BTG 105 - Does a Gi or a Belt Matter?

Hello and welcome to breaking the guard. I wanted to talk about the importance of training for your sport in a specific way. And I got brought to this topic because I saw a couple days ago uh somebody posted an interview or I guess some uh quote from Chrome Gracie who was complaining that there's too many people training no ghee and not training with a ghee. and he had made some silly comment pretty much off-handedly calling people who do noi very effeminate or gay or you know some type of derogatory type of a thing right and uh I think that's silly right I've been in this sport now for what like 29 years something like that and most of it in In fact, entirely all of it is with no ghee, right? I I've trained with a ghee a handful of times in my life. I I don't say this as a point of pride. It's just a point of fact. And the reason is I don't really have an interest in training with the ghee because I don't have interest in competing with the ghee. I don't live in places that wear long coats and stuff like that. And if you see me, most of the time I'm in, you know, no shirt or a t-shirt, you know, uh, so it's not really that useful or applicable in my life circumstance. I've always lived in hot places in Miami. I'm now living in a desert, so it's it it just doesn't make much sense for me. And I and the times I have trained with the ghee, my game was pretty much the same. I just avoided grips of anybody grabbing my collars. and uh I would still knee cut pass and you know work my same submission game like I did before. So it wasn't like it was a completely different thing. Now mind you this is the last time I wore a ghee was over 10 years ago. Uh I think I trained with Galbao at A atoss when I visited there back like in 2012 or 2011 uh with a ghee and I think with Zanji as well and that was the last time you know and I got swept a bunch of times because everybody was giving me like oversized geese. I had my my my sleeves like over my knuckles, you know, so uh it made for a very easy sweeping. All right. But uh I was able to not to get submitted at the very least. Uh but in any case, there's a there's old argument that people say like, oh, you know, if uh you want to be sharper in your fundamentals, you got to train with a ghee. It's like no that doesn't make any sense because if I train no ghee I'm going to learn the fundamentals just fine and as somebody who's become an expert in this field particularly in the area of you know kimoras which I feel like I have a PhD in at this point um I know a lot more about kimoras than many people do that have trained with the ghee and maybe have trained even longer than me with the ghee right the it's just a piece of clothing, right? It's like saying that if you train with a particular set of shoes, you're going to become a much better athlete. It's like, no, you might be able to express your potential better with shoes because you have better grip and there's more stability on your footing, but it doesn't make you um more knowledgeable, right? Uh the ghee is just a piece of equipment you're putting on. Now, it gives you different grips and it might change the way the game is played. But it doesn't make you overall better, especially without it. If anything, I would say there's usually a lot more deficit that I've seen with people who go from ghee to no ghee. They have to adapt their game because they've lost all their grips. There's so many places to grab when you have a ghee uh that really change how you're going to approach the match, especially if you rely on your grip heavily. Imagine if you're a worm guard guy, like your game is gone. it doesn't even exist anymore, right? Um, so and and and it goes the other way also. If you've never done train with a ghee before and you're all no ghee and you go ghee, you're going to obviously have problems when the guys do play war because you've never even seen it, so you don't know how to address it, right? Uh it's going to be a point of ignorance, right? So like on one side, if you're going from no ghee to ghee, you're you're going to run more into ignorance uh issues. Whereas if you go from ghee to no ghee, you're going to run into absence where like you've lost your skill sets because they are no longer applicable. So two different types of problems, right? And the point is if I wanted to be better at the ghee, I should be training with a ghee. If I want to be better at no ghee, I should be training with no ghee. It's very simple, but people with a ghee are going to try to convince you that no, no, you actually have to train more with the ghee if you want to be better at no gi. That's it's a silly argument, right? Uh it doesn't make any sense to in my opinion. You you're just better off training noi. Just like if I want to be better at MMA, I should be training MMA, right? And if you guys heard me talk about this before, that's why I I say like a lot of people they train like they got multiple personalities. like they train kickboxing on one day, they train jiu-jitsu another day, and then they train wrestling in another class, and then they just expect that they're going to know MMA. It's like you're training three different disciplines. Like you, if you wanted to learn how to do MMA better, you would train MMA, which means you're doing all of them at the same time, right? Uh you're not training in the absence of the other styles. Like, you're constantly fighting. Now, you might focus on a specific skill set like, okay, I want to learn how to do a round kick better, but it shouldn't be in the absence of all the other threats like, well, I can get my leg caught and taken down, you know, or a guy might catch and go into a leg lock, right? Like, I should always have that awareness when I'm practicing something, but it doesn't mean you can't specify a particular area of your game. But it shouldn't be like we're just going to train Muay Thai and we're going to forget that wrestling's a factor and forget that jiu-jitsu is a factor. I feel like that's training a different discipline all together. Now that's like training ghee when you're supposed to do no ghee, right? So in my opinion, Cone there has a a really I think he's coming more from a place of hurt from the sounds of it. Like maybe his business revolves more around the ghee. I understand he comes from a traditional jiu-jitsu legendary family, the Gracies. So like they probably emphasize everybody learning from the ghee that's how he learned it and that's how he feels like it's the best and everybody else who's not doing it is kind of cutting corners. It's like no, we just have different goals, right? Like I've never had aspirations of training with the ghee or winning the Mongals or anything like that. It's zero interest in for me. So just like I have zero interest in swimming, you know, in the Olympics like none, right? So like I'm not missing out. It's just not something that I care for, right? Everybody has different tastes and while you know work training with the ghee obviously worked well for Cone, I mean he did win Abu Dhabi, you know, I'm sure he's won all sorts of tournaments. So he had a good path and obviously the skills translate from ghee to no ghee, you know, but that's not the only way to do it. Nor does that imply that is the best way to do it, right? I would argue that if you were trained the whole life no gi, you would have been a much better no guy, right? It just happens that you are already a very good ghee guy and it didn't take much work to adapt your game into a no game, right? So, um, that's how I see that, you know. Uh, I don't I don't see the need to like insult people for like their preferences. Like, if someone wants to train with the Gumore, that's fine. Like, it might suit them better. You know, I could see if you're in a self-defense situation and you do work a lot with clothes and uniforms. Maybe you're a law enforcement and, you know, you do have long sleeves and stuff and jackets or you live in winter areas. Yeah, it would probably make a lot more sense then to start working on collar chokes and stuff like that because they could be used against you or you could take advantage of it against other people, right? But at least in my use case, it doesn't seem as obvious, right? Not not really as much of a need and I've been mostly interested in MMA and no ghee, so just not really important to me to train with the ghee. Um, additionally, as you could tell, I'm quite furry. I've never liked training with the ghee because of the heat. I would just sweat like crazy, you know? It's like I I'm already running hot. I don't need to add I'm probably like 5 degrees warmer than anybody in the room just because of how insulated I am. I don't need extra insulation on top of it, right? So, I don't think it matters whether you train with a ghee, no ghee. It's just depends on what sport you're going to focus on. You're going to focus on MMA, most of your time should be on MMA, right? If you're going to do no ghee, most of your time should be doing no ghee. I don't think it benefits you to split up the disciplines and focus on a particular aspect and then try to expect that by osmosis it's going to come come back to the style of competition you're facing, right? Like no, just like if I'm going to train for EBI rules, I better be working my overtime positions and my escapes, right? I wouldn't just train normally and then expect like, oh, I'm just going to adapt to the circumstances when they present themselves. Like, that's not the ideal way of doing it. If I'm exclusively an EBI competitor, I'm going to do EBI rules all the time. I'm going to become very niched and nuanced in that rule set so I could optimize my skills and my abilities for that. Right? And I don't know how this is controversial or shocking because anybody who trains for big events trains specifically for those role sets, right? And everybody I know that's a a big player will change their gyms training methods based on the prevailing competition that's coming forward. Right? So um yeah, I think that whole argument is silly. So that in my opinion should just be dropped, right? Just train the way you're going to have to fight is the best way, right? Just like there's accessory stuff that you can do, right? Like conditioning is probably a bigger factor of that. that is with the mindset that you're going to you only have a certain amount of time that I could put on the mats before I might injure myself, right? And this is a recovery issue, right? Like why would I run instead of do more jiu-jitsu? If you could do amount of rolling that you would get the same cardiovascular benefit as running without risk of injury and without putting too much of a toll on your body, I would say it's much better to to roll instead. However, most athletes and professionals once they've put a good amount of conditioning time or put amount of rolling time in any additional rolling time is a threat to injury. So, if they want to get some more cardiovascular benefit, then that's when the accessory work like running or doing stairs or doing a rower or, you know, the dreaded assault bike would be a benefit, right? because now I can do that with minimal risk of injury and still get some benefit, right? Like the benefit of having a better cardiovascular system is going to pass over to some extent towards your sport, right? But ideally, if you could just spend all your time on your sport, that makes a lot of sense to me in my opinion, right? If I can just do if I wanted to work like explosive cardio for example, well the best way to get explosive cardio that's sport specific is doing your sport explosively, right? So I would be doing like situational drills where I have to stand up or escape or you know escape arm locks and you know all sorts of dangerous positions. That would be all explosive work. The problem is it's dangerous, right? Submission escapes inherently are very dangerous, right? Um so we have to be very careful when doing that. And usually we do kind of the opposite. Whereas when people get into dangerous situations, we kind of slow down in training, allow the person to escape without blowing out their arm or or the leg, but that doesn't flex that explosive muscle as much, right? Or that explosive cardio. So how do we get that, you know, uh or get more of that? Well, then that's when like a a hill sprint or, you know, that assault rower or assault bike would would benefit there, right? because there's really no risk of injury there for the most part. I mean, you got to do something fall off the bike, I guess, to hurt yourself in an assault bike. So, uh it's a safe way of training that, right? So, to me, that would be a purpose of of doing an accessory movement outside of your sport. The second one, weightlifting, uh, is to gain more strength simply because in your sport, you would be maxed out on the load that you can carry doing doing movements in your sport, right? However, I think most people would if they did enough strength style movements in their sport would probably be good. You can get plenty strong if all you did was wrestle all day, right? Even without touching weights, you can get really strong, especially if you if you're doing a lot of lifting motions, bridging and throwing and, you know, double leg slams and stuff like you're going to build muscles all over the place, right? Especially around your neck and your upper back. Uh, so you'll definitely get strength. However, the load that I'm imposing my body is going to be pretty much fixed to the people I'm moving around, which are going to be around my weight. So, like right now, I'm 192 pounds. So, I'm probably going to wrestle around people who are around 200 and 100 pounds. That's all I'm going to lift. So, my my my squatting motions and my deadlifting motions and my pressing motions are going to be limited to 200 lb. Whereas, if I go in the weight room, I could put 300 lb or I could put 400 lb. Right? So, now I could build more strength than I would normally be able to build if I was just doing my sport. So that's another use case for an accessory motion outside of your sport, right? Um, so those are two good scenarios. A third one would be mobility work like stretching and yoga and all that stuff which I do as well. And this is simply because we're just warming up the body basically trying to give it more range of motion that we might not be able to get while we're doing our sport, right? Like you're not going to build well you actually correct that. You will build some flexibility doing jiu-jitsu, right? And just by doing these motions repeatedly, your body starts building some memory of like, okay, I need to be able to open up my hips as much or I have to be able to open up my shoulders as much. But again, you're kind of going to be limited. So it's similar to the weightlifting example. Whereas in when I do a stretch session, I get to really go hard or go long on a position to open up my body, the limbs, the joints and all that to be able to get more extension or more contraction rather uh of your limbs. So those are three uh good use cases. again getting additional cardio work, getting additional strength work or getting additional mobility out of your body where you might go outside of your your your sport. But I certainly wouldn't be playing football if I wanted to be a better basketball player, right? Or vice versa. So I feel like the ghee, no gee, MMA, wrestling, judo, whatever. Like no, if I'm gonna be a better judo guy, I should be spending all my time doing judo, right? Just it seems like common sense, right? So, I think this is the second time on the podcast of when ghee versus no ghee or, you know, sport discipline, but I I hope this one puts that one to bed. Another point I wanted to talk about that I saw uh somebody arguing against the use of a belt ranking system in in martial arts. I think it's uh Evandro Nunes who's a former training partner of mine back man like in 2013 he helped me prepare for ADCC a really good jiu-jitsu guy and uh after that I think he had trained with the Gracies and did the Gracie Academy and he was one of their head instructors and it seemed like I'm I didn't follow what happened to him after that. I know recently it seems like he split from them and he's gone on this uh tilt about uh from what I can see that the belt ranking system is holding people back and it's not allowing them to really express their full potential. And uh I'm not quite sure what he means by that. I can tell you uh from my perspective as somebody who started from Gondo then into wrestling then developing my system of MMA with my brother which at when we first started was not ranked right and after like four or five years I believe then we got ranked ourselves in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. Sue and I'm not sure when we started our ranking system. I think it was before that or but maybe it could have been around the same time or whatnot. We then instituted a ranking system in our style of fighting. I could tell you it's better to have a ranking system, right? Not having any type of ranking system is basically having no measurement of your skill or your knowledge. It's not great. Does it mean you can't get better? No. I mean, I was beating black belts before I was ranked. So, clearly I was getting better. Uh, but I feel for the average person and even for myself. It's good to have a metric of progress, right? I like to say what isn't measured isn't improved, right? So, if I'm a student starting off day one and I go, "What's my rank?" We don't have a rank. So, you're the same rank as me and I've been doing this for 30 years. It's like uh like that doesn't really give me much to to really focus on. I don't have like a shiny milestone that's easy to measure like okay, you know, like when I develop a certain level of skill, how do I know like I've kind of leveled up. It's like no, you don't. It's just you just go by what you feel. And like I said, it can work for some people, but I definitely feel like you're leaving something on the table, right? It's nice to have uh I I think it's also kind of lazy if we're being honest, right? And again, I'm saying this to myself because uh there's obviously metrics that we can see from people that we can tell like, oh, okay, this guy is like a blue belt level or purple belt level, right? There's certain things we can tell like by a person's movements, by their knowledge, by their attitude, u their confidence that we can see where they are in the game. And it's useful for a few reasons. One, from the student angle, it's going to allow you to measure your progress. If I I know if I'm a two-stripe blue belt, for example, that okay, I'm I'm starting to move up in the world. I'm I have an understanding of what the game looks like and maybe I have a small specialty and a certain move that I'm pretty good at. Uh but I still have a lot to work on, right? Whereas somebody who is like a a black belt, you know, is a lot more developed in the game. They have a good amount of knowledge. They probably have some some strong specialties that they focus on, right? Uh but I it gives me markers to know like what things I want to work on. So I think as a student it's very useful especially from a gym owner perspective it does help keep students in the gym right because people want to see progress if you're the same rank you were 10 years later it's hard to explain your progress right like how do you tell somebody who's not in the sport what you've done like well I know this position that position this position I know I'm good at this. I'm like, okay, but like how can you explain it to a layman? They wouldn't understand it. But we all understand hierarchy where animals and animal hierarchies are everywhere. So we know the white, blue, purple, brown, black, and we have a general understanding even as someone who's unskilled in the martial arts of what that means about the amount of time you've invested, the amount of skill you have, the amount of knowledge you have. So, uh, I think for students when they have expectations of how long it takes to move up to the next level, it gives them hope and it gives them confidence in their training when they see that they're starting to move up to the next rank. And at least for us, we have expect we we let students know what the expectations are as far as what techniques they need to know, uh, how they need to perform when they're doing testing and stuff like that. These are all fine, right? I think these are healthy measures of being able to test people, put them on the spot, and see how they perform under pressure. So, I don't see anything negative with that, right? The other the other aspect of this as a student is knowing who to train with, right? Because you could be training for 10 years and still be a white belt because you've been on and off and not really coming to class all the time. So time is not a good measurement of skill. And if you're somebody who's completely new, it could be hard to know. But if somebody is like a third degree black belt, he's got his certification and all that, then it's very easy to say, well, okay, well, for him to get that certification, he had to train under somebody who vetted him and this person vetted that person. So I could feel pretty confident that this guy actually knows what he's talking about. So I'm not going to be given BS mc dojo technique. Like this guy's actually teaching me legitimate technique, right? So that kind of protects the student and and uh lets them know okay this is actually somebody who has authority who has real training and will be able to pass that down to me hopefully. So I feel these are all great benefits of a ranking system. Now I think what he and again I'm I'm not sure so I apologize to Evandro if I got your position wrong but I'm imagining the beef that most people have with belt systems that I see is when it gets politicized right where if you're not in the inroup or you know you're saying the wrong things or or whatnot you might be held back right you might not be allowed to get promoted or you're just not going to be able to advance period. I I've known people who were stuck at Purple Bell for like 15 years and it's like what the hell happened? Like he pissed off his head instructor and then he kind of got black ballalled and then no one else would promote him so he became like a ronin basically, right? Uh that's messed up, right? Like that's that politics shouldn't like prevent somebody from being able to progress, right? Now that said, there is a character argument you can make as well where I wouldn't want like personally and maybe this is selfish and maybe it's wrong but if I had somebody who was training that became like a scumbag right and just total dirt bag bullying people pushing them around and being you know a very bad representative of the sport. I wouldn't want to have that guy as a black belt under me even if he had the skills because I feel like that would be a bad representation of what I develop because he would basically have become a he's going to be a representative of my belt of my system and if people see this guy and they're going to say oh you know this Avalon guy's a jerk look at the type of people that become black belts in his system. So, I could see that argument. Um, but if the guy is still training with you, that seems kind of weird. Like, why would you let the guy still train and pay dues if you didn't like him, right? Like, if I had something like that, I would probably kick him out of the gym. And we have done that at my gym before, right? When uh somebody doesn't fit in our culture, you know, we'll quotequote like fire that student, right? And it's not like it's not to say that what I the way I act, the way I behave, you know, the the way I think you should uh portray yourself is the right way. But it is my way and I'm teaching people to do things, you know, more or less the way I believe they they are to be correct. So if we're not a good fit for each other, then yeah, I'm probably not going to want you to have you in my academy, right? Uh, and that doesn't mean like I then that guy is a piece of trash and like he's a garbage. No, no. It just means that we don't we're not compatible, right? And hopefully he can find somebody that is and they can be successful together, right? Uh, but that being said, so in that type of situation, right, I wouldn't be blackballing somebody that I didn't get along with or like we developed, you know, some type of spat. they would just move on and move somewhere else and hopefully they can flourish and do better there. Uh so the idea that you would put someone on some type of blacklist where no one would promote them because it would be kind of like a like a taboo thing to do that seems kind of messed up, right? Oh, because you had some type of beef with somebody or some type of disagreement shouldn't mean that they they are no longer able to progress in the the ranking system because you have put some type of you know hit on them. so to speak. So, I could see why that could sour people. I could also see money becoming a factor where people charge for the testing and they almost kind of like trying to extort you to try to get as much money as possible out of you. Uh yeah, that seems like that could be problematic. I know like I'm talking early days like the 90s early 2000s there were people that would have to sign contracts that they wouldn't compete against you know other students of this instructor or I think it was one point where like if you were an American like you would have to say thing that you would have to lose to any Brazilian you face a competition there was like crazy stuff going on like that right or that they wouldn't teach certain techniques to other people without the express permission of somebody lots of weird control type of behaviors. I I imagine most of these things are gone. I haven't heard of them in recent times, but again, this I'm talking about like 20 plus years ago. That was something that happened. Uh I think we're pretty far away from that now for the most part. But those type of weird things, I could see putting someone off of a ranking system, right? And if you've been caught in that machine yourself, you might leave with a sour taste in your mouth and maybe you're going to say, you know what, no ranks whatsoever. But I don't think that's the the right way. I think again it's kind of being lazy. There's obviously merit to having a ranking system. Uh I explained already quite a few reasons why there would be. So, it's a matter of just being ethical or at least in your mind even-handed with how you uh award rank and being very transparent with how the system works. And like for example, in our system, we test people every month. And um for the the adults, testing is free. They just it's like a regular drilling class. They come in, they drill, we uh assess their performance of the drilling sessions. And we're also looking at their, you know, how many times they've attended, um, how they performed the tournaments, stuff like that. So, all these things factor in, but if somebody is showing up to testing every month and doing well, uh, there's a good they're going to be noticed for testing, right? And we normally give people a heads up. Hey, like you know next month you're green lit, you know, so uh you're you're going to get promoted or whatnot, right? And then to perform well that next test. So it's not mysterious as far as like what do I have to do to get promoted, right? Like you show up to testing regularly, you're going to get promoted, right? And depending on the rank, I know that like from white to blue, it could be like a year of testing solid. uh and you know you you're acing all your tests right or like two three years on other ranks right just depending on uh the aptitude and the performance during testing and during general training uh so I think our system is pretty transparent in how we award rank and based on the students skill and their knowledge it shouldn't be a thing like 10 years you're you're you're scratching your head like am I missing a particular technique that I need to master before the the instructor is going to promote me like that shouldn't be the case and in any case if somebody uh felt like they were being really left out you know they can just ask right like hey what do they need to do to get promoted and I would tell them show up to testing and do well right uh because we we keep track of that in our C CRM you know on our database or whatnot how many times someone's tested what scores they got on the test So we know like okay it's like more mathematical for us where there's kind of a and the students know this as well like that the more times they test the more points they accumulate and then at a certain threshold of points we start paying heavy attention onto to their skills and um getting them ready to get promoted right so it's not just like gut feeling there's all and not to say that doesn't exist on occasions we might do like what we call the battlefield promotion where somebody wins a title fight or what not. It's like, okay, you know, like he's ready for that next rank, right? He he that's the ultimate test, right? You you want a big competition or you perform well in competition, you know, that's better than a drilling session because that's real world experience, right? But um we also have like measurable ways of knowing that a student is eligible to be promoted based on testing, right? So uh again ranking testing these are all ways of measuring people right and the more ways we can measure somebody the more confident we can feel on our decision-m process and hopefully our gut feeling is also backing us up there right uh where like okay my gut feeling says this guy's ready to get promoted I could see that on our database this guy's tested for like 20 months aced all of his test he's he's probably ready for that blue right like and I I I feel like he's ready so like I'm a lot more confident in it and it's not a surprise to anybody else because you could say, "Hey, look, that guy's been to all the tests and he's been crushing it." Versus, you know, when you just randomly decide to promote people without any thought or mind, like then some people could feel like they got missed. Like someone could be, "How come that guy got promoted to purple and I didn't, right? I showed up to all my tests. This guy's never been to a test before. He just rolls and does well and he gets promoted and I never get promoted." And then it's harder like to understand from the student perspective why did they get overlooked right oh it's a political issue now right he likes him doesn't like me or something like that but if you have actual metrics where you can say well actually you see you never tested before this guy tested for the past 14 months he aced all this test that's why he's getting promoted right so if you want to get promoted you got to put in the work right so uh and I think that's also communication of what's important right In our system, we value the tests because this is where we get to actually see you on a level playing field with everybody else. Uh but maybe that's not your system, right? Maybe your system you want to reward people more on how they roll or how they perform in competition or whatever the case is. But as long as that is communicated to your students so everybody knows what they're supposed to be working on, right? Because if my promotion system was based on how cool your shoes looked and I never told anybody that, it would be very unfair, right? Especially if everybody's training with no shoes on and they're like, "Man, how come I never get promoted?" Because I had a secret agenda that is actually based on your footwear, right? Uh so like as long as you communicate what your standards are to your students as far as the ranking system and how it works, like I said, you're transparent, it's a win-win, right? Um, but if it's some type of mysterious nebulous uh decision that's made out of the ether that nobody knows when it's going to happen, it's just going to happen when it happens. That's kind of messed up, right? And I think that defeats the purpose in my opinion because now it's not really a measurable statistic, right? It's kind of like just up to the whim of the instructor depending on how he's feeling that day, right? Know like I feel like everything should be measured, right? It's it's the most fair for everybody. Anyhow, enough about ranking and geese and no geese and all that stuff. Hopefully you guys enjoyed that podcast. U again, always feel free to recommend me ideas to talk about like like this one. So, I appreciate that for people who wrote in for that. And uh I'll see you all next