E167 | The Art of the Psychological Rolling: Why Your Jiu-Jitsu Coach Messes With You (And Why You Need It)

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 like to mess with my students. I love coaching. I love teaching. I absolutely love getting to class and helping people get better. Don't get me wrong. It is my life's work, it's my passion, it's the thing that I genuinely love about everything that I physically do. It genuinely—let's say I take a couple of days off because I got to go somewhere, or I take a week off. About halfway through the week, I'm like, "Oh, I wish I was teaching again." That's how much I love teaching. But, I also love messing with people equally as much. I love fucking with people.

00:54 Don't get me wrong, it's all in good humor. I never want to—I'm not a bully. I never want anyone to feel like I made fun of them or humiliated them or any of those things. That's not my vibe at all. But I think, you know, I came from the military. I was in the Reserves for some years. It was my first job—my very first job. I joined at 17, I needed to have my parents sign off on it. I was in high school, had not even gone to basic training, and I was going to drill one weekend a month for that whole duration from when I signed up to when I actually left. It had been a couple of months. And so I got indoctrinated to military culture pretty early. Then I went to basic training, went about my career—or my time, I should say—and military culture is very much a bunch of people embracing the suck. Just having a good—having a good time is not the right phrasing, but having the best time that they could in spite of what was going on. So if you were in basic training or you're on FTX, bivouac, or some field training and it fucking blows because you'd rather be at home, you're cracking jokes and you're up to no good. You're up to mischief. That's what we did.

02:18 And so I've kind of taken that with me to Jiu-Jitsu. And I think Jiu-Jitsu, in a large, weird way, kind of fits or overlaps with military training. There's a lot of things that you do like—parts of Jiu-Jitsu suck. Like, you're getting smashed by other people, the warmup sucks, or you're exhausted, or you're battling through injuries. There's a lot of stuff that overlaps with your military service. And there's a brother- and sisterhood that happens, similar to the military. And one of the things that happens is blue humor and crude humor and, like, messing with people. And so I do that quite regularly. One of the things that I love doing is limiting my own tools or my skill set and kind of trying to get away with doing the least, or using the least amount of tools against someone that I really like that's pretty skillful. And sometimes I use one hand, sometimes I don't use any hands at all. Sometimes I ball my fists up or sometimes I let them be kind of loose, but I don't get any grips. I don't hold forearms, I don't hold wrists, I don't hold behind the tricep. I don't use my hands the way you normally would. I don't even push off with them. I might push off with my forearms, my wrist, my elbow. That's about it.

03:36 And I did this to a student of mine, and we were having this nice competitive round—and I absolutely miss this guy, he went back to Germany—and I had this beautiful round with him. He's doing better, he's starting to get to positions he normally doesn't get to, but he wasn't submitting me. And the buzzer goes off and I say, "Did you notice what I was doing?" He's like, "What do you mean?" "Did you notice what I didn't use?" And I can't remember if it dawned on him or if I had to tell him. But eventually, it was like, "Oh yeah, I didn't use any hands." He's like, "Oh, fuck. I thought I was doing better." Those are the things I love doing to people. And again, skillful student, paid attention, he was my uke at the time. Absolutely love training with him, he was one of my favorite people to train with. But I like messing with you—I like messing with people.

04:06 Sometimes I tell myself that I'm not gonna use a specific position. And we're rolling, and maybe I tell myself I'm only going to play off my back. So then I'm never coming up, I'm never sweeping, and all I'm doing is defending. Sometimes I'm doing specific things and halfway through the round, I might tell someone, "Oh, you noticed I didn't use my hands today? Notice that I didn't come up, I didn't try to sweep, I didn't use any kimuras? I didn't do this or I didn't do that?" Just to mess with people. Sometimes I force myself, "You're not going to do any offensive moves." Or I will tell myself, "Hey, I know this student loves this position. They're not getting it today." Student very much in mind right now who loves North-South. And I've done this to him a couple of times, and it is hilarious to me because he dominates from the position. Then sometimes I go into these rounds and I say to myself, "He's not getting there today at all." He's good, he's technically good, and he's great from that position specifically. Not today. And then he has to deal with everything else, and when you get forced to have to deal with everything else, you start seeing where your limitations are. And I want to show him that. Not to be mean, but just to talk a little shit.

05:14 In that sense, I love talking a little bit of shit. I am not a huge trash talker. I'm not going to—you're never going to see me on anything where it's me going back to back with someone. I'm not that skillful. But I enjoy a subtle jab. If they're in top—oh, this is another thing I like to do. I like to close my eyes. And I'll just—let's say they're in top and they're actively trying to crush you. I close my eyes and I look like I'm just peacefully sleeping. And every once in a while, I'll get someone who's never experienced it before and they'll be like, "What are you doing? Why are your eyes closed?" It's like, "I don't know, I'm good. Don't worry about it." And I just keep playing. Or they're trying to drive or trying to be heavy and I'm like, "Man, you feel light like a feather. I feel nothing right now. You hear my voice? Like, there's no strain in my voice. I'm talking normal. Is that the best you can do?" And they're like, "Ah, fuck!" and then they try to do even more. And they're not applying it correctly, so then they get frustrated. Or they may have gotten something really close to happening, and I fought it off and I was like, "Oh man, that was so close. Man, you know how happy you would have been if you actually hit that? So happy. I'm so glad I stopped it though." Or if they get a submission and maybe they bailed on it too soon—like, I knew it was legit—I like to remind them, "Hey dude, you could have submitted me right there. Solid. Just another few seconds, but you quit." Stuff like that. I love a little bit of just jabs.

06:40 I love getting it, too. Every once in a while, I have a brown belt that I love rolling with, and we'll talk throughout our rounds. I have a blue belt, her and I will talk through rounds. I'll mess with her and I'll muffler her. And then she gets angry, and when she gets angry, it gets really—I don't want to say it gets violent, but she amps it up and then I get fucked up. Mind you, I brought it on, so it's my fault. Sometimes I will wet-willy someone without the wet part. I just kind of like mess with their ears and throw them off. Another one I like to do is—especially when I'm silly and it's not like—you sometimes have these rounds where you're trying to really, like, be competitive and serious, and then you have other rounds where you're just kind of goofing off. Those goofing-off rounds, I'll dig my chin into a rib, like if I'm in the top of half and they're not letting me get what I want. Or if I'm really silly, I'll dig my knuckle into their rib just to get a response. There's a guy at Five Peaks who's ticklish. You tickle his feet and he just fucking spasms out. Like, this dumb shit. Like, it's fun. Nothing serious, it's all silly, it's all trying to lighten the mood. We don't all have to have these really competitive, hard, 100% rounds. We can just enjoy ourselves, have fun, and be silly.

08:34 The other thing I like to do as coach is not tell people how long we're going for. I got busted the other day—I want to say a week or two ago. I had looked at the time and I'm like—thinking to myself—we got time for a long one. And I think it was going to be 8 or 10 minutes, I don't remember. And I must have made a face, but it was like the conversation that I was having in my head to myself. And I must have made a face like, "Ah, yeah, we can do that." And one of my blue belts noticed and he's like, "Oh, we're in for it," or something around the lines of, "We're in for it. What you make that face for?" I was like, "Huh?" And he called me out immediately. He's like, "Oh, you're putting extra time." I was like, "Yeah, yeah, I am." But I'll do that. I'll change the time up. And sometimes specifically if I start sparring a little earlier than normal, I have them spar and I—I stopped putting the timer, using the timer that's on the wall. Because, in my opinion, people started applying Jiu-Jitsu based on how much time was left. So if they felt like, "Oh, there's 4 minutes left, I have 2 minutes left in me," they dialed it down. Or they saw how much time was left, "Oh, I got 3 minutes, I got 3 minutes in me, let me dial it up." And it wasn't—it wasn't the type of Jiu-Jitsu that you did when you knew there wasn't a time.

10:02 And one of the things that I kind of wanted to get away from was this relationship to the clock. So I stopped using the timer, and in my morning program, I put it on my phone and I put the phone near me so they can't see. And some of the rounds are 5 minutes, sometimes they're 3, and I have them switch out faster. Sometimes our normal rounds are 6, sometimes I do 6 and a half. Sometimes I do an 8-minute round. If we got plenty of time and I'm looking at the clock, I'm like, "Uh, let's do 10. Let's see what happens." And I'll start getting comments of like, "Bro, this feels like a long time. This can't be 6 minutes," because they're used to a specific time. So they roll a certain way. And you kind of like those old school Metamoris rounds—not a good—the older school ones from like Brazil where there was no time limit and you just go and you go. That's when you need to understand like, my Jiu-Jitsu for 6 minutes is not the most economical Jiu-Jitsu that I can have with the idea in place that I don't know how long I gotta go. So I don't let them look at the clock, and then I just change shit around randomly for my own amusement. Because then I start getting people who are like, again, "Man, this feels like longer than 6 minutes," and we're already on minute 8. And again, there's no pretense, there's no reason for it other than I just want to see what people can do. And it's for my own shits and giggles. And they may have finished and we still got another one in us, I'm like, "Hey, you guys just did 8 minutes. You should be proud of yourselves." They didn't even think about it, they just continued to roll.

11:27 The other thing I like doing is giving people, like, homework. And or special assignments for the class. If I see someone and I want to make that round exceptionally difficult, and they're going with someone, let's say someone who knows pressure or top position. "Okay, you're going to be on bottom and that person on top gets to smash." And they just look at me like, "What?" "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Don't worry about it. It's part of your development." And then they just have to go do it. No one's getting bullied or anything, but the psychological aspect of having to start from bottom of a terrible position against someone who loves the position and loves being on top and loves driving pressure down—it sucks. Sometimes I tell people, "You could only play guard today." Maybe they're going against a more less experienced person and I just want them to even out things a little bit. So I do random shit. I just want people to get really uncomfortable—or I should say comfortable with the uncomfortable or the unknown. They don't know what the round is going to be. They don't know if it's going to be 8, 6, 4. In some cases, they don't know if I'm going to call them to start from the bottom of a really bad position and they have to fight out of it.

12:51 Every once in a while, what I really like doing is finding the most tired person—usually upper belts, because this is more fun that way—and they're going into a round and they're just exhausted. And I'm like, "All right, you're going to be on bottom this round." And then the other person, usually a lower belt, gets more excited like, "Oh, yes! I get to smash a little bit." And they're just looking at me like, "Bro, I'm exhausted." And I'm like, "It's okay, no one cares if you lose." So, I like to have fun with it as a coach. I like to change things up, force people to do things that they don't want to do. I do give homework to students that's unrelated to this topic, but I give homework for weeks or a month at a time: "You're going to be doing this, this, and this." And so it breaks things up, it allows us to laugh, it allows us to enjoy the company, allows us to enjoy Jiu-Jitsu the way it's supposed to be. Doesn't always have to be serious, and these moments of laughing are a big deal for me. I want my classes to always have a laugh or two in them. I want people to feel the camaraderie and the joy of training, even if it's at 5:00 AM in the morning. And I love cracking jokes. I'm not a comedian and it's not my strong suit, but when it's present and it's on the tee, I'll crack a joke. I want people to laugh, I want people to enjoy themselves.