Jiu-Jitsu—your mental approach. That's the only thing that sets you apart.

07:22 | There is no shortcut, there is no, "I'm going to take this detour over here and pick up a couple of skills randomly." There's literally nothing you can do in that sense, so it levels the playing field a lot. And sometimes, especially culturally, people feel like there are certain hurdles in society that put some people on a faster track than others, and that unfairness sometimes bothers people, and rightfully so. When you get here, aside from being able to buy a private lesson or whatnot, your skill development is on par with everyone else's, and it's really dependent on how much time you put into the sport and how you retain information.

08:16 | So you can be this person who was silver-spoon fed and has this luxurious, beautiful life, and you'll come here and you could struggle, and this person who has struggled all their life financially is doing beautiful technical shit on the mat because they've spent more time. There's literally no shortcut, and that's one of the things that I think a lot of us really love about this, because no one gets out without putting the time in.

08:48 | I also think that one of the beautiful things about Jiu-Jitsu culture is that everyone's kind of speaking the same language or going in the same direction. If you're in a good gym, a positive, quality gym, everyone wants everyone else to succeed. That's not always the case outside. You're at work, and this guy's going to stab you in the back, or this person's going to start a rumor—and I'm not saying some of those things don't happen in Jiu-Jitsu—but there's a lot of pulling and backstabbing in the outside world because there are only so many spots in a company to get a job. So if we're all striving for the same job and holding that same title, it kind of spurs or allows for people to kind of be underhanded.

09:44 | In Jiu-Jitsu, not saying that there isn't some element of that, but in Jiu-Jitsu, there aren't so many black belts, there aren't so many purple belts to hand out, there aren't so many blue belts to hand out. They get handed out regardless; there isn't a quota, there isn't a limit to how many people I can promote this year. So that level of thinking kind of opens up a little bit, and people feel like, "Okay, I can help people more because I'm not vying for the belt at the end of the year." We can all get promoted if we all do the right things. We can all get promoted, we can all succeed and advance.

10:28 | And additionally, if we are trying to get better ourselves and you are of a healthy mindset, you don't feel like you need to be like crabs in a bucket where I got to pull people down so that I look good for the instructor. I can pull those same people up, because if they get better, I get better. And that's a huge shift oftentimes from the outside world in Jiu-Jitsu. I personally help people a lot on the civilian side, when I'm at work and I help people and give advice and go out of my way. I don't have that limited mindset of, "Oh, I have to get this, and this is mine, and I got to push everyone else away." It just doesn't work that way.

11:18 | But in a lot of structures, that's the way things work. So when you get to Jiu-Jitsu and you see white belts are all kind of helping each other, and then there's a blue belt that's kind of helping all the white belts, and a purple belt helping the blue belts, brown belts doing the same for purples—it creates this culture of: we got to pull these people up, because as they get better, I get better, because they're giving better responses, they're defending better, they're attacking better, and then my Jiu-Jitsu gets a lot better. So I think that's one of the greatest aspects. We don't always see that in everyday life, and it's nice to finally be around it and not be so frustrated with, "Oh, I have to get better than these people." We're all just moving in the right direction.

12:12 | I also think that it gives a mirror to ourselves. People have a tendency to not be quite honest with themselves because it's painful and frustrating. So we create or cultivate a certain image online, a certain image at PTA meetings, at work, in all these different avenues, because we want to look good, we don't want to look bad. And we sometimes also run from some of the things that we're supposed to be fixing about ourselves, and we get wrapped up in, "Oh, I'm a good mom, I'm a good CEO, I did great at this task over here." And then that becomes our focal point.

12:58 | In Jiu-Jitsu, it has a really genuine way of highlighting things that you do not do well. That is the first thing you learn: "I do not shrimp well, I do not hip escape well, I do not get out of mount well." I don't do all these technical things well. But it also shows character deficiencies and flaws. How do I respond when I get tapped by a 135-pound woman, as a guy? Do you have issues there? Do you have sexist thoughts there? Do you have thoughts of your ego being trampled on by this 135-pound woman? Those are the things that start to get highlighted, and you have to deal with them at some point, because otherwise they're just going to haunt you the entire time you do Jiu-Jitsu, and you're not going to be a very good training partner or student.

13:58 | So there's times when, for example, I used to get swept, and as I was getting swept, I wouldn't respond to the sweep fast enough. I would almost kick myself and talk negative—not full-on phrases, but in my head like, "Fuck, why did I do that?" So I wasn't addressing the issue; I was kicking myself for making a mistake and getting swept again. Those are character traits of my own that I had to kind of fix and realize, "Oh, I'm being swept. Yeah, I made a mistake, but big fucking shit. I can still post an arm, frame, and get out of this position before he solidifies and gets on top, where I have nowhere to go."

14:48 | So instead of badmouthing myself, I started realizing there's still stuff I can do, and these failures are actually a good thing, so I don't need to blast myself and make myself feel bad because I made them. So those are character things that you start to see and adjust. And if you don't see them, oftentimes your instructor or training partners will point things out. People are very nice; they're not going to badmouth you in that sense, but I have had conversations with people where I've had to say, "Hey, I noticed that you do this when this happens. Why do you think that is?"

15:33 | I remember I had a training partner who would pull fingers or get really rough when he started to lose a round, and we had to have a conversation about it. Again, that's a mirror to something about you as a student and as a competitor that you didn't like, or triggers an aspect of you that maybe you weren't aware of that now you have to fix. If you're an impatient person, Jiu-Jitsu probably is going to test that. You have no control over the belt process, you have no control over when you're going to get that stripe or belt, and there's going to be times where you think you're ready and your impatience starts to get to you and you lash out. You might say something to the instructor: "Hey, how come I'm not getting promoted fast enough?"

16:32 | But there's something there that has to be worked, because you're not the greatest reviewer of your own game. You're going to look at your game very positively, and you're going to maybe gloss over things that you don't do well. Maybe technically, you don't even put yourself in positions that you don't do well, and the instructor understands that and sees that. So then they have to have a conversation with you: "I know you avoid positions and people that are going to test you. I need you to work on that." And again, that's a human trait; the human body doesn't want to do things that are very difficult, and it doesn't want to put itself in positions that are really hard, so we tend to shy away from that.

17:28 | We have students and people—and we've all done it at some point in our lives—where it's just a hard round that I don't feel like having today, or even this week, so then I avoid the person. But in actuality, I should be rolling with that person. But again, that's a mirror to a character flaw within me that says, "I don't want to roll with this guy because that round is going to be too hard." If the round is safe, I shouldn't be avoiding them. Now, if we have safety issues, that's a whole another process. But Jiu-Jitsu is going to highlight a lot of these things, and for some people, they're really good at analyzing themselves and saying, "Okay, I got to deal with this or fix this." And some people will run from it. You'll have black belts who get to black belt who are—excuse my language—pieces of shit, because they didn't bother developing certain characteristics that would make them a better black belt and a better human. And sometimes that happens.

18:35 | I think the other thing that people get addicted to when it comes to Jiu-Jitsu is the "alive" feeling. If you are an adult, let's say you've made it to your 30s or 40s, there's not a lot of things that make you feel alive in the sense of athletic endeavors. You can run, you can do marathons, 5Ks, have PRs in weights, you can be a parent—all these things are great. But there's something about pitting yourself against another person in a very physical way that awakens something in you that's hard to describe.

19:25 | I think that's an aspect because we don't have that as adults. Kids wrestle around all the time—all the time. Dogs and pets wrestle around; it's an innate thing that we do. But when we get older, we stop doing that. I think honestly it is invigorating to wrestle around with someone. That thing might be boxing, Muay Thai, but it's a competitive aspect of me versus someone else in a physical way, not just a mental way, that creates this alive feeling. And if you take it a step further and compete, that's the ultimate high. Winning or losing, there's something about competing and having people watch that amps up everything about that.

20:25 | So I think that if you try it—and again, it's a weird concept as an adult to wrestle someone else on the mat, I get it—but if you give it a shot, you will enjoy and love that physical nature of play. We don't play enough as adults, and that brings us back to our childhood and a genuine way of just being where we get to tussle, laugh, sometimes cry, and just enjoy that physical exchange.

21:05 | These are the things that I think get people addicted to Jiu-Jitsu. I wouldn't be fair if I didn't add some things that are going to be difficult. It's going to be a long learning curve. There's a lot of confusion, a lot of tests, your ego is going to be checked a lot, and it's going to be hard. Your body is going to protest; you're going to have bruising when you first start, aches and pains that you never knew existed, muscles on your body that you hadn't worked in a very long time that you didn't even know were there are going to be sore.

21:48 | You're going to have to test a lot of patience, and there's a vulnerability to this that doesn't always mix well with people in the beginning. There's something about someone being on top of your chest that might spark some fears and apprehension. It's a very in-your-face, in-your-personal-space sport and action that sometimes drives people away. But if you can get past that, the benefits of Jiu-Jitsu are going to be great for you—especially if you're at a great gym, a positive, safe gym. Injuries aren't going to come as often as you think, most of us don't get surgery, and if you give it a try, I am sure that you're going to love it. My opinion is it's for everyone, but it's tough—it's tough.