BTG 51 - Stare Down Language

[Music] hey guys what's going on david avalon here with my co-host robert drysdale for another episode of breaking the guard how many episodes now dave i think we're in 51. all right not bad about that it's been a minute now it's been what two weeks since yeah again we've been different places yeah it just came back recently from costa rica got to do the hero bj academy retreat and uh with ron and rob's gonna be coming up there i think you're in the next few weeks right coming up uh 27th of may so yeah a couple weeks nice i'm excited yeah i'm actually going to be in costa rica at the same time but i'm going to be because i was supposed to go with jamie my girlfriend and last minute she had to cancel okay for work so she still wanted to go so okay we'll just we'll go again so at this time i'll just be going for a vacation yeah you know uh i i know you've done them but like it's a lot more work than you you realize running the camp yeah because i was teaching i thought more this time than i did last time because it was like maybe 15 16 hours on the mat and then i taught a bunch of prior lessons so it's like one day i taught for seven hours straight oh my god yeah so that's brutal people think all that i know because most people that work at nine to five like i do that every day here's the thing man when you're teaching you're 100 immersed engaged talking focused it does something in your brain it's not just physically exhausting it's mentally exhausting people don't like it's like seven hours it's like it's worse than seven hours of driving it's it's i mean because i've done that that much teaching it kills you it's done for the day it's a lot especially when you're in costa rica and the humidity is like 90 percent and you want to go to the beach now you don't have the energy well it's funny because we have a day where we do the sunset cruise right i don't know if you did it the last time you were there yeah but uh and they're like oh uh we're gonna get to go to the beach again i'm like this is my first time to the beach and there's the last day of the camp are you serious i've been on the mats the whole time i mean it's fortunate but uh it was a lot of fun this time around too and it was interesting because whenever i do these camps they're all different people that i've never met before and it's so cool how the martial arts has that that family that brotherhood if you will because everybody got along like day one yeah and people were hanging out doing groups and there was one thing that really struck me which is kind of funny so um we had an adventure day because my camp was actually scheduled for eight days by accident we when me and ron were doing the scheduling we're supposed to do a week and then we put it like oh this is actually eight days like okay we'll put the day in the middle with no like no training and we'll just let people yeah you know do whatever they want so we had a group of uh like 11 of them decided you know what we'll go to the mountains and do the hiking and ziplining all that so we had two other people on the bus that weren't part of the trip they were just you know other people sourcing but they got along with got along with us right away one of them they were both from new york and uh one of them was like a special agent something like that was kind of cool he was terrified of heights and there was somebody else a super white belt chris shout out he's also terrified of heights so they do form together like okay the first activity is zip lining yeah you know so we're like oh hopefully these guys can make it and they did fine they started doing the zip lining but then at a certain point there was like a giant swing like a tarzan rope yeah and they were just terrified and they were stuck on that platform for like a good half hour 45 minutes until somebody was able to coax him to get out but we're all waiting like damn chris hasn't been here yet like it's gonna be a long day because the guy's like there's no way backwards you can only go forwards and we can't extract them any other way so anyhow they got through and then the the other guy he's like hey i gotta thank you man your group was so supportive and awesome yeah that it made this a lot easier because i was really stressed out you know my wife kind of forced me to do this and you know it's it's obvious i can tell that you guys had like a a long friendship like for years because how close you guys are i was like i just met these guys three days ago yeah he's like what it's just the kind of bond that we have for the martial arts we've all struggled and suffered the same way so we know like you know gang sort of like you see yeah it is yeah you go craft way across the world and you can talk for people like you've known them for years i've noticed that like everywhere i go i get the feeling that i'm talking to people that i've known my whole life yeah you know it's very very i mean i don't know if other endeavors are like that like music or any other kind of martial art or arts in general i can't speak but i do feel that bond with with you know grappling jiu jitsu everywhere i go it's the same like it's the same like yeah exactly hanging out and anyone who saw us interacting would swear that we've known each other for a decade and we just met 10 minutes ago yeah no that's what i find amazing the kind of rapport you can develop right away and we're still chatting with each other now you know in a little whatsapp group and we have people poking jokes at each other um and we made a few connections along the way too one of the guys had put me in contact with henry aikens okay i didn't realize henry lives here in vegas oh really yeah i know he came here a few times but it turns out he moved here but he moved here doing the pandemic so it kind of another great timing as far as like so he i said he came over the house the other day super nice guy yeah yeah um yeah so it was a lot of fun man i always enjoyed doing these camps yeah i've only been to costa rica once at hero academy going back into the month now and i'm excited man like it's um it's a beautiful place it's very chill like normally latin american haven't grown up in brazil you're always worried about crime like it is an issue there's no there are very few places in latin america where you're not going to be in danger yeah right um i never felt in danger in costa rica man like you know you haven't grown like i have like these radars like okay like you kind of sense this is a hostile environment watch your wallet watch your phone kind of thing in costa rica i never got any of that like i always felt you see the poverty you see but like i think that develop i mean thailand is like that like they're so welcoming to tourists but they understand that their economy needs us right so they treat us like kings i got that similar feel in costa rica they were so friendly towards tourists i think they know better not to rob us because that screws their economy i don't think if they fully understand but that's what they're doing their weight making us welcome and make you want to go back because you always feel safe well for sure i actually i just realized that costa rica is a country i've visited the most in the world besides living in the u.s i've been there like five or six times okay i think because i went when bulldog fight was going on they did a lot of events in costa rica and i used they used to have a place uh an event called costa rica fights or mma yeah so we went there a bunch of times so i've been there in all parts of costa rica pretty much never felt endangered yeah and especially where hero is and tamarindo it has that kind of thailand vibe you're in a beach town and you can just it's like dirt roads you just walk around everywhere it's very chill there's like virtually no crime the only thing you see out there that's like slightly sketchy would be if you're walking around the beach at night you're going to have people asking hey you want some marijuana you want some blows i like that but not aggressive right yeah but here's a thing like if you're a tourist like i think i imagine half at least half a tourist that want that yeah yeah so it's not right you know it's it's not like like oh my god you offer me some weed i'm like pretty much half the tourists are probably smoke weed yeah at least right if not more and you know since it's not legal there i'm pretty sure it's not legal they i mean i imagine even like the cops are probably like actually that was the one heads up ryan he said don't get it from the street because it's the one thing the cops will look to catch you on really yeah so i wonder if they'll just full monuments if they turn a blind eye because again it kind of helps them if there's that money flooded into the economy and he said there's other ways to get it yeah don't buy the history if you're going just be careful with that but uh oh yeah food's good there how many two classes a day two classes a day it was doing one class in the morning 10 or around 9 10 a.m for an hour and a half and then one in the evening for an hour and a half and then in between i was doing private lessons we had one day where i did one long class like two and a half hours so we had the evening open but uh there's a good pace i would just tell you if you're going there stay hydrated i had one gentleman uh ricardo he during the private lesson his abs started cramping individually which i've never seen before like the left abs yeah and then the other one popped out i was like holy never seen it before i've seen legs crammed plenty you know he was just cramping everyone then his inner thigh cramps hydration hydration and this is not just water you need the electrolytes so they have a pedia light there that's actually really good so it's like i rarely drink sports drinks because i like drinking just water yeah but you need to but i was there i'm like i was taking one every day i'm like otherwise you're into this it's good to know yeah you're just sweating because it's getting summer it's close to somewhere oh yeah no it's hot it's very humid especially us we're coming from very dry climate yeah there's a total opposite it's like super wet so like you're just sweating nonstop yeah man i'm uh i'm excited man i i like to teach but like there's something about teaching that that long that kind of kills you but i'm going to try to make some time for the for the beach and uh last time i had a lot of fun fishing there and i'd be able to train some too like i i like training with new people i'm always training with like the same people over and over sometimes it's a nice little change you know yeah yeah uh dave what else is going on man we had flea mayweather had his cap stolen by one of the brothers which one well i can't even keep up i think it was jacob what's the other one logan logan i'm not sure which one i thought i would imagine jake right yeah like it's like it's a pretty lame move to walk in with face off with a hat there you go you got you got to be i mean you got to foresee these things you know but you know i saw one of the girls do this too yeah where she was wearing a cap it was a ufc yeah i saw the strategic value in it because some dudes when i go like lip to lip which yeah this is always weird if you're like are you gonna kiss me what are you gonna do if you have the cap it kind of creates a little buffer yeah it's like okay you can't get that close the cap's gonna get in the way yeah i always found that strange like the whole like i understand you're trying to show you're not scared of the guy so i'm gonna go right up into your grill and look at you but like at a certain point you start getting home or rather yeah yeah i know because you're like very close to kissing a guy and that happened once where i saw a video i was like i don't want to youtube or like instagram whatever it was but the guy actually got close close and he did like you know just get to kiss him and then the other guy just clocked him oh that wasn't pride i think yeah he just clocked him like he just dropped him like yeah i think it was a japanese guy and he was that big english guy i remember correctly i don't remember i remember he dropped it was like hey man you earned that oh no he's herring he thought i think yes it was right yeah the guy tried to get cute with him he's like nope oh man no that's i can never i i've always done the stereotype because people don't like to do it and i know it doesn't necessarily make you feel here's the thing about that stare down that people don't get because i've had it done to me and i realize what it does you're looking for weakness in your opponent yeah right and the thing is it's not hard to start someone it's not that hard no right but you're if you sense anything it doesn't mean the person that is looking down or weight is scared but sometimes it does something to your own self-esteem so maybe you're scared and then you see that person looking down or away and you go oh i feel great i'm not i might have told this story here already it's possible we've talked about everything under the sun on this podcast i remember like brazilian nationals 2004. i won my weight class in the open that year right and we had 10 fights one day i won like i think all of them by submission except this one it was a semi-final 10 fights in one day yeah five in my weight class five in the open and i beat some big names that day too so it was like it was like the week before i got my black it was right before i won my black belt we won brazza was like three points behind btt and because i won the open it was the last fight of the night we won the whole tournament so it's like a big day right but the guy beating the semifinal i'm not going to mention his name but like he he won two weight classes above i believe a one-way class above like he's a big name and what happened was i could see i i had won my weight class right and i'm thinking okay i won my weight class i'm third in the open like podium syndrome you know i'm on the podium twice like not bad result i was happy i was sort of accepting the fact that i was going to lose this guy because he was heavier than me was very good and he had won his weight class pretty sure he did and i'm thinking probably gonna lose my luck was i had a hoodie on so he couldn't really see my facial expressions like was [ __ ] in my pants i'm sort of i was very tired from my previous match too and i could see this guy he's kind of like checking me out he's looking me over right he's going like you're measuring me up like head to toe and i can see wait a second like you couldn't quite see me as well as i could see him right and i can see that this guy was nervous too and i can't explain what it did to me he did something in my confidence once i realized that he was also nervous it shot my confidence through i i was i was walking in there to lose in my head in the back of my mind i wasn't gonna win but it did something my confidence seeing that he was as nervous as i was and then i became very confident right i think the stare down does serve a purpose to not to let your opponent gain any more confidence i think that's what's going on there it's not so much that you're scared because i've always looked away i don't think he was scared but i think that unwillingly he might have been boosting his opponent's little bit or at least his self-esteem and confidence because it's shaken you know your doubt as if i don't know how experienced you are and i've had like very successful like champions admit this to me like everyone's scared yeah there's no one in there who's not scared everyone's doubted am i going to win is this guy better than me did he train harder like what's going to happen everyone is doubting themselves anything that makes you feel a little bit better is a lot yeah you know it's a game of inches for sure and yeah so famous fighters never looked at people like fedor always looked down never stare down so like you're right it doesn't mean like oh you're you're out you know but there is something like if i'm staring at you and you're staring at me and then you look down it's like oh you feel better yeah you feel better yeah but i think there's also it's just a more there's also like a primitive connection to it because the animal kingdom is the same thing yeah if you stare a wolf down oh you better get ready because it's coming at you yeah it's a sign of aggression for most animals you know if you stare at them right so i think we're no different you know so if you lock eyes with somebody and you look away yeah that's why they tell you like if you're going to stare someone down never look back if you don't want to play the game just look down yeah because even then i feel it's kind of like with a they tell you the silverback gorilla is the same thing they say never look them in the eyes because that's a challenge so you always look down but if i'm looking down and you're the silverback you see me as submissive yeah right so i would see that as the guy who's trying to engage in the stare down the guy won't even engage with me he's afraid to play the game to begin with yes you know so there is definitely a psychological component to it i think it's a point i always tell all my fighters look right through that [ __ ] yeah it's very very animal man and you look him dead in the eye too not like his cheek not his nose more like dead in the eye and i remember the first time someone did that to me it was roger man he was staring at me like right before did you know him does that no one ever done that to me before and he did he's like holy [ __ ] this guy's serious man and i was second like it was after the match that i realized like how serious this is the final of the world championships this is serious yeah but in my head it's like oh we're doing jiu jitsu you know the finals like and then you can see that there was like an intensity there that i was it was a lesson too it's like oh man this is serious [ __ ] here like this guy will hurt me if he has to to win yes and he would and i would too like you know it's like it is serious but like if i have to you know almost kill you to win i don't want to kill anyone but like if i have to break your arm leg or anything like to win i'm gonna do it and it's terrible but that's the reality of combat and i think that the eye contact as prime was it it's we don't like to admit this animal side but they're deep down man there's there's an animal in there i don't know we just don't like to talk about it because it's like politically correct or whatever it's you know we're in denial about it we're smarter than that just watch your own behavior man watch it closely you're way more champ than you'd like to admit yeah we just have a lot of vocabulary a lot of gains but like behind everything it's like a primitive impulse that they're going to learn how to talk that was it you know yeah but i do agree the intent i think that's the other benefit that you get from staring someone in the eyes you kind of get a measure of somebody when you when you look at them you know and that confidence that you said you gained is it reminded me of something that i would do in competitions when i would be wrestling somebody or fighting them or grappling whatever it was i would listen for the breathing yeah when i hear some yeah i'm like okay i got you yeah so i always felt like it it kind of humanizes them right yes if if you were fighting somebody for like five minutes and they're like breathing at all yeah oh [ __ ] like this guy's a robot yeah he's got a lot in the tank you know but like if he's breathing hard and or if he's breathing in my mind they were always breathing harder than me yeah right but it probably was the same or not but like as long as you hear that there's a little confidence but it's like okay he's tired too you know like my favorite is like right when you're like you're struggling to pass someone's guard and it's that battle that goes on for like two three minutes trying to pass and you finally pass and hear them go yeah they're like oh my god it's so hard and it's so funny because you do it unconsciously everyone does you probably i don't think i've ever caught myself doing but i'm sure i do it too because i'm not aware of it yeah but like i've even told myself in the past like man you gotta be more aware of how you breathe and not just your facial expressions too many grappling like do you look like you're suffering you don't want to show that right because that gives him he's about to break and then he sees you breaking he keeps going yeah right this thing is so much more psychological than people think because this is hyper focus on technique which is to me a third of the equation it's super important i'm not denying that third but it's almost like there's a laser like focus on that when it comes to the grappling community and there's very little i mean condition everyone accepts it as well right but it's not there's nothing much focus on what we think about people understand it's important but when it comes to all this the mindset like the poker face the confidence that the self-esteem that you build like to me that's a probably bigger number in the equation because when i look at champions let's say jujitsu let's just stick to jiu-jitsu you look at someone like everyone from jacare to rafael mendes to mike mucho messi to lucas i mean you name your champion right how similar are they technically not at all they're completely different right you see some guys are saying okay follow me i was identical to romeo okay you know in every way they they you know they're not only they grapple like they have the same style right or even mutual messages that are very similar style of them but there is an enormous even like amongst the same weight classes like bruno morphosini and mike which match are completely different there's a huge variety of like technical expertises right and they're all champions so to me the common denominator cannot be the technique because you get this this this the hype it creates an idea it creates the myth that this style is the dominant one right because there's so much like instagram on and the algorithm just shoots [ __ ] through the roof and people under the impression that this is the best method right because these guys are all winning and then when you look at champions you look at the facts you forget the hype and you forget the algorithm you look at what's happening the broader picture you see that people have a variety of styles and they're all successful so to me the common denominator is cannot be the technique what's what did they have in common because their tanks are completely different how they grapple it has to be the mindset like what is it that makes you not quit when the time comes for you to quit like there's you know there's a choice are you gonna quit you're gonna go hard what are you gonna do and like some people fold some people keep going and i i've seen this like so many i don't know if there's a method to change that but to me that should be i think that's the biggest number in the equation man like the more i think about it i don't think that there's a way to i don't know if there's a way to fix it or change it you can improve on it but it's a very personal question like because you seem self boycott how many times have you seen that yeah you know people are phenomenal on the mat and they just like when the time comes they're just like i'm not good enough to do this and they talk to talk and they train the train like they they're there man like they they do everything correctly and when the time comes something happens it's something way in there man and i don't know if it can or can't be fixed it can be improved on i suppose but yeah that's why they call it like or as masculine call it game bread right he even got himself a tattoo on his neck for that but i i think it's something that's developed but it's tricky to teach it right it's kind of like i can't teach you humility by reading your textbook yeah you have to learn humility the hard way yes i can't teach you how to be tough by telling you oh this is what a tough guy does yeah and i gotta put you through what tough people go through yeah and you have to get through it you know so you have to earn it it's funny because i tell a profile at a time like i can solve all your problems if you train martial arts yeah but i don't want to get hurt i'm like well it kind of comes to the territory you know like because i can't tell you these things and like oh you understand it because everybody then would be you know humble tough like if it was easier to learn those lessons but you have to go through the struggle or that physical endeavor and then you learn inherently how to be tough because you did what tough people do yeah or you learn humility because you've been humbled and now you oh you get a different perspective so i think with when it comes to the competition mindset if you're sheltered for a very long time from challenging yourself then you develop this fear a lot of people are just scared of you know finding out something right and that's like an insecurity you know versus or some people just they're just always insecure and that's that's a lot of people nowadays and i think the whole social media thing doesn't make things easier because you see so many studs and incredible men and women out there and then you look in yourself and most of us usually look at ourselves worse than we are right like especially competitors i know whenever you compete if you judge your own performance it's just like oh i did [ __ ] oh i can't watch my match yeah it gives me anxiety i cannot watch myself grapple but you always think you did worse than you did yeah like what's like if a fighter loses the first thing they're going to tell you i'm sorry like no you're sorry for it yeah you know but like everybody judges himself harder you know we have that inner judge in ourselves that's always like critiquing everything it's good in a way but like in moderation right oh i i always say this like you want anxiety over the future you never want anxiety over the past the past is a lesson you can only learn from there's absolutely nothing else that's good for just it's like it's like dead weight you're carrying got to get rid of it anxiety of the future is good if it's channeled if you use it in a positive way to create right as long as you're not just like oh [ __ ] what's going to happen the world economy tomorrow and you sit on your ass all day and do nothing about it but if you have that anxiety and you're making moves to prepare yourself for you know future great depression or whatever yeah that's a good anxiety you have well actually i'm convinced that nature put that there for a reason i don't think it's there for no reason it's like get prepared [ __ ] like shit's about to hit the fan yeah we're about to starve like we're out of game what are you gonna do so you want that anxiety am i gonna be able to find something to eat tomorrow it makes you try hard it makes you wake up early in the morning to go get you know kill an animal if that's what you have to do um where the anxiety of the past is what i feel most of us suffer from like we just it's hard for people to let go of it like i i know like things that i've done in the past or like mistakes that i've made that haunt me and i'm like [ __ ] man i just gotta let that go you know and i think i've been better over the years but like it does i think we all do that like you just hold on to things it's just dead weight there's nothing you can do about it i think what it's a very good point about i haven't heard it phrase like that i like that a lot and i think the anxiety that you have over the past or in general everybody does is something that's unresolved yeah right so like something that bothered you that you did in your pa in your past and you haven't really confronted fully what is it that bothered you about it like or what you could have done better what was the true learning lesson that you could have got from it and our brains don't like patterns or problems are not solved that's why like you give someone like a paradox that's like i was like what the hell like how do you solve this thing yeah you know like i heard this one which is funny and he goes okay answer this question yes or no is the next word that you're going to you have to say yes or no is the next word that you're going to say is no and then it's like yeah yeah there's no right way to answer it's a tricky question right right so we don't like those type of lingering things in our head so i think when you have stuff in your past that like it like haunts you yeah it's like you haven't fixed it yet right and when they're trivial it's not a big deal but like people who have like massive like chronic problems i think they tend to subdue that with drugs alcohol crazy activities yeah they try to indulge that but it's still there you know like it's not tackled yes yeah those problems don't go away like they and they tend to manifest in different ways you know like they'll like i mean we're getting a little in the weeds but there's people who manifest like physical pain from emotional stress and uh there was a study that was interesting that in car accidents here in the u.s people usually experience like whiplash and back pain and neck pain but in other countries they experience pain in their ankles and you know in their legs interesting but it's like a so they're trying to say it's the same traumatic incident but we're expressing pain differently and the idea was perhaps it's not all actually physical but it's just mental like we deal with high stress activities by giving yourself pain in different areas yeah from oxygen decoration or whatnot so moral of the story is like you have to ask yourself those hard questions do the inner reflection and figure out what is it about this thing that's not letting me let go because that is the analogy you're holding on to it right like that stress or that anger or the the sadness that keeps you up at night or whatever that's something that you're holding on to it's like you grab you're holding a knife in your back you know it's like it's it's um you know and sometimes it's like you're not forgiving yourself like you've done something wrong it's like you have to forgive yourself it depends what level of conscience you have i guess because if you're a sociopath it's almost like a biological advantage because you don't feel any guilt you just can do it again and it benefits you yeah that's what a social path that he smiles at you give me your money he steals from you right because you trust them and then they they take that they do that to you whatever and they can do it again to the next person because there's no guilt yeah right so i think that you know social path might be a biological advantage in terms of how you how well you do in the world depend depending what you mean by success of course uh but like i think that a lot of this is like not the inability to forgive ourselves with things we've done in the past with mistakes we've made or things that we keep thinking we should have done this differently done this i should have done that right and this is what i tell myself it doesn't work that well but it works a little bit i did what i thought at the time was the best thing to do therefore i shouldn't regret it right at that time i i sound like i wanted to choose the wrong thing to do i wanted to do what i felt was the best thing for that circumstance for those for that particular problem or issue and that kind of helps a little bit okay i you know i'm not captain i can't you can't go back and i should have done this that doesn't help you right so you just got to let go of it and use that as a list and i always try to say this to my students when you lose a tournament it's on you you can do two things you can blame the referee for being brazilian you can do that sure you can of course you can in the rules oh it's the master of slippery bling the weather blame the you can do all these things right how much progress do you make yeah zero or you can get that anxiety that that that that that frustration is like break it down analyze and like what did i do wrong that i can do better in the future so i don't repeat this mistake right but it's all you can do it's very easy to say it was for some reason it's i feel like even myself as much as i say this i i find myself doing not following my own advice it's not an easy thing to incorporate into your behavior and it's not just for yourself that you have to forget because some people get wronged by somebody right yeah and then it's like oh and someone would tell you oh you need to forgive them like oh i can't right like i always say like the forgiveness is not for them it's for you right if someone wronged you you have to realize that you made yourself vulnerable to this person you created mistakes yourself to allow someone into your life that ended up hurting you so there's a responsibility on your own that you have to take like hey you know i kind of allowed this situation to happen you know like if if someone scanned me in the car he i had to go to this person and trust that he was gonna give me the card i made a mistake in judgment of this person's character i mean so and the forgiveness is not that this guy is an [ __ ] like it doesn't matter i'm probably never gonna see this guy ever again right it's for me i need to say i need to be able to you know what i need to be able to just let this guy go yeah it's like hey yeah no one if you're hated you don't feel a thing like no one cares nobody's hate to give the [ __ ] it's the person who hates yeah that that the person was resentful like you know um that's the person like you it's it's something i i've been saying this like sometimes you know being a gym owner in jiu jitsu it's so it's so political man it's like there's constantly someone trying like there's never a day where someone's not going to try to peck at you you know there's always someone trying to think and i and it's over the years back [ __ ] like what's the right thing to do here right do you and i'm you know what man i just focus on me i'm gonna focus on what i do best and let the chips fall where they may and i can find like it's so much easier to do with things now because you can't control everything you can't do people do you just got to focus on what you do do what you like be happy about it smile as much as you can and don't worry about every single little outcome because they're not going to win all fights but if you sink your teeth into what you really love and you're passionate about and you do it you know with you don't try to be ethical along the way you're not gonna be perfect but do your best that's it man and then and then and and that right there kind of eliminates it makes the [ __ ] not as sticky as it could be when people show throw crap at you you know it's kind of like kind of just bounces off you know versus oh [ __ ] i gotta carry this around too you know um but i actually learned that in like a lot of these lessons man like i know that the maps are supposed to be this great light people stereotype it a lot like it's this great place to learn lessons but i think a lot of it is accurate man like a lot of the problems you're gonna have they you have those same lessons on the mat sure this is why i'm such a fan of competition man like when i see this i call it the culture of participation medal it's a cancer man like you're they're private no way to compare it like a child they can't lose you can't let the child suffer don't let them suffer yeah don't let them cry it's like depriving a child from developing the immune system don't develop an immune system no no back down we're gonna have no bacteria in the world we have a world with no bacteria that's not gonna work buddy that's not and i think a lot of like political correctness is an attempt to eliminate bacteria they're trying to prevent like you're gonna have these things now you can only learn how to deal with it right it's really weird uh because back in the day if you were liberal you were all about free speech oh my god don't get me started with those yeah and so now it's like we're trying to subvert speech i was just saying this to a student of mine this morning we were having the same conversation it goes i never in my life would have thought that the left would be the one attacking free speech because historically it taught me the opposite yes progressive have always been the ones battling for free speech right the serious ones at least and you know i i've been a liberal for most of my life but like i can't identify myself with that i just don't i just like well if that's that's what you guys okay i'm whatever you guys are i'm not because i don't i don't want to be put in that category because i think it's absurd i think i think we're even racist you should let them speak i want them out i want them in the spot i want to find out who they are exactly and then you let if the the ideas they're not and they're not good ideas i think that most people in the 21st century are going to look at that this is anti-scientific this is dumb yeah you know but like when you're depriving them from speaking you're going oh maybe they have something to say then because why else would you want to shut them up yeah you know and it's a major attack on freeze i i don't and someone said to me that they're like oh but you're free to say whatever you want but you're not free to deal with the concept but you're but you're you have to deal with the consequences right or something like that well that's true in the soviet union too yeah right you can say i mean so you could you could attack stalin stalin's uh he's a murderous piece of [ __ ] you could have done that and then you're going to die in a good one yeah but you can do you can say it it's just that the level of punishment in the west is not the same so today if you say something politically right you're not going to go to a gulag but you might destroy your professional career right or something like that because people will attack you so it's the level of punishment that has changed but the pc patrol like i see stalinists like commissars like like borderline fanatics that cannot handle an opinion that they don't like you know and i i'm not i'm not wanting to say that oh hate is good i don't want to hate why would i want to carry for the same reason i just gave i want to carry that around but if i wanted to i should be free to hate the state or anyone else is not in a position to determine how i feel because if the state is a position determine how i feel about hate it is also the position to determine how i feel about love it's in the position to determine how i feel about anything yeah it cannot no one should have that power how i feel is up to me i'm an adult right but what they're trying to do is oh you can't feel that anymore like yes i can and i should be able to verbalize if i wanted to personally i think it's a waste of time and energy to attack people for their religion or the color of their skin i got a better thing to do with my time is anti-scientific anyway but if i wanted to you should have the freedom to do it it's just like 1984 yeah right where they discovered that if you're able to control well at least the book says it but i believe that if you're able to control the vocabulary that people are able to use yes you get to control how they think they double speak yeah exactly wrong think and this and stuff right so it's very true and that's why i tell people like in jiu jitsu learn the names of the moves because if you don't know the names of the move you can't really remember it that well i remember i had an incident once where i was coaching one of my blue belts and he didn't know a hip over sweep or hip bump sweep and he was in a perfect opportunity to do it i'm like hey pump pam pop and then he looked at me like confused i was like oh this would be complicated okay left hand on the back post your hips up i managed to coach him through it and then he won the match with it and then okay that's a hip bump remember yeah right yeah but the language the language is important like and this has been a huge gap in brazilian jiu jitsu um the fact that we've never named anything like and i meant i mentioned this in the book that jiu jitsu has always lacked a technical canon like an original curriculum like judo they establish a curriculum they they lock it down with akata meaning katai this is our main corpse right this is the main body of what we do um of course but like does the body what we do but like after that they expanded to you know what they call creative judo competitive judo whatever but they have a cannon that's fixed right brazilian just kind of never had that's always been open which is to its advantage in many ways because by the more open it is the more welcoming it is to new ideas that's why it's able to incorporate so much on the other hand you have to probably just describe people don't name anything you go to every gym around the world they have like their own names like every time like i go to a gym like rob what about the m guard it's like there's a guard for every like letter in the alphabet i'm like what are you talking about oh it's the the guard you know zyx or whatever yeah i can't keep up with it so many little grilled chicken guard i'm like what i can't deal with this anymore man you guys it's got to stop this madness and then they show me something it's always like something that's like been around forever it's like an open guard it's a delahiva or it's it's it's always something that you've seen amelia it's never something really new but they're just trying to sell dvds so they got to brand it which i get but i think that has hurt jiu jitsu a lot that we can't agree on names but anyway that was completely total tangent there dave i'm sorry we're talking about something else but yeah no i mean it's it's it's a good point because i even myself like sometimes like people ask what's the name of that move i'm like i don't have a different move i just go you know it makes it makes it difficult because a lot of times if you're like trying to describe a move to a friend it goes like this um how does it go it goes oh that move that so and so does which one oh that sweep he does some half guard all the time which one when he grabs the wrist oh the one way he grabs the waist oh okay oh although when he grabs you use like 50 words to describe the situation yes whereas if everyone agreed on what we're doing but think about it this way though in the terms of brazilian jiu-jitsu how could they have established an original canon when they were learning themselves like these guys are not started as grandmasters you got to remember like they were learning to they were incorporating as much as they could but i mean to establish maybe there was an original account you suppose you could have one in the original grace academy curriculum but it was very limited in comparison you know but that's they're not to blame for that either um yeah it's a tough one i don't think they could have i think things happened the way they had to have i don't think they could have done anything different but judo had like a different birth that's why i was able to establish that from the beginning right and if you look at it hasn't changed that much was there in the beginning it's still there right now it hasn't really been that modified i mean i don't think it'd been modified at all i wouldn't know outside of competitive judo um but yeah like i think that the the the the this uh this is her digits in a lot of ways but it's also been helpful and has a side effect keeping the cannon open is super important for creativity to take place and i would give credit to eddie bravo for his unique naming system because he's done he's done well in labeling like but it's kind of good in a way for him because if someone goes oh double crack head control i don't know the hell they were talking about but their language but that's the kind of name that comes up there is a crackhead control oh crackhead controls like crackhead control that's great but i don't know what it is but i know it's something right it's like zombie and that's but like but it's kind of genius because in their language they all understand clearly yeah they're still speaking english but they're speaking tenth planet yeah yeah it works but you have to you have to be friends so they could be coaching their guy and you're in front of them and you're like i don't know how he's saying i've had key words with my fighters before i was like okay this is what we're going to call this and that so your other corner and the other fighter don't pick up on it like that's smart you should have your own i mean it's not like it's secret you could probably find out what it is if you want to really be serious about studying your opponent yeah um but it is definitely helpful it is definitely helpful to have that but at the same time like you're gonna have to come up with new words because every time there's something new and there's always new stuff it's never that different right everything is just an adaptation of something older but i mean think about how many positions belong in brazilian juice curriculum i've written a curriculum for for zenith right i've done it like i i've struggled a lot yeah because you can't make it too broad but if you shorten it and make it accessible this is you know a curriculum i can use in class there's no way you're not leaving out 5000 moves with all their variations like and it's it's a beauty but at the same time it's almost like it's what gives it makes the martial arts so interesting but at the same time it's like there's no there's like a very loose order to it is what i'm saying it's a very chaotic kind of order it works in a very chaotic way but it's not very structured and it's i know because i like doing those mind maps and charts and all that oh you get lost with those if i try to put in every move just from like closed guard oh my god it's just going to be like a spider web and if you start studying what other people do that you don't do oh yeah and then you just like now it goes up exponentially because no one can know everything yeah and so then like if i and then let's say i did the time and i made my spider web oh here's the curriculum like what the [ __ ] and that's exactly the problem i had when i started was like i had to like leave a lot out so what did i focus on i try to focus on the most common things what are the top 10 from closed guard for example right but again even then you're super biased because you're always going to lean towards giving your own top ten yeah which may not be the actual top ten because we don't have statistics on all this so we don't really know right so you're giving your impression with the top ten from closed gardener right so you're leaving out all you know you don't even know what you're leaving out right so it's it's very arbitrary the whole thing and it's the whole thing is very it's a very weird kind of structure it's not like most systems you know that's kind of goes back to what we've talked about before which is the nature of mixed martial arts jiu jitsu it's so technical it's hard to pin down that's why like if you were to do a system for like basketball it would be a lot easier because there's so many more constraints you don't have as much you know free will in basketball like you have to dribble the ball you can't run and carry so like there's a limited amount of movements that you can make i'm sure it's a lot more complex than i would think it is but at a certain point it's not it's like boxing as well like boxing's complex but there's only so much you can do you have two punches you have your footwork head movement you know so it's easier for a spectator to follow it's easier to teach because there's not as much going on so like boxing like the higher level boxers just have they focus on those small details a lot better where most people they see the cross they just see the upper body work yeah you know the technician has the hips the legs and you know moving their weight but like in jiu jitsu there's so much you can do that like even just with one motion you can get lost you know in the weeds just because there's so many possibilities so i think it makes it hard to create that like as you would say that perfect curriculum because it's it'll just be like infinitely large and this is why i have a hypothesis that's people with ocd have they could struggle a lot in martial arts like especially like for these reasons because they like structure people that have that sort of mindset like i like and it's hard because you're kind of you know it in jiu-jitsu it's i call it orderly chaos that's what i call it that's what you're doing there's there's an order to it like you're trying to pass you don't want to get caught in a triangle there are rules yeah but they're so flexible like every single rule in there like sometimes like oh you never want to get caught in a triangle no sometimes like you actually that might be the right thing to do you know like if i were training with like i keep training with a guy like halfway mendez or michael's you want to walk into la hiva you're better off like walking in with that over under passage like i'm a big guy it'd be hard to put me in a triangle very odd example i know but yeah i'm just trying to be to the extreme here but my point is there are so many exceptions you can't really have rule like tell he's like he's the weirdest guy in the world he made a korean given his back and i've trained with taylor he's been back in the day he was murdering people i'm not going to mention names but every single guy on the team was getting tapped i tell he's the same one and it was like you can't go to this guy's back it's the weirdest thing in the world you know and so like who's going to say he's wrong you know like what's wrong so it makes it very difficult to create a hierarchy like the closest thing to it are statistics is you can find like what are the most common ones and then you can base your curriculum off of that unfortunately there's very little on it there's this guy in university in brazil i've been talking to him he's been collecting a lot of data and he starts trying to i even talked about maybe cooperating with him doing something together in the future um where like we can have like a book just on statistics on jiu-jitsu tournaments because that's the only way you're gonna get close not perfect but you get as close as you can to an actual system that is not based off of hype and impressions and fashion yeah it is based off of facts i always remember that movie moneyball you've seen it right yeah yeah they go yeah forget what you think man you're wrong all the time i don't care how wise you are how experienced you are you're gonna be wrong gotta look at the numbers it's the only thing it's the only thing that's that's gonna come close to the reality of what's happening yeah otherwise you're just gonna be biased based on what you're 100 what you're looking at yeah because i mean i know they've done studies at least with acc since kind of a very limited set of data you know you can get the highest finishing submissions or whatnot but i mean what there's been like maybe 10 or 1280 cc's and yeah so it's not a big it's a very small pool yeah a small pool and the rules are also somewhat particular so like excuse you know what moves are going to work well i imagine rear naked jokes will speed up i would imagine that's by far the number one just because of the back take a loophole you know so uh but ibgf and stuff like that that would add more value to it but yeah i imagine it would be an immense amount of of work and it varies from weight class to weight class and it varies and that's what this guy was having problems i was talking like it varies on a female division dramatically like and it varies from bell to bell and you have to be specific for every weight class and every belt and gender and h because it varies too like there are some consistencies my guess and i would be willing to put a lot of money on this back is number one naked choke nogi and bow and arrow on the g like an arm bar probably close tie there to those toes too but i mean but that there's variation for example how many de la hiva sweeps do you think you see in the ultra heavyweight division close to none right the sweeps are completely different right and in the lightweight division how many closed guard sweeps you see you don't see a lot they don't play a lot of closed guard and they the rooster weight division they're very open guard oriented right so these numbers are gonna if i were to create a perfect system for teaching first i need all that data which we don't have doesn't exist second i would have to have a class per weight class per gender per age per belt rank that's what i have you'd have to have like 12 classes a couple of you separate and you have to train them completely differently that's the that's the i don't know this is true but i heard in corto con in japan they have it they haven't i don't know if it's true this might be apocryphal i have no idea yeah but they have rooms for like specializing in each kind of technique like they have they kind of have that separation right so make sense it's not like football you know you have you know defensive teamwork and you have the offensive it's a different kind of work you can't make them practice the same way right but then you run into the problem of resources i'm one instructor i have one small gym the gem you know like gyms are not that profit i can't afford to hire a team of experts like you know have eight coaches and not we're not the nfl yeah so but like if you wanted to get serious about it and this is why like when people think that you know this guy's got it down to each other's guys i mean we're just scraping the surface no one's got this down because no one's doing that everyone's recipe right now is the same go roll train war which is the most important thing but we could be channeling all that energy into a more intelligent direction like how do we focus our energy and to be the most efficient grapplers we can be right now there's not a lot of that going on it's all like go roll because everything any kind of system or method you try to create it is entirely based off speculation and assumptions because we don't have data yeah but we can i mean you can get even further in the weeds because it also depends on the type of person you're going to compete against too right like well i know like i remember once in particular with maspidol he was gonna fight with felson south in georgia this is way back like you know and raphael is short relatively compared to george so i'm like george he's probably going to take you down if he takes it down since you're so much longer than him he has to stand up to pass there's no way he'll be able to pass your guard you're just too tall so when he stands we're working flower sweeps we're working back sweeps and worked every time it happened exactly as you predicted right because we game plan for that particular guy right so like that then that's when the fight canvas always have been tailored towards your opponent you know but this is the problem when people have a too specialized game because everyone this is a common question beginners are asking they go rob should i specialize in one thing i'll be good at everything and i've always preferred to be good i'm i'm mediocre at everything oh no you're exactly i'm really mediocre at everything but i can do everything with mediocrity right like there's i don't have a lot of holes in my you put me almost any position i can hang but i'm not really great at anything i always wanted to learn that way because i think it makes you a better teacher the other hand if i'm in a situation like this like i can let's say i don't play a lot of half court but i got some half guard but half guard is what i need to know to beat a certain opponent like what you're describing i'm gonna be a lot faster to adapt to that because i already have a background in that right on the other hand you see some of the best scrappers or best fighters in history and they're like one trick ponies man like you you look at them they don't have all they defend everything well but offensively they're very simple everybody's like you know caleb sanders an ankle pick yamashita roger the roger's got like six moves yeah i'm serious like you can we can count them like you can you can count like in two handedly got maybe 10 moves that he does consistently right it's very unique but at the same time like if you ever happen to have someone that has your kryptonite you're not gonna have a lot of defenses if you are unable to impose that from the beginning right and that's that happens in fights with people but there's always like some people in sports or feel like they're so ahead of the competition that they're just so dominant for a short period of time no one's that dominant for that long right but for a short period of time it's like it's almost like they're invincible you know like i've seen that they have like there's a moment there where you just you have no rivals and it's very rare it's very and i don't like that by the way i think that's very detrimental to the culture when someone is that good i think it's better that we're in constant competition with each other that's what advances the game for sure if i beat you every single time dave you would eventually just stop trying yeah you know what i'm saying like there has to be like a response there has to be a conflict in both ways in both ways because you're like i don't have to change anything yeah i just keep doing what i'm doing it works yeah exactly and i would i would be a detriment you would be a detriment and the overall culture is at a detriment because there's no evolution there's nothing yeah always like something like roger is like crosstrek always works why would you learn something new yeah yeah you know it really is detrimental but like you occasionally get someone that's that good and it's a rare rare occasion man and i i it's like yeah it's mindset but it's it's all these things we talked about man but there is a genetic component too that's like the one everyone hates talking about it but it's so obvious it's all the combination of all these things and how they relate to one another in your environment all of that yeah i think now more than especially like in mma jiu jitsu when we when this sport started like mma particularly like in the 90s the people fighting weren't truly uh gifted specimens right i mean joyce gracie is not a athletic freak you know keith hackney and and severan they were they were all you know fit but nobody was like not francis ninganoo not francis nagano yeah you got a guy like francis like oh you would throw him in early ufc and he probably would have done really well with zero training just because of that pure physicality that he has now you add all the skill and stuff like yeah now like i always say that go people oh the size of the matter it does it when athletic ability i i stopped seeing size because sometimes size can be a detriment you can be like a big fat blob and not be able to move that's not going to help you yeah you know it's more like what is your level of athletic ability because if you're big and you can hit hard now yeah you're dangerous just because you're big doesn't mean you hit hard correct correct so that is true athletic ability is a better way of phrasing it yeah somebody with extreme athletic ability will handle a lot of people even not as technically skilled as him right so in the beginning we didn't have many of those if any like i think detour is probably one of the first people that came in the ufc and he was studying everybody because 18 year old kid but just built like a freaking greek god yeah but now the sport has attracted all these athletes because there's more money there's more game so now if you're trying to come in there like joe schmoe like uh the the bar is already set here like you need to be this athletic to ride and you're here you know i was like sorry you we're dealt uh unfortunate hand of cards where you're you don't possess the athletic ability to be able to compete yeah you know uh and that's not to say nobody can but it's just much much much more difficult you have to make up with other things you know it's kind of like that movie that you like to reference uh let's say what is it about the one where a guy in the world that everybody's genetically enhanced oh god i gotta go yeah yeah you're gonna have to have that level of commitment to overcome all these physical advantages yeah exactly like anyone could i mean you you'd have to be yeah and sometimes that's a gift too that's a good i think i don't think anyone's equally willed well you remember in that movie there's a quote uh that i'm gonna butcher but he was talking to the brother because you remember they do this little swim race yeah yeah and the brother is gifted and he's not he's genetically enhanced yeah and he beats his brother and swim and ends up saving him from drowning and then it's like how come you're you're beating me you know like he was mentally stronger because he was handicapped yes if i was gifted i wouldn't have to be as mentally strong you would assume that you were going to win yeah yeah i would just yeah and i'm always supposed to it's such a good movie man that movie is good on like many levels but that goes kind of to the point too sometimes being you know and we've seen it all the time someone who's naturally talented yeah they don't try as hard they don't try as hard it drives me crazy yeah and i tell people this all the time like that's why like who are the most technical people in jiu jitsu no light weights yeah right they have to try harder they have to try harder because if i'm a big brute i can like just do this and i hurt you right and then i know that so i'm like oh that's all i have to do yeah i don't have to like go all fancy i just do whatever i can and i win when i'm the lightweight i have to be perfect with my technique to get a finish or to be successful so i always have to have that discipline you know i think there's also a physical component i think just being that big makes it harder to coordinate your body you know i mean like where you're at a detriment yeah and i was like because i always thought that whenever i said it people look at me like i'm crazy especially because i'm a big guy so i'm like oh you i'm the last one to talk right so but i was like remember abu dhabi once and i was a henzo and henzo said and i'm like oh because he said jiu jitsu is harder for big people yeah and everyone i thought he was out of his mind i'm like i agree the bigger you are or the more athletic for that matter the harder it is because just because you're winning doesn't mean you're learning it means you're winning but what is your purpose here to feel good or to evolve very different things yeah because if you're just winning maybe you feel good but they may know you evolution now you're getting your ass kicked you're not winning but you're evolving so when you walk into the gym you need to answer that question am i here to win or to evolve and they're not always on the same sometimes you're winning and evolving but not always and if you have that north of evolution i think the winning is a consequence yes but the thing is for someone like francis and conor someone's incredibly gifted you have to have an enormous amount of self-awareness to be able to continue to be continuously learning versus just you know being able to just bully people around i'm winning there for i am i am good enough right kind of thing that's the level of humility the level of humility yes and it's a very hard thing to do because you've been winning your whole life you know i acknowledge that you're just incredibly gifted and that you could be a lot better this is why to me like guys like gsp are so incredible like you know could be because i have no doubt they're like also genetic freaks but they have you can see this the kind of guy i can guarantee i don't i've never met any i met gsp once but never met a big but if they were in my gym and i show them move i can guarantee you they'll be paying attention yeah because you can see that they're humble enough to like i don't know [ __ ] about [ __ ] whereas like you know the guy who's all a lot of these guys that have that talent it's precisely because they're so talented is [ __ ] them because they lack what you said yeah the humility to acknowledge that you're always a student no and uh i think you look at someone like uh nagano his origin story if you will it it makes it easier to understand why he's so humble you know he came from she met him i don't know him that well but yeah well he had to go through hell to get i know he was like like a legal immigrant in europe right he had to like cross the boat yeah they crossed the deserts and stuff like that i was like oh he had a crazy ordeal so like you know for him i imagine he must be here and be it sounds from what i heard of the podcast he's just super grateful all the time so when you have that gratitude mindset yeah it makes life so much easier you know why because there's merit and merit is the biggest booster self-esteem is the most important thing in life in my opinion like how you feel about yourself because it doesn't matter if you're poor rich sick or not sick or healthy it doesn't matter you're gonna feel good about yourself how do you build self-esteem through merit if for instance and god had been born you know living next door to the ufc pi and he were like dana white's son i don't think he would have made it to begin with and if he did he probably feel like a smaller sense of appreciation humility and merit yeah you know but when you it's like someone was born rich like where is the pride and the and the the self-satisfaction of making money when you were already born really rich it probably doesn't feel the same where when you're born poor every person i've known that built themselves up from nothing they have a sense of self-esteem and confidence that is far superior than the rich little brat who may have more money than him but he knows deep down he didn't do [ __ ] yeah you know what i'm saying it it's much harder i think uh it's just like being the son of a great athlete you know it's like you have big shoes to fill now yeah i mean and uh a lot of it you might think people will from the outset think oh he's going to be naturally great because he is that is a major champion all that but you have that additional pressure now and maybe you don't want to fall in the footsteps or like i think it's more difficult you know like it's always difficult to fill someone's shoes you know especially when you're expected to yeah you know because now it's like i'm being forced into this path you know versus kind of like when you inherited a fortune of money you know and without having to really work for it for yourself it's tricky you know that's why like you have to have a very unique upbringing yes you know to be able to i mean your dad should be if you don't have good parents that will like teach you the value of every dime it goes south and i've seen that up close man i i i know people and you know dad thinks it's a great idea to buy a brand new car when you're 18 you know or whatever i'm like it's not going to it never does because they don't value anything you know it's kind of like me handing you a black belt like let's say you never trained before and i just hand you a black belt how do you feel about that black belt what does it mean to you but if you know you've paid the cost you paid your dues and you killed yourself to have that position like no one can ever take that from you that sense of pride you carry it with you the day you receive your black from the day you die and no one could ever take that away yeah it's a priceless thing it's a priceless thing but it's only valuable because you struggled yeah it's so it's the struggle that you have to chase it's not the reward i always say that the hard work is the reward because reward with no struggle what does it mean yes it's true there's no meaning yeah right you've got it it's got to be hard it has to be difficult right um anyway uh dave i think we're past our hour yeah we're all over the place as usual yes sir yeah me and dave i think in the first 10 episodes i think we planned like okay we're going to talk about we had a list i think the first time like we got 10 topics like and it didn't work from the beginning we start one place and just yeah it is like the complete tangent but we just really literally wing it i think we normally start with like one topping we just go over the place but yeah went that way all right always a pleasure man all right likewise we'll see you guys next time all right thank you guys see you man next time [Music] ciao you