E182 | Why Open Mats Are a BJJ Gold Mine

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 I'm getting the most out of my training with pretty much just open mats. I'm not saying that anyone should go this route, I'm not saying that this is the best route. I teach roughly 16 classes a week—I mean, a month. In those 16 classes a month, I'm working full-time, I'm doing this podcast, I'm doing a bunch of stuff. I don't have the time to be a traditional student. I'm going to set some time aside, I'm hoping this month I can go up north and stay for a night or two and just get as much training in as a student as possible from my instructor. But, uh, it just doesn't happen as much. I don't get to just take in a class for myself, and so I have to supplement it somehow. And one of the best ways that I have come across is these open mats that I get to go to on Saturday mornings at Five Peaks.

00:54 What I like about these mats—these open mats specifically—is that I can find a wide gamut of experience levels. There's several black belts that show up, a bunch of white belts, and everything in between. And so I can train whatever part of my game that I'm looking for within that hour. I don't normally sit out unless there's something going on where I end up being the odd man out, but I'm generally rolling the entire time.

01:21 Um, for me, you can't go into an open mat and try to get the best out of it by being unstructured or considering it free play. If that is what you want to do that day, by all means, uh, I'm—I'm not going to push against it. But if you're trying to get a good amount out of that—that hour, which is a gold mine—you should go into it with some kind of a game plan, some kind of a thought process of what you want to work on, what you want to do. And for me, oftentimes it's a little bit of cardio that I'm trying—I'm trying to push myself further than I can normally do in the classes that I can jump into or teach. And I'm trying to develop a sharper timing against other black belts. And sometimes that bleeds over into a brown or a purple belt—someone who knows what they're doing really well, and knows how to shut things down, so then I have to up my timing and understand what I'm trying to do in that situation.

02:26 Um, if your open mat time—if you want to spend it drilling, that is perfectly fine. If you want to spend it, in some instances, socializing, if you want to ask questions, if you want to get some feedback, all of that is great. Open mat's one of those—it—it can be whatever it needs to be for whoever. It doesn't have to be the same thing for everyone, and for me, it's something a little more specific. And I'm trying to push the cardio or I'm trying to develop a certain game, like, I want to say two months ago I was doing a lot of, uh, Octopus Guard. And someone actually pointed something out with me when I was trying to get it in the match, and, uh, they gave me a—one of the most like useful tips that I had been given when it came to that. Because I was doing a lot of self-study, so self-study is a—a hindrance and—and difficult to do sometimes when you're doing that off of videos. So someone who knew the position a little bit better than me pointed something out, and it was a breakthrough.

03:47 So I enjoy these because of the different personalities, the different, uh, approaches, the different experience levels that you're going to find, and I get to play whatever game I need to play, whatever I'm trying to develop. Um, in my opinion, the reputation without the pressure of, like, performing. Like open mat is really a free sparring session in a sense. Uh, your instructor is generally rolling themselves, so they're not judging other people like you might do during a class setting where you're trying to see where your students are at. They're in the rolls as well. Um, do they watch? Yes. I don't have an instructor in San Diego, so I don't—I don't have that pressure at all, and not that I would have it all that much anyway. Like, I'm at a certain level where I'm just not—it's not the biggest concern of mine, and I'm my own biggest critic, and I'm going to evaluate the things that I'm going to do a certain way and I'm—I'm going to push. But for those of you that are more conscious of that, this is that time where you don't have to worry about those things, you don't have to take that into account. When you go visit other gyms and you do a cross-training, very much the same thing. It's not—there's very little pressure, you're just trying to learn something new or learn a new aspect or add something to your game that is going to develop over time. You're not concerned with, "Do I look good doing this?"

05:14 Um, at these open mats also you can always—which—which I've seen—is sometimes people kind of stop in the middle and they ask questions. Uh, sometimes people ask their training partner, "Hey, do you mind resetting and starting from this position? This is what I'm working on." You feel more comfortable doing that in open mat, and most people are usually obliged to do it, they—they don't mind. Um, it's not necessarily fair to ask that of your partners every time, but it does assist, it does help, and these people that you're around will generally want to help that along as well. Um, there's no failure concerns. It—it is an hour-long, sometimes longer, event where you're rolling against various people and your cardio will be tested. So if you're getting rag-dolled by the 40-minute mark, it's to be expected, and that's something that you're going to be working on. How do I deal with being exhausted and being rag-dolled? Do I mentally check out? Do I defend well? Do I just let things turn like happen because I'm so tired, or do I have the ability to, even in an exhausted state, put up a defensive battle that forces them to have to work? That's completely up to you, and those are things that you can work on over time. And because there's days where you're just going to be exhausted. Your—you're just tired, it's probably the end of the week for me, um, and life has gone on, both professionally in your job and in Jiu-Jitsu. By that point, you might be playing more defense. And that's a skill set that you need to develop, so this is a perfect opportunity for it.

06:58 One of the best things for me that I really enjoy is the conversations that I have. Uh, at black belt, you're usually running the class, so when I can jump into gyms that I'm not teaching at or I can jump into these open mats, they allow me to have conversations with people, my peers—the other black belts, the other people who are running programs or instructing or teaching, who are doing whatever. And I get to really have those conversations freely. Um, I was at a workshop, and at the end of the workshop me and Professor Morgan started chatting about dynamic—like, the kind of games that we don't see that often anymore and how Jiu-Jitsu is cyclical and it kind of changes and things grow out of—out of favor, not because they're uh, no longer effective, but because they're just not the new thing, so people move on to something else. That whole yearning for something new. And we discussed that and we kind of talked about some of the stuff that I was teaching at the time, because I think I taught, if I remember correctly, uh, De La Riva stuff. I don't see a whole lot of De La Riva these days—not that it's gone, but I don't see it as often as I used to. Same with Spider and Lasso. And so we were kind of discussing how things kind of just become cyclical and they go out of fashion, they come back, and just like everything you see from decade to decade. You see '80s fashion start to come back in the '90s and you get '90s fashion coming back a decade or two later. It—it's very much like that.

08:52 I also like to pick the brain of the people who I'm training—my peers. Sometimes I pick the brain of people who are, quote-unquote, less experienced. They'll do something that fascinated me and I'm like, "So how did you—how did you go about doing this?" Um, there was something that, uh, a blue belt was doing, and I picked her brain about the way she was, like, windshield-wiping her legs at some point. And then recently, I had a conversation with Carlos, who's one of the owners at Five Peaks. He proceeded to—to molly-whop me in—in our round. I have grown to understand whoever has the top position generally gets a more favorable outcome in that round. So there's times when, uh, he—he just—I make a mistake or I maybe I start late or he just—he is in the top position. I know it's going to be a long round for me, I know it's—it's going to be punishing, I know I'm going to have to do something tricky to kind of either off-balance him or get my guard back in play or sweep somehow. Uh, the gentleman proceeded to wreck me with pressure. My guard fell apart, my shield—my knee shield fell apart, the frames just went to dog shit, and then he ended up passing, and once he was passed I couldn't regain the guard, and then he gets to North-South.

10:29 He got to North-South, he did something where it kind of forced me to deal with one thing, and then he went to the North-South choke. Once he went for the choke, he starts to slide away, and the slide away is the way I've been taught and the way I do the North-South choke. He slid away and then it started making a J-shape. So we make typically the I. We solidify the position, we start to slink away from our opponent's body, separating the chin from the rest of the body, sinking in the choke, directly away. He went away, sunk it in, and then started to make it like a curve with his body, so my head started to turn one way. It was by no far—no means a crank, it was not painful, nothing, but it was clean. And when I say clean, I mean really clean. And I—well, I tapped, and then I started asking, picking his brain. And we still had like a, I don't know, 30, 40 seconds, maybe a minute left. But I was enthralled by—he did something that I hadn't felt, I hadn't seen, I hadn't been taught, so I picked his brain about it.

11:39 Those are the conversations that I love having because Jiu-Jitsu is such a large sandbox, and the way one person or one group of people are developing Jiu-Jitsu in one part of the sandbox sometimes gets—is different than another part of the sandbox. When I went to the Jiu-Jitsu camp last year in Kentucky, not that they were doing anything that was like super revolutionary to me, but they were doing things that were different. And in rolling with people, I was like, "Oh, slightly different approach." It was just like, uh, like people who speak the same language but there's a slight accent—that's what it felt like to me. They were just doing things differently than I was used to in San Diego. So that was another example of like open mat style rolling being so imperative to me that I get to see different styles, I get to ask questions, I get to pick their brain. I remember picking someone's brain, uh, Old Bastard, because he—he was using a lot of pressure, and I was all, I'm like, "I—I'm a fan. I do pressure, you do pressure."

13:00 Um, so those conversations that you have with the other instructors or your peers about Jiu-Jitsu and about technique are a big indicator or a big ingredient of the development that you get to go down, like that—that path where sometimes I'm training something completely different. But like in the North-South choke, I felt something that I hadn't felt, so now I got to ask questions about it. Now it's stuck in my brain, and it's something that I'm going to end up utilizing on someone because I want to test that theory out and see what else I can do there.

13:38 So these conversations are—are massive. We don't—I don't think we have enough of these, I don't think there are enough between student and instructor, and I don't think there's enough between peers. So if you can get to these moments and get to these open mats, I highly recommend you do. Stick around, don't leave right away. Have the conversations, have the jokes, have the—the laughs at each other's expense, pick the brain of the people that you're around because they're doing things differently, they're going to pick your brain. And if you're in a healthy environment, that's going to be very mutually beneficial to everyone in there.

14:21 Um, so I, as an instructor, personally recommend my students to go out. Um, I want you to go to as many open mats as you can. If there's women's events that you want to get to, go. Uh, as a guy, I understand there's—I can teach Jiu-Jitsu, but there's something about learning Jiu-Jitsu from a woman and there's something about being around other women and training with women—go. I tell my students to go all the time, I'll suggest them. Uh, if there's open mats that you want to go to in neighboring neighborhoods or streets or counties, go. Expose yourself as much as possible. Be open, be respectful, be a—a kind training partner, protect your training partners. Have the conversations, pick their brain, allow them to pick your brain. There are no secret techniques, people are willing to share everything, and for me, these are the moments where I get to really be selfish, I get to really put as much time in as I can about me and specifically to me. Um, I really need to, now I'm thinking about it, I need to set up, uh, another day or switch out a day at some point where I just—I'm a student a little bit more often. It—it doesn't happen as often and I just—I know I need it.