BTG 147 - Write it in Stone

[Music] Hello and welcome to another episode of Breaking the Guard. Just passed uh UFC here on Saturday. Not a big card, honestly. I didn't watch any of it besides the highlights. It was just not uh no one I'm really interested in seeing fight. I would have tuned in into the the main event, but by the time I got on, it was already over. Uh I think I was three of two for my fight picks. Uh and I had picked Derrick Lewis to win that. I think anytime they someone wants to bet against them, it's usually when he's going to win. And the guy obviously shows he's still very dangerous, still very powerful and you can't leave your chin dangling out there for him to touch. Uh, but it's a weird card to me because it doesn't seem like maybe Gabriel Bone Fiend is maybe the biggest winner of this card as far as like he elevates his stock a bit, you know, beating established guy uh like Thompson. But I mean that's I figured that's pretty expected, right? Thompson's on his way out, you know? Uh so in my mind, it doesn't really change his his stock, you know? So like I said, weird matchmaking and that it doesn't really change anybody's like position from my view. Like everybody's still where I would think they would be. Anyhow, um other side of things, it appears that this White House UFC might actually be a thing, which seems bananas to me. But Dana White now is talking about it. And now the dream match is Tom Asminol and Jon Jones. I mean, it's like, are you are you freaking kidding me? you know, like that's been the match the whole time, you know, but now that's the dream match. And of course, Jon Jones now is like, "Oh, I'm motivated to do this cuz I want to fight in the White House." It's like, yeah, you know, you should have done that. You should have just fought, period. The idea that you're just fighting for this novelty now that gives you purpose, I it annoys me. Uh, and to try to hang another fight card on Jon Jones, who has his long record of goofing things up, seems like promotional suicide in my opinion. Uh, if you want to fight, it doesn't matter where it's going to happen. All right? You're just going to fight. Like, it's in your blood. You want it. And I'm not faulting him for not being motivated. The guy's done a lot. But now because of this extra thing he can add to the record, you know, which I get it's a one-of-a-kind novelty of fighting at the White House. I don't know if that's enough to keep him and to trust him that he's going to show up be way not, you know, do drugs and the steroids and PEDs and all that, which is a big ask. So yeah, he had someone else, right? Unless he gets back into the pool and he starts fighting and, you know, then he earns his way back to the title shot, but he I don't think he's in a position to be calling shots now. He pretty much killed the heavyweight division when he after he, you know, won it in a weird circumstance which he just got bumped to the head of the line in front of the the interim champ then didn't do anything with it. I don't know what type of hold that he has over Dana that Dana keeps is giving him this hall pass, you know. So, it's weird. I don't like it. I want to see Aspenol fight, right? Let's see him fight some of the guys. But uh so you can tell that bothers me. I I hate this type of favoritism that you can just bully your way around just because you have, you know, some market power. Like I feel the whole point of the promotion is to instill some meritocracy, right? Whoever is the guy winning and leading in the rankings and stuff like that should be getting the best shots. Not somebody that you're friends with or somebody that is going to bring a lot of social media engagement or whatnot. That's the guy we're going to put in. It defeats the points to the rankings, right? If that's the case, then make the rankings based on popularity and then the fighters will be doing different things. Instead of trying to get better at fighting, they'll get better at marketing, right? Anyhow, uh so there's that. But the thing that I did want to talk about was something uh that I experienced yesterday. And I've talked about this before, but uh this got me from a different angle. And my wife and I, we've been bickering over an issue for quite some time. And uh it seems like we got to a resolution just by writing down what we wanted to happen. And it it's interesting to me because it's like I said, I've talked about journaling a lot. I've talked about writing down your goals and the power of writing things down. But it didn't occur to me that in this dispute that we were having that writing it down would make it solvable. And I'm not saying it's 100% solved, but it's definitely made it close to that. Right? So, uh, this just goes to what I call the power of writing things down, putting things in stone, if you will, uh, has more than it because to it's not just a trivial exercise because you and I could talk about something and say we're going to do it, but when we actually write it down on paper, we've manifested it physically into the reality. Before that, it was just in the clouds. It's ethereal, right? Like it's nebulous. When we actually put it down where someone else could see it and observe it, now it's real. And I think that reality binding that thought, idea, agreement, you know, dispute, whatever it is, into a real form makes a big difference in your perception of it. And I find that especially nowadays where everything's uh digital, people have forgotten the value of writing things down. And mind you, you can write things down on a word processor. That's fine, too. Uh but just make sure it's observable and it's you can be accountable for it. All right. like if I write it down somewhere secretly where I can't share with anybody or I can't see it, it doesn't really do me much good. And so that was just another insight into it. But again, there's lots of ways that you can utilize writing things down besides obviously handling a dispute, which to me was a new one. I've never handled a dispute by writing it down. Uh so that was useful uh because I just handle it like any other problem like okay we what are the problems of the dispute what are the possible resolutions what does party A want what does party B want what's the compromise and uh that makes everything a lot smoother you know uh because there's no there's no misunderstanding everything's already been laid out until everybody's satisfied. But for training purposes, same things should be happening. And you know, I have talked about if I want to analyze training footage, for example, watch the video, take notes. Uh, for example, I did a breakdown on Saturday of John Carlo Bodoni and Roberto Himenez on their Aiga World Cup final match. And that was a great match. If you didn't watch it, go back and watch that. That was uh probably some of the most technical grappling you'll see and like what I considered realistic grappling. in that this is grappling you would do in a self-defense or MMA situation. Um, so it wasn't like I said like lightweight grappling where it's all 50/50 foot locks and like stuff that you'll get punched out on or you just couldn't really do in a street fight. These two were going at it exchanging takedowns, back scrambles, going for chokes. There was one dlock exchange, but um I think it was a good representation of high level jiu-jitsu. And one of the things that I was taking notes on was Roberto Himenez's backtick. And it's commented quite a bit on that breakdown. He was doing a few things differently than what most people do with back these days. And one of them was rather than using seat belt grips, he was using high body lock grips, right? And this is kind of old school. Back in the day, everybody was doing bolock to for back retention. And then I feel like Marcelo Garcia was the one that really was pushing the seat belt element of it. And uh everybody started making it mandatory, you have to be in the seat belt, otherwise you're not doing good back control. But if you watch Roberto with John Carlo, he is using a lot of high body lock, which allows him to stick to the back a little better because it doesn't allow the the grip to slip. And he's nimble enough with his hips to be able to keep the hips centered entire time. But there was a second thing that he did which I I noted which was using the straight jacket. And if you guys recall last week, I was talking about how I need to improve my flexibility because I'm not able to do a leg trap off the straight jacket pins from back mount because I just can't pull my ankle high enough naturally. But I saw Arerto did something very clever, which is rather than used a straight jacket to arm pin to go for the rea choke, he actually switched it up to go for an arm bar. And in training, I did that yesterday and I was like, "Oh, that worked pretty well." Uh because even though I couldn't keep a traditional back mount to get the leg hook in, if I know I'm going for the arm bar, I can let my hips ride up a little higher. So now I can get that arm trap without compromising. While I give up the back mount per se, I am now going to be in a really nice armbar finish because I'm going to be, you know, now perpendicular. I already have the kimora grip on the free arm, other arms pin. So, it sets me up for a triangle triangle arm bar, you know, or an X cross arm bar. So, it puts me in a really solid position. But this is a result of note-taking, writing things down and seeing like, oh, okay, look, I'm not just watching something and saying, "Oh, I should try that later." Because you'll forget. I know I've done that before and I've forgotten lots of things to write down. But when I learn something or I I take note of something that catches my interest, it's like I told you guys, I journal, but my journals are usually not about my feelings or like, oh, what? Like I was telling people at the the gym about that. It's like my journals are like factual references. They're like, okay, I need to work on this. I saw this today and I want to try to do this tomorrow or I did this wrong. These are the things I did wrong. I want to try to remedy remedy those and make them better. So, uh, in this case, my journal is on my phone. I have it on a Google doc that I can access anywhere. Uh, that gives me a lot of flexibility because if I was carrying around a notepad, it'd be covered in sweat and whatnot because I'm usually taking notes on the mats. So, uh, like I said, digital notes are fine as long as it's written down. But uh having that ability to have notes on you and take them whenever you learn something is huge. The other thing, another way of writing things down, like I've talked about also before, is this video. If you video your training sessions, you're going to be getting more out of them because you'll be able to review what happened afterwards and see things from a third party perspective where you can catch mistakes that you couldn't catch from the first person view. It's weird to me that nobody does this because I'm training at the gym. I don't see anybody with cameras. I'm the only guy filming myself. And uh that's why now you guys see it on Wednesdays I'm putting breakdowns of rolling footage that I get throughout the week. And uh I did this primarily just to give you guys more content. It seems like a lot of you guys enjoyed the my rolling footage and I'm like, "Hey, I'm going to do it anyways. It's easy for me to make and if I can make it useful for you guys, it's a double win." But I'm getting a third win, which is I'm getting to watch myself do things and be able to catch my own errors and my ways or catch things that I did well that I can use more of. But in this day and age where everybody has a camera and people tend to be more narcissistic than ever, I still don't see people applying that narcissism in a useful way of of filming yourself uh during training. Uh, and I'm talking about everybody. I don't see pro fighters doing it. I don't see the amateur amateur fighters doing it. I don't see, you know, the casual students doing it. Right now, I'm the only person that films myself. So, seems weird. Like, if you're a pro, in my opinion, you should be filming yourself because instead of watching TV or Netflix when you're at home, you should be watching your training footage and seeing what you could have done better. That's a student of the game in my opinion. Uh if you're not doing that, I feel like you're a little lazy if I'm being honest with you. If you're a pro and you don't watch yourself train, you're not watching your sparring footage, even your drilling footage. I mean, if you're a pro, that's what you do. And I know my brother and I did this. Now, I won't say we did it every day. That would be a lie. But we did do it. And uh I remember when Kit Dale was training with me here for ADCC in 2017, we were filming this boring footage and I was reviewing it with him afterwards. Say, "Hey, look, look at this. This part here. Oh, this was good. This was not so good." Right? Like you have to be aware of these things and you're not going to be cognizant of it during the match. So there's a lot of opportunity for development and learning just by filming yourself doing what you plan to do in a competition setting. And in my view, that's like just another way of writing things down. We're writing it by video, you know? So it's like we're doing an animation, right? Uh but on top of that, you should be writing notes of what you observe as well, right? So, if I watch the video, then the things that I see that that I that are noteworthy should be written down like, "Hey, at 3:30 I did this technique and it was a little sloppy. Here's what it could be done. I should fix this tomorrow in training." That in itself will give you direction because if you're just stumbling into training without a focus, without a goal and just winging it, your performance and your growth will be winging it, which is not great. The trajectory should be up. So if I don't have an aim, it's just going to go anywhere. Maybe it goes up, maybe it goes down. But if I have a direction, then I know I'll be heading in that direction, which should be for my benefit. When you take notes, you're giving yourself direction, right? I know. Okay. Like it's like when people ask like, "What should I do to get better?" From me from the outside, it's hard to tell you something technical to do because I don't really know your game. Now, if I roll with you, maybe I can say, "Oh, do this." Right? But you shouldn't need me to tell you what to do. You should know just from your observing your training what went wrong. That's what you need to work on, right? Like, if you're like, "Oh, every time I get I I train, I get my guard pass." Well, obviously guard retention is a problem. You need to work on that. Maybe it's a framing problem. Maybe you're not tracking the hips. Maybe your your feet are, you know, not engaged. But it's going to be one of those areas of guard retention that are going to be an issue for you. You shouldn't need me to make the note for you. I will, but you can do this on your own. Especially, like I said, if you're documenting yourself. I' I don't know who said this before, but I say it a lot. What isn't measured isn't improved, right? And filming yourself is a way of measurement. Taking notes in yourself is a way of measurement, right? U so if you're serious about being a better person in whatever aspect of your life, if you're not measuring, we're just guessing, right? So that's why I'm big on this documentation, you know? And this reminds me of another thing um I was discussing uh with a business partner which was that they were a little frustrated on well not business partner but someone who was also running a business. They were frustrated with hiring processes because they couldn't get their staff to do things right. And it's like well first of all like how extensive is the documentation right? like is everything clearcut that you can explain to a third grader how to do this? Because if it isn't, that's not so much on them as it is on you, right? Like everyone needs clear instructions. They that are not vague or subject to interpretation that are actionable that they can actually do. Right? If you give me clear instructions, but I don't have the tools to execute those instructions, I'm going to be fut it's useless, right? So, I need clear instructions. I need them to be actionable. So, I have the resources capable of executing those instructions and I'm probably going to have to be reshown multiple times, which is why if you have it documented, then it makes it easier. But if I'm just telling you, hey, do this, and I leave, you might forget. And then especially if it's a complex process that requires multiple steps, I might have to come back to you. Hey, what was the order again? And you be, oh man, I told you once already. It's like, yeah, but I'm human, right? I'm not a super genius. I forget things and I'm going to need you to show me. And then even after you have shown me over time, I'm going to forget and then I'm going to have to be retrained. So when we have good documentation, that helps eliminate that. Especially if you could again film the whatever the procedure is that needs to be done, I can just say, "Hey, refer to the video again." Right? That way, I'm taking my time out of it since I've invested it in the filming process. So, now people can just repeat the training. But to assume that somebody's going to learn something on the first take is a mistake. Some people, even if they're learning something, they'll forget it over time and then have to be retrained on it. And this is why writing things down, putting things on paper, putting it on video, you know, taking a picture of it, these types of things help cement that knowledge, that process, that idea into reality that it can be referred to and learned from again. It's why we have books, right? that before people were writing things down and were telling things word of mouth. I'm sure we've lost many of the great stories and news and facts of history because it was a a piece of information that was handed out by word of mouth instead of by word and print. and it's going to disappear at some point. When someone forgets to to speak it or someone misremembers it and speaks it wrong, we've lost it forever. But when you can write something down, it gets permanence. I mean, I obviously it's it can be destroyed, but at least if it isn't destroyed, you know, it it gets a a a state of permanence, right? Uh so that's just to urge you think about solving your problems on a written form. make them a reality. Right? Like I said, whether it's a dispute, whether it's just observing something and taking notes on it, whether it's a plan of action, right? Uh that could also be taking pictures or taking videos, some type of media, all these things are going to make your life easier because it's going to bring that problem that might be in the back of your head that's keeping you up at night. Like you're, man, I can't believe that happened. How can I get better at that? and like write it down. Make it real because a lot of times problems are bigger in your head than they are in reality. And once you make it tangible by putting it on paper, then it's a lot more assailable right now. It's like, oh, we can actually tackle this in many different ways, right? And I have a solution here. And sometimes it's just helpful to list things out, right? Like you say, man, what's getting what's what's giving me problems? Let me just write down. Write that down. Right there. Write that down. I know this isn't the first time I talked about it, but like I said, I got a a slightly different perspective in it from the other day, and I figured, hey, if it helped me in my my personal life, and it's helping me regularly in the training environment, I might as well give it a second glance. As I just told you, people don't learn things the first time. So, if you didn't get it the first time, maybe this second goaround might convince you to start taking a journal. And if you if you do actually want to follow his advice, it's very simple. You don't need a notepad. If you especially most of you watching this on your phone or whatnot, get a Google docu a I'm assuming most of you have a Google account or some type of digital account that you can access from anywhere. make a a document and just have it log in. I have mine that has like I guess it's like four years now of notes just continuous on a daily basis and you can just keep adding new pages every day as you move through. You don't have to have extensive notes. Mine are very straightforward. Like I said, it's more about uh factual things and actionable knowledge versus thoughts and feelings. uh that has its place too and I do insert that in there from time to time but for performance purposes I'm more about getting in things I'm trying to work on actionable knowledge but it does help if you're having some emotional turmoil when that to also dump it on paper so you can actually see everything out there and understand like oh okay I'm dealing with all this stuff but really the core of this issue is this part here Right? So, it's useful for everything. Just give it a shot if you haven't done it before. If you do it for a few days, I'll tell you, if you do it for a week, it'll become a habit because you can just either start your day or or end your day by taking notes. You know, like if you start your day, it's usually your planning in advance, right? Like, I'm going to look to tackle this, this, and this. Uh, or you're maybe practicing gratitude. I'm writing. I'm thankful because I have these things. All all good things. If you're doing at the end of the day, it's nice because you're kind of summarizing what happened that day, what things you could have learned. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from doing it at both times, but you know, if you had to pick one time, you know, you can choose based on what you feel is more important. Anyhow, that's all I have for you today and I wish you a wonderful week and I'll see you all later