Full Transcript

David Figueroa-Martinez: Welcome to Tapped In, my name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing the art of strategic abandonment. First, before I get started, I want to ask how many of you have built out or are in the process of building out a Jiu-Jitsu game for yourselves? I have been painfully aware to me that not everyone has a coach who tells them that they need to do that. And sometimes students just come to class and learn whatever the coach is teaching them, and they just sort of magically over time put things together. I don't know how it works, to be honest with you; I can't wrap my brain around it. But they just come to class, and somehow over time a game sort of, somehow flourishes. But there's no continued or intentional aspect to it.

David Figueroa-Martinez: I highly recommend, if you are doing Jiu-Jitsu, you have to create an intentional game that you are actually proud of and want to play. When I was coming up, we did things a little bit different. There were no—I won't say no ecological games, but they weren't the highlight of what we did. We did a lot of drilling at the time. And my instructor, whether it was based on maybe your body type or something he saw in you when you were rolling, he gave you assignments. So mine at the time was to learn butterfly guard. He gave me the technique that he wanted me to drill, and I had to drill it, let's say, two or three hundred times—some odd shit like that.

David Figueroa-Martinez: And then when you were done with it—while you were drilling it and getting to that 300, you were actually supposed to also implement it in sparring. And then you got to a point where, okay, I've done it 200, 300 times, whatever the allotted goal was, he would then give you the next step in that chain. And then you had to do the same thing over that.

David Figueroa-Martinez: I don't recommend that anyone actually does hundreds of reps of a technique. I don't think it's as useful as we thought it was back in the day. These days, I think you drill enough till there's a familiarity within your muscle systems, and then you just apply it to people who don't know what you're trying to do. And then you get better feedback; you can play the eco games to kind of encourage certain things so that you spend more time in a specific position, and so on and so on.

David Figueroa-Martinez: But what it taught me specifically was the importance at an early age to develop a game, and to develop chains in that game based on what your opponent was going to be doing. So we were very intentional about it. And it was brought to my attention that not everyone actually does that. I can't imagine having another process, because I think it's like going into the desert and being told, "Hey, just make it to this destination." Well, do I have a compass? Do I have any landmarks? "No, you just go in that direction, you'll figure it out." Like, I can get lost; I can mis-time how long I should have been walking; when I thought I was walking in a straight line, I started to veer off. There's a whole host of shit that can go on there because I don't have an actual game plan that I'm trying to develop. Like, how am I supposed to get there?

David Figueroa-Martinez: So for me, I'm really big on developing game plans and spending time on creating them, and specifically while you're rolling. Have a specific game: "Hey, when I'm rolling, I'm going to play butterfly guard, and that's going to be my goal for the next month, maybe two months." And then developing and having off-ramps to roadblocks that happen, and developing a much more rich game.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Now, there are going to be times when you pick a technique or a position that you thought was going to be good, but over time, it's just giving you diminishing returns. There's a host of reasons why this might be: you might feel like you end up hitting a roadblock or a plateau, things just aren't feeling right, but you've spent time in it, so you want to continue it to try to make it work. There's a couple of reasons why this might happen: it might be that you're missing a step. It might be that you need a little bit of clarification on the timing, or where your hands are actually supposed to be. Cutting a certain angle sometimes makes the world of difference when you're applying a certain technique, so you're going to have to start asking questions.

David Figueroa-Martinez: But if you're only setting up the situation and playing the game, and you're not getting feedback from your coach or higher belts, you can find yourself in a plateau where you feel like you're not getting any better. And it might be that you're not. And then someone sees what you're doing and points out, "Oh, you're supposed to be at this angle, not this one." And you're like, "Oh!" And then when you try it, you're like, "Oh shit, I didn't know." And sometimes that's going to happen.

David Figueroa-Martinez: And sometimes, the thing you're using just isn't for you. It might not be—like, for example, if let's say someone wants to develop a mount attack system, and I have decided, "I want to develop this," but I didn't develop the other things that allow me to either pass the guard, transition to mount, and then hold mount, and I'm not actively developing those things along the way, it's going to feel like this position maybe isn't for me.

David Figueroa-Martinez: The same can be said for like, let's say I start saying, "Oh, I want to do toe holds." And this is just arbitrary; I don't care what the technique is, but I say I have a love affair for toe holds, I make that my thing, and I start hitting it on people. The toe hold may not be the right technique for you at that moment. You might be in more of a dire straits or need of developing more of a fundamental game of passing the guard, playing a proper guard, playing proper application of passing and solidifying and maintaining, but you fell in love with something that was a little niche—like the toe hold is a little niche. Not that it's not viable and it's not out there, but it probably shouldn't be the goal early on. Early on, you're trying to develop guard play, guard retention, and escapes; you're on your back a lot. So you may not find a position where you find a whole lot of toe holds. That's the reality for that position and that situation.

David Figueroa-Martinez: So you might need to develop or put that development on hold. You might need to tell yourself, "Hey, I'm not bailing, I'm not necessarily quitting; it's just I need to build up the rest of the house before I even worry about this position." So maybe I just put that off to the side, and I realize I keep finding myself on bottom of side control, and there's not a whole lot of toe hold options from there. Maybe I need to develop how to escape side control, how to develop a proper guard, guard retention, and sweeps, and then the toe hold will start to appear for me.

David Figueroa-Martinez: And again, I use toe hold just arbitrarily; I don't really care what the position is. It's just there's a foundation that needs to be upheld and built before I can get to that position. No different than building a foundation, and I haven't quite built out the foundation—it's maybe rickety—and I want to start working on the second floor. Like, I got to get the whole foundation in place so it can withstand anything that I start building on the second floor. But I want to get to that position because maybe it sounds sexy to me. Those are moments where you might want to put that position on hold and move on to something else.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Another thing is sometimes your body isn't necessarily made for that technique. I was a blue belt when I fell in love with Leandro Lo's spider guard. And I am 5 foot 4. I'm not a tall man; I'm short and stocky. If you can picture more of a Marcelo Garcia, that's more of my body type. I had no business playing spider, per se. Leandro Lo was a far taller individual, and spider guard works better with taller people. I have made it work for myself; I'm not saying short people shouldn't apply it or shouldn't develop it. We can develop it for our height and for our capabilities, but sometimes there are positions out there that work kind of against us; they're not great for a specific body type.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Sometimes those positions or situations, maybe we have injuries or we have body limitations. We don't have the flexibility for things; maybe we have a lower back that just screams every time we play a certain position, even if we love the position and we think it's cool. We have to make an assessment whether this is something that I want to continue to try to do. Let's say you have neck problems, and someone's going to tell me, "Well, you can still do it with neck problems." Whatever. Let's say I have neck problems; maybe I don't want to berimbolo, you know what I mean? Like, maybe it's not the greatest idea for me.

David Figueroa-Martinez: But sometimes we fall in love with a certain technique, and we want to continue to push it. We have to make an assessment: Can I physically, with my body—the one that I have, as imperfect as it is, how many injuries it has or limitations it has physically—can it do this, and should I put my body through it? Remember, we're thinking long-term. We're trying to get better at Jiu-Jitsu long-term, not for the next six months or a year. We want to be doing this for 10, 15, 20 years—longer if possible. So if it means that I don't put myself in harm's way and berimbolo underneath people and maybe hurt my neck or my upper back or whatever, then maybe it makes more sense to let me put that to the side, and it's not for me.

David Figueroa-Martinez: And sometimes that happens through the course of your career. You might have had a strong inclination for this technique when you were in your mid-20s, and you're 10, 15 years in, and you're like, "Well, this isn't for me anymore." That happens as well, and then we just have to adapt.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Sometimes, certain techniques don't have a rich depth. I can't think of any right now; it'll come to me after I hit stop recording, so please bear with me. Sometimes certain techniques are very niche, and they don't have a deep, rich, developed game. So maybe you don't want to go down that road; maybe you go down that road and you realize, "Hey, this game requires me to be too technical, or use muscle, or whatever it might be, that this isn't as rich of a game as I thought it might be."

David Figueroa-Martinez: Let's say—something comes to mind now, I want to pat myself on the back—let's say Buggy Choke. What the fuck am I doing with Buggy Choke after it fails? And I mean no disrespect to people who love the Buggy Choke; it was the shit for a minute, it still gets played, but once it fails, what do you do? There isn't a large, deep, rich game that you get to play and flourish off of that. Now, if I miss an armbar, sometimes there's other armbars, sometimes there are back takes, sometimes the armbars turn into triangles or turn into omoplatas, sometimes Americanas turn into armbars, sometimes they turn into Kimuras, sometimes they turn into mount, sometimes the mount turns into back control, and so on and so on. The Buggy Choke specifically, it's sort of a dead end. It doesn't really take you to a whole lot of different places. So those are the types of techniques that I'm referring to where: identify if it's a dead end or not. It's great to use and throw up as a Hail Mary, but it's not the thing that I'm going to use as an A-game, if that makes sense.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Sometimes you're just tired. Sometimes you're just tired of the whole technique; sometimes you're tired of—maybe you've put in too much time, and you just want to do something else. That is going to happen quite a bit. Sometimes you have to power through that, like I did mount for like four or five months. I picked that up again, I think sometime last year, and I made it a focus again. It doesn't mean that you have to continue to do the whole process for six, seven, eight, nine months; sometimes four months at a time is fine. You don't want to get bored of your game, you don't want to get bored of coming to the gym, and sometimes putting it away, putting it off to the side, and picking up something else is actually a huge benefit. Similar to you're writing that paper, you're trying to make that song, and you're stuck somewhere, you get writer's block—you put it away, go take a shower, you come back a day or two later, and then the words start coming back to you again.

David Figueroa-Martinez: Jiu-Jitsu is the same way. Sometimes you've just got to step away from something for a couple of months, and then you start—in your roll, you'll start hitting something off of it again, and you're like, "Oh yeah, I remember when I used to do this; I've got to spend some time on this again." And that's what happened to me with mount last year. I had done mount attacks for, I want to say, four months when I was a brown belt, and it wasn't that I gave up mount, but I just moved on to other things. And then it started becoming a place of success again, and then I decided, "You know what, I'm going to do another deep dive." And it was so much fun. So I find these little positions, and I let my curiosity take over. Sometimes you've got to put them down, and perfectly fine.

David Figueroa-Martinez: So there isn't a hard set rule of when you need to quit something or when you need to put something to the side. You'll kind of feel it. You want to give time to the techniques, you want to give them their rightful amount of time, like if you're two days in and you're like, "Oh, I'm running into roadblocks," you're supposed to find answers to those roadblocks. Don't sit there and be like, "Oh yeah, this technique sucks now." Be analytical with why you're wanting to put it down. If it's just a roadblock, but the technique is useful, find answers to the roadblock—whether that's deep dives on an instructional, or videos on YouTube, or better yet, asking questions of the higher belts, or someone in the gym that does that game, or your instructor.

David Figueroa-Martinez: But really put some time into whether quitting now is just because you're having a hard time, or because maybe it makes strategic sense that you want to put this down. Quitting is not a bad thing; there's going to be times where you're going to quit techniques for one reason or another, like I said. Maybe it's your body, maybe it's "Hey, there aren't a whole lot of options here and I didn't realize that," maybe there's changes to your body, or maybe there's changes to your interest level. It's okay to quit some of the things that you're doing. It's okay to put them down; it's okay to pick them back up later. Don't keep going ahead for the wrong reasons. If they're sound, if you're getting some advancement out of it, if you're getting your questions answered, then keep with it. But again, it's okay to quit, too.

David Figueroa-Martinez: But if you have any questions, please hit me up. If you like the podcast, please like, share, subscribe, review—all of that goes a long way. Thank you for everything, until next time.