The Biggest Mistake People Make Before Black Belt

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Transcript

Welcome And How To Send Questions

SPEAKER_04 0:00

What's up, fam? Welcome to the QA episode where we answer your guys' questions. If you want to record a question for one of our future episodes, go to bulletproof for bjj.com, hit the podcast tab, and record us a voicemail. We love hearing from you guys. Tell us your name, tell us where you're from. It's fucking

Preparing For A Black Belt Test

SPEAKER_04 0:16

cool. First question coming in today from Fish. Fish. What up, Fish?

SPEAKER_00 0:22

Hey, this is Fish. Um, calling from the United States. And uh I guess I just have a quick question about any advice you have where I would be preparing for uh my black belt test, which I'll be eligible for in maybe a year, a year and a half, I've been told. And it's a pretty rigorous test. Um, you know, I know it's uh got some realistic self-defense kind of uh stuff in there. And I'm a little concerned about getting a major injury. I'm getting close to 60 years old. I'm up there, around there. And uh I've been training for like nine and a half to ten years, two-striped brown belt, and uh in pretty good shape, but I've had a couple, you know, serious injuries. So yeah, I'm just concerned about you know getting another major injury or um I don't know, part of it is learning all the techniques. It's a lot of uh it's kind of a merge of modern jujitsu with uh the Gracie system with a lot of um a lot of self-defense techniques. So just didn't know if you had any advice, got all kinds of stress going on at work and and uh family and fish.

SPEAKER_04 1:52

Appreciate the question, man. Dude, I gotta say, I got very little to offer on this one. I've never I got something. I've never done a test for any of my belts. Right.

SPEAKER_03 2:02

Okay. Well, I had the I had the shit beaten out of me for my blackboard, specifically by my students. Yeah. Um, so I mean, so everywhere, every gym has a different process, right? Um, I didn't have to do a set of techniques, but I had to roll continuously for three hours. It's it's designed to just trash you. Like basically exhaust you, and then how good is your jujitsu when you're exhausted? Like, can you still do your techniques? Now my strategy was to play possum, give very minimal energy, kind of work the like three-minute round, and towards the end of the round, sweep, come on top, dominate. I did that almost every single round. But what I didn't know during my series of gradings was like uh through the hours was that you were allowed to get a drink break every like half hour or hour or whatever. Like they would you could just have a quick support. I didn't know that until the very end, and then Giago was like, Oh, J, like you you didn't get a drink, the drink break, man. And I was like, What?

unknown 3:08

What?

SPEAKER_03 3:09

And like one of my students popped my ankle with a toe hole, another student dumped me on my back and hurt my back. Like, I was I was so thrashed afterwards. So to your to I believe you ate fish, you've got time to prepare. You said it's a year, 18 months. You need to get as fit and as strong as you can be to have the resilience to deal with the fact that you you might take a beating in your grading. But it sounds like you know, factoring in some kind of street defense and stuff like this, like it could be worth, in my opinion. Now, this might be a bit controversial, maybe try a little bit of Muay Thai. Try a little bit of like if you have to do some stand-up grappling, do a bit of judo. Like do something which is hard, which isn't just jujitsu. That's that's my my little bit of input in terms of if you have to do realistic effective self-defense techniques. Well, you know, and I'm not I'm not I'm not speaking about, I have no idea about how your school trains and stuff like that. But I'm saying when I went to Muay Thai, even though I thought I was fit, I I gassed a lot. In the same way I thought, oh, I've been grappling heaps, I'll go do judo, and it thrashed me. I think exposing yourself to some more other semi-related martial arts will give you a better conditioning base as well as just prepare you for the physical assault of what might be ahead of you.

SPEAKER_04 4:33

Yeah, I mean, it can't hurt, right? But I I guess Fish does also close with saying that he's got a lot on, yeah, and he's got plenty of stress, and his concern also is these techniques that he's got to learn. And that that's where I have a hard time relating because I've never had like, hey, there's this whole curriculum we're gonna go through. You know, and I I think Adam once sent me the the brown belt curriculum from Alliance. I was already a brown belt because like, oh, if you ever want to have a look at it, and I looked at it and I was like, fuck me. Like I I couldn't I couldn't produce this today. You would need to give me a good couple of months to yeah, prep for this. So, so you know, you you have a bit of workload ahead of you. Um, yeah, I I probably would need a bit more information. Like when you say you're concerned about injury there, what what's gonna go on to that? Are people attacking a stick? You know, I I would also think that they might like if they're fucking got half a brain, yeah, like they're gonna make it tough, but they're also gonna understand that you're approaching 60. Sure. And that what you might expect from a 22-year-old aspiring black belt is different from a 59-year-old aspiring black belt. Right. Maybe you're not. Maybe they just put beat downs on everyone, in which case I fucking power to you. Yeah, bro.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

I've hit the peptides and it's time to get on the

Learning Big Curriculums Without Overload

SPEAKER_03 5:51

source. I think from a memory perspective with the techniques thing, my advice around that is to um well, we had talked this about this before. Jolly had also like really adjured this home was spending an extended period of time on a corner, like a one thing, whether it be back escape or like really stick on something for a period of time, then move to the next thing. Don't just try and learn a whole list of techniques, like you know, find a corner, talk to your coach, or you're very experienced already, like you know, you've been training like almost 10 years, and really spend some time there and go, right, I'm gonna do two months of this and just do that. Two months of this, just do that. And the techniques will filter into that, right? So I would reorganize that from techniques to little bodies of knowledge and and really double down on that. That would be my advice about trying to digest so much.

SPEAKER_04 6:44

That's a cool tip. Thanks, Fish. Man, next shout out. Next question coming in from Jason.

App Update And Sponsor Notes

SPEAKER_04 6:49

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Do You Need To Compete

SPEAKER_01 8:00

Hi, JT and Joey. This is Jason here from Central Queensland. Um, so my question is around how necessary you think it is to compete. Um so for context, in my first six months of training, I entered into a competition and I just really didn't enjoy the experience at all. Um I'm a pretty laid-back kind of person, and although I really enjoy the competitiveness of rolling in class, I didn't at all all enjoy the you know how serious many of the competitors took the competition once I competed, and that level of intensity, um, I suppose, and risk, I guess, rose quite a bit. Um, as I'm progressing and I'm I'm you know getting better at jujitsu, I suppose, I am starting to more and more feel that imposter syndrome because of the fact that I don't compete and not testing myself against others outside of my own school. So I guess my question is do you think I should just suck it up and go and compete, or do you think it's completely fine for someone to um to train um and really just not, you know, move into the competition space at all? Cheers, guys, love the podcast, thank you.

SPEAKER_04 9:05

Uh Jason, Queensland. I mean, would be remiss of me not to mention the fucking horrible loss you guys took in the state of origin last night. Up the fucking blues. Up the blues, let's go. Sorry, we're we do not deserve to win that by any means. Queensland is clearly the better team, but somehow we snatched from ghosts. Um, that's a very it's a good I I'm gonna say that I grappled with, no pun intended, this thing in my head of what Jason said for years about I should compete more, I need to prove it. I'm not competing enough. Fuck, I hate competition. Why had that stress show off? I'm being a pussy, stop being, you know, just him back and forth. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:47

I I I have two distinct views on this because there's a big difference between somebody who's really good in the gym and kind of can kick everybody's butt in the gym, but doesn't necessarily compete well because the environment feels not conducive to it. And I've seen it at the highest level. Somebody who could dominate world champions in the gym, but would lose first round at worlds, which is hard to comprehend because the guys he were beating was beating everyone else. Um, look, uh it's up to you. Jiu Jitsu is it's choose choose your own adventure, right? If you really find that environment um just so uncomfortable and gross, it is stressful. Like it, it is, it is one of those things. And I've talked to many competitors that just say when they win, it's more of a relief than a joy, right? You know, like oh thank god that's over, right? Like it's it it it is this artificial thing we do, uh but I believe the benefit in the competing is the learning. So uh you have to know that by not competing and kind of sticking with your gym and and being more of a chill guy means when you come up against somebody who's more that speed, they're probably gonna beat the shit out of you. And you gotta be cool with that. Like you gotta accept that you didn't go there and you didn't put that stress in your life, and therefore someone who did is going to absolutely trash you, and that's that's what it is, you know.

SPEAKER_04 11:16

And I think it provided you're cool with that, if you can sleep at night, yeah, knowing that there's someone out there that is potentially better than you, imagine that Joseph Chen is gonna come to your school.

SPEAKER_03 11:27

But that's the thing, like even does that matter? Like for some people that does, right? Matter, and then for others, who cares, right? Because jujitsu is at its core about fun. So if you decide comp is not for you, I don't think that's wrong. But I think the the small the small little thing in that is you will miss out on some learnings by not testing your techniques in that very uncomfortable situation. That's all I'd say.

SPEAKER_04 11:56

Yeah, I as someone who never liked competition and always felt pressured to do it and felt obliged to do it, right? It was the culture of the team that I trained at up until Brown Belt, and it was just like expected, and I was like, you're competing, right? Next weekend kind of thing. And being one of the, you know, whatever, one of the more active tough guys, tough guys of that gym was like, fuck, yep, let's do it. Um, I I can say that I I got a lot of development out of it. Not in the technique of my jujitsu, I don't think, but just personally through having to do something that I really didn't want to do. That was that was the learning, was like, this fucking sucks. I'm doing it, and then you come away from it and you're like, Man, I'm so glad I did that, you know. Fuck, who knows? Maybe you maybe you get on the podium, maybe you win one, maybe you fucking bomb out for you know, like results and shit, you know, it's like it, and so I would say to you, Jason, if you believe, like I think you said you've just done one tournament, I think. And if it is just one that you've done, I think that it's not enough of it. You probably need to do a few couple to get to be able to on to get some kind of honest assessment. Because yeah, the first one's a fucking worst. Yeah, it's tough as fuck. But um, if you believe that there's nothing to be gained by doing competition, then there's not. But if you come away from having done a couple and you're like, yeah, I got something out of that, then then you know, then it's really your call, right? It's fine, you can turn your back on that and be like, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, which I totally respect because I don't compete anymore. Yeah, not to say I never will, but it probably won't. Um, so I fully respect that. And so the UFC pays us to have a super fight. Shh, fucking the right price. Dana, Uncle Dana, give us a call. Send me to the PI, jab me with the fucking supplements. I'm coming out looking like fucking Uber Ream. Um, but yeah, you know, like there's there's so much game from it. I was talking, I was at um Legacy Paramatta, yep, only just on the week training training with Jesson. Yeah, and I was chatting to chatting to one of the guys there who's a staunch competitor, and I said to him, he competes all the time, black belt, very good competitor. And I said, Man, do you you do you love it? Where he's like, I fucking love competition, man. I love it. I get excited the day of it, man. I'm like, wow, I've I'm the opposite. Right. He's like, yeah, it's what most people tell me. He's like, I've always loved it. And there are just some people out there that do love that shit. And if you're not one of them, there's nothing wrong with being like, you know what, that's not what I want from jujitsu. I just want to have the training room. Yeah, so you know, like JT said, man, it's what you make of it. Don't feel bad for not competing.

SPEAKER_03 14:48

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But just know when the competitors show up, it's it'll it'll be a hard day.

SPEAKER_04 14:52

That's the time to take a rest round.

SPEAKER_03 14:54

I'm not I'm not doing that. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 14:57

Last question coming in today from Kyle.

What Brazil Teaches BJJ Travelers

SPEAKER_02 15:02

The Bulletproof PJ. Yo, yeah, yeah. My name is Kyle. I'm so fashion, blue belts. You are the Brazil, but I'm in the States United.

SPEAKER_04 15:41

What a fucking legend. Well, there you go. Did you catch it?

SPEAKER_03 15:44

I I did catch it. I I think I think he's saying about the level of like training in Brazil, right? Or the enjoyment of training in Brazil, is that right?

SPEAKER_04 15:54

I I the first question was what did you like most about Brazil? I believe, and then was what place did you like the most? Right. I I believe. I believe. Yeah. Um, that was fun. Oh shit. What did you like most about Brazil, brother? Um, Kai is a blue belt, by the way. Yeah, he's from Brazil, but he lives in America.

SPEAKER_03 16:13

Yeah. I I think the culture and passion of Brazil, like passionate people. It doesn't matter if it's Capoeira, football, whatever it is, like Brazilian people are fucking passionate, man. And I so in that way I really fit in. I'm a I'm an emotional guy, I really get into stuff. So in that way, I I I loved it. And yeah, man, I think uh I we went to this beach, uh uh Maricias, which is like uh the top of Sao Paulo State before you get to Rio Estate. It's like being in Hawaii, it's it's like that little coastal town, yeah, yeah. It's the beach on on on uh mountains basically. Amazing. I went there twice. Oh my god, the best. I mean, I spent a lot of time in Sao Paulo, so so I'm kind of like a Paulista in my heart, but we went to Florianopolis, like Floripa, like it was it was amazing, right? Went up to Minas. We I went all over the place. Like I think I traveled more in Brazil. It's probably like people visiting Australia. I went all over Brazil, and Brazilians, like, why did you go there? Like I went to some little town for a tournament, you know. Um, just because I was I was fascinated. Um yeah, and I and I think the the thing that put a huge impression on me was like being part of you know the community, communidade. Like when you feel like you belong, and you do, and you know, whether it's a a jiu-jitsu team or like a group of friends, like you do. It's it's I I miss that. I I feel like that that that idea of like you never go somewhere by yourself, you always get like two, three friends, four friends. Next thing you're 15 people, it's 11 o'clock at night, you're all at SAE and hanging out and just talking, and it's like, man, we don't we don't do this so much in Australia. Like, yeah, you get mates together, you go to the pub, but then eventually, you know, people disperse. It's rare that everyone just hangs out for hours, which is not like a scheduled party. It just always kind of eventuated to that. Going to the spontaneity, yeah, man, like Iberpura Park, and everyone's there on a Sunday, like thousands of people just playing, you know, like like like um five on five, five aside soccer and you know, football, and people doing buddy gymnastica natural, and you know, like it's just like for me that that um energy is something that is really impressed upon me. But uh that's that's that's what I love about Brazil. So yeah, I'm uh like I say, you it sounds like you know, anyway, that's what I love. How about you Joe?

SPEAKER_04 18:53

Man, um quite the same. That like that fucking happiness and like that kind of it's like a vitality that Brazilians have that we just don't have in Australia. It's like a zest for life and it's like an intensity, you know, that that yeah, we just don't have. And when you're there, you just you're in it, and it's like, man, like if we're going out, like if someone's taking you to a party, it's gonna be fun. It doesn't matter what's going on, it's fun. If we're getting beers, it's fun. Yeah, you know, these fucking people here, like you go to a club or whatever, like it's just that whole thing, yeah, it's it's classic Brazilian, right? Uh, I remember my ex-girlfriend saying, like, she just found it boring in Australia. She really loves it for all the reasons and it was safe and big customers. Yeah, but she's just like, it's just fucking boring compared to Brazil. And I'm like, I get it. I can I you know, I can honestly say, yeah, I I see that thing that you, you know, they miss my favorite place. Um fuck. I I think for me is it was the era of of being in Rio, staying at a hostel in uh Copacabana and training at the Carlson Gracie Academy. Yeah, and that was a team that I I trained with them for like three weeks, but it felt like a long time when I was there. Yeah. But I had some boys, you know, we competed together. We you know, we went to the comp. We went out drinking after the competition. One of the guys started a fight with some dudes. It was sick, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:16

You know, it was like, but it was it was that thing of like that felt to me like a just a really cool Rio experience, yeah, you know, and and um and look, I gotta say, I got so much love for Rio because that's the first place I went, and I stayed in Baja Jitsujuka, which is like the little river, which is back of Baja, which is where Gordo Jiu-Jitsu was, which I think is now Evolve, maybe I don't know for sure. And that was Connection Rio, and you're just under the you know Pedro de Gavio, like the big mountain, you know, and um yeah, same thing. Like we went up to the Tijuque like favela, and we ate street meats, and we're like drinking beers at 2 a.m. And it's like Gringo's probably shouldn't be there, but we were just dangerous as fuck, but fuck this is a good time, you know. Shut up, guys, yeah. But it was just like, mate, it there's something which is it feels dangerous, but it's so fun.

SPEAKER_04 21:12

You're like, fuck, it's worth it. I mean, I think that's where the zest for life comes from, right? It's like your life's under threat. You gotta so it's like you better enjoy this shit, yeah, man. Which is, you know, an interesting observation, right? Because you because it's heavy, it's a heavy place.

SPEAKER_03 21:25

Because you see, I think that the difficult thing for me to witness for all my Brazilian friends, whether they be poor or wealthy, the government's not looking after you. Like the corruption is is crazy, and the police, no, you know, they're looking for bribes, they're looking to extort you. You know, like it's it's real cutthroat, you know? And so, and I say that with no disparagement on on Brazil. It's just if you live there, you know, right? And so that's tough. I think that's um it's confronting to see how hard it is for good people trying to make it there.

SPEAKER_04 21:59

Guy, you're a legend, man. Obviously, that question lit us up. That was super, it was super fun to get a question.

SPEAKER_03 22:04

Once I was just scrambling, I'm like, fuck, I haven't tried to speak Portuguese in ages.

SPEAKER_04 22:08

And he, I mean, he spoke slow and clear too. Thank you. Yeah, you served it up well for the gringos. Thank you, brother.

Final Thanks And Voicemail Reminder

SPEAKER_04 22:14

Um, guys, appreciate the questions today. If you've got a question, please go to bulletproof for bjj.com, hit the podcast page, and record us a voicemail. We'd love to hear from you. We'll catch you on the next one.

SPEAKER_03 22:24

Shoo