Learning Is More Fun Than Doing
The academic’s safety blanket is to remain in the academy. Not everyone has to compete, but we owe it to ourselves and our students to challenge and test ourselves; specifically in ways that are uncomfortable.
I have a somewhat unique perspective on BJJ. The “good old days” for me were the late 2000s — as I wrote about here. In rural, mid-west USA, while social media was still in it’s infancy, this was still only the second (and budding third) generation of UFC.
In those days “instructionals” were bootlegged VHS recordings of ADCC, or a DVD if you were lucky. However, I had a significant break during the late 2010s. When I returned to BJJ in 2019 the game had completely changed — I had no idea who this Gordon Ryan fellow was.
From a technical perspective, that gives me a nice blend of “old school and new.” From an educational perspective, in today’s world, we now have an endless supply of Instagram highlights, plus high quality instructional content on YouTube, BJJ Fanatics, and elsewhere.
Something I’ve struggled with since 2020 or so (my purple belt years and onward) is that learning, in an academic sense, is fun. The problem is, learning is more fun than doing. We can literally lose ourselves in an endless sea of instructional content. In fact, to make matters worse, a lot it is pretty high quality.
The reason this is a problem is because instructional content tends to lag behind competition efficacy, as the later is often used to legitimize the former. The mistake I’ve made, and still make, is wanting to find some “secret wisdom”, the silver-bullet instructional, but that’s not how this game works.
Plenty of “young, athletic, and spirited” lower belts have frustratingly taken me to task on the mat because they relentlessly observe and integrate competition study.
Public academia is all about playing a game. One’s test score is largely indicative of one’s ability to take tests and not necessarily their knowledge or wisdom of a particular subject. For example, open book tests aren’t cheating. They’re actually indicative of the more important skill — which is critical thinking and utilizing resources rather than regurgitating vocabulary.
Coaching practices are a topic for another day, but find their place here in that often times — again, myself included — we as coaches teach too many techniques. We, like the YouTube algorithm, throw so much at students that we’re literally asking them to drink from a fire hose regardless of rhetoric or intention otherwise.
It’s been said that John Danaher only teaches 6 submissions. The number is arbitrary as I can distill it down to three categories for you — extension, compression, and rotating submissions. One of those mechanics, or a combination of them, will break any joint on the human body.
Since ADCC 2024 recently took place, let’s do some “80/20” analysis of what coaches and practitioners should be focusing their time on; not for then next month (or any other arbitrary time period), but until further evidence is presented.
The most frequent submissions in ADCC 2024 vs. 2022 were:
Rear Naked Choke (RNC): 25% vs. 30%
Armbar: 20% vs. 15%
Heel Hook: 10% vs. 28%
Guillotine: ~10% each.
Triangle: 10% vs. 8%
Key Takeaway: The order of the Top 5 flip flop for rank. However, the submissions themselves haven’t changed much. Even more specifically, the Top 3 and especially the Top 1 have reigned supreme for quite a while.
The RNC is consistently the highest percentage submission. Obviously, that occurs from the “back” or “back mount” position. It’s worthwhile then to ask ourselves what the most effective ways of getting to the back are:
Guard Passing (attempt): 38%
Takedown (attempt): 24%
Key Takeaway: Almost 2/3 of all back takes come from either a takedown attempt or a guard pass attempt. Over 1/3 come from the former. Get better at takedowns.
If you see where this is going, you might be asking yourself what the most effective guard passes and takedowns in ADCC have been.
For guard passing:
Body Lock: 30%
Half Guard: 44%
Key Takeaway: Almost half of all passes came from half guard. 3/4 came from either half-guard or a body lock.
As for takedowns:
Body Lock: 20%
Single Leg: 18%
Double Leg: 17%
Key Takeaway: Thou shalt not give up underhooks! Thou shalt also learn to sprawl and down block.
Additionally, both of the takedown-oriented and guard-pass-oriented back takes come from creating scrambles or from forcing a “turtle” or front-headlock / “referee’s position” type of situation to then take the back from.
We are what we give our attention and energy to. While there’s nothing wrong with exploring your style and skills through high-quality instructional material, there is something lost by only being oriented academically.
We can do better, both as coaches and athletes.
Inspiration: Climb Strong, “The First Step Off a Peak is Down.”
References: ADCC 2024 stats, ADCC 2022 stats.