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His actual point is kind of obvious , that BJJ fundamentals are fundamentals. I don't think anybody is misled on that. OBviously trying to learn top level things without knowing fundamentals is ridiculous. The way he makes his point sounds a bit waffly and all over the place.
If one is looking for examples of attribute-dependent success, Gordon Ryan is an odd duck to choose as your example, as attribute wise, he's mainly known for being slower than all the other major competitors at his weight class, and notably has a fair number of people more or less exciting his key techniques and gameplan with a high level of success. It also seems odd to frame high-level sports performance as not generating any usual data points for technical (or tactical) efficiency
I think the point is that relatively few people in high-level sports use the same techniques or game plans in the same way as each other. I don't think Cobrahina, Marcelo Garcia or Roger Gracie ever once had any crossover in their techniques or gameplans. That's not to say any of them were doing jiujitsu more correct than the other or that any of them possessed unobtainable attributes, but that to base your jiujitsu off of an individual's techniques/gameplan rather than universal principals is going to misguide you, at least in the long term. What makes more sense is to try and find what connects these competitors. How do they use pressure, how are they efficiently connecting to their opponent, how are they aligning their shoulders hips and spine, how are they connecting to the ground etc. If you just try to do exactly what Gordon is doing it'll take 15 years to get there and by the time you do the high level competition will have changed to avoid whatever meta was created by the past giants of the sport.
@@o0zeroh0o Yeah i guess what I'm getting at is that fundamentals are things that work at all levels, and that's just not something you can arrive at by intuition- actual performance in the sport should be causing you to revise what is and is not a fundamental tactic or technique. It's not obvious to me that fundamentals are forexample "whatever high level black belts were doing in the 90's". There's also plenty of space between "you should just copy marcelo" and "Marcelo's dominant performance with techniques that were then replicated at every level of competition might revise which techniques or tactics you focus on to some degree"
@seneca savoie I absolutely agree that sport performance gives you a tonne to learn from, so we definitely don't disagree there. My interpretation of what the SBG guys are getting at is that there is no fundamental technique or tactic, meaning a "scissor sweep" isn't a fundamental but rather a delivery system. The fundamentals are the underlying principles: - How you choose to connect to the person (cross collar) - Why you've chosen this connection (It gives me a greater degree of control over the corner of the body I'm trying to rotate this person over) - How well you connect (turning the wrist thumb out and engaging the muscles in your back to remove every millimeter of slack in the lapel) - How does my Posture relate to this connection (My Spine is straight and strong and I'm turning to face the direction of the sweep, rather than looking at my opponent) - Where is my direction of force (My arms are guiding the opponent into a hole as I rotate and move my body away) Etc The technique/Delivery system is a lens to view those principles and to understand a means of aligning every aspect of a movement towards a singular goal (to control, to sweep, to submit) while using the least movement/force/speed. An example of these fundamentals not being aligned is a whitebelt's closed guard - They may be aware of the goal (I want to keep my opponent on their knees and find a way to sweep or submit) but then their hips are resting on the ground therefore they have no weight on the opponent, they're not controlling the opponents posture, they're not connected in any way to their opponent and so they're unable to feel any changes in the opponents base, nor are they able to create any angles relative to their opponent etc. All of these things are present in Butterfly guard as well as Half guard as well as RDLR as well as every possible configuration of two human bodies. A really beautiful example of the same fundamentals being applied in entirely different games is Xande Ribero vs Marcelo Garcia - both of these men have an amazing understanding of how to apply those fundamentals to every single position, however their games are hugely different with Xande defaulting to closedguard and Marcelo defaulting to butterfly. They both have similar attributes so either of them could have played the other's game but due to their slight differences in training, body type, personality, muscle fiber type (marcello is one big ball of fast twitch muscle fiber) etc. they chose to develop their particular game and tactics and style. They have very similar bjj records yet have gone down completely different paths with their jiujitsu. There's 3 other things which are important to keep in mind when trying to learn from sport jiujitsu. 1 being that the various techniques you see are going to be mainly focused on a particular set of rules. It may not be the most efficient/best application of jiujitsu or the underlying fundamentals. 2 alot of details are felt rather than seen - in the example I gave above, it's going to be extremely difficult to see the difference between a well connected collar grip (wrist turned, 0 slack) vs a poorly connected one, so many of the actual details are lost. 3 Many of the techniques will be a very particular response to counter the most popular techniques in the current meta, again, not necessarily the most efficient / best jiujitsu. A lot of these techniques that are currently seen as the best, e.g. Gordon's game, will be set aside as non optimal, probably by Gordon himself, when the meta game catches up. If you give his podcast with Joe Rogan a listen he says it himself that his game is based on specifically negating the game plan of the opponent and that he's constantly changing his game in response to changes in the meta. So then getting caught up in accumulating techniques is a little like Chinese Whispers (Sorry if that's offensive. I mean the game where you whisper something and it gets a little different each time) Where by Gordon understands the underlying principles of each movement deeply, and he creates a fundamentally sound technique which is both an optimal response to some specific scenario he's expecting, under a specific ruleset and is also an optimal use of his particular attributes in a way that satisfies his particular personality. A viewer then watches this technique, sees all of the visible details and loses every other important aspect of the movement - a lot like the tip of an iceberg. And learning from this "iceberg tip" is alluring because it offers a short term gain in the sense that it's something new which your gym buddies won't have experienced so you'll probably see some success, but it will quickly fade away as your buddies figure out the preventative measures. It's analogous to buying single use kitchen gadgets - an avocado knife and an apple dicer and a pineapple core-er etc. Sure they might make you a little bit better at cutting onions in the short term but there's a reason chefs will spend years learning to use and sharpen a single knife instead of just using a slapchop.
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Everyone that ever does Jiu Jitsu and martial arts in general needs to see this video. A perfect explanation.
His actual point is kind of obvious , that BJJ fundamentals are fundamentals. I don't think anybody is misled on that. OBviously trying to learn top level things without knowing fundamentals is ridiculous. The way he makes his point sounds a bit waffly and all over the place.
Well said
If one is looking for examples of attribute-dependent success, Gordon Ryan is an odd duck to choose as your example, as attribute wise, he's mainly known for being slower than all the other major competitors at his weight class, and notably has a fair number of people more or less exciting his key techniques and gameplan with a high level of success. It also seems odd to frame high-level sports performance as not generating any usual data points for technical (or tactical) efficiency
exciting??
I think the point is that relatively few people in high-level sports use the same techniques or game plans in the same way as each other. I don't think Cobrahina, Marcelo Garcia or Roger Gracie ever once had any crossover in their techniques or gameplans. That's not to say any of them were doing jiujitsu more correct than the other or that any of them possessed unobtainable attributes, but that to base your jiujitsu off of an individual's techniques/gameplan rather than universal principals is going to misguide you, at least in the long term. What makes more sense is to try and find what connects these competitors. How do they use pressure, how are they efficiently connecting to their opponent, how are they aligning their shoulders hips and spine, how are they connecting to the ground etc. If you just try to do exactly what Gordon is doing it'll take 15 years to get there and by the time you do the high level competition will have changed to avoid whatever meta was created by the past giants of the sport.
@@o0zeroh0o Yeah i guess what I'm getting at is that fundamentals are things that work at all levels, and that's just not something you can arrive at by intuition- actual performance in the sport should be causing you to revise what is and is not a fundamental tactic or technique. It's not obvious to me that fundamentals are forexample "whatever high level black belts were doing in the 90's". There's also plenty of space between "you should just copy marcelo" and "Marcelo's dominant performance with techniques that were then replicated at every level of competition might revise which techniques or tactics you focus on to some degree"
@seneca savoie I absolutely agree that sport performance gives you a tonne to learn from, so we definitely don't disagree there. My interpretation of what the SBG guys are getting at is that there is no fundamental technique or tactic, meaning a "scissor sweep" isn't a fundamental but rather a delivery system. The fundamentals are the underlying principles:
- How you choose to connect to the person (cross collar)
- Why you've chosen this connection (It gives me a greater degree of control over the corner of the body I'm trying to rotate this person over)
- How well you connect (turning the wrist thumb out and engaging the muscles in your back to remove every millimeter of slack in the lapel)
- How does my Posture relate to this connection (My Spine is straight and strong and I'm turning to face the direction of the sweep, rather than looking at my opponent)
- Where is my direction of force (My arms are guiding the opponent into a hole as I rotate and move my body away)
Etc
The technique/Delivery system is a lens to view those principles and to understand a means of aligning every aspect of a movement towards a singular goal (to control, to sweep, to submit) while using the least movement/force/speed. An example of these fundamentals not being aligned is a whitebelt's closed guard - They may be aware of the goal (I want to keep my opponent on their knees and find a way to sweep or submit) but then their hips are resting on the ground therefore they have no weight on the opponent, they're not controlling the opponents posture, they're not connected in any way to their opponent and so they're unable to feel any changes in the opponents base, nor are they able to create any angles relative to their opponent etc. All of these things are present in Butterfly guard as well as Half guard as well as RDLR as well as every possible configuration of two human bodies.
A really beautiful example of the same fundamentals being applied in entirely different games is Xande Ribero vs Marcelo Garcia - both of these men have an amazing understanding of how to apply those fundamentals to every single position, however their games are hugely different with Xande defaulting to closedguard and Marcelo defaulting to butterfly. They both have similar attributes so either of them could have played the other's game but due to their slight differences in training, body type, personality, muscle fiber type (marcello is one big ball of fast twitch muscle fiber) etc. they chose to develop their particular game and tactics and style. They have very similar bjj records yet have gone down completely different paths with their jiujitsu.
There's 3 other things which are important to keep in mind when trying to learn from sport jiujitsu. 1 being that the various techniques you see are going to be mainly focused on a particular set of rules. It may not be the most efficient/best application of jiujitsu or the underlying fundamentals. 2 alot of details are felt rather than seen - in the example I gave above, it's going to be extremely difficult to see the difference between a well connected collar grip (wrist turned, 0 slack) vs a poorly connected one, so many of the actual details are lost. 3 Many of the techniques will be a very particular response to counter the most popular techniques in the current meta, again, not necessarily the most efficient / best jiujitsu. A lot of these techniques that are currently seen as the best, e.g. Gordon's game, will be set aside as non optimal, probably by Gordon himself, when the meta game catches up. If you give his podcast with Joe Rogan a listen he says it himself that his game is based on specifically negating the game plan of the opponent and that he's constantly changing his game in response to changes in the meta.
So then getting caught up in accumulating techniques is a little like Chinese Whispers (Sorry if that's offensive. I mean the game where you whisper something and it gets a little different each time) Where by Gordon understands the underlying principles of each movement deeply, and he creates a fundamentally sound technique which is both an optimal response to some specific scenario he's expecting, under a specific ruleset and is also an optimal use of his particular attributes in a way that satisfies his particular personality. A viewer then watches this technique, sees all of the visible details and loses every other important aspect of the movement - a lot like the tip of an iceberg. And learning from this "iceberg tip" is alluring because it offers a short term gain in the sense that it's something new which your gym buddies won't have experienced so you'll probably see some success, but it will quickly fade away as your buddies figure out the preventative measures. It's analogous to buying single use kitchen gadgets - an avocado knife and an apple dicer and a pineapple core-er etc. Sure they might make you a little bit better at cutting onions in the short term but there's a reason chefs will spend years learning to use and sharpen a single knife instead of just using a slapchop.
🐵🔥