E221 | The Philosophy Behind Technique: Why Asking "Why" Unlocks Your Jiu-Jitsu

Full Transcript

**** Welcome to Tapped In, my name is David Figueroa-Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing the philosophy behind technique, or jiu-jitsu.

**** When I when I was coming up, I tended to ask the "How do you do this?" How do you do this armbar, how do you do this back take, how do you do... And that is generally the types of questions I get asked about specific techniques.

**** I'm guilty of this as well, so it's not me pointing the finger at other people and saying, "Oh, I I know better." I did these same I put and phrased these same questions, because there's a certain point where you can only retain so much information and understand so much jiu-jitsu that maybe that's just the the basic way of asking a question that gets us the answer that we are ready for.

**** As you come up, you're going to connect or you're going to collect a lot of random techniques. You're going to find things that you kind of thought were cool, things that were the "it" move at some point, they were all over your social media, all over this the instructionals. And people bought into them, you spent time developing it, and you get to a stage where you have almost hoarded a high level of techniques. More techniques than you'll ever really need, and more techniques than you'll ever really use.

**** You'll use these things sparingly, maybe in unique or niche situations. You might use these to teach, you might uh throw them into your technique vault or your your A-game for a short bit of time and then toss them out because of one reason or another. You're going to collect so much more than you actually need.

**** And one of my goals with my blue belts was to get them to understand: develop your game with the nuance of the understanding that not everything you see is going to be part of it. So I want to create more specialized students earlier.

**** When I was coming up, white was where you got a little bit of a taste of everything. Blue was where you were you inherently just started hoarding techniques. You picked something up for a couple of weeks, dropped it; picked something else for a couple of weeks, dropped it. And there was a lot of waste in motion. There's a lot of waste of time developing things that you had no intention of really cultivating. It's like a half-finished project in a in a home, and you didn't really care for it, now you're trying to toss it out. It just wastes your time.

**** So what I What would happen for us, and I think it's happening a little sooner, was by purple belt, we started throwing things out. You started fine-tuning, you started cutting off the fat, chiseling things down so they were more detailed, snappier, they had better connections to other techniques. They were your timing was better in execution execution executing those techniques, and it was just a sharper game. That's where you pick up, at least when I was coming up, where you picked up your real identity. Where you were really known and feared for something specific.

**** For me, it was the kimura. I remember another gentleman, it was the armbar. Another gentleman, once they got your back, you were done for. One guy had a crisp knee cut. And you just got to a point where you started understanding that less was more.

**** There's a I think the biggest issue is how we phrase our questions. When a student comes to me and they're on the newer side, they have an immediate problem that they need an immediate solution to. There was this weird story, and I don't remember how it exactly goes, something about: there was a mouse so they got a cat, then there was a cat problem so they got this other thing, and then they got this other thing to deal with this other problem.

**** That's kind of how we address issues. "Hey, I don't understand how to do this, so I learn this. But they did this, so then I learned this other technique to deal with that technique. And then now they've done this, so I learned this other technique to deal with this other response." Instead of understanding that I still want the armbar. How do I get the armbar regardless of what they do?

**** That should be the phrasing or the the approach of getting better at jiu-jitsu. But also start asking the "why." Why does your instructor do this? There's a whole philosophy behind our games and why we approach jiu-jitsu a certain way.

**** If you look at my game, for example, I started at 30. I wanted to get my black belt in 10 years, which I did. I trained three, if I was lucky, four times a week; more often it was three. I competed quite a bit at white belt, blue, some at blue, a little bit at purple, and maybe once at brown.

**** I had a very specific goal in mind, was to be efficient. Starting at 30, I understood that I was on the tail end of my prime athletically. So I needed a game that would be safe to play as I got older, because I knew I was going to be getting older. When you're in your 20s, you sort of don't think about the future; when you're in your 30s, you inherently do. And I wanted to be able to play the game that I wanted to play into my 50s and 60s, and hopefully 70s in some form or fashion.

**** That was the "why" behind a lot of my techniques. I don't do a ton of berimbolo. I don't play a whole lot of leg entanglements, and I know that's an old-school approach. Been 15 years in, I'm 45 now, so I'm going to have some old-school approaches, quote-unquote.

**** I don't go porrada every round. I train hard on certain days. I'm cautious. I'm cautious about the people that are around, I'm cautious about who I'm rolling with, I'm cautious about how my my training partner is rolling and where we're rolling into and how are we controlled. I'm cautious about a lot of different things. That is my "why." That's why I do the the techniques the certain way I do.

**** I wanted to get better faster without knowing a thousand techniques. I knew I was getting older, I knew my athletic prime was going to suffer, I knew that I wanted to get it in 10 years, and I knew that I only had three days a week to potentially put into the mat. So with that framework, my game kind of reflects that. It reflects positional or it reflects techniques that venture beyond one position.

**** Two-on-ones, for example. And I've spoken at depth about this, so I apologize if you've heard those episodes. I do two-on-ones in various positions: closed guard, bottom of half, butterfly guard, standing. All these positions allow me to do two-on-ones. So because I learned how to do two-on-one in one position, it's pretty much the same in the other positions, so I didn't have to learn new techniques. So now I can sharpen the blade every time I get in a position where I can use two-on-ones, regardless of the position, I'm doing it.

**** The other thing I did was I got really good at kimuras. Kimuras lead you into armbars, triangles, omoplatas, sweeps. You can hold people down, you can kill them with pressure. So these that one submission or submission gripping sequence was again allowed to play, or could play, in all these different positions. I didn't have to learn a whole new technique.

**** So instead of hoarding techniques, I created functionality out of the techniques that I was having an interest in, and I chose techniques that I can play regardless of gi, no-gi, strength, flexibility, and athleticism. That is my game. So it's simple in a lot of ways, but there's a lot of intricate parts within those techniques that allows me to understand what I was doing and why I was doing it.

**** So when someone says to me, "Oh, how do you do a two-on-one?" I can give them the breakdown. I can give them, "Oh, so this is what I'm looking for: either cross sleeve and then the webbing of the gi right where the armpit is—that's one of my favorite grips—or the tricep. Or if it's no-gi: cross wrist and tricep/elbow." Two grips, nearly identical in some ways, and I'm doing the same things. There's a push-pull mechanism; if I can get the the elbow across the body, I'm taking it. If they open up, then it gives me something else because it's counterbalancing the response, and I can do it from every position.

**** But if you only ask me, "How do you do it?", I may not share everything else of what got me to that position. What got me to understand why this is so important to me. So when you ask these questions of your instructor, ask them "why." Ask them the "why" behind the position and the situation and the technique, because you're going to get a much richer application and answer.

**** When someone asks me, "Why do you do two-on-ones?" Oh, I had an interest in kimuras, and when I did two-on-ones from certain positions, they automatically would open up the elbow, counterbalancing me. When they opened up the elbow, it allowed me to get to the kimura. But I understood that in them not opening up the elbow, it got me to the back. So I understood that I didn't have to be necessarily strong, because the two-on-one is relying almost, not exclusively, but heavily on your body weight, that I can do it even against big people.

**** The other thing that I understood was it kept their arms busy. It's a two-on-one: my two tools versus their one. And then, as things developed, they would block, and then I would get two-on-one in the other arm, and it became this cat-and-mouse game. And the more we played, the deeper I got into position.

**** So now there's a whole "why" of why I use this technique in the various positions I use it in. So now you can get a deeper deeper understanding of the whole picture. It's not just, "Why do you do an armbar?" "Oh, because my legs are short, I don't do triangles very often, I don't get away with it, but the kimura grip allows me to get into the armbar. And the armbar allows me to finish the bout. Then if they sit up and I miss the armbar for some reason, I can still take the back, and then I can come back to the armbar."

**** So there's a "why" behind this stuff, a whole story that we need to get sometimes. And we're so wrapped up in—and I get it, we're trying to also save time—we're so wrapped up in the initial answer. But sometimes the story behind the answer is even more rich and more beneficial for you.

**** It's like, how did we how did we invent light or electricity? "Oh, it wasn't invented, it was this, this, this, and this is how we got here, and we made these mistakes, and then we got here, and then I understood how this was a conductor for electricity, and then we got..." And there's a whole "why." And sometimes we don't have time for it, I get it.

**** But all the lessons that that person picked up along the way are super valuable, because then they can also tell you the mistakes they made along the way. "Hey, I used to do it this way, but then I realized if I cut this angle, it gave me more access to whatever position. I used to make a mistake when I was in mount when I was doing this, this, and this." And it sticks in your head more. You remember the details more, you remember the "why" more, you remember the mistakes they made because they're illustrating, "Oh yeah, they would do this." And then you have a reason to want that specific spot, that specific approach, because it allows you to look at everything as a whole.

**** Start asking your instructors and your training partners the "why." Again, like I said, we don't always have the time for a long, in-depth [answer]. They'll give you the answer that they can. If it's a close training partner, they'll give you a deeper understanding of the "why." If it's your instructor, he or she might actually value the fact that you're not just looking for the answer, and you want to know more about the process.

**** Many of us don't want to give this long, in-depth answer because we don't sometimes think that people want to hear it. But when a student comes to us and says, "Hey, I want to know why. How you got to this? How did you develop the game you have? You're short, but you play you play spider guard. It's not common. Or how come you never play this type of passing style, but you play this one? And maybe you're not a heavy person, but you play really heavy."

**** We want to tell those stories from time to time, but we just we don't want to bore you. We don't want to make you have to sit through this whole process. But when you ask, you're going to get a lot of details that are going to be really important to you, and it makes us feel good to kind of tell part of our story. To tell part of how we got to the certain positions that we get to, and a certain lot in life.

**** So ask for the "why." The "why" is going to be equally, sometimes even more important than just the solid answer they're going to give you. I'm hoping this makes sense.