E169 | Developing Your Own Map: Why You Can’t Use Someone Else’s Jiu-Jitsu to Find Yours

00:00 Welcome to Tapped In. My name is David Figueroa Martinez of DFM Coaching, and today we're going to be discussing developing your own map. I was on social media and, uh, I follow Rough Hands BJJ, which is out of Kentucky. They did, uh, the last few years of the BJJ Mental Models spring camp. I went last year, they hosted it again this year, I couldn't make it. But, I did see this post which read, "You cannot use someone else's map to find your Jiu-Jitsu." It popped something in in in my brain, and it's one of the things that I try to illustrate to people more than most of what I do.

01:13 I came up—I don't know how to word this. I came up under a program that—it wasn't that you couldn't develop your own Jiu-Jitsu, it was, "Hey, I'm the one that can give you what you need." It was very "I'm the source," or "the source is through me." That that type of mentality. And for marketing sense, it makes sense if you're connected to certain people, and there's a little—a certain lineage that kind of allows you to market differently than everyone else, including me. It makes sense in that—in that degree.

01:58 But when it comes to developing talent and developing Jiu-Jitsu that works for the human being, and the certain—and that specific student, that approach does not work at all, in my opinion. I think that it creates too many mini-mes, it creates too many rigid developmental approaches, and it frustrates people. It can make people feel burned out, it can pull people's creativity away from them. And there's a development or a dependency that occurs between the student and the instructor that some instructors want. Don't get it confused, some instructors actually want that because it continues that relationship. They're scared of losing people, they're scared of people developing games that maybe they don't understand, and then they have to develop a game that they themselves don't know, and they have to kind of go out of their way to learn.

03:00 So, there's a whole host of things here, and the hierarchy or the—or the higher—like, the line—lineage aspect plays into some of this. Sometimes, if you—if your instructor is known for butterfly guard, if your instructor is known for lapel, if your instructor is known for all these different specific, niche, subject matter expert type games, and they—that's what they're known for, and they want other people to be produced under that lifestyle or that approach, they're going to continue to push it. And to me, it doesn't matter how legendary that person is, Jiu-Jitsu is going to develop. And no matter how many people you're teaching, you're going to run into people that just that game doesn't work for them. And you can force it, you can make them do the thing that you want to do, and there's gyms out there that will do that. There's gyms out there that have a very principled, regimented approach to Jiu-Jitsu. You're going to do this drill, you're going to do this drill this many times, and then when that drill finishes, you're going to do this follow-up to that drill, you're going to do that many times. And they're reproducing really good competitors that are specific to that game, and they do well on the competition scene. It's great if that's what we're going for.

04:31 Many of us, myself included, I'm not going for won competitors, but I'm not going for rigid discipline. I don't need it. Martial art, within the name, means an art. I don't want to make people paint the same picture as the one that I made. I don't need people to do that. What I want is to be able to—and it makes more sense to me—is cultivate people who are very unique in their approaches because of their body mechanics, their temperament, things that they find cool, things that they have a legitimate interest in, and then developing those things. If you can develop as an instructor a bunch of different people with varying styles who are still a pain in the ass for everyone else and can still perform Jiu-Jitsu at a—at a good level, that's a massive win. That's really what we should be going after. I don't want a carbon copy of me. I don't want a carbon copy of of Marcelo, I don't want a carbon copy of Roger, I don't want a carbon copy of—like, I want people to develop however they decided they want to be developed, as long as you're technically sound in the game that you decide to to play. And that's the hard part.

06:19 So, when we think of it in the sense of maps, we start at a position, and none of us are starting at the same—the same spot. None of us. Anyone who has my body type, my temperament, you can clone that person at some point—they're not going to have the same starting spot. When I started, I was a certain age. When I started, I came through certain things in life, and I had certain tendencies and habits, or fears, or predicaments, or trauma that I that you're going to carry into that starting position. Not even to mention the fact that our body types are different, the age at which we start is different. The fact that some of us are college students versus 30-, 40-year-old professionals. The fact that some of us have jobs that are physical, versus some of us who are behind a desk the whole time. All those positions, if you have someone start, none of those are starting at the same spot. None. You are all starting at different positions and different places in your life, and you're being dropped off at random spawn points in the—in the Jiu-Jitsu world. The big sandbox that Jiu-Jitsu is.

07:44 So, how can I expect someone who has been dropped off and joined the academy at 36, a mother of three, hasn't been physical or athletic her entire life, expect her to somehow compete with the woman who is maybe in her mid-20s, had some collegiate lifting or collegiate sports, so she did softball, she ran track, she did whatever? Those are two different spawn points. I'm not giving the same roadmap or map in general to the 30-something that I am the 20-something. We're not giving the same roadmap or—or generic—or specific map to someone who, both have kids, one might divorced, one might not be, one might be a single parent, one might be going through traumas of losing a partner, one might be have a—a child that is—that requires more attention. None of these are the same. None, and that's why I always kind of try to remind people you're running your own race. You really literally are. None of us are running the same race. So if we're not running the same race, why would I apply the same map to everyone? Why would you want to pick up someone else's map? The scale is off, the placement of where you're starting is off—again, it doesn't make any sense.

09:12 So, I want us to just understand that first and foremost, both as the instructors and then the students. The students, while we want to compare some things to other people—like you want to—you want to have a healthy rival. You want to have someone who is close enough in age, body type, training regiment, life circumstance that you could kind of gauge where you are with them. And there's nothing wrong with that, I think that's healthy. My healthy rival has changed over the year—over the years. When I was coming up, it was one specific person, and then they changed things and it became someone else, and I had to change those dynamics because I couldn't compete with certain people who made legitimate changes to their training habits that I couldn't do. But, we're going to—we're going to make those changes and having that legitimate rival or healthy rival is a good thing. But we don't want to compare ourselves to everyone at that level, at that belt, at that age, because we're—again, we're literally running different races. It's not the same across the board.

10:29 Our vehicles are a huge component of this. I can't expect someone who is able to devote six days a week to Jiu-Jitsu and is running in—uh, and driving in a body that's like a sports car, to have the same map as someone who's doing three days a week and has a bad knee, has a bad back. I have a bunch of training partners who at every belt level are dealing with some kind of ailment. And then I got some training partners that don't have anything, and they're—they're just—they're just loose, and they're out there, and they're living their best life. And the rest of us are taping fingers and bracing elbows and knees, and we got back braces on afterwards, and we're using electrotherapy to help our backs, which I just bought one—oh, it's amazing. Anyways, so we're—not driving the same vehicle. You know what I mean? Like, we're not driving the same roads, we're not driving the same vehicles, we don't all have the same headaches, the same route, none of this is—is specific or is going to be the same as anyone else. So, I want us to just understand that first and foremost, both as the instructors and then the students.