Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
This is the official podcast of the Bulletproof For BJJ movement. Hosted by JT & Joey. Each episode the founders break down problems that Jiu-jitsu people experience, giving guidance and tips to improve your training for BJJ. With the goal of helping every body on the Brazilian jiu-jitsu path reduce their chance of injury, improve their strength and mobility to become more resilient.
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
How to Build a Personalized Game in Jiu Jitsu
Ever wondered why your jiu jitsu game feels stuck? Unlock the secrets of tailored training with SWOT analysis. Build yourself a personalized game and take your jiu jitsu to new heights...
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A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power? I'm ready. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast. Are you struggling to build your game at BJJ? Here's the thing. You go to class, your coach shows a bunch of techniques, you're in there as much as you can be, but every week you keep showing up and you're like I don't have a game, I don't know what I do. I come to class, I learn, I do some stuff, and then where am I? And this is actually brought up to me by a friend of the pod who is like I'm a blue belt, going on a purple belt, and I can't tell you what my BJJ game is. Could you give me advice on how to build a game? And that's what we're going to do, folks. We're going to break it down.
Speaker 1:There's always a dreaded question for me when someone was like well, what's your game? And I'm like, fuck, I don't know. I just fucking went and see what they do and then I'd do something back. I don't know, I just fucking went and see what they do, and then I'd do something back Jump, guillotine, no. Well, I thought about this a bit because when I was teaching, people would ask me a similar question. And I'm not, I don't have the bias of you should try to do jiu-jitsu the way I do it, because I think that's not the right approach me personally. But what we're going to get into is just the simplest way to go about your natural inclinations and building off that, because some people are like I really want to play guard, cool. Some people are like I want to wrestle, I want to take down, some people don't know. So how are we going to work this out?
Speaker 1:First things first, you need to pick a position, a guard, a pass, a takedown of sorts. You need to pick somewhere on the map to start, because if your coach isn't giving you specific guidance on how you build your project, which is your project you're an adult, you've got to work on this shit yourself. Um, you've got to choose yourself. So joe yourself, let me. Let me throw to you holy fuck, if you were to just pick a position for yourself right now, I'm back, go ahead. I said position, not technique, whatever, however you say it, but what's something? Because a while while ago you were looking at back attack stuff. Yeah, I was, let's say, back attack, right, right, perfect. And for me right now I'm doing more takedown wrestle, judo stuffs. So for me it's kind of throw by, working on the throw by, right on this kind of a thing.
Speaker 1:Once you've picked that thing, you see fucking Pixley's throw by. Oh God, what's he? He's over the top, he's got the overhook and he does a little under pump and he just fucking throws with that, doesn't he? Yeah, and the Rotolos do it too. Very nice it's. Yeah, I like I've been really enjoying watching Pixley's Instagram stuff savage. But what I did notice is that he's like towering over everyone, he does the techniques on. Oh yeah, he's obviously a tall guy, but it's like, yeah, that shit works when the guy's shorter than you. Well, I mean, I'm not criticizing there, but I know I can't do fucking throw buys on big dudes very well. Uh, I think it is particularly beneficial if you have longer arms, yeah, so the rotolos do it really well as well. They do this like overhook kind of pull. And if you notice, the grapplers who do have the longer arms are better with the arm drag point stuff.
Speaker 1:Right Now, this might sound a little bit weird, because maybe you've never thought about jiu-jitsu in this way. You need to do a SWOT analysis. Oh, wow, yeah, we're going there. Corporate development day. Take me through it, okay. So we're going to start with the trust exercise. I want you to grab a work colleague and they're going to fall and you're going to catch them. No, footsweep, bam, slam them on the ground. That's trust. No, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. What's this like from a bjj perspective?
Speaker 1:Let's, let's break this down. So, joe, you were saying back position, yep, and for me, I'm doing more stand up. Why don't we just choose one? Why don't we just go with yours? You'd stand up, grapple, take down, no, but. But the reason why I wanted, but I want to, I want to play, I want to see this. What analysis? You want to see how this plays out? Yeah, so what is good about the position? Oh, what's the strength of the? Yeah, what's the of it? Right, and I'm happy to talk about the back because it's very easy for people to visualize and understand that right. All right, let's go there.
Speaker 1:Really, the person doesn't have a lot of attacks against you. One of the strongest things about having the back is they're all defense, yep, unless you crush your feet, of course, and then you're in big trouble. So don't do that. But really the greatest strength I feel about the back is you have massive amount of control, minimal vulnerability, yep, so you don't have to really worry about the fences if you're working on that. What you do have to worry about really is losing the position. This is, like, probably your biggest problem, yeah, but generally, people who are good at getting getting the back, keeping the back, you know they'll, they'll body triangle, they'll switch, they'll, they'll fuck around, like once they're there, you're kind of stuck, yep, you know, and that's the thing. So the strength of the position is minimal vulnerabilities, maximum attack, yeah, so then we go weaknesses.
Speaker 1:What are the weak spots relevant to having the back? So don't cross your feet, because I have seen people you know get their knee popped by crossing the feet from the back. Done it myself, it's my favorite way to tap. We've all been guilty of that. Shout out, simon Carson. So. But really the vulnerability is in getting stalled out, because also, if people are very good at defending from the back, it can get a bit stalemate-y, yeah, and you would say that, like for someone who's good at defending your back attacks.
Speaker 1:Often, the weakness is that you'll end up back with them in your guard. Oh, yeah, you end up on your back and you're on top yeah, would that be a fair weakness? Yeah, it is a fair weakness. Or you end up your back and you're on top yeah, would that be a fair weakness? Yeah, it is a fair weakness. And, uh, I think you end up in a fucking half guard or some shit. Yeah, it's, it's. You go from one of the most dominant positions to I gotta do this all again. Now they're knee cutting you. Yeah, yeah, so that can be a problem.
Speaker 1:Opportunities so, if you're thinking about anything you're doing, whether it's a back attack or anything else, what are the attacks and also what are the transitions? So, if you can't strangle your person, if you can't do a back strangle, a choke and rnc mataleon, what can you do? What are you going to switch to? You're going to switch the armbar. Wait. Are we still on the swot or are we? Yeah, so strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, okay, okay. So we're going to the opportunities.
Speaker 1:Piece, fucking hell, bro, you're losing me. Shit, it's okay. I'm just, I'm, I'm fucking. Yeah, jt's gone. Fucking matrix on this shit. I am. So we're on the opportunities piece.
Speaker 1:You got the face crush. You got the strangle. Yeah, you got the transition to the arm bar. Arm bar. You got that nice little shoulder lock that mikhail taught me. Oh, yeah, there you go. Yeah, and you could go to crucifix. Yeah, you got back mounted triangle. There's that too. Yeah, reverse triangle stuff. Yeah, yeah, you got transition to mount. You can, yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah, fucking need I say anymore. I mean, it's pretty clearly the best position. Or you just, or you just turn them belly down and just bridge into their lower back and get them to tap from just sheer dominance, yeah, threats, you know how can your partner or your opponent mess you up from there. Right, what's, what's okay? So this I say the footlock would come up here again. Potentially, catch that. Actually you could get fucked up on the body triangle True, where you body triangle and then they pull that fucking counter on you and you pop your own knee. Yeah, I don't like that one Shout out Chris Dirksen For any of you who know the name, you know the legend.
Speaker 1:He armbarred me from the back. I had my arm over and he was like fighting on this side and he just flipped my wrist and like Armbarred me over the shoulder and I was like, yeah, I couldn't believe it. I was like, did he let me, because he's two, three belts ahead of me? Did he let me take his back so he could armbar me from the back? And wrist locks? You know how you might be doing hand fighting and stuff like that With the hand that's under the arm. There is actually a cheeky wrist lock if they fall, particularly in the game. Huh, oh, dude, yeah, it's, it's actually kind of surprising, yeah. So I mean, that's fucking characteristic of a wrist lock, isn't? It caught me by surprise. Oh yeah, I didn't know we were doing those.
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Speaker 1:But if you haven't actually thought about the thing you're doing, whether it's a takedown, a back control, a back attack, whatever it might be. If you haven't gone through and gone, what's good about this, what sucks about this, what else can I do and where am I vulnerable? What sucks about this? What else can I do and where am I vulnerable? Then you're not really thinking about, you're not thinking the big picture. Oftentimes we just go, yeah, but the knee cut, the knee cut or oh, the stack pass. Yeah, these are all good approaches to achieving an outcome, but you've got to look at all sides of the square so you can better understand where you might get fucked up. Right, because these are things. You've got to look at all sides of the square so you can better understand where you might get fucked up, because these are things you've got to practice. So, if you know that someone might arm lock you or wrist lock you or whatever, you've got to tighten that up so that doesn't happen.
Speaker 1:So we just did the. We analyzed the back take or the back mount yeah, so what would you then? So what would be your next step off back take or the back mount? Yeah, so what would you then? So what would be your next step off that, based off the weaknesses and whatnot and the threats that we identified. So, once you've picked your position and then you've done your SWOT analysis of said position, the third thing is actually practicing the individual pieces of the puzzle. Now, I know that there'll be people out there who'll be upset with me for talking about this, and I'm not saying you have to drill, but be that as it may. If you've never, ever had anybody do a certain thing to you from a position, you need to practice it to understand how the hell that happened.
Speaker 1:Are you pandering to the non-drilling proponents right now? No, no, no. I'm just saying for our ecological. Have you become a shill? No, I have not. I have not, even though I have met Greg Souders and he's actually a lovely person. I love him. Why do you got to bring up Souders every time we're talking about technique? No, because the ecological guys like to get in the comments section. He's sitting on his couch right Like see that fucking real estate for free in that motherfucker's head, baby. No, no, no, because the thing is I met him at ADCC and he was a nice guy. We had a chat. He invited me to train. It's cool. Anyway, shout out.
Speaker 1:What I would actually propose is that you go and practice each piece of the puzzle. So if you and you talked about this, joe, when you were teaching it, don't fucking bring me into this, bro. Hey, shut up your mess. I'm dragging you down with me, joe, that's if I go down, you go down, brother, that's how it works. It's teamwork.
Speaker 1:Um well, this is where I would say to you because this is my approach, it's not necessarily your approach, joe that I would practice little scenarios where the person does try to counter in a certain way, and then you work on the counter to the counter, yeah, or the person does a certain escape and then you work on the transition to the next control, and you do this from a fairly passive point of view of just understanding oh fuck, how do I get to the mount from the back? How the fuck do I get to the armbar? If that doesn't work, then working that at various levels of resistance and doing that for all the five, six, seven, eight multiple things that can happen to you there. So you're like oh, all right, I feel pretty good, I understand everything that can go wrong, not everything, but most things that can go wrong, most things that can go right and then go put that shit into action in rolling. That's what I would do. How would you approach it, joe? Yeah, I really like that.
Speaker 1:I would definitely aspire to do something like that and have found when there's a coach that's teaching me in that way, so like, say, with Paul Smeatbird, shout out, fella. He had very much that approach. Hey, we're looking at this at the moment and we'd be looking at this thing for weeks and it would be like, okay, so let's look at what happens when they counter with this, and so we'd just drill the fuck out of that one day or that week and then the next week, okay, but here's another thing that could happen. And so you're sort of mapping out all of these, all of the potentials, right as much as you can. You know, I've said I've always been shit at doing it for myself, but when someone's like joey, do this, I'm like that's excellent and I found that it allows you then to sit on a technique for like ages, like you can do back control for weeks and weeks and weeks, yeah, and just be learning more and more about it. Here's what I find personally is when you're like working on a position and then someone does something to you and you have no idea how to deal with the thing they did. That really sucks, yes, and so even though you may have only drilled it enough, like to this degree where it doesn't, you can't counter the counter on every single person no, at least having a response. So what I was trying to do when they did that was like you're already so far ahead yes, you know. And then if, yeah, if you can keep drilling that and working on that and implementing it in training, that's going to be a fucking great little roadmap there for for dialing in this position.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there is a a digestion period, and this is the thing I actually got. Got this from one of the YouTube channels I follow, which is all about learning. There's this guy, medical doctor. He's all about helping folks learn medicine faster and he's talking about reading and he's saying just reading isn't good enough. Like, even if you're a speed reader or you listen to audio books on triple speed, whatever he's like, that doesn't matter. Where that cements is the digestion phase, and the digestion phase happens when you're not directly reading. It's when you're thinking about the ideas that you read, and so I think jujitsu is similar to this. Is that it's probably similar to when I come up with a genius, come back to some bullshit you hit me with earlier in the day, later in the car, and I'm like, oh fuck, that digestion period is just too slow.
Speaker 1:Calls, calls, podcast. Hey, can we get this in? If I record this soundbite, jack, can you just edit me and say Jack, I need you to wake up. Jack, I don't care if it's 2 am in Virginia, sort it out. It's one of those things that understanding jujitsu can occur to you. You know they talk about shower thoughts and you know, like later, when you're white space, when you're not actually doing the thing, that it sinks in. And then you go back, you reapply, do it again, rinse, repeat.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I've had that situation a couple of times recently where I've come to training with some water but I haven't had any electrolytes, and I've finished training and I've had to go to a convenience shop and buy myself some kind of sports drink. Usually a Gatorade cost me like seven bucks. It's small and it really doesn't contain that much of the good stuff that I'm looking for, which are the electrolytes. Sodi, on the other hand, is my partner when it comes to hydration and I'd simply just run out of it and it sucks because I got to go buy expensive stuff that doesn't do anywhere near as good a job. I'm super stoked that we've been restocked with the sodi and now I can be properly hydrated when I train jiu-jitsu. This has always been an underexplored aspect of my training and I'm so stoked that we now have these guys in place to support us and also the listeners of the show. So if you want to be hydrated on the mats so that you can perform at your best and have the best mental clarity while training, get yourself some Sodi. Go to sodicomau that's S-O-D-I-Icomau. Get yourself some delicious hydration salts and use the code bulletproof15 for 15% off. Go to sodicomauau. Get yourself hydrated, but relevant to the building your game.
Speaker 1:One of the hardest things is this. This is the thing I think one of our friends was struggling with is having the discipline to remember applying your game in training. Yeah, you know, because you're not just getting caught up in the fray. Yeah, oh shit, we're doing fucking birambolos. Let's fucking do it. You know, and yeah, sure, like it's. Of course you go to class. Your coach is teaching what they're teaching and that's great, but most of the time there will be some free rolling of sorts, most classes, depending on the structure. That's when you got to go right, I gotta work my game plan. Yeah, like, if you don't do that, it doesn't happen, it doesn't mean shit, right, it's all theoretical, it's just ideas. It's not applied and I feel the best, some of the greatest grapplers of all time, lucas Sleperi being one of them.
Speaker 1:He never drilled, but what was interesting was he was drilling in sparring, like you would see him working his knee cut relentlessly against every single training partner, didn't matter how big or small. He was working that same technique over and over again. And obviously he's fucking one of the greatest grapplers of all time, so he could just do whatever he wanted to people. Sometimes it's not always your choice. If you're with big, fucking harris, big harris just wants to fucking crush you. You don't have much. Hey, big harris, could I just work on my delaheva? No, no, you know like you're fucked, right, but it's your ability to go no reset. I'm gonna try and implement this each time, each time.
Speaker 1:I think that is the biggest challenge for anyone trying to build their game in jujitsu it's your ability to stick to your game plan when free rolling comes. So if you with this SWOT analysis piece. How like, do you have some kind of framework you could suggest for how often people should look at this and like how long they should spend? Say they're like, yeah, the back thing sounds cool. How long would they work on that for? I think, because fair run is different, right? So the analogy I use is is like for any of you out there who've ever played Ages of Empire, just like exploration, civilization type game. Joey Glaze is over. Sorry, bro, we all play a real sport.
Speaker 1:The map is not revealed to you. Wow, so you're a little dude and you've got to walk around and find the resources. Oh, there's the timber, there's the gold. You, wow, so you've got a. You're a little dude and you got to walk around and find the resources. Oh, there's the timber, there's the gold. Like mario, super mario world. No, no, it's just. It's just a map. You're just a little dude. You got a little little village, okay, and you've got to harvest timber and harvest gold and build resources and build a barracks and all this shit. But at the start the map is not revealed to you and as you venture out, you're you're like, oh shit, there's enemies over there. They fucking kill you Reset, you've got to start again. You're like, okay, enemies are over there, we've got a big day ahead. I'm falling sick, let's go. I've got to build a fucking wall there. I've got to build a watch post so they don't fucking come kill me. Right, this is like ju. But once you start to learn this position, you learn this map. You're like, oh, there's the fucking threats, there's the resources That'll help me, that won't. And then when you come back to this map over and over again, you already know what the map is.
Speaker 1:The problem is folks only ever spend a little bit of time on a map and just die. No, I didn't get that. And then they just change maps right, it's a new technique every fucking week. So how then? They just change maps right, it's a new technique every fucking week. Yeah, so how can you like apply this? It? For some of you out there, you might be like a speed runner. You might zoom all over the map. You know what the fucking map is in a week. So you only need to do this for a week, maybe.
Speaker 1:I generally recommend that a person spends anywhere from three to four weeks just just on the one thing knowing the fuck out of it, yeah, on the one position and ask higher belts, you know, say to them, how do you counter this? Or what's the bad thing here? I'll be like have you ever played Age of Empires? Right, and you can nerd out on that. But it's just one of those things Once you feel you've got a good view of the map, move on. Yeah, okay, play a different game. That makes sense. That's, that's my take on it.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what I, what I attempted at the beginning of this year, which I've kind of I started strong, fell off. But, um, I, I mapped out like six different projects for jujitsu. Oh, nice, and uh, was it six or was it eight? I think it was, who the fuck knows? I think it was six and I I'm going to do each of these for like fucking six weeks or whatever. It's going to be my shit. And back was one, mount was one, back was one. Got through those and then stopped coaching where I was going and I was like, okay, full, I'm not training at the moment, but that was actually really good.
Speaker 1:And and so I had like a list of like six things that I wanted to address this year. Yeah, and I'm pretty confident that I'm going to go back to it, but it kind of laid things very like six things. It's not a lot, right, yeah? And so it's like whatever four weeks, six weeks at each of those. Yeah, like, if I'm kind of diligent about my shit, there should be enough time to get pretty familiar with each position and answer some big questions that I have about each position. Yeah, um, again, I've proven to myself that I'm just better off when there's a coach coaching me.
Speaker 1:Of course, you know, but I think that, like, yeah, this, this, you know, what you put forward here, would really fit in well for that, you know, as a way to just to tell you what questions to ask. Yes, so you're like, oh, I want to work on takedowns, all right, well, what do you need to know about that? If you do the SWOT analysis piece, you kind of know like you don't need to worry about this, but this is what you need to worry about and it's probably going to be like one or two main things. Yeah, and I think that the, like I said before, the biggest difficulty is kind of sticking to your guns, because if you're not having success with something, you can get bored. You're like, ah, fuck this, I want to just go do something else, but really the the benefit is kind of staying in it in the sucking, and then breaking through the next bit, which is actually I'm a bit better at this and yeah, and then that can lead you to a different section, like that's why, for me, right now I would like working on wrestling and judo.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of interplay, even though they do different shit completely in terms of gripping, balancing and grappling on your feet. I feel is so different to just allowing people have a certain level of control by people pulling guard or passing or engaging in that way like the rules are a little bit different. Yeah, so just by keeping the rules around, not pulling guard and trying to stay standing the whole time, that's a constraint that allows me to fucking get better at that. So that's that's what I'm working on. But yeah, man, that's, that's that's how I approach it.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying this is the way. This is just a way if you're not sure, if you're a bit stuck and you're like fuck, I can't, I don't have a game, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, pick something, choose a thing and build out from there and then it's. It's actually not as hard as it sounds, other than being able to stick to your guns, boom, boom. Hey, don't forget. If you're still here at this point of the thing, don't forget to give us a five-star review like subscribe, do all that shit, because it helps to get this show out for other jiu-jitsu folks who maybe don't know about it. We appreciate you, sure.
