BTG 62 - Popped Ribs - My Specialty

Hey guys, what's going on? David Avlon with another episode of Breaking the Guard. And quite a bit of news uh transpired this week. So, let's go ahead and talk about it. First off, PFL has bought Bellator. So, Now, the possibility, which is funny because I was talking about it last episode about crossover fights. Well, that they made it happen. Right now, they're already teasing that they're going to have PFL champions fight the Bellator champions and there's going to be a whole new arrangement, which is going to be curious to see what happens because PFL also just had their world championships um this past weekend as well. Uh some of the key takeaways uh Olivier Aubin Mercier uh you know GSP's uh protege has won the title defeating Klay Collard and that's now his second time in the row winning the championship. Uh a mostly ground grappling uh fight. Not super exciting by all accounts but hey it's a million dollars. So he got that. Han Ferrer punched his way through through not surprisingly knocked out his opponent. You got the heavyweight title. Lissa Pacheco won hers. Uh Maggomed. Magome Chimeraov won his by guillotine choke and other fights of note. Derek Brunson made his debut in PFL in a catchweight fight and won a decision against Ray Cooper. Um, and Kyla Harris uh won her match against Aspen Lad uh to I think that was her return match uh into the PFL since her last season loss. So, uh now they've already teased that all these champions are going to start facing Bellator champions. So, again, interesting development. Uh, again, kind of on point with what I was talking about now that there's a possibility of these crossover title matches. And what I'm more interested to seeing, are they going to merge the two properties together and do away with the tournament format? They're going to keep the tournament format uh, and just run these two leagues separately, but you know, just do these crossovers. Is this going to mean now that PFL and as a result Bellator are gonna have more media presence and capture some more of the market share and perhaps take it away from the UFC? Uh, one would hope, right? Uh, again, I feel like if the UFC right now is the 800lb gorilla in the room that nobody is able to take out, if these small companies start working together to try to overcome them, that would definitely be a good thing, right? Like uh at least start more of these uh salary bidding wars, you know, that that would help for the fighters, right? That's my my thing really is I want to see the fighters have a better position uh to negotiate from. If the UFC holds all the cards, uh it doesn't bode well for the fighters, right? So, uh there is that in the MMA world. No UFC uh this week or I think next week as well. So, it's a cold season as far as the UFC is concerned. But, they do have um the a match up I'm very interested in coming up at the end of the year, which is going to be Oh, man. How the the name is just slipped my head right now. I'm going to cheat a little bit. Look at my phone because I should know this off the top of my head, but I don't know. I'm not seeing it here. Um, I'll get back to it later then. Uh, but what we do have on the grappling side of things, uh, ABCC trials in Oceanana and Asia just transpired and more the same, uh, a lot of returning faces. Isaac Mitchell uh, just won his uh, I think it was four or five matches. Four, yeah, five matches. four by submission and then he won his finals by decision. I actually did a breakdown which you'll probably see in the coming days on davidmma.com of one of his matches that was an interesting one. Uh some mistakes were made at his part. A lot of mistakes by his opponent. Some uh a crazy slime happened there. So if you haven't seen it and you have flow grappling, it is a good watch. But if not, you know, I'll break down some of the key parts of that fight uh in a few days. You'll probably see it. Uh, and uh, the other news in grappling is uh, the biggest star in grappling, which if you follow it, you probably know who it is, is Gordon Ryan, right? And he just uh, he was supposed to have a match this next weekend, I believe, right? And that was going to be the headliner for the who's number one. And then the following week, there's a UFC Invitational number five that he was also headlining, I believe. And unfortunately, he uh reported that he's out of those fights because he sustained a rib injury and he tried to train for a few days, couldn't come back. So, he's going to take the time off so he can recover and be able to prepare for ADCC, which is going to be next year in August. Of course, you have all the haters and everybody else commenting like, "Oh, you know, he's running away from the matchup, you know, um because he's going to fight Hulk, Lucas Barbosa." So, personally, I've had lots of rib injuries, right? I commented on on social media on this as well, like I've popped my ribs at least a dozen times. Uh unfortunately, it's not fun. There are uh degrees to the level of a subluxation, right, which is typically like first a lot of people know what what actually happens, right? You're not breaking a rib, right? I mean, if you broke a rib, that's a severe injury. Could potentially be threatening u mortal if a rib punctures your lung, right? So, and those from I've never had that before, but from what I've understood extremely painful. You would know if you had it. uh a rib subluxation basically you have your rib cage so your sternum your ribs come out and in between those um different ribs you have cartilage and intercostal muscle right so this mechanism I'm not super clear on whether it's a intercostal muscle that gets frayed the ligaments or tendons connecting to that or just a cartilage in between as well that gets torn either way. What ends up happening now is that your ribs are no longer stable and they're somewhat floating. So you have particularly usually be one rib that starts to wiggle around and that moving sensation does not feel good for you. And particularly for breathing, which you have to do the live, you take a deep breath, you cough, you sneeze, you know, anything like that, and it feels like you're getting stabbed, right? because it basically that rib is moving around a lot more when it normally wouldn't be. And depending of how much damage you have done, it could be from mild where you you just feel it like I know for me my partners will notice it because I'm I start grabbing my ribs a lot because I feel like one's moving around a bit or it could be severe where you know it's hard to even move or walk because when you start to twist that rib shifts out of position and it's just again like a short stabbing pain. So, uh, I saw some people saying, "Oh, it's not an excuse to to back out of a match or whatnot." Like, you can still fight with a rip pop. Uh, again, it depends. I've competed with my ribs pop. The ACC 2013, I had a rip pop. When I had my first my fight in Bog, I had a rip pop, but those were on the minor side, right? like I felt it but not enough where with adrenaline and you know combat like it wouldn't be a big deal but I've had ribs pop where you're just out. I can't train, can't do anything. I can I can't even run or you know walking's a challenge because it's just so severe. My guess is he's he was probably somewhere in between what I consider mild and moderate and maybe thought he can tough it out a little bit, but then probably saw that he wasn't getting any better. And I can tell you from experience, training with the rib injured will make it worse. And I've had it happen where I try to push through and what became one pop rib became two pop ribs, right? because I guess it's kind of like a domino effect where one starts getting weak and now you you the other one's compromised, right? Um so I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to push through pop ribs and unfortunately I've gone to doctors before, talked to PTS to try to see like if there was a cheat sheet on how to recover better and there isn't at least to my knowledge. If you know, let me tell me, right? Because I've asked it's just time. Uh, I've seen people who do the body wrap, which I've done as well, doesn't really do anything, right? Uh, you can't really contain it from the outside. Uh, that you could say it helps because by wrapping your ribs, you it's putting more heat uh as an insulating effect, those compression bands that people use. So, you could say you're promoting more blood flow to the area, which brings more nutrients. And maybe that's the case, but as far as the actual physical integrity, it's not going to really matter too much. So, unfortunately, all you can do for ribs is just wait and rest. I always tell people the same thing with any injury. Do as much as you can where you don't experience pain, right? And um you know, because again, that's going to promote blood flow and you're still working out a little bit. I feel mentally also keeps you engaged and makes you more motivated to recover better and faster, but at the end of the day, you can't accelerated that much, right? And ribs usually take anywhere from four to six weeks to finally set back in. And that's not scientific, right? That's just what I've observed personally. So, it is very frustrating, especially if you're an athlete and you're trying to compete and then you pop a rib. It's like, damn, what do you do? Right. Can't do much. So, I don't blame him. And I He said the mechanism of the injury was he was trying to do a misdirection back escape, which, you know, you're like twisting really fast, which makes sense because that's normally how they pop when you twist your your core one way too fast or against a lot of pressure. What is happening is that rather than rotating from your spine, right? So like your thoracic spine, middle middle back, you lack the ability to move there. So then your ribs finish the the twist, right? And that can put too much pressure on the ribs which causes them to pop. I know this because somebody uh I think it was actually on the app I mentioned before, the yoga for BJ, one of the instructors on that had a thing of ribs and talked about that mechanism and it clicked for It made sense because my back was very stiff. So basically, rather than twisting from your spine, you're twisting from your rib cage. Your rib cage is not designed to twist that much, causing you to pop your ribs. Uh, and I say this because I started doing the exercises on that course and I haven't popped the ribs since. And I got a lot more rotation ability where I could rotate more from the spine rather than having to utilize my my ribs to rotate. So, uh, if you're watching this and you've had rib issues before, the best thing you can do to avoid them is again, and not to have ribs pop is to do preventative maintenance, which is going to be working on your spine. Do uh a lot of twisting exercises. Again, if you join that app, yoga for BJ, it's definitely worth it. If you've seen I've done a little I actually do the warm-up I always do. So, if you want to avoid that and signing up for that course, you could just go and watch my beg yoga uh post that I put last week, I think, which has the exercises I do for that, right? Um, but that has definitely saved me quite a bit. So, uh, unfortunately for Gordon, now he's out of those cards, but unfortunately for, uh, Flow Grappling, he was the headliner for that card. And the UFC, the Fight Pass Invitational number five, he was also the headliner. So, they lost their big star, you know, just a week or two before the event. They haven't announced a replacement yet. They're still listing it as Ryan versus Barbosa. Um, so unless Nikki Running is stepping in this place, which I doubt, uh, it'll be curious to see who they put in. I know they have nominated to put in, uh, Bodini, uh, his teammate who won the ADCC the previous year. He would be a good candidate for sure. I think personally for me, it's a more entertaining matchup. Um, so I think as long as I he would probably be at a weight disadvantage. I think they say Barbosa is in the 230s and if I was guessing I would think John Carlo is probably the 200s maybe 210 at most. So there is a significant weight disadvantage but uh I think it does make a more entertaining matchup. In my head at least I have uh Gordon smashing uh Barbosa. So, Bodini having their weight disadvantage and not being as experienced, there definitely is there's going to be more action going on in that matchup, I believe. So, um that'll be interesting to see. And then the Fight Pass Invitational, I don't think they have announced a replacement either. Um so, again, more things to to consider there. Now, the last thing I wanted to talk about was ADCC. the 2024. They just had their pre-sale uh this past week. I think they did it on Wednesday or Tuesday if I'm not mistaken, just before Thanksgiving. And they sold several million dollars worth of tickets in like a in a day, I think. So, which is amazing because you have to remember the events a year in advance, a grappling event, right, in the T-Mobile arena here in Vegas. and they sold that much tickets a year in advance. Kind of tells you Grappling's here, man. Like, it's now at a stage where they have an audience and they've opened up for general admission sales and I think there's maybe a couple thousand tickets left. Uh, but they've sold out the whole bottom bowl and they only have upper deck seats now. So, very impressive. So, good job to Mo Jackson for elevating ADCC and in general grappling and I think they've done a good job of leveraging the stars. Uh, particularly guys like Gordon Ryan and Craig Jones. Um, they have gotten a lot of mainstream press and as a result, I think they probably sucked in a lot of eyeballs and people to fill those seats. It's crazy because I remember the last ADCC I did was in 2013 which was probably the most poorly attended ADCC of all time for a good reason. They did it in Beijing and China didn't follow grappling at that point. Right? I know it seems now like China has their own PI center and you know the Asian martial arts has picked up significantly with one fight one SC but in 2013 it wasn't there. In fact, I had a friend who lives in China. He was telling me that uh he might be wrong, but this is just what he reported to me was that martial arts was seen as lowbrow, right? Like uh a person of status wouldn't be seen training martial arts, which I thought was bizarre because, you know, for America, we're looking at China as one of the meccas of kung fu and all that, you think martial arts is a big deal, but they actually kind of turned their nose down on it, right? like again according to him uh they didn't see martial arts as a big deal. It was seen as a lowbrow sport. So in that context and then you're talking about particularly jiu-jitsu nobody cared. It was like a high school gymnasium but from the looks of it where we were competing at and there was probably just coaches and maybe like 10 people watching. I've been to nagas with bigger audiences and grapples quests and every any other grappling event I've ever been at was bigger than this one, right? I think I can only think of one event that had less people and that's only because there wasn't 100 competitors competing and their coaches were filling the stands, right? So really bad compared to now where by all accounts they're probably going to sell out that team arena and uh be featured here in Vegas. you know, the biggest fight town of the world. That's a amazing turnaround. So, that's pretty cool. You know, I think that's awesome. And I'm happy for all those athletes now that get to compete in the big stage, big lights, and hopefully with all that the pay goes up, right? Uh especially with all the inflation and everything going on, I think the Grappers could use some more money, right? Like instead of throwing them the the 10K prizes that they're doing, let's bump it up a bit, right? add 10 20 30% at least you know so that they can start seeing more money coming their way because um yeah 10k for winning a world championship not a lot quite little you know when the sport was baby like it was maybe 10 15 years ago you could say yeah not that big of a deal right uh not that not that many people watching didn't really warrant it and the economics wouldn't make sense but now you're selling out the T-Mobile arena. Uh there's a lot more eyeballs, lots of sponsors. The fighters could definitely use a pay bump and hopefully that makes sense economically, which I think it will ultimately. So again, uh good time to be in the martial arts right now, right? All these uh promotions are starting to build up. There definitely seems to be an element of mainstream acceptance now um and all this independent media and podcasting and whatnot. I think it definitely helped elevate all these athletes to that sport. I can see now like Craig Jones has a podcast. you know, every all these uh athletes have podcasts and they're talking um and one in particular bringing up Craig Jones, he was also he had said the week previously how he was upset with Flo Grappling because basically he felt that they only picked one star to headline every card they had, which was Gordon Ryan, and we're throwing them all the money, but not throwing any money to anybody else. But I guess he had a story where they wanted to do an interview with him and they wanted him to go over like a couple days early to a city where he wasn't he didn't live at so he could do the interview but he had to pay his own way there. He had to get you know a hotel and all that stuff and not get anything from it as a result and he felt it was like disrespectful and they weren't valuing his time so he opted not to. And I could definitely see that aspect. If they're going to be using you um to promote their content, which they're getting paid for, and you're going to have to come out of pocket to do that, that doesn't make any sense, right? If you're going to make an athlete have a media obligation, there definitely has to be pay. Now, maybe if he was competing at that event and he signed a contract which said showing up to media uh events is part of that pay arrangement, then he kind of doesn't have a place to bargain at. But if that wasn't the case or that wasn't highlighted in the contract as far as how he should get compensated, then yeah, he's probably right. Either way, then now we just told you, you know, Riley got hurt. Now they have nobody to replace. His whole joke is, oh, now who are they gonna come crawling back to? They need a big star, you know. He's like saying like if they if they ask me $1 million for me for me to show up and to fill his spot, you know. Uh and that is definitely the danger of only creating one star right now. I don't think they only have one star. They definitely have tried to build up other people. I think the issue is that Gordon is such a big star and he is now beyond the niche of grappling and martial arts. He's a celebrity whether you like it or not. That's the reality of it. And he could, you know, probably go on dog shows and go into other things now. Like he doesn't have to be just in the martial arts through his u masterful use of social media. Again, I'm not a big fan of it in in most regards, the the trash talking and all that stuff, but it clearly has worked amazingly well for him and he has positioned himself now where he's a legit celebrity and he's kind of like the Brock Lesnar of grappling, right? He can just show up and get a title match, get all the money even if he didn't think he was qualified. But in Gordon's case, he's the most qualified. But regardless, I'm just talking about the celebrity status. So for someone else to show up and try to take that away from him is going to be a lot because I think Craig is probably the next closest to having that level of celebrity because Craig himself has, you know, done quite a few different things where he's got a lot of eyeballs on himself. So, if they were they weren't treating Craig with any respect or any similar affinity that they were to Gordon, I would definitely see that as a big mistake, right? Like they're kind of neck and neck. Gordon's obviously bigger because of his accomplishments and you know he's got I think a bigger reach, but Craig being the perennial second place guy is also very valuable and especially since they're not friendly so to speak, it definitely makes him even more valuable because he could be the antagonist. Uh, so if that's all true, Flow Grappling dropped the ball big time and not really picking up Craig Jones as supporting him at least similar level that they were to Gordon Ryan in my opinion cuz now like he says they're bent over a barrel at this point because they lost their superstar and they don't have anyone else near that level that apparently is being compensated in a similar regard. And uh it's why they say one's the the worst number in business. Should always have two. Now, if you only have one, you lose that one and you're done. Um so yeah, I think that is a interesting development. I guess we'll see in the coming weeks or say next week what happens. Um, I know there's quite a few people that don't like flow grappling and I've seen reasons why that would be, but as far as a consumer, I don't really watch a lot of the events. I do watch some of the bigger events. Uh, generally the who's number ones I I will tune in for and for the ACC and the trials as well. And for the most part, seems like it's good coverage as far as video. I know I'm kind of late into the game. I didn't start watching it until like a year or two ago. I know earlier I always hear about streams going down and whatnot. That hasn't really been an issue for me. Been able to watch it on airplane and stuff. So, like seems pretty solid. Uh but as far as other content they're putting in, I've never tuned in. Uh, so yeah, I think they definitely could do with more uh engaging content or things that pick up the user because browsing through it, I just look for grappling events. The the feature articles don't really seem to grab my attention too much. So, there's something to be said there. Right. Anyhow, as far as the the topic of the day here, uh I want to get into a topic I've gotten to before, but new format, just me. So, the power of specialization, right? For anybody in their martial arts journey, in my humble opinion, the best way to make quick progress is to specialize. And I don't think it's debatable. So, uh, reason being, it just seems to me just principles of economics, right? Like you can't be great everywhere. Not to the extent that you could be amazing at one point, right? Uh because you just have a limited amount of time and resources to spend with time being the greatest of them. So, if you're a white belt, blue belt, purple well, even a black belt, and you're trying to make progress, it's best to start in one place. Focus on one area of game where you feel like you'll get the most traction. If you're a beginner, of course, you have to learn the general rules of the game. So, you're going to be a little bit scattered. But at a certain point, I would think maybe once you start transitioning into that blue where you understand now like in my guard, I can sweep, you know, I can go for submissions. If I get my guard pass, I have to recover. you know, if I get top position, my goal is to pass a guard and you you understand the basic framework of the game and you're no longer like thrown off by it. At at that point, I feel then you need to start specializing and developing a strategy of how you're going to attain victory. And that specialization, the reason why it works well in my opinion and I think objectively because I've seen it through my students and many others is that one of the keys for getting successful and getting improvements in any area of game is exposure to that situation that you're trying to improve on. For example, if I'm trying to get better at passing in the shield guard, it will be hard for me to get better of it if I'm only practicing passing guard from a standing position, right? Where I'm not getting that knee shield. My exposure to the knee shield in that case is zero. So, how I'm going to improve it? Uh, you're going to have to rely on falling in there by chance. Whereas when I specialize, I'm going to basically force that situation to happen in practice, in drilling, do live situationals so that I'm always getting into that position and having to work. And the more time that I invest in that position, the more results and feedback that I'm getting, whether it's positive or negative, I'm able to learn from those outcomes and those results. and then as a result of that get better, right? Cuz I'll learn and adapt and make the changes I need to tweak that technique and that position so I can optimize it. I my success with the Kimora trap system is purely because I was specialized in it. I where I really picked it up was in 2017 just before that ADCC I was starting to work on it and after that ADCC I really put a lot of work on it. Did I say 2017? I mean 2007 a decade earlier right? uh in 2007. And by specializing, what I mean is that every time I trained, the only thing I tried to do was kimora traps. Okay? I was forcing it all the time. Top position, bottom position, standing, any situational drill, it would start in a kimora. So, I hyperexposed myself to the kimora. And all my partners at first weren't aware of it. and it it was and I did pretty well with it. Then the more versed and more experienced they got seeing it and defending it, then the more I got to work on the counters to the counters and then back and forth and so on. So I was able to refine the system very quickly because of the constant feedback and the again the hyperexposure to that position. And I think what helps maybe in the understanding of it is for you to really absorb an idea or a new concept. The way I like to imagine it is like a egg fert um a sperm fertilizing an egg, right? And a kind of a weird scenario, but you know, to fertilize an egg, it only takes one sperm, right? But it's not easy to achieve, right? like you're shooting literally millions of sperm and sometimes none of them even fertilize right why am I using that analogy because in the same context if you imagine that fertilizing the egg means that an idea has impregnated your conscious subconscious so that you understand it truly at a core level all those little sperms are basically your attempts every time you've had an exposure or every time you attempted a technique technique, whether it was in the drill session, in the practice, sparring, in life combat, you know, in a competition. And one of those hopefully eventually fertilize, right? And you clicks and is at that moment you've picked up the move, right? or you've picked up a new detail of the move or you you've made a part of the move that was subconscious conscious and you understand how to manipulate that one particular variable to be more effective at that move. So, uh a good part of that is lots of exposure, right? If you only shoot one shot, right, chances are you're probably not going to get that fertilization of the idea. It's just not you didn't give it a good chance. Not saying it's impossible, but it's harder. But repeated exposures over and over and over and over again improve your odds, right? And this is why I've supported the idea of drilling because you're just giving yourself more opportunities to get that idea in there, right? Versus just seeing it once, trying it once, and going, "Okay, that's good enough. I got it." Like unless you're a genius, you know, or you just manage to hit the perfect, you know, rep on day one, which is very lucky. Chances are it's not going to land. And if you want to get those repeated exposures, the best way of doing that is by specializing because you're going to be forcing them, right? Um, so I've always supported people specializing very early in their career. I've talked about one of my athletes, Devon Genchi, when he was competing. He was a blue belt and he actually picked it up on the month that my brother and I uh developed ffaccoach.com. uh which you guys know was one of my earlier membership sites which we pretty much we host our school's curriculum online. So our students can go there and see the videos and understand what they need to know for that month and we also let outsiders join in. So if they wanted to essentially train remotely with us and work on the same techniques we are they could. So it was I believe the first month of where we were instilling that curriculum and the curriculum happened to be guillotine chokes. So the whole month we're just showing variations of guillian team jokes, defenses, setups, but it's all guillotines. And that month we had two pro fighters win fights by guillotines. And Devon, while he didn't have a pro fight at that moment, he really sunk. Like he really had a knack for that guillotine. He picked it up early. And as a result, he started specializing in that guillotine. Not by like my direction or by my brothers. He just innately knew this is a move that I need to work on. And over the course of months, still as a blue belt, he would end up submitting a Popovich black belt and a naga with the guillotine that he ended up we named it after him. We called the Genchettine because it was like a very unique guillotine which if you watch the breakdown I was talking about Isaac Mitchell, he actually used that technique. I'm not sure if he picked it up on his own or whatnot, but you could see he he won a match with that as well. It's a very powerful guilty. And Devon would then go on when we would do like school seminars and we would have visitors black belts and Mother Academy show up still as a blue belt. He was guillotine choker black belts and like good black belts who competing black belts and all of them would just be super puzzled and they couldn't understand like what the hell's going on and it was because even though dead was only a blue belt at the time and had a very unrounded game he was hyper specialized in this guillotine and he had a world class black belt level guillotine choke. Right. So even though the rest of his game might have not been fully fleshed out, he had one area that was really, really strong. And when you have a move that's very versatile, like a guillotine, which you can hit from so many situations, you instantly become very dangerous, right? So one thing I've always told people, if you're going to specialize, try to make it in an area that has a lot of use cases, right? Uh, as an example, if I chose as my specialty, like my one move that I'm going to spend a lot of time developing was going to be flying triangle chokes, the use case is very limited, right? Like I need to be standing, which most grappling matches don't stick around to long standing. And I need the guy essentially to either have his head down or be too upright. I need to be able to set myself up in there. It's a hard situation to really put yourself in and get a lot of repetition doing. You might be able to drill it a lot with a cooperative partner, but in live, you're really going to have a harder time forcing that situation. So, it's going to be hard to be super good at that. And even if you are, you're just not going to have that many times where you're going to be able to rely on that, right? It would make more sense to focus on triangles from your guard or half guard, right? Where you're going to be there quite a bit. It's easier to force. I can just pull guard and then they're going to have to come into my guard. And that would make more sense because you're going to be able to use that triangle more often. That's why when I did my specialization, when I picked the Kumora as the move I was going to become a master at, I did it in part because I did a little mind map of all the different grappling positions and then put all the possible submissions from each position. And as when the as the result of that study, the most versatile move was a kimora because there it was literally possible everywhere. I could do it from mount from the top or bottom back mount from the back or from the or from being back mounted standing in front of them then behind me, you know, all the ground grappling positions. So it was the most versatile. So if I'm going to have a Hail Mary move, might as well be one that I could use everywhere, right? Uh back then the number two move was arm bar, right? Which again if you know Kimor's arm bars are pretty you can use them from a lot of similar situations. So not surprising there. But anyhow if I was going to tell a new student what to specialize in I would say if you're going to go for a technique try to pick one that's very versatile because you're going to be able to use it a lot more. But even if it's not going to be a versatile move, but you just want to be good at it, by force feeding it to yourself repeatedly, you're going to give yourself a much higher learning curve, right? Because you're going to be able to pick up and get a lot more exposure quickly versus just doing whatever it is that coach tells you to do. And remember, coach on the most part, he's teaching a whole class of people. He's gonna have to approach it in a shotgun type manner where he's not hyperfocused, right? He's teaching ideas that apply and work for everybody. And maybe if he's teaching, let's say, the guilt team, that day it's going to work very well for you. But then the next day he's going triangle choke and now you're moving away from your guilt team. Now, I'm not saying to rebel against your coach and not do what they're doing, but on the side, you should always be focusing on, okay, uh, get some drill sets with a partner on that guillotine choke. When you go live, try to get that guillotine choke. You know, if you can do some situationals, start with a headlock, you know, so you can go into the guillotine. That's the way you have to think if you want to really make quick progress. If you're just hoping that you're going to stumble into it while you're going to live, it's going to be much harder to make to get quick results. And I'm not saying the goal is to get quick results. But obviously, if you want to make improvements, the faster you can do them and the more tangible you can see the results occur, the more likely you're going to follow through until you you get that mastery that you're you're seeking. That's my take on it. So again, uh I'm in favor of specialization. I think everybody should be doing it at all levels. Um again, if you're super new, probably not ready there, like your first couple months. You probably just need to understand how the whole game works, the basic positions and the the flow of the game. But once you're out of there, like I said, blue belt is a perfectly good good time to start focusing in and getting dialed in into your what you want to make as your core elements of your game and and build your strategy based off of that, right? Because at the end of the day, combat relies on strategy. Is not necessarily the guy who is the most technical, the fastest, the strongest. is the one with the best strategy that can utilize their strengths against their opponent's weaknesses and achieve victory. So when you understand where your strengths lie, which is usually going to be in the area that you specialize in, then you can tailor your strategy to try to bring your opponents into an area where you can utilize your strengths and ideally line them up with your opponent's weaknesses so that you can achieve the most efficient victory. I'm not somebody that would tell a fighter like have the toughest battle ever. You know, you know, you want to have the easiest battle possible, right? So, I would always try to line up what is the greatest difference between an area of my strength versus the area of my opponent's weaknesses. To give you an example, if I knew I was facing the number one kickboxer in the world and for sake of argument, say I am the number two kickboxer in the world and kickboxing is a great strength. Like I'm the second greatest kickboxer in the world. Now, on the flip side, my opponent has a very low level of grappling, maybe like bottom thousand fighters, whereas I'm ranked in the top 10 of the grapplers in the world. Even though on paper I'm a better striker than I am a grappler in this battle, the area of greatest difference in my benefit is going to be to grapple this guy, right? Because on the feet it's a slugfest, right? Even though I'm a I'm a greater striker, more experienced, he knows nothing on the ground, I know a lot of the ground and I'll be able to quickly neutralize him on the ground and win an efficient victory. Hell, you can even say I am the best striker in the world. I mean, I am the number one striker in the world and I am the top 10 grappler and my opponent maybe he is like top 10 striker, not even ranked in a grappling context. I still should be grappling that guy, right? because he knows how to handle himself on his feet. Even though I'm more technical and I can outpoint him, I'm still going to be in a battle. Whereas on the ground, I would demolish him. As a fighter, you should always be thinking that way. You should always be thinking about where is the greatest area of weakness that I could exploit. And sometimes it doesn't lie in the area of your specialty. Right? In this in the example I'm giving, it wasn't right. like you're a striker primarily, but your grappling is much better than your opponents. You grapple them, right? I mean, that's getting a little bit off topic there, but feel it's somewhere along the lines as far as understanding how to craft strategy and why specializing will help you there. Because in this case, if I knew my opponents in advance and I'm starting to trying to game plan how this strategy unfold, I would be making shifts, right? Like, okay, I'm like, you know what? I I don't need to work as on the striking as much as I need to work on my approach on taking this guy down or putting him on the ground so that I can exploit that advantage that I have there. Right? And ultimately that's going to be the easiest path to victory which is what we should be looking for. I've seen sometimes and guys like Jon Jones are guilty of this earlier in their career where, you know, when he fought Gustafson, for example, I feel like Jon Jones could have worked them on the ground much better and probably had a more dominant victory in their first outing than trying to stand toe-to-toe. And he had said in interviews that he wanted to prove that he could outstrike, he could beat somebody at the best part of their game, right? which is an ego thing, right? It's not strategically sound, right? That's a poor way of winning a fight because you're gonna there's a toll taken there, right? But he wanted to prove a point that he could beat his opponents where they thought they were the best, right? Again, very impressive and it just shows how good Jon Jones is, but it also shows how egotistical Jon Jones was, right? I think Jon Jones now is a bit smarter as we can see in his last approach. He didn't try to out strike Sir Gan, right? He just took him down immediately, submitted them, made it look easy. That's what he, in my opinion, as if I was his coach, like this is what you should always do, right? Don't try to prove points. You prove points by winning fights easily, right? And walking away unscathed, you know, getting into Sledfest. They're great to watch. you know, it's it's great as a character builder, but you shouldn't want to be there. Um, especially from a coaching angle, that would make me very frustrated. My if my athlete was getting into these little ego battles like no, you should be trying to win. That's all your your goal is to do your best and to achieve victory. Don't try to complicate it by trying to prove points. Anyhow, uh, end of my rant there. Hope you guys enjoyed that and picked up some valuable tips and I'll see you guys next week.