Brian Glick is a 3rd degree Black Belt under John Danaher, the owner and head instructor of Brooklyn BJJ, and a world-renowned grappling coach. Brian cut his teeth in the legendary blue basement at Renzo Gracie New York and has trained with some of the best MMA fighters and grapplers in the world. We discuss takedowns for BJJ applications, safe training, and the evolution of the sport.
INSTRUCTIONALS:
Under Pressure: Leg Entanglements by Brian Glick
Under Pressure: Half Butterfly Mastery by Brian Glick
Under Pressure: Retention, Recovery and Attacking From Guard by Brian Glick
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Chapters:
00:30 Intro
01:19 Brian Glick begins BJJ
11:09 Takedowns for BJJ
19:28 What takedowns are worth learning?
28:24 Takedowns for beginners
34:03 Takedowns for Sport BJJ
38:27 Injuries
45:48 Ecological training
54:15 Brian’s pedagogy
1:03:51 The evolution of BJJ
1:10:10 John Danaher
1:20:10 Outro
Because the easiest way to suck in jiujitsu is to get injured and not trink you know if you if you want to find someone like a really quick path to sucking just don’t show up what’s the most efficient pass to Victory against this particular opponent he’s dropping off the choke
Here we could see the Finish it’s looking tight tight at Del hello everyone welcome to the essential Jiu-Jitsu podcast I am Matt Quan your host the essential Jiu-Jitsu podcast is everything you need to know about Jiu-Jitsu and today I have very special guest John danaher third degree
Black belt Mr Brian Glick Brian welcome to the show thanks for having me awesome um so I’ve been a big fan of yours for a while uh we’re GNA discuss training uh pedagogy takedowns for Jiu-Jitsu amongst other topics before before we get into that guys I would
Like to please ask you to like share and subscribe if you like the show uh there’s links in the bottom you can support the show by getting merchandise subscribeing to my Online Academy or my PayPal is at the bottom if you want to leave a donation and at the end of the
Show we’ll talk about how you can reach uh Brian and and uh check out his content as well so uh Mr Glick it’s great to finally have you on the show and I just wanted to get I guess I’ll just get your background information for those who don’t know when and where did
You start martial arts did you start henzo uh was professor danaher your first instructor go the floor is yours yeah you got it so um that that’s exactly right I started Jiu-Jitsu um back in 2000 and I had heard about it because I I had an acquaintance who was
Actually studying gracic Jiu-Jitsu at the time uh end of the 90s um and he was out in California so it was horon and the Torrance Academy and at the time you know there are so many instructional videos out now but at the time there was really only one or
Two video series you know there was the um horon uh his self-defense Gracie Jiu-Jitsu series and um henzo and Craig kukuk had one and then there was Gracie in action and that those videos are still out there and I I still think that they’re incredibly valuable um they’re
Not they’re not quite as obviously quite as modern as some of the stuff that’s out now but they’re really in terms of uh instruction and we talked you know you mentioned pedagogy in terms of like teaching and delivering information those things are really amazing um and so this this friend of
Mine had encouraged me to um you know we we had had a conversation and uh and I had never done any martial arts before but he was really enthusiastic and I think that even now you know a lot of the people probably some a lot of the
People who are listening to this and maybe even you um you know we find out about Jiu-Jitsu and and martial arts through people who do it already you know kind of like word of mouth and so that’s just what this was this guy was a a practitioner he was a
Fan of it and he was really enthusiastic so he was like oh you know if you’re thinking about trying it um there’s a school somewhere in Manhattan and this was in you know 2000 the internet was not there wasn’t really a thing you know um so he didn’t know exactly where it
Was I think he maybe knew it was henzo and I went to the phone book like the Yellow Pages and I you know went through and I found they had just moved from um there was a shared space that they had I think like end of the 90s
Through 2000 and they had just moved from that space into their new space and the Yellow Pages still listed the old space so I I went there and they were like you know no they said no they had they had just moved and they gave me the
New address and I walked in and it was this was the methadone clinic so it was like the third floor of a building a second floor was actually a methadone clinic so it was an unusual clientele mix a lot of Jiu-Jitsu people and you know people who were either in the
Throws of drug addiction or recovering from and a lot of people down on their luck and uh and then there was also the methadone clinic and so then when I walked in um there was some guy at the desk who was this kind of hulking beefy guy with
Long hair and I said you know I wanted to try jiujitsu and he gave me a record gave me passed a schedule to me was kind of tur and didn’t say too much and told me to come back at you know whenever the next class was happened to be John Daner
And the next class I came to actually was working at the time um in the evening so I couldn’t make the evening classes the evening classes at henzo back in those days those were the classes where uh all the killers were you know if you if you were coming hzo
Was teaching uh Matt Sarah Nick Sarah Ricardo Almeida um D Danner himself was training then um in those classes Shawn Williams anyone who was a guest would come through in the evenings and I just wasn’t able to get there so there were daytime classes thankfully and those were the classes
That I ended up attending and those classes were taught at the time by uh Dan her and Sean Williams so those were my first two instructors and it just happened to be that that that was the place and that was the time and those
Were the days I could do it and then I I stuck to that schedule for years and years and almost 20 years you know I stuck to that schedule and just didn’t look back I looked back a couple times but not much would you say that having those
Daytime classes like because it’s I don’t know if recreational is the is the way that I would describe the crowd that went to those classes but you had mentioned that the the pros were going in the evenings um did you have like more uh I don’t know if one-on-one time
Is the way i’ choose to describe it but could you get more uh individual attention from John danaher because you attended that that time you know at the time so a couple things and I think that it’s hard to remember this but at the time that I started he was a
Purple belt he and Shawn Williams were purple belts so I was going to an you know a noon class taught by two purple belts and I think that that there was not really a sense of um hard to describe but there wasn’t a sense of anything really momentous
Going on it was very nuts and bolts chop would carry water kind of training where the people who were coming to those classes in some ways yeah you know they weren’t the pros but on the other side of it they didn’t I don’t think they had broad aspirations for some kind of
Bigger thing and remember at the time also this is you know in 2000 2001 2002 there wasn’t anything really except MMA you know and the MMA at the time was pretty brutal I mean it was like Pride um you know kind of this was the era where it was like Gracies versus
Japan and pride and sakuraba was beating everybody and um so it was that and then even UFC at the time in 2000 2001 was not really it wasn’t even a shadow of what it is now but that said you know coming to those those daytime classes there wasn’t
Really a sense of um it was a professional invol environment in the sense that we were all there and really kind of serious about training most of us but it it didn’t carry all of this other stuff so I don’t know that I had more individual I did I think I did have
More individual time because the classes were not as well attended because fewer people are just hanging around during the day um but so I think maybe that was kind that that was like a side effect but more broadly it was very much it had very much the feeling of a lab a
Laboratory in that there was plenty of room to stretch out and test and try and ultimately to suck for a longer time I think that there were times where I would you know I I would go to those classes in the evenings if I had off
From work or if my schedule was upside down and there’s a lot there was a lot of pressure there and in a lot of ways that’s good and I think ultimately later on the blue basement there was a lot of pressure even in the daytime classes kind of things flipped around but when
You don’t have that much pressure especially for someone it I think it suited my temperament pretty well um you were able to spend a little bit more time figuring things out without feeling like you know some big name was gonna come by and just smash you for for
Living so I think it was It ultimately it was it was to my benefit yeah I I think the best training environments are like how you described a laboratory where everyone’s just trying to find I don’t know if the truth is the word but uh the best way to do something
They’re willing to go through the trial and error to to to find you know the next the next detail or the next solution to a problem and everyone’s kind of contributing um and serious about doing that that’s a good culture to have do you have experience in other martial
Arts no not really um you know I I do Judo I’ve done Judo and that is an outgrowth of my Jiu-Jitsu practice I didn’t have a separate track that I was on for Judo where I decided that I was going to cross Trin Judo necessarily I
Spend a long time you know it was like I I really and I know not everybody does this and um especially now I think the culture of how people train and practice Jiu-Jitsu and they relate to um their instructors or teachers professors everybody has it kind of a different way I’ve always
Been willing and like very happy to turn my progress over to my teacher that’s just how I again it’s no one told me that I needed to do that it just seemed to me the right way to learn something that I really wanted to know was to find someone who seemed to be
Knowledgeable and able to to communicate it and translate it and and to share it and then to kind of get out of the way and let them do that and then so the reason that I’m bringing this up is because around purple Bel um you know Mr Daner was like he
Didn’t intro he was just we started doing standup we started doing uh you know Judo stuff and that was what he was showing and that was what we were training and that was what he was teaching and that what I was uking for and that so there was that was really
The beginning of it and as a result even though I am a judo practitioner I came to it through a through the back door of Jiu-Jitsu where the stuff that I learned um in in Judo has a very jiujitsu kind of approach uh and again it’s not AR not
In an artificial sense but just this is how I learned so for instance um and we can get more into takedowns I know that you you had mentioned that we wanted to talk about that but you know like I never really learned how to do a a good
Morote Sagi or like a good Eon sinag I never really learned the mechanics of those things I didn’t spend much time practicing them I spent a lot of time doing like tadi which in Judo is kind of like a you know it’s like a second tier technique most of the time it’s
Considered like a bailout technique something you go to like the rest of your stuff has failed but that was like a primary focus because it fits so well with the the practice of Jiu-Jitsu ultimately um after I had been doing maybe a year or two of that I was
I did some formal Judo training under uh Sensei Sheena who in New York and particularly in Brooklyn was a huge um was a huge figure here in New York there were four or five Japanese judoka who who were sent over from Japan at in the 60s as really
Diplomats emissaries of Judo and this happened across the world but particularly in like the tri-state area there were a couple of guys Mr Sheena was one uh Mr higashi was another Mr unesa was another one still his his son’s school um is still in Cranford in New Jersey uh Mr Oishi Mr matsumura
Those guys were really the foundation of Judo in this area so Mr Sheena who is now in his I don’t know like 80s I so I did some formal training with him later on one of his students uh who is himself now like almost 70s was a in the in the Olympics
In uh Montreal which I think was 1976 is tyok John sonono so I did Judo with him and I did Judo with the St Ledger brothers and with uh shintaro so I did kind of develop some Judo practice over the years but like I was saying it kind
Of came through this weird filter of Jiu-Jitsu and what was most important for for for Jiu-Jitsu and um so my Judo developed in a kind of unorthodox way do you feel um what do you think is like if let’s say you know I’m uh blue Bel level but I don’t have takedowns I
Want to incorporate takedowns into my game should I go into Judo training should I go to wrestling uh do you have a preference of one over the other uh should I try and do both what’s your opinion on that for someone who is like let’s say blue belt level and they just
Need to get like some confidence and some some game on the feet what what would you recommend yeah I think the best of all worlds in an ideal world is how having a jiu-jitsu instructor who has started to synthesize some of those the tool the best tools from both wrestling and JJ
And Judo into a jiujitsu context so rather than um trying to uh you know set out on your own to figure out what’s the best thing if if I were a blue belt again and we can talk about you know that too but I think the best
The the best of all worlds is the the Jiu-Jitsu Professor who understands stand up and they don’t need to be Master you know a master necessarily they need to understand just kind of what what are the tools that you need in order to be able to function well in the
Standing position functioning well means to me means you’re safe uh so you’re not getting injured either being taken down or or in the taking down both of those things are totally possible to get injured in either the the doing or the receiving um and then um kind of eliminating some
Of the the techniques that are just you don’t really need that aren’t going to be helpful and then also narrowing it down so that you can spend the the precious little time that you have left over after trying to understand how to do groundwork in an area that going to be effective so
That’s like the best case scenario I think that going into a judo environment and this actually has been my experience you know spending in the last couple years I’ve spent more time in an actual Judo school with uh with shintaro hiashi and up at uh kakushi budo
Institute and a judo class is very different than a Jiu-Jitsu class and a judo classroom is very different than ai-yu classroom not just in formality but in the sort of intensity the um the way the techniques are approached and then how sparring and randori runs so I
Really think if you’re someone who’s a blue belt and you go into it into a judo environment you need to be ready to it’s uh to to graft in a way that’s very active if that makes sense like it’s not a one to one ra it’s not like a one to analogy so
You have to kind of do a little work to figure out what do I really want to be spending my time doing if you just want to get comfortable standing up and moving around and gripping I think it’s great I think if you’re if you want to
Learn Judo you should go to a judo school I think if you want to learn standing Jiu-Jitsu it’s a little bit different um wrestling I think that there especially in the United States there are more opportunities for people around the country at a at a younger age to start
Wrestling you know like there wrestling programs and wrestling you know there’s high school wrestling there’s college wrestling so there are all sorts of opportunities built into um built into the culture here for wrestling experience and I think generally speaking um you know you can’t go too wrong with
Wrestling I haven’t spent much time in in just a wrestling environment so I can’t speak you know with as an authority but single legs Double legs if you’re doing nogee understanding how those things work that’s going to be very valuable to you so yeah to recap
You know best of all worlds is your your professor your instructor feeds you ghee and no gee standing stuff so that you know what to focus on second best I think having a reasonable expectation if you’re going into a judo uh environment and um and then I think you know being
Ready to learn how to wrestle and get some mechanics down that’s not going to hurt you when you go in and start doing no and I guess it’s it also has to do with goals too you know like uh if if if a student has specifically nogee
Aspirations and they don’t plan on doing the ghee at all then I guess um Judo training I’m not going to say like because there is a lot of things that do Transition over but certain gripping aspects and things like that probably wouldn’t have any benefit to somebody
Who has no aspirations of uh playing in the ghee um was going to ask what are the best and worst takedowns for BJJ but I think off of what you said I’ll rephrase my question what is uh what is necessary and what is not necessary in your opinion from the standing
Position in terms of techniques or uh uh types of types of throws types of takedowns yeah so broadly I think um there’s a there is some overlap between ghe and no ghee and I think that there are some in in the ghee I think uh when we’re talking about generally speaking
Um when we’re doing takedowns from a standing position in the ghee in Judo couple of things one is turn throws are turn throws make a lot of sense in Judo um for for for two reasons one is uh you can hit a strong turn throw um
And have a lot of success with putting somebody flat on their back and that’s a big part of doing Judo is not just throwing the person but ultimately getting them down onto the floor on their back so turn throws can be very good for that taking the guy over the
Girl over you’re rotating and you’re you’re really creating a flipping action where they’re not they’re more likely than not to land on their on their back the second thing is that turn throws work great because the consequences of failure are not that high they’re high uh in the sense that if we’re continuing
With naaza and you know you’re you’re going down on the ground you have your back exposed but in a judo context and in the way that most people train Judo you don’t have that long really to work so there’s this really limited window for how long your back is exposed and as
A result you can kind of take the risk and if you fail it’s all about like kind of hanging on to prevent your partner from strangling you or turning you over um in Jiu-Jitsu it’s totally not the case so turn throws broadly speaking are not really a good idea there are some
Exceptions but like all the classic like uh morot Sagi Eon zagi um even like Taos um those sorts of throws where you’re really turning your back even a Goshi you know like where you’re trying for it like those throws where you’re giving your back to your partner the
Consequences are really high if you fail in Jiu-Jitsu because you you even if you succeed you throw the person and there’s still a good chance that their chest is glued to your back because that’s where you put it in order to throw them or you R through yeah like exactly like you
Roll through or you drop and you put them down but they crawl their way to your back because your arm is positioned across the central line it just is it kind of turns into a mess and so when when if if this is if you’re looking to learn you know standing takedowns with
The ghee stay away for Jiu-Jitsu stay away from turn throws it just doesn’t makes sense uh what if the what if you uh what if you have like an underhook like what if you’re grabbing the belt and now your arm can’t come across the center line would you say that that
Statement is still true I think some some of it is look if you’re talking about like a a hip throw or um you know really the throw the turn throws that I’m talking about are more like arms were going across the center line but even in a throw like a GOI when
You throw there’s a there’s the opportunity for your part to roll you through right and like if you’re hitting a Tios same thing even if you hit a Tios where your arm is not all the way across the center line to get the power that
You need in order to be able to throw somebody there’s going to be some follow through it’s kind of like tennis or golf where like you know people who hit hit successfully don’t stop halfway they go all the way through and there’s a a likely not not I don’t know how high the
Likelihood is I think it depends on the person who’s doing it but there’s still the risk of getting rolled through it becomes even clearer when you contrast that with methods of take down in the ghee that are less risky foot sweeps and uh Sumi was are sacrifice throws so
Foot sweeps one class of throws sasai COI igari kosari relatively low risk relatively low effort um lower amplitude generally but the likelihood of either getting rolled through getting your back taken in most cases is much lower if you fail then it functions a lot like a jab in boxing
Where you may not knock somebody out with your jab but you can certainly use it to set up other things and it’s an incredibly good off balancing tool so in terms of time spent on skills foot sweeps and asias tend to be a better reward for Jiu-Jitsu practitioners
Because the consequences are much lower also the risk is lower both the risk of back takes and like like bad consequences are lower but also the risk of injury tends to be a little lower you know yeah like you’re not dropping your whole body weight into a saai or coari
You know yeah um and then yeah good you can you can expose your partners back through snapd Downs when you start threatening with oig gari coochi just it’s such a it’s such a like you said like it’s a lowrisk uh high percentage uh type of strategy to threaten snapd
Downs and foot sweeps it it doesn’t cost you anything if if if it fails you know you’re still right where you started and uh yeah I totally agree just just like stumbling someone you know instead people ask me like oh I want to learn Judo I want to learn throws and I’m like
First of all I’m not I haven’t I can do some turn throws but it’s not I would say a big part of of my game um and I’m just like why don’t we just focus on how to move your feet or how to uh outg grip
Your opponent kind of the music kind of the the the space between the notes you know what I mean that’s what I think is really important for Jiu-Jitsu practitioners at the fundamental level is don’t worry about how to do like a nice throw you’re never going to throw
Someone if you don’t know how to uh misalign their shoulders or how to make them stumble so uh sorry I didn’t mean to interrupt you there um that’s right I mean I I agree with you I think if you want to learn to do those things I think
And and I want to be clear about this too I think if you want to learn to do those things they’re very worthwhile you know there’s a value to them I don’t I’m not really you know I don’t really kind of you don’t hear it too much or at
Least I don’t hear it too much right now but there is like kind of always a thread of people where they’re like traditional martial arts you know don’t work they like to talk about how like you know it’s only a pragmatic thing and like you know Judo people you know
You’re going to turn you’re gonna get your back taken or like if it’s a judo guy versus a Jiu-Jitsu guy and they do a turn throw I’m gonna take your back I tend to avoid those kind of like I think it’s nonsensical debates you know I think that there’s a huge value to
Practicing Judo as Judo I think there’s a huge value to practicing even traditional martial arts as long as you know what you’re doing and what you’re not doing you know like I think the mistake is a judo person going well you know I do Judo and so it’s basically the same as
Jiu-Jitsu because it’s not and you know a Jiu-Jitsu person who’s like I do Jiu-Jitsu it’s basically the same as Jud all I got to do is you know stand up it’s it’s just not the same thing but yeah if we’re doing Jiu-Jitsu and we only have a limited amount of time
Because like Matt like you’re a busy guy it’s like how much time do you have actually to spend first of all on Jiu-Jitsu and then separate from that learning you know a whole bunch of other stuff you just don’t have that much time you know so being efficient with your
With what you’re learning is a huge part of it and um so I think your advice is is good advice it’s like learn the stuff that you’re actually going to use learn the stuff that’s going to be functional for you and that will allow you to funnel somebody into the thing that
You’re actually trying to do which in in our case is take somebody down grapple on the ground take their back find a way to enter into a submission um that sort of thing so that’s my that’s my take on it yeah so I’ve I’ve heard Dan and her mentioned multiple times
How he sort of will structure training for somebody at the fundamental level in jiujitsu it’s a lot of the time he says he works from the ground up right like escaping pins uh escaping submissions guard retention distance management and then uh essentially working Your Way backwards to the standing position
Because let’s be honest in uh let’s say an ibjjf rule set you could potentially be and there has been world champions who never do a single takedown right that’s just not just under that rule I mean ADCC is completely different you have to train takedowns to fight an ADCC
But in ibjjf you could literally pull guard every tournament and win um my question to you how important is learning fund uh is learning takedowns at the fundamental level would you say whether it’s like uh not just for a competitor but for anyone recreational you know uh do you think it’s important
For recreational beginners regardless of their Ambitions in the sport how important is it for them to learn takedowns and let’s say you are you know you get a new white belt today who comes into your gym and they want to learn Jiu-Jitsu and uh let’s say you did want
To introduce takedowns to a fundamental student like how would you begin to introduce uh takedowns to them I want to back up it’s a good question what I would say I want to go back one step which is I think the problem with takedowns is that they’re dangerous and they’re more dangerous
Than working on the ground there are a bunch of reasons for that but the most most evident one is you’re two people standing up and one of you is going to fall down because the other one does something so you have two bodies with for crashing together and
Then crashing down on the ground and in order to move somebody you have to use power and you have to use speed um until you’re at a a high enough level where you can use like timing so I think that if someone is going to learn if you’re going to teach so if
This is if you’re an instructor listening to this and you’re going to teach someone how to do takedowns early on in their career in their practice you need to have a safe enough training environment where it’s not dependent on the technique that you’re teaching them but like the overall culture of the
Class allows them to remain safe because the easiest way to suck in Jiu-Jitsu is to get injured and not trink you know if you if you want to find someone like a really quick path to sucking just don’t show up and if you get injured early on
Even if it’s with the right you know someone following Our advice to do the right first technique and the environment is wrong where the attitude is wrong or you know like we were talking about like those early days back at henzo like if the if the environment doesn’t
Support a safe way of training then it’s better not to learn any takedowns as a white belt or a blue belt it’s better to wait until purple or brown belt where you have some understanding of what the culture is and what you’re limits are and what the training is like and what
It means just like kind of General body mechanics and movement and safety and like you know because you do learn something if I sweep you with Sumi it’s like a fall so only you’re learning it this you know this high off the ground you’re learning to tuck your chin you’re
Learning to roll so when we stand up if you have if you’ve understood not just like intellectually understood but like in the cor you know in the body like you’ve understood how to fall safely that’s that’s going to help you you know hey there’s your number one student making an appearance [ __ ] cat
Man ruining my show keep going that’s it ruining the show or or saving the show I don’t know it depends but but look like you know if I so in other words like I think it’s safer not to do any takedowns if the takedowns are not going to be done safely
And I want to bring that up because sometimes like even as instructor we lose the forest for the trees and we feel like you know we’re we’re doing our students a service by teaching them a single leg but you’re not doing your student the service if you’re teaching
Them the single leg and then they go into a room of people who don’t know how to fall and they do they do a great single leg and their their buddy lands on their leg and breaks it which happen I mean this stuff happens all the time
So even by the way even in Judo schools I mean especially in Judo schools you get two white belts they learn Oso deari and they go hacking at each other’s knees and someone tears their miniscus and that’s the end of that person’s career so I think in the takedown
Discussion one of the reasons why you know I think this is kind of like the the the wisdom of you know Dan’s vision for this is you end up doing the stuff that’s least safe and you start with the stuff that’s going to keep you safest the longest escaping the pin escaping the
Submission so does that make sense as a frame yeah absolutely so um do you think ibjjf should do more to incentivize takedowns than they do and if so how would they do it um or is it good the way it is Sport Jiu-Jitsu is good if two guys pull guard
I’m I I love pulling guard so I I’m not like I’m not one of these guys online that criticizes guard pullers oh that’s not fighting blah blah blah it’s like it’s sport Jiu-Jitsu right so I have nothing against pulling guard but what do you what do you think in terms of
Ibjjf and their approach to takedowns you know there every um every organization or every event has a specific set of rules that govern the way that that uh that tournament works and so when you have people who want to win those tournaments they’re always going to direct their training towards
Like the path of lease resistance for the win in a way you know so yeah I’m I’m in total agreement with you I mean I think that asking uh I don’t think they need to change the rules I mean I think like you know if you want to
ADCC if you take someone who wins in in ADCC rule set and you put them in ibjjf and it it doesn’t necessarily translate directly with some people it does but it doesn’t really you know and it’s why you have people winning in one rule set and
They can’t win in another or they don’t win in another same thing ebi rules or submission only rules or whatever it is there are always going to be people and you know athletes who want to win and so they narrow their focus into what that
Rule set is and I think that you just kind of accept the rules as part of the condition of what that what that environment is so um if if ibjjf were to incentivize uh standing you know a little bit more I think you would see people’s training change in order to
Accommodate that and I think some of it you’d probably see and I haven’t thought about it really enough to to to work through it but you know you would probably see some people whose positive standing increases so like their standing skills increase generally you see people cross trainining with Judo
And developing a more robust Judo game and then you would see another class of people who build entire practices around winning ibjjf and having a kind of negative standing game you know and this is like the the arms race that takes place in every rule set of every organization
So if if you had a situation where like ibjjf was like okay you know what we’re going to incentivize uh standing you would probably see more higher level people improving their standup um but you might also have a bunch of unintended consequences where it gets micromanaged and you see this in
Judo a lot now where it’s like the rule sets are constantly updated and it’s like um yes you can break with two hands no you can’t break with two hands well next year maybe you’ll be able to break with you hands you can’t grab the leg
Well you can grab the leg but only in these cases so I’m not really a fan of like over regulating a particular rule set in order to be able to like just like you know tweak these little things to get this perfect situation um I don’t know if that exactly answers
Your question but I think that what we see is by the way side note is I think that if if you do see people um if you do see someone um like ibjjf increasing like incent incentivizing standing you’re going to see more injuries I think especially among lower
Belt ranks you know um it won’t last forever but you know it’s like I don’t know what’s what’s the worst injury you’ve seen in training um the worst injury I’ve seen in training um thankfully you know I haven’t I haven’t seen I haven’t physically been in the room for like any catastrophic injuries
I don’t think at least not like in the last 10 years and then I think maybe before then I might have just blocked it out um but I’ve been like proximal to a few and um you know I’ve seen I i’ I’ve uh I’ve been around like there was a guy who
Broke his shinbone I think someone went for it was a something in the standing position that guys his shinbone broke like almost in half and you had like part of it sticking out it was just so bad someone had to come over and like yeah guy was like screaming and someone
Had to come over and like put a ghee over the thing so like it was just disgusting it was like gross you know so we could we didn’t you know people didn’t have to see it um so like that that kind of thing is pretty bad
Um you did you see that no I was there I was actually I saw the aftermath of it because and it happened I think in the class in the class before before I was there uh so like maybe it happened like 11:00 a.m. and I was there at noon and
So it was just kind of like you know everybody was on on U on edge about that you know injury like that happens and like the whole kind of psychic Vibe of the place really goes Haywire for a while um yeah I don’t I don’t really I can’t remember seeing like like seeing
Somebody get their you know their uh they like a shin broken or um you know there have been injuries where it’s like you know someone gets their knee popped someone gets their ankle popped um someone gets their arm you know messed up or someone gets their shoulder
Torqued out of a chimur you know I’ve had injuries myself I had you know my my miniscus I torn meniscus you know that was from like a Toe Hold so like I’ve had some of my own injuries but thankfully knock wood um I haven’t I haven’t seen too
Many ropic injuries yeah so I I deal with my own meniscus issues do did you get surgery do you what is your uh you know um what is your protocol for uh prehab and recovery and things like that I mean I don’t do as much preab as I
Should and over the years I really I wasn’t doing very much cross trainining I my C my my prehab um from 2005 to about 2015 was Muay Thai you know I was doing I was doing a lot of tie boxing for that 10e period and then I kind of tapered off and and
Um you know we were talking about like you know amount of time that you have to train uh my son was born in 2015 and I was at this kind of inflection point where it was going to be very difficult for me to continue doing Jiu-Jitsu and also so like tie
Boxing at the intensity that I was doing them prior to that um I don’t know if you have a family or kids but that can it’s amazing but it can throw a monkey wrench into your plans you know um so I I made a decision then that I was going
To not do tie boxing quite as intensely that was my that was my strength training that was my preamp that was my other stuff and um I did some yoga you know for a while I was doing I I’m actually a big fan of like hot yoga not necessarily bickram
Yoga but Hot Yoga I think it’s for me it’s been um being in that hot environment and kind of loosening everything up and going through some of those static postures and stuff like that it’s been very helpful in terms of my meniscus yeah you know like when it
Happened my Meniscus was torn in such a way where I couldn’t walk like I couldn’t bend my knee it was locked was yeah it was locked out it was like locked out in an angle like this so I couldn’t straighten it I couldn’t bend it and I needed to have surgery in order
To recover any kind of like useful function so I went into I had it um excised and I went into surgery pretty quickly like maybe a couple days later and then it was actually it was the right choice uh for me I don’t think people should like you know be going under the
Knife unnecessarily but for me it worked out great because I walked out I couldn’t walk into the hospital but I walked out of it and so they cut a piece out I assume they didn’t Stitch it they didn’t Stitch it they gave me the option to stitch it if anybody’s listening to
This and you’ve had you know miniscus issue usually they’ll give you an option of either stitching it to repair it or excising it and if if they said you know if if they were going to excise it then you know recovery time was like maybe six weeks
Um and then repair it was like six months and a bunch of that time on crutches or even this yeah or longer yeah so like this was was in a time where I didn’t want to lose the I didn’t you know I was doing Jiu-Jitsu I knew
That it was something that I wanted to continue doing and um I just I opted for them to take it out and it was it was a good a good call for me um and these days I still have problems you know it’s like different sorts of problems but you know it still
Clicks around and sometimes my knee locks out and um I mean does your knee lock out still yeah once in a while it does got to kind of [ __ ] jam it through yeah you got to unlock it yeah but you know it’s like you’ve been around for
Like if you train Jiu Jitsu for a long enough time you’re going to have some injuries you know and you get to the 20- year mark or whenever and there’s going to be some stuff that you’re carrying around from 15 years ago if you’ve trained well and this is a separate
Topic but I think if you’ve trained well you haven’t done so much damage to your body that you can’t train in a normal way um like like have normal expectations for your training like continue to practice do randori do some standup continue to progress and grow and you know there aren’t any positions
There’s some positions that are give going to give you a hard time maybe you’re physically uncomfortable in them but there’s nothing that’s like super off limits I think the risk of hard training in a exclusively hard training in a way that’s not done in an intelligent way early on in your
Practice is that if you do make it to year 10 or 15 uh your body doesn’t forget that you’ve you know had had to do that and you end up suffering and I know there are plenty of U you know people in my early cohort of Jiu-Jitsu who are still
Around and you know it’s and a they they ain’t doing that great you know some of them are doing great but some of them it’s hard you know so you know I feel like I talk about it I almost beat it like a dead horse on this
Show is the uh the ecological approach right this live training the task focused games a lot of people are like oh that’s just Target sparring or whatever um other people are very much um very much like fanatical and very uh particular about their about how they
Perceive that type of training so I I now when I think about the ecological approach I think about the previous training that I’ve done and I ask myself was this a waste of time you know like drilling for reps and things like that one thing that’s big in uh traditional
Judo training and is still done pretty much I would say by every highlevel Judo C at the Olympic level today is uh uchikomi so doing entries right uh counting entries trying to trying to work on your mechanics and your speed and your intensity while you’re doing these
Repetitions but to me that kind of flies in the opposite direction of the ecological crowd who says no it needs to be live training um you know just doing entries and speed drills doesn’t necessarily equate to the development of skill or the ability to be able to use these techniques against someone who’s
Resisting someone who’s moving who’s gripping you uh breaking your grips Etc um how how do you feel about like the traditional methods uchikomi speed training drilling uh maybe not even just in the standing position but on the ground what’s your opinion on that as opposed to how it can transfer or
Develop skill into a student I can only speak about my own experience and my experience has been um you know I I came up drilling not drilling in a really in an ucha Comey sense although I I I I think uomi practice is important and I’ll give it a
Kind of put an asterisk by that and give a C out in a second but um drilling to become familiar with the mechanics of the technique is valuable and has been valuable to me you know it’s a valuable I think it’s a valuable thing and um I prefer to think about it
As understanding a technique or a set of techniques in isolation versus understanding a set of techniques in context and in any this is true in most other fields also you can isolate something and get an understanding of it and there’s nothing wrong with that understanding but if you have an it’s
Separate from an understanding of the thing in its context and what’s I think that what the debate or whatever the discussion is about from what I have gathered is that it’s like well on one side we have we have this idea that there can be kind of technical development in isolation through like
Aomi or Drilling and then on the other side you have um people who say that no it needs to be in context and that’s like where you’re really you’re really getting the um kind of the true essence of what’s going on because you’re you’re taking the thing and you’re putting it
Into a context where someone is resisting maybe not too hard but you’re narrowing down the focus and you’re going like okay this is the same sort of thing we’re kind of at the end of the day you’re trying to build the same kind of uh trying to get to the same outcome
But one of them is in context and one of them is more in isolation and so if you look at rich aomi just as an example it’s like the ultimate isolation drill where you have a partner who’s relatively static and you’re doing all of the work and it’s this kind of way of
Putting things under a microscope you know are are your feet where they’re supposed to be uh or is your arm where it’s supposed to be and a lot of that has to do with developing um just ba you know basic stepbystep movements and then also kind of a feel for things because
As you know there is an element of Jiu-Jitsu which is you have to feel it there is a tactile thing in the sense that um it’s beyond just the intellectual understanding of what an arm lock is if you hit an arm lock and you do jigami from the guard and it’s on
You know it’s on even without like having mapped it steps one two and three and even if you do steps one two and three you may get there and be like you know what it just it’s not right you know it’s not right and sure enough second later your partner pulls out so
There is a sense of feel that you want to develop and I think that in my experience I I really like ucha comies I like ucha comies for one I think that um developing speed and like speed of Entry speed of exit that’s an important thing in at least in Judo in
Jiujitsu entering things quickly is less important but understanding how your body fits into your part’s body some people need to kind of slow that down and take it out of context and put it in isolation so they can see the pieces um and then uh I like the kind of it you know
It’s a good um it’s a good cardio in a way you know if you do if you want to get tired do 500 otaris it’s like you’re going to be [ __ ] tired after the end of that it’s not going to be that easy and so I think there are some
Benefits um and then I think on the other side you need to be able to put things in context it doesn’t make sense to understand how to do o soari if you don’t understand the setup and the movement and how your partner is moving and where it fits and when what do you
Do it before and what do you do it after and what are the prerequisites and feeling body weight and feeling your partner moving and feeling when they’re off balance all that stuff so I think you get in a sparring like a lighter sparring or um kind of a contextual
Situation you get some of those soft skills that are very difficult to build in just the drilling but in the drilling you get the um you get these things in isolation which allow you to kind of pinpoint in a way that might be difficult if you are if there are a lot
Of other things going on in a context if that makes sense um the broader point to me is that as with like a lot of things it’s not what you’re doing it’s how you’re doing it and repetition for the sake of repetition it it’s I’m not going to go
So far as to say it does it’s it’s useless but it’s a real limited utility you know just rep competing things and one thing that I I got tell my students this also but you know you can have two people and one person has five years of
Experience and the other person has one year of experience five times so they’ve both been practicing for five years and you know you may have done 500 ucha you know 500 oaris do you have 500 repetitions worth of osari or do you have like 10 repetitions that you just
Kind of mindlessly went through till you got to number 500 and I’m never going to be in favor of empty mindless totally un non-contextualized repetition for anything um just as on the other side I’m not going to be a fan of less than your best most precise execution of a
Technique so that’s I think I kind of land somewhere in the middle um if if that makes sense to you yeah absolutely I I I agree I I I’m pretty much right on the same path as you you know I think I think drills as long as you’re drilling with intent and um
Drilling for precision I I think it’s I think it’s totally valid uh but um if you don’t mind I’d like to shift the conversation towards sort of your you and your school excuse me and your program uh if that’s all right so you’re if I’m not mistaken is is it Brooklyn
BJJ yeah yeah okay um when did you open your school um so I started uh I I have a partner of mine I I um I started uh we started the School in 2005 and so we had um we had pre pandemic we closed one of the schools in uh in 2020
Um because the lease was actually coming up and we were having issues with the landlord and I don’t know how it was where you are but in New York it was pretty tough to have uh brick and mortar Jiu-Jitsu martial arts school um going and if it wasn’t for the the
Um landlords who were helping you know kind of allow us to to make things work it would have been really difficult to get through so we had one that wasn’t that cooperative and but now anyways we have three schools first one was in 2005 and then
Um they were they they grew uh they grew from there um do you do you have like a kids program there yeah we have kids we you know we we teach kids we teach adults um you teach the kids I don’t teach the kids myself not anymore um I used to
Teach kids uh through I don’t know first 10 years or so um I was teaching kids and I don’t I don’t teach them now um mostly because I have my own kid and a lot my my time goes to that but um you know I think
That kids I think kids programs are have you know present their own challenges for people who are in Jiu-Jitsu running Jiu-Jitsu schools um you know one one thing about a kids program is that you just tends to be you know more technical than other types of martial
Arts and as a result it can be it has some challenges especially with younger kids um I think a kind of like more contextual model like the one you were talking about like that is something that kids can get where they’re actually moving and building live skills and it’s
L yeah yeah like it’s exactly like a kind of more uh ecological approach I think can be good for kids because it allows them to move and develop more holistic skills ultimately kids you know they what do they need they need uh they need coordination they need gross motor
Skills they need to understand balance they need to understand distance movement how their bodies are in space where their bodies are in space um what it feels like to pull or push and you know how to land safely how to fall safely and a lot of that stuff they they
Know already so it’s more just about Fally it into a Jiu-Jitsu context um the other challenge of course is that when you’re teaching kids you’re also having to teach the parents in a way so generally speaking that’s the bigger challenge um which is why I think if you if it’s possible for
People I think parents should be training Jiu-Jitsu you know the Suzuki method it’s interesting uh the one of the tenants I don’t know if you ever did music lessons when when you were a kid but you know the Suzuki method is like the preeminence was the preeminent like
Violin method for um it may still be for for kids learning violin and it was kind of like U it was a movement maybe back in the 80s or it may have started a little bit before like I did I remember when I was a little kid and they start
Kids like age three you know or maybe even younger with violin but one of the among the many things that they do one of the things that they focus on is the parent has to do like parent also has to take violent lessons you don’t have to
Like continue it but especially at the beginning and I think what they figured out was that if the parents are doing the lesson number one they can be more helpful to the kids number two they understand some of the challenges that go into practicing something that you’re
Not that great at and it gives parents a little bit more uh empathy for what’s going on when their kids are trying to learn something so the best students that I the best Junior students I’ve ever had have been students whose parents are also training and um so I think that if
Someone you know if if you’re listening to this and you’re teaching Jiu-Jitsu or you’re a school owner um and you’re struggling with your kids program a good recommendation is try to get more parents on the mat and uh it’s going to make life a lot easier it’s also more fun for
Everybody yeah I absolutely agree um I think you’re I also absolutely agree with what you said about the ecological approach in kids I’ve talked about that before in the show is yeah that’s actually where I think the Eco approach truly shines is when you’re dealing with um uh children
Who especially from ages say 5 to n 5 to 10 where you can’t EAS easily show them techniques and then expect that they’re going to be able to do the techniques or even drill the techniques with interest a lot of the time I mean I’ll be
Teaching kids and like if the gym door opens and someone walks in they immediately stop watching what I’m doing and they’re watching what they’re doing so it’s just like it’s really challenging to hold their uh attention but if you put a kid in a single leg and
You say okay you have 40 seconds to escape the single leg if you don’t do that you lose if you fall on your butt you lose and then you just say go now they’re like oh [ __ ] like I can lose this that now I have to try I’m forced
To now apply myself and then and then constantly switching it up so I was defending 10 seconds ago now I’m attacking it just keeps them interested you know and and at the same time they’re building that motor skills whereas you know just the explicit instruction I think for kids of that age
Um they do struggle even just trying the move you know I mean even adults do I mean I think of course you know adults struggle and it’s like now have a seven or eight-year-old kid trying to do like I don’t know what like a spider guard
Sweep or you know collar drag to you know bow and arrow it’s going to be you’re going to have what will happen is you first of all you got your work cut out for you second of all the instructor is going to get you know it’s frustrating it’s difficult to do
Sometimes you know so yeah sorry I didn’t mean to cut you off no no worries have you ever uh in your journey have you ever known John Daner to teach children no I mean I’ve only seen him do you know Nicki Ryan was you know 14 or
13 or 14 or something like that when he first showed up so um I don’t know if that that counts exactly but um and then like every once in a while there have been there would be kids floating through but these were not the kid you know when you and I are talking
About kids we’re talking about kids who are um you know either new white belts or you know kids who are in the community that your school is in and the parent wants them to improve and grow the only kids that I I’ve ever seen in teaching were kids who whose parents
Were crazy enough to bring them to the noon class in the blue basement at henzo in Midtown manhatt and uh you know I think that has that’s a particular kind of parent and um also it’s a particular kind of kid whose parent understands that that environment is not going to be
Totally too much for them um so I I I don’t I haven’t seen him like you know jumping in to teach the you know kids fundamental class um but I also haven’t seen him jump in to teach the uh adult fundamental class either I think that
That’s not his his um you know I he could do it but I think it’s not in his wheelhouse he doesn’t his attention is somewhere else you know but I think it’s challenging you know kids teaching kids working with kids that can be very challenging and I think it requires you
Know a great instructor like we’re talking about you know if you’re going to teach kids I think that you need to be you know it takes it an ungodly amount of patience um you have to have a real passion for it and a vision for it
And like you saying like a an idea of not just kind of bending kids into the the shape that you want them to be in but understanding what will allow them to bend themselves into the shape that’s appropriate for them so that they can get the most out of their training and
Often those things don’t don’t overlap you know it can be it can be it can be challenging but worthwhile um the the sport of Jiu-Jitsu has moved along very quickly I would say in the last 5 to 10 years especially in The Last 5 Years right um what do you think
Is the the biggest contribution to that uh rapid growth over the last decade like what’s what’s caused Jiu-Jitsu to grow the most well I think those are two different questions because you could look at the sport growing in terms of a spectator sport with what’s going on ADCC I’m talking
More about the technical development of the sport um and you know like with the leg locks and and even if you if you want to go back slightly further like Baron bolos things like that um the technical developments and advancements that we’ve seen over the last five to 10 years what
Do you think is the biggest factor that has influenced that I think you have more people doing Jiu-Jitsu now than ever before and there’s a greater pool of people and there’s a greater pool of people who are coming to this younger so you have people who are starting the whole you
Have more people you have more of those people starting younger and then you have the um the uh kind of recognition machine that is fueling people to do more uh and to kind of reach these higher levels where there’s some kind of reward uh Financial uh like recognition
Um you know Prestige those sorts of things so back if if you look back 15 or 20 years ago number one there weren’t that many people doing Jiu-Jitsu there just were not as many practitioners um number two people who were coming to the martial arts if you
Were a kid doing martial arts you were starting with a traditional martial art you were and I think that by and large that’s still true but you were starting with Taekwondo you’re starting with karate you might be starting with Judo you were starting with wrestling and then you would eventually maybe get to
Jiu-Jitsu but it would be much later you know Jiu-Jitsu was kind of a thing that adults did it was self-defense it was like you know bare knuckle fighting it was UFC it was not stuff that was well suited for children to be doing in most cases so you didn’t have as many younger
People doing it which meant that the timeline for the training wasn’t as great and then lastly if you look back that there was no real um you know Golden Ring like you there wasn’t anything really for people to chase I am I think that you know I think that there is my
Opinion op is I think there’s sometimes too much emphasis on EX external um kind of rewards and external like people are too externally motivated I think um but that that’s just my opinion there didn’t that stuff didn’t exist back in the day you know like I was saying like the kind
Of the big promise for Jiu-Jitsu when I started was like someone would climb the ranks to fight in Pride and it was this like Mount Everest some people could Summit it but most people couldn’t and even more people than that would look at it and be like that’s way too big a
Mount The Climb now I think that there’s um there’s obviously like there are Financial incentives there are like gear companies and sponsorships there’s prize money there is um you know social media recognition there’s all of this stuff where people are like oh I want to do
That for this reason or it I don’t want to sound too jaded I think that you know it’s it’s an additional exter external motivator for people who might otherwise already be internally motivated to to train so if you look at the people who like some of the major standouts in the
Last however many years it went from and I don’t know this for sure I’m sure someone can like do the like the metaanalysis of this but I bet you that the median age of people who are like considered in ators or like really high level practitioners or winning stuff has
Dropped down because you had like the Mendes brothers who were you know these guys were phenoms in you know their teens or you know like even like mid teens meow same thing Roto same thing um you know you have these younger kabat Nikki Ryan you know even you know Gordon
When he started was a little bit like older but he’s the guy was still you know 18 or whatever it is so that was that what you know that’s like 10 years of of training that we you know wasn’t even like really considered so I think as a
Result of that you have more people more time and then when you start younger you have fewer of these inhibitions uh physical or mental or you know less baggage you know you have people who are the people who are going to shine are going to shine earlier they’re
Encouraged more and then they kind of continue to go and so you have that and then you have you know technical innovations when something comes up because you have more people digging around in what that is if something is really effective or works really well because you have a broader pool of
People who are practicing it that thing kind of like tectonically like pushes everything up and so you end up with the people who are older or you know people who are not early adopters or don’t have as much time to to to train because they have jobs or responsibilities they can
Still see the results of that pushing up and so you know leg loocks is a good example you know even though leglocks you know might my thing about leglocks is that’s a system that Dan her took Dan her 20 years to develop you know he was
Working on that you know his his version you know I know they didn’t invent you know all all leg locks and stuff but like our approach was 20 years in the making from a guy who had basically given up everything to sit in a basement and teach and train Jiu-Jitsu for you
Know literally guys on the mat 12 hours a day seven days a week so I think particularly for for Jiu-Jitsu and like our thing that was the seed planted the rain coming the sun shining and the the the seed underground kind of like pushing up pushing up pushing up
And then it comes up and there’s a crop and everybody’s like oh we got corn amazing you know and it you know wasn’t here yesterday and then now here it is today well not the whole story but I don’t know that’s a long answer I think that if you look at this
It’s like a combination of like structural things and external factors and then you have people who are you know in ADCC if something works and there’s a big a big prize at the end of it again Prestige or money or whatever you’re going to have more people who
Want to learn that thing if it’s going to help them to get closer and you end up with a kind of builtin evolutionary engine that’s going to get things going a little bit faster than it would if there was no incentive and nobody training which is how which is how it
Was in like 2001 so I often wonder because I’m a huge fan of uh danaher’s instructionals and Gordon’s instructionals I I watch them a lot probably probably to the point where I now I question uh what would I teach if I didn’t have these resources you know like these resources are so available
And from what I’ve heard I’ve I’ve heard Gary tonen say you know as amazing as John danaher is as a grappling coach he’s just as knowledgeable in the Striking Arts if not more so I’m like it’s crazy the level of knowledge of John danaher the the understanding of
His mechanics I when I started watching him was really what um you know what really uh turned me on to him like I had heard obviously oh is gsp’s coach you know we love GSP up here in Canada but I when I started watching his DVDs I was
Like this guy’s got the craziest level of detail with his mechanics and he’s got these like little landmarks with you know oh if if if uh if my leg is in this position then it doesn’t work I need my knee to be above this guy’s ear or
Whatever you know and then and and these little uh these little details um maybe you’ve already answered this question where did he get this information from just from surrounding himself with jiu-jitsu is he just like uh is there a a level of autism that’s involved in it just to be that dialed in
When it comes to TA to absorbing this knowledge he is an unbelievably um his ability to observe and distill and then communicate details and also what is going on in an otherwise very complex set of events is uncanny and I’m sure there are people in
The world who have a similar kind of um set of attributes and skills when it comes to that I just don’t think they’re doing Jiu-Jitsu I don’t think they’re doing martial arts I don’t think they’re in in this world I think that they’re probably you know they’re in they’re in medicine
They’re in um political science they’re in Tech they’re in mathematics or in something else and so we have this incredible like person who has for whatever insane reason dedicated their their gifts to what you know this this work and so so uh the the short answer
Is part of he his OBS his ability to observe and then distill and understand is just off the charts and um I think that’s the biggest difference because you know back in the day there wasn’t that much we didn’t have YouTube you know we had like videos every once in a
While something would surface um but it wasn’t really you know there wasn’t much of it but it same time the stuff that he was seeing he was able to draw out of those you know thousands of people were seeing the same thing but they weren’t seeing the stuff that he was seeing they
Were watching the same thing they weren’t seeing it and um so he was doing that back then and I think he can do it for striking and I think he does it for for Judo and I think he does it for Jiu-Jitsu and I think he can do it for wrestling and
Um you know ultimately as practitioners something that I found is the problem that one of the one of the issues that we face is that we used to have a problem where there wasn’t enough information you know there was kind of like a scarcity of information or you you know
There was an armlock variation that we had never seen before okay um in a in an environment like that the solution to that problem is you get the information about the armlock variation then you’ve learned it and then you’re then you got it right and you kind of
Keep doing this it’s this ability uh to gain and gather new information that’s not really the essential skill anymore and I re I think that if youve come to things from the know the Dan her perspective that’s not really the skill that hasn’t been the skill for a long time but actually the
Skill is filtering out the UN necessary information and funneling through into what you do and what you’re focusing on and what your attention is on focusing on only those things that that matter now that’s a really it seems very simple okay all I’ve got to do is filter out
The stuff that doesn’t work and I’m left with the stuff that works but that’s a huge job and it requires uh a very unique intellect and a very unique way of observing and a balance between understanding detail and seeing the big picture and I think there are a
Lot of people who see detail very well and this is not a knock on anybody but I think that there are plenty of people who can do great breakdowns um you know like YouTube and Instagram and like people do like these breakdowns of technique but it’s one thing to be able
To do a breakdown it’s something else to be able to like figure out a way to determine if what that breakdown is about is worthwhile and valuable and and and meaningful enough to bring into the training and then how to link it to a bigger picture so there are a lot of
People who can do the detail and then there are other people who can do big picture thinking you know um think strategy and understand context and that sort of thing but marrying the two of those is a very it’s a very rare thing so
How did you know how he can do it I don’t I don’t know um but what it involves is this like Sherlock Holmes you know um you have you know Sherlock Holmes is this you know like two you know someone will be sitting there and they’ll have a
Conversation and the person will leave and it’ll turn to you know Watson and he’ll be like the mystery is solved and Watson is like you know Watson is kind of like the standin for the you know all of us because we’re like what are you talking about you know I saw
This guy sitting here I didn’t see anything nothing was weird and so then Sherlock Holmes goes and says what he saw that was actually the key to unraveling the whole thing and so in many ways I think that it’s that kind of intellect that is just you know I think
It’s rare I think it’s a rare intelligence that that allows him to do that but kind of to bring it back to your thing I think he can do it with striking he can do it with kickboxing he can do it with Muay Tha he can do it with MMA and
Uh you know I wish I could do it you know instead I just I have to sat I have to be satisfied with being you know proximal to someone who can and also like I said the kind of very beginning is I think as students whether it’s
Danah her or someone else who is in line with your approach is being comfortable enough to take your hands off off the wheel and go like this person’s a better driver than me you know like it’s fine uh I don’t need to do everything I want
To learn as much as I can and I think if we’re good students then we’re willing to do that awesome all right well um that’s all I got for you today Brian thank you so much for your time I really appreciate your Insight the content you put out is really amazing guys I
Recommend you check out uh Brian’s YouTube channel and also his DVD on BJJ Fanatics uh Brian can you let us know where we can find you yes thanks so first of all thanks so much for having me it’s a pleasure and I really enjoy talking to you um I’m on
Instagram bz Glick and um my you my YouTube channel I think might be the same but if not if you just put my name in Brian Glick it should bring up the the channel and then uh BJJ Fanatics you know I have these uh right now we’ve got
A couple of videos out that cover topics that I learned from danaher you know they’re not not ideas that I came up with they’re very much kind of in line with this conversation and uh and uh if you have if you’re if you have a chance
To check those out then you know that would be great awesome we’ll leave links in the show notes for anyone who’s looking to follow you and again I really recommend checking out uh Brian glick’s content guys I really uh thank you for joining us for this discussion and also if you
Want to support the show I’ll leave the links in the bottom the Online Academy my online merchandise store plus my PayPal account if you want to leave a donation please leave uh comments in the comment section and um I’m going to let you go thank you so much for the
Conversation Mr Brian Glick thanks Matt this was great appreciate it all right and remember essential Jiu-Jitsu podcast everything you need to know about Jiu-Jitsu take care Guys
1 Comment
Brian is a very interesting character! Thx!