Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Discussions on improving your BJJ, navigating mat-politics and all aspects of the jiu jitsu lifestyle. Multiple weekly episodes for grapplers of any level. Hosted by JT and Joey - Australian jiu jitsu black belts, strength coaches, and creators of Bulletproof For BJJ App. Based out of Sydney, Australia
Bulletproof For BJJ Podcast
Are Your Expectations Ruining Your Jiu Jitsu Journey?!
Do you go into class expecting to get crushed.. and then you get crushed? Could it be possible that you are manifesting poor performance with your own self doubt? They say the fight game is more mental than physical, learn here why your mental could be the thing holding you back or propelling you forward. Keep your head up and keep progressing!
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Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for BJJ podcast the expectation effect. What you expect is what you get. Now, Joey and I, we get pretty deep on this that the thinking you bring to training is really what is helping or hindering you. It's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy, as you may. And here's the thing we also unpack the Pygmalion effect. Now, you may never have heard of it, but it is impacting you, your coach and how you're learning. Also, we talk about auto-suggestion and how just the ideas, the talk and the words of the people around you are changing, whether you are stronger, weaker or better, and this is very impactful. Last but not least, we get into how looking for evidence can change the way you improve. Having a way to document your training will invariably help you. How can you do it? We explain why. Let's get into the episode now. But one last thing do us this small favor. This little solid helps us out a lot. Give us a like and a subscribe. We know you in there, we know you're commenting, we know you're watching and we love that. But what we would also love is the like and the subscribe. It means a lot to us and it helps us reach more good people like yourself. So do it now. We appreciate it Better. Listen very carefully. 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 limit this power? I'm ready. Are your expectations destroying your jiu-jitsu? That's what I'm talking about. What you expect is what you get. Now. A lot of us don't necessarily think about jiu-jitsu in this way, but what you're thinking about before you come in to your training whether you're expecting a good result, a bad result, your coach's expectations, all of it really influences how you succeed Right on. And this is something that really people are not talking about.
Speaker 1:And the reason why I wanted to bring it up is a while ago I read a book called the Expectation Effect. It's a pretty easy book to read. It's nothing too heavy, it's got the words and shit. Yep, some words, not so many pictures. Okay, you may not be interested, joe, that kind of book yeah, yeah, a reading book, but it does talk about some key things that many people are already aware of but maybe don't know that it's negatively affecting their jiu-jitsu. Tell me more, let's fucking get into it. So the expectation effect talks about many things.
Speaker 1:The book, but it talks about the placebo effect, which many people are aware of, where someone gets given a pill, like a sugar pill, but they're told hey, this will cure your headache, or this will help anti-inflammatory your knee, blah, blah, and they go oh, okay, cool. And then an hour later they're like yeah, my headache's gone, I feel great. Yet they were not administered a drug, they just believed. They just were like yeah, okay, I expect this to work. Therefore, it works. Yeah, but there's also something else, and this sounds silly.
Speaker 2:Which just to clarify that. So it's been shown that placebo is effective. Yes, when someone believes it is a thing, even though it's not, it actually has the desired effect.
Speaker 1:Here's something even crazier. Even if someone knows it's a placebo, it still has an effect like a positive effect. Wow. So they're like this is the sugar pill, this is the sugar pill. It's not the one, no. And then people are like I feel better. But it's great, that's fucking nuts, right? I? That's what that's in this book. I was like that sounds like rubbish. But it just cites all these different amounts of information. But it goes the other way. Folks, if you think something is bad for you, even if it's neutral, it will have negative effects on you, right? So if I say to you, joe, look, um, it's a painkiller, but the side effects you may experience diarrhea, you may experience bloating. You know how they are sometimes on like. I don't know if you've ever seen those medical ads like. It's usually like a usa medical in america yeah, yeah, get new remandical.
Speaker 1:Side effects may include anal bleeding. Yeah, you're like oh, it's definitely worth it. People reported having side effects, which is the nocebo effect. They believed it was going to be bad for them and therefore they experienced negative effects.
Speaker 2:Right, so nocebo is like the negative side of a placebo.
Speaker 1:I think, from what I understand and please feel free to correct me in the comments, I know you will guys Placebo means to heal in Latin, or the ability to heal, and nocebo means to be ill to be unwell.
Speaker 2:Okay, so how does this play into jiu-jitsu? Like my dad, he's got massive guilt about fatty foods, oh right, and he's of that generation. He's brought up Christian and they carry a bit of Christian guilt about various things. Oh, right around stressing about every fucking thing you eat. You are going to get cancer, like you know, like it is going to fuck you up, yeah, but but yeah, so yeah, I kind of to that point continue and, and this is this, is the really.
Speaker 1:This is the thing. It's not that it's crazy, it's just we don't give enough credit to the power of our thoughts. Yeah, and I'm not saying this in a fucking woo-woo way, I'm saying that literally. They have done scientific studies, same people. So this is one of the examples from the book which is very interesting. They just use a chocolate shake. It's like chocolate, cocoa powder, right, and it's all auto-suggestion, right. It's just the package. One package was super healthy, low fat, low calorie, all this crap, right, they put put it, they have the shake. Same group of people, it's regular people, and they report. They asked them if they were hungry or satisfied or whatever. Within 20 minutes, the people who took the healthy shake reported being hungry, not being satisfied. All this stuff, right. A week later, same shake, except the box says creamy, delicious, right, like you know, satisfying, rich, rich chocolate. It is nutritionally the same fucking chocolate powder, right, they. They pull the same people and they're like, half an hour later, how you feel? Like? I feel quite full, I feel, I feel very satisfied what a bunch of fucking idiots we're just like but it's that's
Speaker 1:great power of auto suggestion. Same people, same product, different words on a box. Yeah, why is this fucking powerful for jujitsu? When you come into jujitsu, let's say, last session you got fucking destroyed by everyone. You had a really bad day and you take that as a signal that I'm not good at this. I expect to suck again. I expect I'm not going to win, I expect, oh fuck, and you get there. But you've brought all this, the weight of this expectation and this kind of like I'm not good at this thing attitude. You invariably are not going to have a better result because of your expectation, like bringing that kind of mindset. And this is where-.
Speaker 2:You're bringing that nocebo mindset. It is.
Speaker 1:This is where, like, if you look at some of the greatest athletes in the history of sports, they're not necessarily the smartest people, because they don't think too much and they tend to forget and they tend to just do. You know, you're like how'd you go last time? I don't know, how are you going to go today?
Speaker 2:I'm Okay you go then yeah, that's a definite, not synonymous, but like it is a prevailing quality, you know and it's not that sports buffs or people who are particularly athletic are not necessarily intelligent.
Speaker 1:There are many examples of people who are very high level in their sport they're also super smart. But there are many examples I would say more examples of folks who just don't think, they just do and they're not dwelling on the past. They just come in like, yep, I'm going to just smash it and that works quite well. And so not that I'm trying to get into any kind of meditation or any other thing, but I believe if you can set your expectation before you step onto the jujitsu mat or before you get into the gym or anything like that, you can have a very different session as a result.
Speaker 2:So you're talking about? You're kind of talking about um, how someone's um internal dialogue, like how, yeah, how they check Cause, cause, yeah, we all have. I mean, we all have those conversations with ourselves and so, yeah, changing it like talking to yourself about setting a different expectation, yeah.
Speaker 1:Like, for example, people say, oh, I will try. Now, fuck all that. Like Yoda, had you locked in since the eighties? Do or do not. There's no try. Try is like an honorable fight, an honorable fail. When someone says, oh, I'll try, they're already admitting that they will not. They're not determined to succeed. They actually expect that they won't, because if they thought they were going to succeed, they'll just say I will do that and it's just a, it's just a little trick of the mind that we, we talk to ourselves in this way.
Speaker 2:I'll try to do that. What do you think about? I will do my best.
Speaker 1:Well, I think a lot of us don't necessarily know what our best is. I mean, that's not bad, I feel like.
Speaker 2:it's an improvement on try. It's still indicating a humility in terms of like I may not succeed, yeah, but it is a declaration of I will do the best I can. I think to be human.
Speaker 1:I'm going to do my best kind of guy. No fault on that, because oftentimes your best is enough. Joe Often.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:Not always, but Because oftentimes your best is enough. Joe, often Thank you, not always, but that said, sometimes you can do more than you expect, like your physical capacity to do something, your expectation, even though it might be really good, say you come in, you're positive, you're this. Sometimes you can actually do more than you expected. I can't do more than my best. Well, you don't necessarily know what your best is, joe. My best is my best 100% my best.
Speaker 2:well, you don't necessarily know what your best is, joe, my best is my best, but you don't but you don't know, there is no 101, no, no, no I. But what I'm saying is you can't 10x 100 bro you can, no.
Speaker 1:But what I'm saying here is you, based on the day you're having, you may not know what your best is that day. Yeah, and this can go both ways, right, and this is why we always encourage people to do a warmup and check where they're at Cause you, you can positive mindset all day, but if you pick up 80 kilos and your expectation is a hundred, and 80 kilos nearly breaks your back, today is not the hundred kilo day, right. So there's, you do have to have some point of correlation to be grounded in some kind of reality. Yeah for sure. But in the same way, we often see it with like useful naivety.
Speaker 1:They talk about this in business Like if you knew what it fucking took to start run a business to whatever, you might not even do that shit. Like I got married. If you had told me 14 months ago everything that would go behind making that happen, a month out I was questioning myself. I'm like run it back. I don't know if I'd fucking do this, to be honest. Not because I didn't want to be married. I love my wife, she's the best, but the process of making that wedding happen was fucked. The last month was so stressful, dude, oh wow, I fucking hated it I carried that quite well.
Speaker 1:This is no good. This is no good and it the end result was great. But you catch me a month out and I'm like nah, you guys better not get divorced. No, bray, it's not like that. It's not the relationship thing, it's the, it's the family members and yeah of course, who got invited, who?
Speaker 2:didn't get.
Speaker 1:I just mean because you, you, you had to endure that fucking shit 14 months oh yeah, but no, but what I'm saying is this having a bit of, uh, naivete or like not knowing, and having that youthful, like you know, you see it that kind of like young energy, like someone who's frothing. They don't know how hard it is, they're like, fuck, I just want to do it all right, fuck, get after it. That's great. Yeah, that's actually really positive. Whether you're starting a business, you're starting jujitsu, kind of not knowing how hard something is and just having like a positive, like I mean, whatever life might beat it out of you, but bringing a positive expectation for lack of a better option, I believe is a good way to approach your jujitsu in terms of, you know, I don't know how energized anyone feels, like, don't get me wrong, there's plenty of folks out there that'd be be realistic.
Speaker 1:Look, if every motherfucker was being realistic, we wouldn't have an iPhone, we wouldn't have a digital camera, we wouldn't have podcasts, we wouldn't have progression in society. So being irrational and being overly optimistic is actually pretty key to things getting better in life.
Speaker 2:I think it's also like what you're saying isn't, isn't? Also it's not implying that you shouldn't also review your weaknesses and like close gaps in your jiu-jitsu, right? No, it's like no, like you, you go in with the expectation that I'm gonna like my jiu-jitsu is good and I'm gonna perform well, and that's not gonna happen all the time. 100. So of course you got to go back and review the shit and fix that. But it's more about sort of as I'm understanding this, the framing of your, of your jiu-jitsu, of your performance. So, instead of being like I'm understanding this, the framing of your, of your jiu-jitsu or of your performance. So, instead of being like oh, I'm kind of I'm shit at this, or I always.
Speaker 2:It always takes me a long time to learn techniques or I'm never good in positional sparring. You're changing that frame to like no, I can be good in, I am good in positional sparring. I can be faster off the mark et cetera.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely. And look, I am going to get to that reflection piece at the end. Oh, pardon me, we are going to get there, but that's good. It's good we're going in the same direction on this one. Thank God, about time it's only been seven and a half years. But your coach's expectations of you Fuck, that's a lot of words on the page. It is. I'm ready. I'm fucking ready. Looks like you're writing a book. I can not my kind of book, sorry.
Speaker 2:I'll do drawings there's a stickers at stick man I like, I like, I like books. By the way, I just thought we got an email this week from a listener saying who was like hey, I know, jt, not sure if you're much of a reader, joey like blah, blah, blah I was like what I to defend myself now that I fucking read books.
Speaker 1:No, it's just because Joey likes to play up that he is a meathead, not a nerd. But that's fine, he's intelligent enough.
Speaker 2:We know you struggle in the gym. Most people do. Jt and I both train in gyms and those places are full of people who don't know what to do with all the stuff. So JT and I built an app. It's called Bulletproof for BJJ and it is exactly the app for you. It's going to teach you how to get strong and how to get flexible, specifically for jiu-jitsu, and it's going to require that you go to the gym like a couple days a week, so it's not going to take much time out of your schedule, but in exchange, you're going to get stronger, better performance, less injuries and you're going to look better. So all you need to do to start your two-week free trial right now is go to the app store, search Bulletproof for BJJ, download the app and connect with JT and I so that we can help make you Bulletproof for BJJ.
Speaker 1:Your coach's expectations are massive. So there's a thing that's pretty well studied I can't remember, I think, the gentleman's name, it was a scientist back in the day, the 60s 50s, called Dr Rosenthal had studied this in a classroom that the teacher's expectation on the students directly affected their performance. So if the teacher expressed higher expectations, the student performed up In the same way. If the teacher was like, no, you're probably not going to get far, that also had a worsening effect on the student. This has since been. It was originally called like rosenthal's theory, whatever it's been, uh, renamed to the pygmalion effect. And this has been demonstrated in business workplaces, not just the classroom, in business workplaces, not just the classroom.
Speaker 1:And so for those of you out there, if you've got like a coach who's really great at jujitsu but they've got very poor personal skills, can't coach, can't talk to you, can't look you in the eye, you know whatever it might be, and they're also a bit negative. They're a bit kind of that old school like you get no love from me, you have to fucking earn it and bleed. That isn't necessarily going to be the best for your development Because you say, oh, you know, what do you think about my chances of being a world champion? It's never going to fucking happen for you, son, Didn't happen for me, won't happen for you. You know like this happens in parenting.
Speaker 2:It happens in lots of situations in life. It does, you know. It makes me think of a coach that you could say, one in particular that doesn't possess a lot of those social qualities, right, however, and my coach one of my early coaches, dan, I would say was like that, wasn't a very like socially, was just a bit fucked up. But do both of these individuals do have strong belief in their students? Sure, you know, and, and we're often and, and and. At times, I thought that it was like not grounded in reality, but like, yeah, you'll fuck that guy up. Of course, your jujitsu is fucking sick, and you'd be like, oh shit, right, but yeah, so I, you know, yeah, I see your thing there.
Speaker 1:Well, no, cause I, I, we both know a coach. I won't name him, but he's like a pretty kind of negative guy. Yeah, he has a bit of a negative vibe to him.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but he does have. I find, if you were talking to the same guy, he has a strong faith in that of his students.
Speaker 1:He loves his students.
Speaker 2:No, but he trusts in their ability as well. He does.
Speaker 1:But if you talk to him, his language always steers towards you. Ask him his language always steers towards.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, yeah, you ask him.
Speaker 1:How are you? Oh, fuck him. Oh of course I'm sore. This is fuck. That's fuck, society's fuck you know like people who just they're really in a negative spiral. They don't even know it right, and then so if you try to get something positive out of them, that's like fucking pulling teeth, yeah.
Speaker 1:And so I think, if you're new to jujitsu and you, you put all this faith in a coach and you're like, how do you think I'll go this tournament? Oh look, you're probably gonna lose. Oh, like, that's a bit of a gut punch, right, because then that lowers your expectation. I mean, that could be true, but that's not going to help you. It's not what you need to hear, right?
Speaker 2:so your expectation, you expectation, you're going to win. You could beat Gordon Ryan. You will go on to be the best ever. No, but I think I'm having a laugh Well.
Speaker 1:I mean, maybe you have to be grounded in reality?
Speaker 1:No, but I mean you know the guy's dying of like his gut falling out. I mean sure, I think in about five years anyone would beat Gordon Ryan, unless he becomes a cyborg. He's got the money for it. But here's the thing, my friends not only your expectations will affect how you learn jiu-jitsu, your coach's expectations, but then the the difficult, the difficulty.
Speaker 1:Here I was talking with someone online about confidence. They're like I don't, I'm not a confident person. And I said, okay, let's like fucking get into that. What? What do you mean by that? Oh, you know like I don't do well in job interviews and I'm not good on dates and I don't, you know, like all these different things. But I said, okay, that's fine. This person's had injuries, all this. They've had plenty of challenge in their life. But continue, you know they're living their life, they've got their job, they're doing their thing, they're trying to get back into jiu-jitsu from injury. They're, they're, they're a brown belt. You know like you got through a lot of shit to be where you are and so you've got to.
Speaker 1:You got to reflect on that and that's where the reflection piece comes in and I feel like a lot of jiu-jitsu folks don't do this. Confidence comes from evidence, not an arrogant thing or not a dreaming thing of just oh, I'm the best, and it's not based in reality. The thing that I have to remind myself is, when I look in my diary is all the reps and sets I've done and each week I get a little bit better and I'm like I am stronger. I have to tell myself that because some days I get in the gym and I'm tired and I'm like, fuck, I feel weak. Today. Am I weak? No, am I actually like 2% stronger than last week? I am. It just feels like shit today. But I got to remind myself you need evidence to have confidence.
Speaker 1:And so I was saying to this guy what is his point of reflection? Like, do you ever think about past wins or do you ever look at things that you've done well? And he doesn't. He has no introspection at all and I'm like that, I think, is a problem, and I think for many people in jujitsu they don't document their progress, they don't film their roles, they don't have a positive feedback, because we all need a friend who helps us stay grounded but also can kind of pat us on the back when we feel shit about ourselves.
Speaker 1:You know like we need someone. You know that person you can rely on to be like no man, it'll be okay. And just that little, just that little external voice allows you to be like okay, I can trust this person, they know me, et cetera. It's great if that's your coach, but sometimes it's not your coach, sometimes it's a training partner. You know, you think you had a really bad BJJ session and at the end of the session your friend's like bro, that sweep, that was such a good sweep. And you're like, oh yeah, I fucking forgot about that. Hey, you know like it's very easy to forget the good things you do.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think, having a point of reflection, like you were saying, you know, not that long ago, joe was like that feedback loop and being able to be like what did I do well, or am I getting better? Oh fuck, I am getting better. Actually, I had two good roles out of 10 instead of like no good roles. You know what I?
Speaker 2:mean, yeah, this kind of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, roles, you know what I mean.
Speaker 2:This kind of thing, yeah now um, yeah, I think, I think for me that, um, that sort of internal dialogue is is probably most prevalent as I come into a session, right, oh, no, actually that's that's, that's not right. It's also very prevalent when I come out, but when you come in it's more. It's like it's kind of proactive in a way, where you're like prepping for the session and then later after your class. That's when you tend to like usually, when you're like prepping for the session and then later after your class. That's when you tend to like usually when you're in bed or whatever. Right, are you having a shower? That's when you start to process what you've, what you did in training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and, and look, here's another little side note uh, relevant to the expectation effect, auto suggestion, all this stuff. This has always been interesting to me and this is why I can be quite anti-social prior to training, like I don't want to talk to people. I don't want people putting negativity in my ear. And I'm not talking like strictly for vibes, bad energy, I'm saying literally I don't want thoughts in my head that are going to detract from what I'm trying to get up on. You know, after class I'll talk shit, it's all good. Before class, no, and in the gym too, because I don't want to hear anybody whinging about oh, it's fucking Wednesday, oh, my back, shut the fuck up. This is why and it's not just because I'm any social asshole of a human that might have a small component of that but they had done a study, it was a it's. It's always the way.
Speaker 1:I always feel like I don't know who signs up for these studies, but it's almost like a cruel trick. They never tell you what, what the experiment is. They're like look, sit in this room, read these magazines. Oh, this can't be part of the experiment. Why are we all in lines? Why is there cameras? Why are there men with clipboards. What's this fucking about? They got people to read articles about the effects of aging and how aging is terrible and injuries and the slow fizzle out which is older age, and then they got the people to go oh, okay, cool, now we're going to do the experiment which is reaction time drills. You've probably seen it, where they have a row of pins and they drop them and you've got to catch them, or whatever.
Speaker 1:So then same people a week later come in. All right, we just got to get you guys to wait. Just read these magazines. It was articles about cheaters and how quick they are and how fast and they're you know, they're the fastest creatures on all this stuff. The reaction time after reading the cheater article was improved by 50%. Wow, because they were thinking about fast cheaters. Fuck, yeah, you know. And then when they were thinking about the detriment of age and injuries and all this, they were a hundred percent slower. Yeah, then if they read nothing, yeah, well, they just got them to sit there and read nothing.
Speaker 1:They had their reaction time. But when they compared the three different, it's the same group of people. They're just average people. They're not athletes. When they read the articles about old people and aging 100% slower than the non-reading, 50% faster reading about cheaters. This is just auto-suggestion. This is just the thoughts you put in your mind, Right?
Speaker 2:So if you're having a conversation, with someone Auto-suggestion, as in something you are suggesting to yourself.
Speaker 1:No, as in someone. No, it's just an input. Auto-suggestion can be text, it can be audio, it can be a conversation. Someone has said something to you or you've read something and that's then like oh, you know, like, if you've got someone who loves to whinge about their injuries, people are like oh, my knee hurts, Do your knees hurt my fucking back? You're like shit, does my back hurt?
Speaker 1:I don't know, maybe it does, I don't know, Like it just plants an idea in your mind and then you know, an idea can be very pervasive and distracting.
Speaker 2:We're talking about it. I was talking to my sister this week and we just stayed there for a couple of days at her place. My son came back when we came back to Sydney he had nits in his hair, dang. And Mies was like, fuck, leo's got nits. And I was like, oh, he must have picked it up from his cousins. Anyway, as soon as the word in the house, as soon as it's like Leo's got nits, you're like oh, my head's itchy. Yeah, like you're straight away, like I think I've got them too. You know It'll get you.
Speaker 1:It'll get you. The power of an idea is it's really powerful. So what you say to yourself, what others say to you, you know it's very impactful, and I think that we have to spend a bit of time, actually just not a lot of time. This isn't about having a meditation practice. It's just set an expectation for yourself which is positive in some way. It doesn't mean you're going to win every role. It might just be that you're trying to do a certain sweep and you're focused on that and you are confident. You know how to do the sweep. You're just going to do your best. Yeah, there it is. I like that Got to do your best.
Speaker 2:There it is. I like that. Gotta do your best, fam.
Speaker 1:Yeah and just expect good things, it helps.
Speaker 2:That's what I'd say, just putting it out there and can I tell you how to do your best and get yourself one of these fucking bulletproof t-shirts oh yes, we're wearing a range of colors. Go to fanwarecomau and just search for bulletproof. You'll see the whole color range there. Get yours now. Bus, bus, thanks for buss. Shoo. Thanks for listening. We'll see you guys next week. Appreciate y'all.
