E166 | The Science of Specialization: Ronda Rousey, Systems, and BJJ/Judo Mastery

If you watch back to the Ronda fight, she takes—she takes a takedown, Gina has an overhook over Ronda's left arm. They get to the mat, she keeps the hook, the overhook. They—Ronda passes into mount, she has her head locked up in a headlock. She uses her left hand to bring the arm from around the body to between their chests, and she hooks that arm that was a overhook. She doesn't release it. She holds it in place the entire time, because she's going to use it later. She still has her head locked up, and most people they would post both hands on the ground, one hand on the ground and then use their other hand to kind of either punch or get the—the—the neck free. She did not do that. She held with her left arm, she punched I think to the body, and—and Gina finally let go, and then she punched her to the head a few times, still has the arm trapped. It's still hooked. When you would normally just posture up and start throwing—landing punches, it's still hooked. She set this up from the moment she went into mount. And then she starts to circle around, goes over the head, leans back and finishes the bout.

That's what I mean by, it doesn't matter what position we land in, I am so—I have such a deep understanding of the positions, your limbs, my limbs, gravity, positional, that I understand what I need to do right away. And by the time you're aware what's happening, you're three moves behind. You have already fucked up. The match is won and you're not even aware of it. So the match was done seconds earlier, and we're in a 17-second total bout. So then she took it and went home with it.

So there's this weird—so on top of that, when we have this idea that my opponent—some people will argue, "Well, what happens if your opponent knows what you're doing?" I'm all for it, please. Watch the videos, watch—you can—you can study everything you want to study about my game. You can—you don't know the defense enough to help yourself, other than just not be in the position, which is what was—was Ronda's issue when she was a competitor. In MMA, when they did not lock up and they were so much better her at striking, that's where she lost the two fights she had. But anytime I put my hands on you, and she had hands and weight on you, it was a completely different story. Because at that stage, a couple of things happen. Like I mentioned, I know every possible response that you're going to have. It's stored in my CPU, and my CPU is running on autopilot. Because it is so used to everything that you can potentially do, it doesn't have to think. I'm not setting up, "Oh, I need to put my hand here, and then I need to hook here, and then..." Nope, I am just doing it because I have seen this movie a thousand times.

So what happens is, the other person is no longer being themselves. There's times when I roll with people and I'll lock up the hand, and just getting a wrist grip on people, knowing the position, they know that a kimura's coming, or the two-on-one. And they'll start immediately backtracking and pulling away. They do not want to feel my hands on their wrist. So then it becomes an objective of, they are no longer imposing themselves, and now they are—I don't want to say deathly afraid, but they are in defensive mode and they are trying to disengage. They don't want to be there. There's a mental aspect that happens when—psychological aspect happens when you—someone puts their hands on you and you know it's the last thing you want them to do.

The same happens from standup. The same way Mike—Mike Tyson would step into the ring and people were deathly afraid. They were scared. They did not want to be in punching range. They didn't want—they didn't really even want to be in the ring. That same thing where you—he's in front of you and you're like, "Oh fuck, what am I going to do with this shit?" Same happens when someone grabs you a certain way, and you're just like, "I—I don't want to be here." Them—fact that they touched me is a red alert, and you have to respond right away. But you're not responding in a tactical or responsible or calm way; you're so worried about what's happening. So there's that psychological edge the minute the—the match even slightly goes into a certain position.

And I remember I used to roll with certain people that were really specialized in certain things. Right now, my—my kryptonite is Carlos at Five Peaks. He has this way of tying up my inside leg when I'm trying to pass, and the minute he does it, I—I—I panic a little. Not that I—I—that I want to run, but I know it's not good. And I got to figure it out quick or it's going to turn bad, and when it turns bad, it gets even worse. And then he reverses the position and he drops down—his pressure and weight, and it's just miserable for me. There's a psychological aspect that happens to these things when you know it's coming, you know exactly where it's going to go, but you just don't have enough resources to tell you what's the most effective response. Because it doesn't matter like, I had a—someone made a comment, "Oh, the armbar's the most fundamental aspect or technique." And it showed me everything I needed to know about the person, that they just didn't—and they trained, they just didn't know depths of training. They didn't know the depth of—of a—of an opponent.

Like, I'm a black belt. You should say I should be able to handle most people. There are black belts that make me feel like a white belt. A month ago, a month and a half ago, a guy just tuned me up. And I, and on the—the face level, surface level, I should be able to do things. I should be able to prevent a pass, I should be able to—like all fundamental shit, I should be able to bridge, I should be able to—none of it worked. They—they—they had a certain sense that they just shot everything down and I couldn't do anything, and I was just sitting there helpless. Now, if you have not been helpless at a high level, and like maybe you've been doing something for 5, 10, 15 years, and someone else makes you help—feel helpless, maybe you don't understand the—the concept of—of this fight, and the fact that Ronda is at an Olympic level and Gina Carano was not. And that if I rolled with Ronda, she would be picking armbars whenever she wanted. I understand that. It's just a certain level to the game that's different than everyone else's.

And what's creates these issues is that the attacker understands the dilemmas. People will say, "Oh, it's a one-trick pony, it's the armbar." That's the end result. It's like saying it's a KO. It's a—the way you—it's home. And the thing that I've always tried to tell people is, the—the magic isn't in the fact that I got home, or that I'm home. Home being the same—like let's say we were, and I equate this always to like detours on a road. You're trying to get home from work. Your job is to get home. Doesn't matter if you get home with the fastest route or the other route, and if there's a detour then you have to understand what you're going to do in order to get around the detour to get home. Because there's—there is no going anywhere else. My home is where—and for her case, it's the armbar. So, she has to know every possible detour, exit for the freeway, side street, side alley, every potential response from a athlete trying to defend that armbar. Her job is to know every potential one so that she can get around it. And that's where the magic is.

The fact that you finish something the same way to the layman isn't a curse, isn't a bad thing. It's all the nuance in, we're in mount, we're in—I have the back, we're in S-mount, we're in this weird funky mid-transition they took me down and I reversed it and now I'm in the armbar. It's all of that. That's where the magic happens. Instead of understanding the depths of knowledge that is required to pull this off when everyone knows where my home is, that's the magic. And that's the part that I think laymen and—and casuals aren't understanding. They're just not getting it.

So I want—I want athletes or my students to have specialties. I don't want them to—"Yeah, I keep hitting this and..." No, no, no, keep hitting it. Now start hitting it from other positions. Now put yourself in a deficit and see, where does it appear? Where can you funnel people into positions that they don't like so that the armbar or the crucifix or the back take or the kimura, wrist lock, whatever the position is that you want to be a specialized individual in, where does it appear? Does it appear in half guard? Take it. Funnel them into half guard. And then in a couple of weeks, I want you to start funneling them into mount. Couple weeks after that, I want you to start funneling them into the back. Can you hit the position or the submission from the back? How do you transition from the back to the position that you actually want? And that's where this magic happens.

Sometimes people feel like, "Oh no, I don't want to keep hitting the same thing." Understood. I don't want you to—to slow down your growth because you're doing only A-game shit that you know is going to work. The depth of, you're going to get to a point where you understand your game really well. I understand mount—mounted armbars really well. Now the goal then becomes, can I get the armbar off the back? So then you make that your goal. Can I get the armbar from bottom half? And then you start—that's where you start seeing people develop the choi bar. All right, so let me see, what happens if I'm in butterfly? How do I negate the—or how do I funnel the position in butterfly to get to a position that I really want where the armbar's exposed? Maybe I expose it by going kimura grip first. And then once I get the kimura grip, I now can swing the leg over, now we could attack the armbar, or we could attack it from this, and that's where the webbing starts to open up and be created, where you're now developing a system that's wider and has a wider net, but the end route to the layman looks like the same shit.

I don't care. I want you to have a wide net but catch the same fish if that's what you want. That—it—nothing wrong with that. So I try to push people to become specialists in something. We're all going to be specialists in something. I have a student, he's great with pressure, has a great clock choke. I have another student who's great with anaconda choke. I have another student who he is great with a loop choke. These aren't chokes that I—I shared with them. They—they are chokes that I do, and they aren't chokes that like, if I have to show them, I would rather them show the techniques because they know it better than I do.

But the specialty is a beautiful aspect. Because then like, let's say, how often are you going to find a loop choke? Probably not as often as maybe an armbar. But it's the web of connecting tissue and techniques that it creates off of it. If I can genuinely get the loop choke, then it's a submission. If I can get the loop choke and you try to pull away, then it's—it's me reversing the position, maybe getting to mount, maybe getting to whatever. Maybe I start following it up from top of half, just to prevent you from preventing me to advance. So again, it becomes a wider net, even though it looks like to the outsider, it's just a loop choke.

So become specialized. The more specialized you are in a technique with—with interconnected techniques into it and out of it, the more you control where things move. Less chaos there is, because you understand the interconnected tissue between the positions. Yes, I might go kimura from bottom half. Is that high percentage for me? No, not at all. But if they're low, I can swing the leg over and attack the armbar. If they start to go high, I can hip bump. And then now we're in top of half with the kimura grip, I can do a straight arm lock. I can pass with the kimura grip and start going north-south kimura, I can go t-kimura—like there's a host of things I can do from it, all these different positions.

But you don't get there unless you're a specialized athlete in a given aspect of the game. There is nothing wrong with that. Don't let anyone kind of push you away from it, just don't allow it to slow or shrink down your progress. If all I'm doing is a year's worth of mounted armbar, and I'm just doing it because I want the win, I'm doing myself a disservice. If I'm doing it because I'm doing it to high-level people and I'm still figuring out the details, it's a different thing.