E175 | The Jiu-Jitsu Buffet: Structuring Your Game on a Limited Plate

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 Jiu-Jitsu Buffet. I was recently having a conversation with a student after a workshop, and during this conversation, I had really—during the class, we had a rolled at—at the end of it. And I had noticed the differences in his game, the way his decision-making was getting better, the way he seemed to be rolling with intent and a plan in place. Often times, white and blue belts tend to not do that as well. And when I was rolling with him previously, I could tell there wasn't really intent behind a lot of the decision-making that he was—he was doing. And again, that's natural, and we all go through it at some point, and sometimes we reverse back to it when we become unfocused, even at the later belts.

But I genuinely noticed the difference, and I'm rolling with him, and I'm doing certain things that would normally kind of stump him, and would kind of put him in a place where he didn't really know where to put his hand, or what to grab, or what angle to cut. And when you do that to students and you see it visually, it's almost like a—like when you're watching a—a video on YouTube and it's buffering, or when the computer has that hourglass and it's trying to figure out what it should do next, and just takes a second—that's what it really looks like to me on the outside. And this time around, he was actually picking and making decisions rather quickly. And it doesn't mean that every decision was, quote-unquote, the right one, or at the right time, but he was making the decisions instead of kind of sitting back and waiting for me to decide for him, or sitting back too long trying to think of what he should do.

So there was more—I don't want to say muscle memory, but there was a faster processing power there that was very noticeable. He defended better, he was offensively better, he caught me in a—a triangle off the back that I really liked. He didn't finish, there was some mechanical errors there, but the fact that he was thinking about this—and this is not a—an easy position or easy move to hit—and the fa—the fact that he was actually conscious of, "Oh, I'm going to do this," or "I feel that I should do this," and then he would go for it, the gaps in between techniques were far smaller. I loved it. And uh, those are the moments where you—when you're teaching people, and he's not my student, um, but when you're helping people along, when you're doing like answering questions over time, or whatever it might be, you notice these things because they're readily apparent. They're—they're obvious when you've been rolling with someone and they make that skill gap jump.

And it's fun. It's a bit rewarding. It's like, okay, he's—he or she is starting to get it now. They're starting to make strides in the right direction, they're responding better. And again, it doesn't always mean that you're going to make the right decision, but the fact that you're making a decision at all is a plus. And that's kind of like where we need to get sometimes is just, "Hey, I'm going to fuck up. I'm going to mess up, I'm going to—I'm going to call the wrong play." But the fact that I—I call the play at all quickly is—is a win. And then there's going to be times when the other challenge is, let's say you called the wrong play and you're right back at the same scenario again, what play are you going to call? Sometimes calling the right play at the wrong time is an issue, and then you can call the right play, you're in the same position, but the scenario is slightly different and you can't quite identify it, so you call the same play again and then it works.

So, we sat down—or we kind of chatted after class, and I complimented him on what he's doing differently and what it feels like, and he's like, "Yeah, um, I was talking to coach or professor, and one of the things that he said or he compared Jiu-Jitsu to was being at a buffet." And he explained that Jiu-Jitsu is a wide-open game. There's so many different things that—just like a buffet, there's so many different things that you can get into, that you can study, that you can spend time with, and your job is to kind of narrow down on what it is that you want to pull off of the buffet, because you only got so many room on your plate. And I love the concept, and I may have heard it before, I haven't quite heard it put that way. But it may have been something that I briefly heard or a concept that someone tried to connect to that, but the way he put it was very profound. It was a beautiful way to put Jiu-Jitsu specifically when you're new.

You can't take everything on. And the buffet concept or the layout is, everything available to Jiu-Jitsu, you could technically get into. You can study any and all of it. At most gyms, there isn't this like hard-set rule, "Hey, you can't do this because of this." Not like back in the day when they were very more a lot more strict, and they were like, "No, we don't want you doing X, Y, Z. You need to go do this instead." These days, it's a little bit more relaxed at most gyms, so you really have a plethora of dishes to kind of like pull from and to get into and to sample, and that within itself is a—a little bit of an issue. So there is something about having a coach, or you having a conversation with a coach and saying, "Hey, I'm in this buffet line. I don't know what I should get first. I don't know what I should try to dabble in." And then taking their suggestions. And be like, "Hey, I think this will be really—I think you'll like this technique. I think because of the—the—the positions you tend to find yourself in, this is going to lend itself really well for you."

And having that conversation kind of cuts out all the wasted time you trying dishes that you end up not liking, or not finishing. And I remember coming up at blue belt, and my coach constantly saying, "This is the technique collector phase. Do not fall into that trap." And at the time, I was like, "What do you mean?" And he explained, blue belts constantly get into this trap of they're just going to hire or they're just going to pull in every technique possible. And sometimes it's driven by what you see in—in an instructional, what you see a higher belt doing, these days what you see in a reel, what you see on Instagram or YouTube, and you buy in because it looks cool. And then you want to do it. But are you really ready for that technique? Do you have the base-level knowledge of the technique or the surrounding techniques that help that technique work? And if you're not, then maybe it's not for you, yet.

But understanding what's viable for you is super important, so you got to have these conversations. And then when you get a little further along, you kind of understand what that actually means and which techniques you can throw in because you have a base-level knowledge, and which techniques you got to just start from scratch. And when you're new, how much from scratch do you want to do? You know, I mean, that's a—that's a conversation within itself. Like if I—if I have a blue belt and he does—he or she does really well from bottom half guard, and they're looking to get better a little faster, I'm not going to suggest, "Hey, I want you to start doing spider guard." Like it's not—for them to jump into spider guard, it's going to be a new concept and building foundations. But if I tell them, "Well, I want you to start doing underhooks from the bottom of half guard. I want you to start doing collar chokes from bottom of half guard, loop chokes from bottom of half guard," even octopus guard from bottom of half guard, like those things are interconnected in something that they are already doing to some degree with some success.

Uh, the other aspect of this is the plate size. And that's what really makes the—the analogy work is that you only have so much room on your plate. Being time of day, how much time do you have each week, each day, to train? If you are a professional, again, you got probably all day, every day, any day you feel like. If you are a quote-unquote hobbyist, and I say this every time, and that's just a term I'm using because that's what's used in the culture, if you're someone that has a full-time job, a family, a spouse, you're taking care of a family member, uh, your—your mother, your mother-in-law, your father, you got multiple kids, your job is highly demanding, you're doing 50, 60 hours a week, you don't have time to dive into everything. Your plate size is only so big.

So you have to determine which one of these techniques is going to fit into what I'm doing, and which one of them are going to take the little attention that I do have in order to get better. And it's a hard choice to make sometimes. So sometimes I—I pick, because I'm limited—I teach a lot, I work—I'm limited on time, but I have a larger foundation because I've been doing this for 15 years now. So my foundation is bigger, richer, more in-depth, so when I plug things in, I have more of options to plug and play, because I'm more adept at a bunch of different positions than if I had only been in a year or two. So that's going to change as you developed, it's going to change as you get more time on the mats. But we all suffer the same—same restraints if we are quote-unquote hobbyists: time. How much time do I have?

So one of the things that I do, and let me backtrack, in discussing this with him, he says, "So every time I get on the mats, I come train, I—I focus on like two things." Beautiful. So one of the things that I started doing at one point was, because I knew I had limited time, was I focused on two things offensively and one or two things defensively. There's going to be times where we're going to be on multiple ends of the court. So if I am—if my primary goal is I want armbar from mount, but in the round that I am in, this person's more advanced, maybe they're bigger, they're stronger, I constantly find myself in the bottom of half guard, then I'm going to have to adapt one of my goals to that position. So I have the offensive goal, the one that I'm actually really trying to get to and work on, and then defensively because I can't get there, I have the defensive goal. The position that I know I find myself most in common with—because I spend so much time there, I feel comfortable there—let's set a goal there. I want underhooks, and I want to be able to wrestle up.

And then let's say from bottom half, I start underhooking and they back away, and now I'm more in sit-up guard, I want to wrestle up, because that's what I want to do from the beginning. So then those are two connected goals within a defensive position. Once I get back on top, now I'm going right back to my primary goal, which was I want the mount and armbar. So they can connect or not connect, but at least empower one another in some way. I don't want all offensive goals, because there's going to be—especially if you're new—you're going to spend a lot of your time on your back. Equally, I don't want all of my goals to be defensive, because there's going to be some rounds where I'm going to be on my—on on top and I'm be dominant. Maybe a guy comes in who's one month in, I'm a year in, so now I can play more doff—offense, even though it may not occur as often as I'd like, I want to have a goal in mind, something that I want to work on, so that when I do get to those positions—by luck, by chance, happened by skill—I have something that I'm working on.

So I don't want all of it to be offensive and or all of it to be defensive. I want one or two on each end. And then I start playing from there, because many rounds when you're with someone who's equal, are going to be back and forth. I was rolling with someone recently, and hi—his—our rounds, because we're so closely matched in—in familiarity—he's not as experienced, but he knows my game really well and I know his game really well—it was back and forth. There were times when I thought I had the right position and he would bridge, and I end up in the bottom of guard, and I got to work out of that, and then I would sweep him and I get back into the position I want, and then I would start working and he would reverse the positions to mount. We're so closely matched that it's a lot of back and forth. So every time the—the position switched, I had a goal from that position that I wanted to work on. Then when I got back to the dominant position, I had this goal that I want to work on that way.

So it's really important for us to understand what these things are going to look like, what our goals are going to look like. They're going to be different from white to blue, blue to purple, and so on. And sometimes they're going to be—you're going to revisit old goals. You're going to revisit like me, not that long ago, I revisited the mount and armbar. Um, I'm constantly revisiting some form of passing. I'm constantly revisiting some form of uh, open guard. I have shorter legs, so I tend to have to play a little bit more open or loose. Loose but controlled. So I'm constantly playing with those positions and trying to understand them a little bit better, specifically because I'm now I'm getting a little older. And there's times when I feel like, oh, yeah, I can still go, and then next day I'm— I'm trying to piece it together, but I'm a little sore, a little tired, and I have to be more efficient. So my goal has been: find the most efficient routes, don't rely too heavily on strength, and cut more angles, so that's what I'm kind of pushing for, and I'm working on.

So understanding that Jiu-Jitsu's an open space, just like an open-world role-playing game if you play those, you can go any- and anywhere, but there are certain skill sets that you got to develop early. And then you only have so much time in the day, so much room on your plate. Pick wisely. If picking is difficult for you, have conversations with your training partners and or instructor. Um, a great training partner, great mentor, will kind of guide you and cut out all the fat. All the mistakes that you make that you're going to make if you're trying to go about it yourself, and it just makes life easier. Additionally, you can always get a coach that's unrelated to the gym, that's always a great idea. I think that it takes away any concerns that you're going to maybe ask dumb questions. Some of us have that issue, I had the issue when I was a white and blue belt, I really worried about the kind of questions I was asking so I didn't ask any.