Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with John Donoher,
00:00:02 widely acknowledged as one of the greatest coaches
00:00:05 and minds in the martial arts world,
00:00:08 having coached many champions in jiu jitsu,
00:00:11 submission grappling, and MMA,
00:00:13 including Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonin, Nick Rodriguez,
00:00:18 Craig Jones, Nicky Ryan, Chris Weidman,
00:00:21 and George St. Pierre.
00:00:23 Quick mention of our sponsors,
00:00:25 Onnit, SimpliSafe, Indeed, and Linode.
00:00:28 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
00:00:32 As a side note, let me say that John
00:00:34 is a scholar of not just jiu jitsu,
00:00:36 but judo, wrestling, Muay Thai, boxing, MMA,
00:00:40 and outside of that, topics of history, psychology,
00:00:45 philosophy, and even artificial intelligence,
00:00:48 as you will hear in this conversation.
00:00:50 After this chat, I started to entertain the possibility
00:00:54 of returning back to competition as a black belt,
00:00:57 maybe even training with John and his team
00:00:59 for a few weeks leading up to the competition.
00:01:02 For a recreational practitioner such as myself,
00:01:05 the value of training and competing in jiu jitsu
00:01:08 is that it is one of the best ways to get humbled.
00:01:11 To me, keeping the ego in check is essential
00:01:14 for a productive and happy life.
00:01:17 This is the Lex Friedman podcast,
00:01:20 and here is my conversation with John Donoher.
00:01:24 Are you afraid of death?
00:01:26 Let’s start with an easy question.
00:01:29 There’s no warmup?
00:01:30 That’s it?
00:01:30 No warmup.
00:01:31 No jumping jacks?
00:01:34 Let’s break that down into two questions.
00:01:38 I’m a human being, and like any human being,
00:01:40 I’m biologically programmed to be terrified of death.
00:01:45 Every physical element in our bodies
00:01:49 is designed to keep us away from death.
00:01:52 I’m no different from anyone else in that regard.
00:01:54 If you throw me from the top of the Empire State Building,
00:01:58 I’m gonna scream all the way down to the concrete.
00:02:01 If you wave a loaded firearm in my face,
00:02:03 I’m gonna flinch away in horror
00:02:05 the same way anyone else would.
00:02:09 So in that first sense of, are you afraid of death?
00:02:15 My body is terrified of injury leading to death
00:02:18 the same way any other human being would.
00:02:21 So when death is imminent, there’s a terror that.
00:02:24 Yeah, I go through the same adrenaline dumps
00:02:26 that you would go through.
00:02:28 But on the other hand,
00:02:29 you’re also asking a much deeper question,
00:02:31 which is presumably, are you afraid of nonexistence?
00:02:35 What comes after your physical death?
00:02:37 And that’s the more interesting question.
00:02:40 No, I should start by saying from the start,
00:02:47 I’m a materialist.
00:02:48 I don’t believe that we have an immortal soul.
00:02:50 I don’t believe there’s a life after our physical death.
00:02:53 In this sense, from someone who starts
00:02:56 from that point of view,
00:02:58 you have to understand that everyone has two deaths.
00:03:04 We always talk about our death as though there was only one,
00:03:08 but we all have two deaths.
00:03:09 There was a time before you were born when you were dead.
00:03:18 You weren’t afraid of that period of nonexistence.
00:03:21 You don’t even think about it.
00:03:24 So why would you be afraid of your second period
00:03:27 of nonexistence?
00:03:28 You came from nonexistence.
00:03:30 You’re gonna go back into it.
00:03:31 You weren’t afraid of the first.
00:03:33 Why are you somehow afraid of the second?
00:03:35 So it doesn’t really make sense to me
00:03:37 as to why people would be afraid of nonexistence.
00:03:40 You dealt with it fine the first time.
00:03:43 Deal with it the second time.
00:03:44 But your mind didn’t exist for the first death.
00:03:47 And it won’t exist after you die either.
00:03:50 But it does exist now enough to comprehend
00:03:53 that there’s this thing that you know nothing about
00:03:56 that’s coming, which is nonexistence.
00:03:58 Actually, you do know about it,
00:03:59 because you know what it was like before you were born.
00:04:01 It was just nothing.
00:04:03 Every time you go to sleep at night,
00:04:05 you get a sneak preview of death.
00:04:06 It’s just this kind of nothing happens.
00:04:10 You wake up in the morning, you’re alive again.
00:04:13 But it’s not about the sleeping.
00:04:15 It’s about the falling asleep.
00:04:17 And every night when you fall asleep,
00:04:20 you assume you’re going to wake up.
00:04:22 Here you know you’re not waking up.
00:04:25 And the knowledge of that.
00:04:26 But there’s a whole step from that
00:04:28 to the idea of fearing it.
00:04:29 I’m fully aware that there’s gonna be a time
00:04:32 I don’t wake up.
00:04:33 But are you gonna be afraid of it?
00:04:34 Is there some mortal terror you have of this?
00:04:36 No, you didn’t have it before.
00:04:38 You don’t have it when you sleep.
00:04:40 Going from the fact that you know you won’t wake up
00:04:43 to terror is two different things.
00:04:45 That’s an extra step.
00:04:46 And at that point, you’re making a choice at that point.
00:04:50 What about what some people in this context
00:04:54 we might call like the third death,
00:04:55 which is when everybody forgets the entirety
00:05:01 of consciousness in the universe
00:05:03 forgets that you’ve ever existed,
00:05:04 that John Donahue ever existed.
00:05:07 So.
00:05:08 It’s almost like a cosmic death.
00:05:09 It’s like everything goes, yeah.
00:05:12 Not just, I would say it’s like knowledge.
00:05:15 The history books forget about who you are
00:05:17 because the history books.
00:05:19 This is inevitable, by the way.
00:05:20 We’re all very, very small players in a very big game.
00:05:23 And inevitably, we’re all going to go at some point.
00:05:28 Yeah, but doesn’t, so you’re.
00:05:31 It’s disappointing, of course.
00:05:33 But it’s not even, it would be arrogance to say
00:05:38 I’m disappointed in the idea that I will disappear.
00:05:40 But there’s far greater things than me that will disappear.
00:05:43 I mean, it’s crushing to think
00:05:46 that there’s going to come a time
00:05:48 where no one will ever hear Beethoven’s symphonies again.
00:05:51 That the mysteries of the pharaohs will be lost
00:05:54 and no one will even comprehend that they once existed.
00:05:57 Humanity has come up with so many amazing things
00:06:01 over its existence.
00:06:02 And to think that one day this is just all happening
00:06:06 on a tiny speck in a distant corner of a very small galaxy
00:06:11 and among millions of galaxies,
00:06:13 that this is all for nothing.
00:06:15 Okay, I can understand.
00:06:16 There’s a kind of dread that comes with this.
00:06:20 But there’s also a sense in which the moment you’re born
00:06:22 and the moment you can think about these things,
00:06:24 you know this is your inevitable fate.
00:06:26 Is it so inevitable?
00:06:28 So if we look at, we’re in Austin
00:06:30 and there’s a guy named Elon Musk.
00:06:32 And he’s hoping, in fact, that is the drive
00:06:35 behind many of his passions,
00:06:36 is the human beings becoming a multi planetary species
00:06:40 and expanding out, exploring and colonizing
00:06:44 the solar system, the galaxy,
00:06:46 and maybe the rest of the universe.
00:06:48 Is that something that fills you with excitement?
00:06:52 As a project, it’s very exciting.
00:06:56 The whole, I mean, we all grew up with science fiction,
00:06:59 the idea of exploration.
00:07:02 The same way human beings in earlier centuries
00:07:06 were thrilled at the idea of discovering a new world,
00:07:08 you know, America or some other part of the world
00:07:10 that they sail to and come back.
00:07:13 But now instead of sailing oceans,
00:07:15 you’re sailing solar systems and ultimately even further.
00:07:20 So of course that’s exciting.
00:07:21 But as far as relieving us from non existence,
00:07:25 it’s just playing a delaying game
00:07:26 because ultimately, even the universe itself,
00:07:30 if the laws of thermodynamics are correct,
00:07:31 will ultimately die.
00:07:33 Of course, we might not understand most of the physics
00:07:40 and how the universe functions.
00:07:42 You said laws of thermodynamics,
00:07:44 but maybe that’s just a tiny little fraction
00:07:47 of what the universe actually is.
00:07:49 Maybe there’s multiple dimensions,
00:07:50 maybe there’s multiple universes,
00:07:52 maybe the entirety of this experience.
00:07:55 You know, there’s guys like Donald Hoffman
00:07:57 that think that all of this is just an illusion
00:07:59 that we don’t, like human cognition and perception
00:08:03 constructs a whole, it’s like a video game
00:08:05 that we construct that’s very distant
00:08:07 from the actual reality.
00:08:08 And maybe one day we’ll understand that reality,
00:08:10 maybe it’ll be like the matrix kind of thing.
00:08:12 So there’s a lot of different possibilities here.
00:08:15 And there’s also a philosopher named Ernest Becker.
00:08:18 I don’t know if you know who that is.
00:08:20 He wrote Denial of Death.
00:08:22 And his idea, he disagrees with you, but he’s dead now,
00:08:25 is that he thinks that the terror of death,
00:08:31 the terror of the knowledge that we’re going to die
00:08:35 is within all of us and is in fact the driver
00:08:38 behind most of the creativity that we do.
00:08:41 Exploring out into the universe,
00:08:43 but also you becoming one of the great scholars
00:08:47 of the martial arts, the philosophers of fighting
00:08:52 is because you’re actually terrified of death
00:08:55 and you want to somehow permeate your knowledge,
00:09:00 your ideas, your essence to permeate human civilization
00:09:05 so that even when your body dies, you live on.
00:09:10 I would agree with him insofar as death
00:09:14 is the single greatest motivator for action.
00:09:18 But going beyond that and saying it’s somehow terrifying,
00:09:22 that’s an extra step on his part.
00:09:24 And not everyone’s going to follow him on that step.
00:09:27 I do believe that death is the single most important element
00:09:34 in life that gives value to our days.
00:09:37 If you think, for example, of a situation
00:09:40 where a God came to you and gave you immortality,
00:09:46 life would be very, very different for you.
00:09:49 You’re a talented research scientist, you work to a schedule.
00:09:55 Why?
00:09:56 Because ultimately you know your life is finite
00:09:59 and actually very finite.
00:10:02 And could be even more so if fate plays its hand
00:10:05 and you die an early death or what have you.
00:10:08 We never know what’s going to happen tomorrow.
00:10:13 As such, we get work done as soon as we can.
00:10:18 The moment you gain immortality,
00:10:21 you can always put every project off.
00:10:23 You can always say, I don’t need to do this today
00:10:25 because I can do it four centuries from now.
00:10:30 And as you extend artificially a human life,
00:10:33 the motivation to get things done here and now
00:10:36 and work industriously and excel fades away
00:10:40 because you can always come back to the idea
00:10:42 that you can do this in the future.
00:10:45 And so what gives value to our days is ultimately death.
00:10:49 And value, it’s not the only reason behind value,
00:10:55 but a huge part of what we consider value is scarcity.
00:10:59 And death gives us scarcity of days
00:11:02 and is probably the single greatest motivator
00:11:04 for almost every action we partake in.
00:11:08 It’s kind of tragic and beautiful
00:11:10 that what makes things amazing is that they end.
00:11:19 Yeah, I think it would actually be a terrible burden
00:11:22 to be immortal.
00:11:27 Life would be in many ways very hollow and meaningless,
00:11:29 I think.
00:11:30 People talk about death taking away the meaning of life,
00:11:34 but I think immortality would have a very similar effect
00:11:37 in a different direction.
00:11:42 So given this short life, we can think about jujitsu,
00:11:48 we can think about any kind of pursuit.
00:11:51 What do you think makes a great life?
00:11:54 Is it the highest peak of achievement?
00:12:00 You know, you think about like an Olympic gold medal,
00:12:03 the highest level of performance,
00:12:05 or is it the longevity of performance,
00:12:08 of doing many amazing things and doing it for a long time?
00:12:12 I think the latter is kind of what we talk about
00:12:15 in at least American society.
00:12:18 You know, we want people to be healthy, balanced,
00:12:22 perform well for a long time.
00:12:25 And then there’s maybe like the gladiator ethic,
00:12:30 which is the highest peak is what defines.
00:12:33 You asked an initial question,
00:12:35 which what makes a great life,
00:12:37 but then pointed towards two options,
00:12:40 one of longevity versus degree of difficulty.
00:12:43 There’s gotta be a lot more than that, surely.
00:12:47 I mean, think about, first of all,
00:12:50 we have to understand from the start
00:12:52 that there’s never gonna be an agreed upon set of criteria
00:12:55 for this is a great life from all perspective.
00:12:58 If you look from the perspective of, say, Machiavelli,
00:13:01 then Stalin lived a great life.
00:13:04 He was highly successful at what he did.
00:13:07 He started from nothing.
00:13:08 So the degree of difficulty in what he did
00:13:10 was extraordinarily high.
00:13:12 He had massive impact upon world history.
00:13:15 He oversaw the defeat of almost all of his major enemies.
00:13:20 He lived to old age and died of natural causes.
00:13:23 So from Machiavelli’s point of view, he had a great life.
00:13:26 If you ask the Ukrainian farmer in the 1930s
00:13:30 whether he lived a great life,
00:13:31 you get a very different answer.
00:13:33 So everything’s gonna come
00:13:34 from what perspective you begin with this.
00:13:37 You’re going to look out at the world
00:13:39 with a given point of view,
00:13:40 and you’re gonna make your judgments.
00:13:41 Was this a great life or was this a terrible life?
00:13:45 Going back to your point, you were actually,
00:13:48 I think, focusing the question on more
00:13:51 in terms of great single performances
00:13:55 versus longevity of performances.
00:13:58 Presumably, this isn’t really a question
00:14:00 about what makes a great life, then,
00:14:03 because there’s so much more than that to a great life.
00:14:06 I don’t know.
00:14:07 I’m gonna push back on that.
00:14:08 So I think the parallels are very much closer
00:14:11 than you’re making them seem.
00:14:13 I think, let’s compare Stalin.
00:14:14 Stalin is an example of somebody who held power,
00:14:18 considered by many to be one of the most powerful men ever.
00:14:22 He held power for 30 years.
00:14:24 So that’s what I’m referring to, longevity.
00:14:26 And then there’s a few people,
00:14:27 I wish my knowledge of history was better,
00:14:31 but people who fought a few great battles,
00:14:34 and they did not maintain power, but they were.
00:14:37 Let’s contrast, say, for example, Alexander the Great,
00:14:40 who died at 33 from probably unnatural causes,
00:14:48 had around four to five truly defining battles in his life,
00:14:53 which responsible for the lion’s share of his achievements,
00:15:00 and burned very bright, but didn’t burn long.
00:15:04 Stalin, on the other hand, started from nothing,
00:15:07 and quietly, methodically worked his way
00:15:09 through the revolutionary phase,
00:15:10 and gained increasing amounts of power,
00:15:14 and as he said, went all the way to the end of his career.
00:15:21 Yeah, there’s definitely something to be said
00:15:23 for longevity, but as to which one is greater than the other,
00:15:29 you can’t give a definition, or a set of criteria,
00:15:36 which will definitively say this is better than that.
00:15:39 But when you look…
00:15:40 Ultimately, we look at Alexander as great,
00:15:42 but in a different way, and we look at Stalin.
00:15:44 I didn’t think many people would say
00:15:45 Stalin was a great person,
00:15:46 but from the Machiavellian point of view,
00:15:49 you would say he was great also.
00:15:53 But when you think about beautiful creations
00:15:56 done by human beings in the space of, say,
00:15:59 martial arts, in the space of sport,
00:16:03 what inspires you, the peak of performance?
00:16:06 I see where you’re coming from.
00:16:08 It’s a great question.
00:16:10 For me, it always comes down to degree of difficulty,
00:16:13 but things are difficult in different ways, okay?
00:16:17 A single, flawless performance in youth
00:16:22 is still that wins a gold medal.
00:16:25 Let’s say, for example, Nadia Comaneci
00:16:28 won the Olympic gold medal in gymnastics,
00:16:31 the first person ever to get a perfect score.
00:16:34 If she had disappeared after that,
00:16:36 we would still remember that as an incredible moment.
00:16:39 And the degree of difficulty to get a perfect score
00:16:42 in Olympic gymnastics is just off the charts.
00:16:46 And contrast that with someone who went to four Olympics
00:16:50 and got four silver medals.
00:16:52 I mean, they’re both incredible achievements.
00:16:53 They’re just different.
00:16:56 The attributes that lead to longevity
00:16:59 typically tend to conflict with the attributes
00:17:01 that bring a powerful, single performance.
00:17:05 One is all about focus on a particular event.
00:17:08 The other is on spreading your resources over time.
00:17:13 Both present tremendous difficulties.
00:17:17 There’s no need to say one is better than the other.
00:17:19 There’s also just, for me personally,
00:17:21 the stories of somebody who truly struggled
00:17:26 are the most powerful.
00:17:29 I know a bunch of people don’t necessarily agree,
00:17:31 because you said perfection.
00:17:33 Perfection is kind of the antithesis of struggle.
00:17:37 But I look at somebody, okay, my own life,
00:17:39 somebody I’m a fan, oh, I’m a fan of everybody.
00:17:41 I’m a huge fan of yours.
00:17:42 I’m trying not to be nervous here.
00:17:44 But somebody I’m a fan of in the judo world
00:17:47 is Travis Stevens.
00:17:49 He’s a remarkable fellow, by the way.
00:17:50 A remarkable human being.
00:17:52 Insane in the best kinds of ways.
00:17:54 I think I started judo, I really started martial arts.
00:17:59 I wrestled, if you consider those martial arts.
00:18:00 That’s been in my blood.
00:18:03 I’m Russian, so.
00:18:04 But beyond that, the whole pajama thing we wear, the gi,
00:18:08 I started by watching Travis in 2008 Olympics.
00:18:12 Was that accidental, or did you know Travis
00:18:15 prior to watching him?
00:18:16 No, no, no, I just tuned in.
00:18:17 Now, that’s an unusual choice.
00:18:19 It was just random, you just tuned in
00:18:20 and you saw Travis Stevens.
00:18:22 I tuned in to the Olympics,
00:18:23 and I was wondering what judo is.
00:18:26 And then I started watching.
00:18:30 We’re all proud of our countries and so on,
00:18:32 so I started watching.
00:18:33 He was, I think, the only American
00:18:36 in the Olympics for judo.
00:18:39 Maybe the, so this Kayla Harrison was 2012.
00:18:44 Rhonda was there too, so I watched Rhonda and Travis.
00:18:47 But obviously, sort of, I was focused on somebody
00:18:51 who also weighed the same as I did,
00:18:53 so there was a kinda, I think, 81 kilograms.
00:18:57 So there’s a connection, but also there’s an intensity
00:19:00 to him, like, he would get angry at his own failures
00:19:06 and he would just refuse to quit.
00:19:07 It’s that kinda Dan Gable mentality.
00:19:10 I just, that was inspiring to me, that he’s the underdog.
00:19:14 And the way people talk about him, the commentators,
00:19:17 that it was an unlikely person to do well, right?
00:19:21 And I, the FU attitude behind that,
00:19:25 saying, no, I’m gonna still win gold.
00:19:27 Obviously, he didn’t do well in 2008,
00:19:29 but that was somehow inspiring.
00:19:33 And I just remember he pulled me in,
00:19:36 but then I started to see this sport,
00:19:39 I guess you can call it,
00:19:42 of effortlessly dominating your opponent in throwing.
00:19:48 Because to me, wrestling was like a grind.
00:19:52 You kind of control, you slowly just break your opponent.
00:19:56 The idea that you could, with like a foot sweep,
00:20:01 was fascinating to me, that just because of timing,
00:20:06 you can take these like monsters, giant people,
00:20:10 like incredible athletes, and just smash them.
00:20:14 With, it just doesn’t, there was no struggle to it.
00:20:18 It was always like a look of surprise.
00:20:19 Judo, dominance in Judo has a look,
00:20:23 like the other person is like, what just happened?
00:20:27 This is very different from wrestling.
00:20:28 It’s built into the rule structure too,
00:20:30 the whole idea of an epon,
00:20:32 of a match being over in an instant.
00:20:34 And that creates a thrilling spectator sport,
00:20:39 because you can, as you say, with Ashiwaza,
00:20:42 the foot sweeps, you can take someone out
00:20:45 who’s heavily favored, and if you’re not,
00:20:49 Judo is the most unforgiving of all the grappling sports.
00:20:53 If you have a lapse of concentration for half a second,
00:20:56 it’s done, it’s over.
00:20:59 If those guys get a grip on each other,
00:21:01 any one of them can throw the other.
00:21:05 The idea, when you see someone like Nomura,
00:21:11 who won three Olympic gold medals,
00:21:14 to win across three Olympics,
00:21:17 and that’s an incredible achievement,
00:21:19 given how many ways there are to lose
00:21:21 in the standing position in Judo,
00:21:22 and how unforgiving it is as a sport,
00:21:25 it shows an incredible level of dominance.
00:21:28 And I think when I was also introduced at that time
00:21:33 to the idea, just like in Judo,
00:21:36 I think in Jiu Jitsu is the same,
00:21:38 a lot of sports is probably the same,
00:21:40 is there’s ways to win that include kind of,
00:21:45 if I were to use a bad term, stalling,
00:21:48 which is like use strategy to slow down,
00:21:51 to destroy all the weapons your opponent has,
00:21:53 and just to wait it out,
00:21:55 to sort of break your opponent by,
00:21:58 yeah, shutting down all their weapons,
00:22:00 but not using any of your own.
00:22:02 And now, Travis was always going for,
00:22:06 he’s of course really good at gripping
00:22:08 and couldn’t do that whole game,
00:22:10 but he was going for the big throws.
00:22:12 And he was almost getting frustrated
00:22:15 by a lot of the opponents.
00:22:17 I remember Ola Bischoff, I think.
00:22:21 Yes, from Germany.
00:22:23 From Germany.
00:22:24 Very talented.
00:22:25 Very incredible.
00:22:26 I know he’s very good at doing big throws
00:22:28 and he’s an incredible judoka,
00:22:29 but he was also incredible
00:22:31 at just frustrating his opponents
00:22:33 with gripping and strategy and so on.
00:22:36 And I just remember feeling the pain of this person,
00:22:39 like Travis, who went through just,
00:22:42 he broke like every part of his body.
00:22:44 He went through so many injuries.
00:22:46 Just this person who dedicated his entire life
00:22:50 to this moment in 2008 and then 2012 and 2016,
00:22:55 just gave everything.
00:22:57 You could see it on his face
00:22:59 that his weapons are being shut down
00:23:04 and he’s still pushing forward.
00:23:05 He’s still with that, both the frustration and the power.
00:23:09 I mean, the kind of throw he does is his main one,
00:23:14 I think, is the standing, it was called Seoi Nage.
00:23:16 Ippon Seoi Nage.
00:23:17 Ippon Seoi Nage.
00:23:18 But that was the other thing is like,
00:23:21 the techniques he used was these big throws
00:23:25 that there’s something to me about the Seoi Nage.
00:23:27 I fell in love with that throw.
00:23:29 That’s my main throw, standing Seoi Nage.
00:23:34 That is like…
00:23:35 Why do you favor the standing variation?
00:23:37 Because of the amplitude?
00:23:39 You get a more powerful wind up.
00:23:41 Yeah, power.
00:23:43 It’s like…
00:23:44 Are you a fan of Koga?
00:23:45 Yes.
00:23:46 That’s when I, Travis,
00:23:48 so Koga and Travis opened up my…
00:23:52 Travis uses the same gripping patterns
00:23:54 for Seoi Nage as Koga.
00:23:55 All the same, and the way he uses his hips and turns.
00:23:59 And I remember going to my judo club
00:24:01 and other judo clubs and they were all saying,
00:24:05 this is the wrong way to do it.
00:24:07 The way Travis does it is the wrong way to do it.
00:24:08 And I remember…
00:24:09 I’ve always been amazed by this, by the way.
00:24:11 I don’t mean to cut you off,
00:24:12 but I could literally fill 20 hours
00:24:17 of reproductions of people who will tell me
00:24:22 that either my students or other great world champions
00:24:28 are doing things wrong.
00:24:30 And I’m looking at them and I’m like,
00:24:35 who would I rather trust here in their judgment?
00:24:39 Koga, who was one of the greatest throwers of all time,
00:24:44 or you, a recreational guy who couldn’t throw my grandmother.
00:24:54 I’m supposed to take your word over his.
00:24:56 Well, say, don’t listen to what people say.
00:25:00 I’m gonna give you a piece of advice here.
00:25:02 Watch what the best people do, okay?
00:25:06 That’s how you get superior athletic performance.
00:25:09 I’m gonna say that again.
00:25:11 Don’t listen to what people say.
00:25:13 Watch what they do,
00:25:14 particularly under the stress of high level competition,
00:25:17 because that’s when you see their real game,
00:25:19 what they really do under pressure, okay?
00:25:22 And if you can emulate that,
00:25:24 you’re gonna be very successful.
00:25:26 I guess what I was frustrated with, to your point,
00:25:29 is that the argument against Koga
00:25:32 is he has a very specific body type
00:25:37 and he figured out something that worked for him.
00:25:39 The statement is that might not be applicable to you
00:25:46 or to the general public of judo players
00:25:49 that wanna succeed.
00:25:51 That, by the way, at the shallow level, might be true.
00:25:57 The point is there might be a body of knowledge
00:26:00 that’s yet to be discovered and explored that Koga opened up
00:26:05 that I wanted to understand why his technique worked.
00:26:09 It made no sense to me that with a single foot,
00:26:12 like the way you turn the hip,
00:26:14 the single foot that steps in, why does that work?
00:26:17 Because it was actually very difficult to make work
00:26:20 for me as a white belt in the very beginning.
00:26:23 It doesn’t make sense.
00:26:24 Like people just, they don’t get loaded up onto your hip.
00:26:28 Anyway, for people who don’t watch Koga highlights,
00:26:30 watch Travis Stevens highlights,
00:26:32 but the details of the technique don’t make sense,
00:26:36 but when mastered, it feels like
00:26:40 there’s something fundamental there
00:26:42 that hasn’t been explored yet.
00:26:43 It’s like Koga and Travis made me think
00:26:48 that we don’t know most of the body mechanics involved
00:26:53 in dominance in judo.
00:26:55 Like we just kind of found a few pockets
00:26:57 that work really well.
00:26:58 There’s Yamada, there’s these different throws, Osorogari.
00:27:02 I wonder if there’s like totally cool new things
00:27:05 that we haven’t discovered.
00:27:06 And that Seinagi gave a little peak
00:27:07 because there’s very few people that I’m aware of
00:27:10 that do it the way Travis and Koga did.
00:27:13 May I ask you a question?
00:27:15 Yes.
00:27:17 The choice of standing Seinagi,
00:27:20 I should say this for your listeners.
00:27:23 They’re probably thinking,
00:27:24 what the hell are these two guys talking about?
00:27:26 Seinagi is one of the more high percentage throws
00:27:30 in the Olympic sport of judo.
00:27:32 Probably Uchimata is probably number one
00:27:36 and variations of Seinagi would be
00:27:39 in the top five for sure.
00:27:41 The basic choice you have in modern competition
00:27:44 is the more difficult standing Seinagi
00:27:47 where you literally are up on your feet
00:27:49 and you perform a shoulder throw
00:27:52 that takes your opponent over from a full standing position.
00:27:55 The most popular form of Seinagi
00:27:59 in modern competition by a landslide
00:28:01 is not the standing version.
00:28:02 It’s a drop Seinagi where you go down to your knees.
00:28:05 This means you have a much easier time
00:28:08 getting underneath your opponent’s center of gravity.
00:28:10 The defining feature of any Seinagi
00:28:12 is getting underneath your opponent’s center of gravity
00:28:14 and lifting them.
00:28:15 Seoi literally means to lift and carry.
00:28:21 Why did you choose the more difficult version?
00:28:23 What was your motivation?
00:28:24 You know, you’re a smart kid.
00:28:26 You know right from the start
00:28:28 that for every standing Seinagi,
00:28:30 there’s 20 drop Seinagis in modern competition.
00:28:32 One is obviously more high percentage.
00:28:34 One obviously works for a wider variety of body types.
00:28:39 The number of people who are successful
00:28:41 with standing Seinagi is dramatically lower.
00:28:44 And it appears to be a move which is completely absent
00:28:47 in the heavyweight divisions
00:28:49 and rarely seen in the lightweight divisions.
00:28:53 Why?
00:28:55 What was the motivation?
00:28:56 Why did you willingly adopt the less high percentage
00:29:00 over the more high percentage?
00:29:01 And this would be very interesting.
00:29:04 I would love you to break it apart
00:29:06 because I apply the same kind of thinking
00:29:09 to basically everything.
00:29:10 I mentioned to you offline,
00:29:11 there’s these Boston Dynamics Spot Robots.
00:29:14 When I first met Spot, I fell in love.
00:29:18 I don’t understand what exactly,
00:29:20 but there’s magic there.
00:29:22 And I just got excited by it.
00:29:24 And that fire burns.
00:29:26 I wanna work with these robots.
00:29:27 I wanna work with the robots.
00:29:29 I want to, I felt like there’s something special there
00:29:33 that I could build something interesting with,
00:29:36 create something interesting with.
00:29:38 And the same with the standing Seinagi
00:29:41 from Koga and Travis.
00:29:43 I just fell in love with that technique.
00:29:44 Just even watching,
00:29:45 I didn’t even know what the hell to do with it.
00:29:47 Was it aesthetic?
00:29:49 The standing Seinagi is more beautiful in execution.
00:29:51 There’s no question.
00:29:52 In my own, we’re talking about love here, right?
00:29:58 In my own definition of aesthetic, yes.
00:30:01 It’s not just beauty.
00:30:02 Cause you could argue there’s more elegant sort of Uchimata
00:30:05 is very beautiful and effortless.
00:30:07 I love something about the dominance of it.
00:30:11 I love the idea in sport of two people
00:30:17 that are the best in the world.
00:30:19 And one of them dominating the other.
00:30:23 And to me, the standing Seinagi, you’re lifted off your feet
00:30:27 and especially when it’s done perfectly
00:30:32 and with really strong resistance from the other person,
00:30:37 it results in a big slam.
00:30:40 And that was like beautiful to me.
00:30:41 That’s the Alexander Karelian like big pickups.
00:30:45 I love that.
00:30:46 It’s interesting, you’re correct in so far as
00:30:50 you’re not just going with aesthetic
00:30:52 and the sense of beauty, but also,
00:30:54 but you are making as it were value judgments
00:30:59 about the throw.
00:31:00 And that’s fascinating to me
00:31:04 because there’s two elements to any grappling sport.
00:31:09 I’m always insistent upon the idea
00:31:12 that Jiu Jitsu is both an art and a science, okay?
00:31:16 It has scientific elements in so far as it works
00:31:18 according to the laws of physics
00:31:20 and lever and fulcrum, et cetera, et cetera.
00:31:24 But it also has an aesthetic element
00:31:28 in so far as you’re making choices with technique.
00:31:31 You’re expressing who you are as a person.
00:31:33 You have 10,000 different variations of moves you could use,
00:31:37 but you’re specifically choosing these.
00:31:39 That’s an element of choice and self expression on your part.
00:31:42 And in so far as that is true,
00:31:44 combat sports are not just a science,
00:31:45 but they’re also an art.
00:31:47 So most combat sports have this sense
00:31:49 which they have the features of both an art and a science.
00:31:53 And it’s not just about high percentage in your case.
00:31:59 I mean, me personally, I’m obsessed with percentages.
00:32:02 What are the ways to make you win?
00:32:03 That’s the science part.
00:32:04 Yeah, but that’s also choices involved, yeah.
00:32:08 But there is an undeniably aesthetic element
00:32:13 to martial arts where you, as it were,
00:32:17 express who you are as a person
00:32:20 in terms of the techniques you’re ultimately going to choose.
00:32:23 Does that get in the way?
00:32:24 Do you allow yourself to enjoy
00:32:26 the aesthetic beauty of a technique?
00:32:28 Of course, yeah.
00:32:30 When martial arts are done well,
00:32:32 it’s the most beautiful sport in the world, okay?
00:32:35 When it’s done poorly, it’s the ugliest.
00:32:37 But a beautifully applied submission hold, a perfect throw,
00:32:43 a superbly set up takedown are among
00:32:47 the most difficult techniques to execute in all of sports.
00:32:51 And when they’re done well, they’re magic to observe.
00:32:54 But do you prefer certain techniques over others
00:32:57 because of their, like for example,
00:33:00 I’ll tell you, for me, chokes of all sorts
00:33:03 with the gi, without the gi,
00:33:04 probably with the gi is the most beautiful to me, personally.
00:33:10 I value them above all others.
00:33:13 People mostly associate myself and my students with leg locking.
00:33:17 They’re usually rather surprised to learn
00:33:19 that I actually value strangle holds far above leg locks.
00:33:25 But not for aesthetic reasons, for effectiveness.
00:33:28 We can talk about that later if you wish.
00:33:30 Well, let’s step back.
00:33:33 Sorry, we drifted awfully far off topic there.
00:33:36 I think this is beautiful.
00:33:38 We drifted along the river of life and martial arts.
00:33:43 Can you explain the fundamentals of jiu jitsu?
00:33:46 Yes. If I couldn’t, I wouldn’t be much of a coach.
00:33:51 Jiu jitsu is an art and science
00:33:56 which looks to use a combination of tactical
00:34:00 and mechanical advantage to focus a very high percentage
00:34:05 of my strength against a very low percentage
00:34:09 of my opponent’s strength at a critical point on their body,
00:34:13 such that if I were to exert my strength
00:34:15 upon that critical point,
00:34:17 they could no longer continue to fight.
00:34:22 Well, that’s about weapons and defenses.
00:34:27 But then, is there something more to be said
00:34:30 about the set of tools that we’re talking about?
00:34:33 That’s where the art comes in.
00:34:35 Because ultimately, you have a set of choices,
00:34:38 and those choices that you make will be an act
00:34:40 of self expression on your part.
00:34:42 Some will prefer this, some will prefer that.
00:34:46 That’s where you come in as an individual.
00:34:48 That’s an overall definition of jiu jitsu,
00:34:52 of being a set of choices that where you’re using
00:34:59 the things you’re powerful in versus the things
00:35:02 your opponent is weak in.
00:35:04 No, I was only talking about percentages of body strength.
00:35:07 If I have, for example, let’s say we have two athletes,
00:35:12 athlete A and athlete B.
00:35:13 Athlet A has 100 units of strength,
00:35:16 however we define that overall.
00:35:18 Athlet B has 50.
00:35:20 OK, so ostensibly, athlete A is twice as strong as athlete B.
00:35:26 But athlete B can maneuver his body
00:35:29 into a set of positions focused around a critical point
00:35:34 of his opponent’s body, where he can apply 40 units of strength
00:35:38 out of his total of 50.
00:35:41 His opponent can only defend with 20 units of strength
00:35:44 out of his total of 100.
00:35:47 You have now completely reversed the strength discrepancy.
00:35:51 Originally, athlete A was twice as strong as B.
00:35:54 Now, on that one localized point, the knee, the elbow,
00:35:57 the neck, B is now twice as strong as A.
00:36:01 Under those circumstances, B should win.
00:36:04 I guess what I’m trying to get at, by the way,
00:36:07 that’s really beautifully said, is what you just said
00:36:12 could be applied to other games, other battles.
00:36:16 It could be applied to the game of chess.
00:36:19 It could be applied to war, most obviously in war.
00:36:22 I think about, for example, the American strategic bombing
00:36:26 campaign in World War II.
00:36:30 The Eighth Army Air Force was tasked
00:36:32 with the idea of destroying German industry.
00:36:37 Did they attack all of German industry?
00:36:39 Of course not.
00:36:40 That would be stupid.
00:36:41 They attacked the ball bearing industry.
00:36:45 Why?
00:36:46 Because almost all of modern machines
00:36:51 require ball bearings in order to operate.
00:36:54 In order for the mechanical interfaces of machines
00:36:56 to operate, you have to reduce friction.
00:36:58 It’s done through ball bearings.
00:37:01 If you knocked out one tiny component of German industry,
00:37:06 the ball bearing industry, the rest of it couldn’t operate.
00:37:09 So too with the human body.
00:37:11 I didn’t have to fight your whole body.
00:37:13 I just have to fight your left knee.
00:37:15 If I can break your left knee, the rest of your body
00:37:17 is irrelevant to me.
00:37:19 But then isn’t the art of jiu jitsu discovering
00:37:24 the left knee, discovering the weak points?
00:37:29 Yeah, a huge part of jiu jitsu is understanding
00:37:32 the strengths and weaknesses of the human body.
00:37:35 There’s parts of the human body that are shockingly robust
00:37:38 and there are other parts that are shockingly vulnerable.
00:37:41 The major joints, and of course the most vulnerable of all,
00:37:45 the unprotected neck.
00:37:46 So if we take something I’m not familiar with
00:37:49 but I was incredibly impressed by is the body lock
00:37:52 that I saw Nick Rodriguez use last time a few weeks ago.
00:38:00 But then I also got to hang out with Craig Jones
00:38:03 who showed that.
00:38:04 He also has a very good body lock.
00:38:06 So that was, I don’t know if this body lock applies
00:38:10 to all positions, but I was seeing it from when Craig
00:38:14 is on top of the opponent and trying to pass in the guard,
00:38:22 use the body lock as a controlling position.
00:38:24 The principle behind it is that it shuts down,
00:38:28 as you’ve spoken about, it shuts down the weapons
00:38:34 of a very strong opponent.
00:38:36 That’s absolutely correct.
00:38:37 In the case of guard position, what makes guard position
00:38:42 dangerous, what makes someone a powerful guard player
00:38:47 is the movement of their hips forward and backward
00:38:49 and side to side.
00:38:52 Body locking is designed to shut down that movement
00:38:56 and does a very fine job of it.
00:38:57 You’ll see all of my students excel at it.
00:38:59 Gordon Ryan is probably the single best body lock
00:39:02 guard passer I’ve ever seen.
00:39:04 Nicky Ryan is outstanding with it.
00:39:05 Nick Rodriguez is very good.
00:39:07 Craig Jones is outstanding.
00:39:09 All of my students use this for a very simple reason.
00:39:12 Understand what is the central problem of shutting down
00:39:16 a dangerous guard player, it’s his hips.
00:39:18 That’s what makes him a dangerous leg locker.
00:39:20 You go up against a dangerous leg locker,
00:39:22 body lock guard pass, single best way to shut down
00:39:25 most of his entries.
00:39:28 We’re all strong in leg locks.
00:39:30 So in our gym, you gotta control the hips
00:39:33 as soon as possible.
00:39:34 Otherwise it’s gonna be a very difficult thing
00:39:36 to avoid leg entanglements as you go to pass.
00:39:39 And across the board, my students excel
00:39:43 in body lock guard passing.
00:39:47 They understand what’s the most dangerous feature
00:39:49 their opponent has, the lateral movement of their hips.
00:39:52 What’s the single best way to stop that body lock
00:39:55 and then work from there.
00:39:56 So if this asymmetry of power is fundamental to jiu jitsu,
00:40:01 how do you discover that?
00:40:02 How did you discover the body lock?
00:40:05 That as one of many methodologies
00:40:09 of achieving this asymmetry.
00:40:11 It would be an overstatement to say
00:40:12 we discovered the body lock.
00:40:14 Body lock passing has been around longer
00:40:16 than we’ve been around.
00:40:18 But what I would say is that in a room full
00:40:20 of dangerous leg lockers, you’ve gotta have a way
00:40:23 to shut down the hips.
00:40:25 And so once we started using body locks,
00:40:28 we saw that was one excellent way
00:40:30 to get around that problem.
00:40:32 But as with all development, it comes from trial and error.
00:40:37 You will often see people teach the technique
00:40:40 to a certain level and you see the teaching,
00:40:43 you’re like, there’s a lot of inadequacies there.
00:40:45 And that doesn’t cover a lot of the problems
00:40:47 that we’re encountering.
00:40:49 And so trial and error is the single most important part
00:40:52 of the development.
00:40:53 Trial and error in?
00:40:56 In the training room amongst ourselves.
00:40:58 In hard training or?
00:41:01 No, it never begins with hard training or everything.
00:41:04 Techniques are born the same way we’re born.
00:41:08 Weak and in need of nutrition.
00:41:13 You have to build them up organically like children.
00:41:16 And you start with minimal resistance
00:41:18 and you make progress over time.
00:41:20 When you first go to the gym, do you put 500 pounds
00:41:22 on the bench press and try to bench press it?
00:41:24 No, you’ll be killed.
00:41:25 You start off with the bar, you build over time
00:41:29 and then one day, five years from now,
00:41:30 you really are lifting 500 pounds.
00:41:33 But only a forward attempt, they’re on their first attempt.
00:41:38 And they’re born like children in your mind first?
00:41:41 Like there’s a spark of an idea.
00:41:43 Yes, there’s always a spark.
00:41:45 It’s like scientific development on a subject matter
00:41:48 which is intrinsically simpler.
00:41:51 Okay, there’s a sense in which naive
00:41:56 and overly simplistic assessments
00:41:58 of scientific method may not work well
00:42:01 at advanced levels of science, but they work damn well
00:42:03 in the training room with jiu jitsu
00:42:05 where the subject matter is inherently simpler
00:42:08 than it is in research science.
00:42:10 And as a result, there’ll be a spark.
00:42:15 You’ll see something, there’s possibilities there.
00:42:17 Okay, let’s puzzle this out, let’s work with this.
00:42:21 And you run into a lot of failures.
00:42:24 You’ve suddenly been, oh man, if I put my hip this way,
00:42:27 this works really well.
00:42:28 And then suddenly you just try and spar
00:42:29 and you get caught in a simple, normal platter.
00:42:31 And you’re like, okay, that didn’t work as well
00:42:32 as I thought.
00:42:33 And then you look to rectify things.
00:42:35 If things go in promising research directions,
00:42:38 you keep them.
00:42:38 If not, you discard them.
00:42:41 Well, it’s funny you say science.
00:42:42 It feels more like art.
00:42:44 There’s somebody I really admire
00:42:46 that talks about this kind of ideas.
00:42:48 Johnny I from Apple, he’s the lead designer.
00:42:51 He recently left, but he was the designer
00:42:54 behind most of the products we know and love from Apple.
00:42:57 When you say designer, be more precise.
00:43:00 What exactly was he working on in Apple?
00:43:03 The iPhone.
00:43:05 Which parts of the iPhone did he work on?
00:43:07 The entirety of it.
00:43:09 Was he a leader of a research team
00:43:12 or was he the person personally responsible
00:43:14 for the development?
00:43:15 He’s kind of, I would say, very similar to your position.
00:43:22 He wasn’t necessarily the last, the person executing
00:43:25 the fine, the manufacturer, right?
00:43:27 Yeah, of course.
00:43:28 But there’s the, he’s somebody that’s very hands on.
00:43:33 And it’s like, okay, so he worked obviously
00:43:37 extremely close to Steve Jobs.
00:43:38 Steve Jobs has this idea.
00:43:41 We should have a computer that’s as thin
00:43:42 as a sheet of paper, and then you start to play
00:43:45 with ideas of like, what does that actually look like?
00:43:48 The reason I bring it up is because he talked about,
00:43:51 he had these ideas that he would not tell Steve
00:43:54 because he talked about in the same exact language
00:43:58 as you’re saying, is there’s like a little baby
00:44:01 that it’s very fragile.
00:44:05 It needs time to grow.
00:44:07 Absolutely.
00:44:08 And then Steve Jobs would often roll in.
00:44:10 Was too ruthless?
00:44:11 Too ruthless.
00:44:12 This is, he would destroy ideas.
00:44:15 Because Johnny Ive and the team didn’t have
00:44:19 actually good responses to the criticism at first.
00:44:23 Because when they’re babies, you can’t defend the baby.
00:44:27 But you need a time to develop.
00:44:29 You need to sleep on it.
00:44:30 You need to rethink it, dream things
00:44:33 and all those kinds of things.
00:44:34 It’s fascinating you say this, Lex,
00:44:36 because this is actually the entire history
00:44:39 of scientific development is literally the story
00:44:43 of the juxtaposition between the need to protect
00:44:47 and nurture new theories versus the need
00:44:50 to rigorously test them with harsh testing
00:44:54 that either verifies them or falsifies them.
00:44:58 And learning to find a satisfactory compromise
00:45:01 between those two is a very, very difficult thing.
00:45:04 When you look at the history of science,
00:45:06 you will see that there’s some pretty damn chaotic moments
00:45:10 anytime there’s major theory change
00:45:12 where all kinds of apparently undesirable tricks
00:45:21 are used to protect certain theories
00:45:23 with ad hoc hypotheses, et cetera, et cetera.
00:45:25 And ultimately, only time and success over time
00:45:34 will justify a theory.
00:45:36 There’s usually a period where when one theory goes in
00:45:39 to replace another, there’s something
00:45:41 of a battle between competing groups of scientists, some
00:45:44 of whom advocate theory A, some who advocate theory B.
00:45:47 They often use seemingly unscrupulous methods
00:45:52 to protect or attack another person’s theory.
00:45:54 They dig for proofs.
00:45:56 And usually, some period of time has to go by.
00:45:59 Sometimes, in some cases, it simply
00:46:00 involved older scientists protecting an initial theory
00:46:03 dying off and new scientists just replacing them
00:46:09 with numbers.
00:46:10 And this is a common, common theme.
00:46:13 And the same applies in jiu jitsu.
00:46:16 So many times, especially when I first
00:46:18 started working with leg locks, I would show things
00:46:22 I had worked on to even world champion black belts.
00:46:28 And they would try it once or twice and fail and be like,
00:46:31 yeah, it doesn’t work.
00:46:33 And I’d be like, you tried it once on another guy who’s
00:46:37 also a world champion who has a strong ability to resist it.
00:46:42 And that’s it.
00:46:43 No more.
00:46:44 It doesn’t work.
00:46:45 And then five years later, they would
00:46:47 see my students finishing world champions with it.
00:46:52 And in some cases, finishing the very people
00:46:54 who said that the technique would never work.
00:46:57 I mean, if there was ever a refutation of a statement,
00:47:01 that’s a pretty clear example.
00:47:05 And there has to be a sense in which you
00:47:08 can’t be too forgiving.
00:47:09 You have to test hypotheses.
00:47:11 But on the other hand, you can’t be too ruthless either.
00:47:14 You have to look for promise.
00:47:17 And my advice is start slow.
00:47:22 Again, the analogy of lifting weights.
00:47:23 You don’t lift the heaviest weights on your first day.
00:47:26 You build up.
00:47:26 You work progressively over time.
00:47:30 Now, you also have to have some common sense here.
00:47:32 You can’t be too forgiving to a technique
00:47:35 if it’s repeatedly failing and good people have tried it
00:47:38 and multiple good people have tried it
00:47:40 and it’s just not working out, then, OK, it’s
00:47:43 time to dismiss it.
00:47:44 But don’t be too quick.
00:47:46 Is this where your idea of training with lower belts
00:47:50 quite a bit comes from?
00:47:52 I’ve actually just, as a side comment,
00:47:54 and maybe you can elaborate, the place, the gym,
00:48:00 Balanced Studios with Phil and Rick McGarry’s where I got
00:48:02 my black belt, where I grew up as a jujitsu person
00:48:05 in Philadelphia, they have a huge number of black belts,
00:48:08 but they have a huge number of all other ranks.
00:48:13 And the way they picked sparring partners,
00:48:16 people you train with, is very ad hoc.
00:48:18 It’s very loose.
00:48:18 It’s one of those places, one of those gyms
00:48:21 where you can train for like three, four hours.
00:48:25 And you could take a break or you could jump back in.
00:48:29 Very informal.
00:48:30 And you can go to war with black belts,
00:48:32 but then you can also play around
00:48:34 with the purple and the blue belts and so on.
00:48:37 And that was really beneficial for growth.
00:48:39 And you can pick which, because everybody has a style,
00:48:43 and you can pick which style you really want to work on.
00:48:45 And then I came to Boston, Broadway Jiu Jitsu,
00:48:51 with John Clark, who I love.
00:48:53 He’s a good friend.
00:48:54 But it’s a little bit more formal.
00:48:58 And I found myself, it was a very interesting journey.
00:49:01 I would be training with black belts the whole time.
00:49:03 And it was a very different experience.
00:49:07 I found myself exploring much less.
00:49:10 I found myself learning much less.
00:49:14 I mean, part of that is on me,
00:49:16 but part of it was also realizing that,
00:49:20 wow, there’s a value to training with people
00:49:23 that are much worse than you.
00:49:24 Yes, is there a philosophy you could speak to on that?
00:49:28 Yeah, you probably know it already.
00:49:31 You know from your studies in artificial intelligence
00:49:34 that all human beings are naturally risk averse.
00:49:37 This is a bias which is deeply seated in all of us.
00:49:42 I’m sure you’re well read on people like Tversky and et
00:49:45 cetera, who talk about this all the time.
00:49:48 For your viewers, there are numerous psychological
00:49:52 experiments that are showing that most people,
00:49:55 to the point of irrationality, fear loss more
00:49:59 than they are excited at the prospect of an equivalent gain.
00:50:04 So for example, if you have $100 in your wallet,
00:50:08 you’re more worried about the idea of losing the $100
00:50:11 that you have now than you would be
00:50:13 excited by the prospect of gaining $100 that I could
00:50:17 potentially offer you.
00:50:18 This comes out whenever you get black belt versus black belt
00:50:22 confrontations or any kind of similar skill level.
00:50:27 Whenever you get similar skill levels,
00:50:31 the chances of defeat get very, very high.
00:50:34 Interestingly, if you’re a white belt
00:50:36 and you’re going against a black belt, you’ll take risk.
00:50:38 Why?
00:50:39 Because there’s no shame in losing to a black belt
00:50:40 when you’re a white belt.
00:50:41 So you’ll play more lightheartedly
00:50:43 and you’ll have a more fun role.
00:50:45 But when you have very similar skill levels,
00:50:49 you’re going to come back to what?
00:50:51 The techniques that are most likely to get you a win.
00:50:57 That number of techniques is usually pretty small.
00:51:00 And if you’re always battling with the same tough opponents
00:51:04 every day, where if you make even a single error,
00:51:08 it will cost you that match inspiring
00:51:11 and you don’t like losing, you’re
00:51:13 going to stay with a very small set of moves.
00:51:17 You might get slightly better at direct execution over time,
00:51:20 but you as an individual will not grow.
00:51:22 Growth, as it does in organic life forms,
00:51:28 comes from small beginnings and builds over time.
00:51:33 You can’t take an untested, untried move
00:51:36 and get it on a world champion black belt.
00:51:39 It’s going to get crushed, so it’s not ready for that.
00:51:45 It’s like a lion cub being thrown out
00:51:48 into the Serengeti plains.
00:51:50 A lion cub is just too small and too ineffective.
00:51:53 It’s a lion, but it’s a cub.
00:51:56 And it’s not until it grows into maturity
00:51:58 that it can be a lion that can dominate the Serengeti plains.
00:52:04 That’s why I always encourage my students to play
00:52:07 with a variety of belt types and spend
00:52:11 the majority of their time with lesser belts
00:52:15 for development purposes.
00:52:16 When you’re getting closer to a competition,
00:52:18 you obviously want to change that.
00:52:19 You want to be getting more a competitive sense
00:52:22 of hard work, but you must learn to divide up your training
00:52:27 cycles into non competition cycles
00:52:31 where you’re presumably working with people
00:52:35 who are slightly lower in level than yourself,
00:52:37 and in some cases, quite a bit lower than yourself.
00:52:40 And then competition cycles where
00:52:43 you’re working with people much closer to your own skill level.
00:52:46 Is there something to be said about the flip side of that,
00:52:50 which is when you’re training with people at the same skill
00:52:54 level, being OK losing to them?
00:52:57 Yes.
00:52:58 You have to see training for what it is.
00:53:01 Training is about skill development,
00:53:03 not about winning or losing.
00:53:04 You’ve got to understand that you
00:53:08 don’t need to win every battle.
00:53:10 You only need to win the battles that count.
00:53:13 And the battles that count are in the world championship
00:53:16 finals.
00:53:17 That’s the one that counts.
00:53:18 Think about that win.
00:53:20 That’s the one you’re going to be remembered for.
00:53:22 You’re not going to be remembered for the battle you
00:53:24 lost on Tuesday afternoon at 3 PM in some nameless gym
00:53:27 with some guy that no one cares about.
00:53:29 No one’s going to remember that.
00:53:31 You’re going to be remembered for your peak performances,
00:53:33 not your everyday performances.
00:53:35 Focus your everyday performances on skill development
00:53:38 so that your peak performances you can focus on winning.
00:53:43 This is not a therapy session, but if I could just speak.
00:53:48 Every session’s a therapy session.
00:53:52 There is still an ape thing in there.
00:53:56 Of course.
00:53:57 You think I don’t feel it?
00:53:59 You think everyone in the room doesn’t feel it?
00:54:02 Because, for example, you have never seen me roll.
00:54:06 When there’s people, I’ve seen the look in people’s eyes
00:54:10 when they see me train.
00:54:12 And I could see, maybe it’s me projecting,
00:54:16 but they think, I thought you were supposed to be good.
00:54:18 I thought you were supposed to be a black belt.
00:54:22 That look, they’re like studying.
00:54:24 I’m going to give you some therapy.
00:54:25 OK.
00:54:26 Do you know how many people have come up
00:54:32 to me over the years who have visited the training
00:54:37 halls that I work in, and they come up to me and they go,
00:54:39 man, I rolled with Gary Tonin.
00:54:43 I did really well with him, like really well.
00:54:48 I’m like, oh, that’s very good, very impressive.
00:54:52 And then I see them talking to their friends, like, man,
00:54:55 I tapped out Gary Tonin.
00:54:59 And I’m sitting there going, yeah.
00:55:04 And you can see that they’re just like, whoa, dude,
00:55:06 I’m way better than I thought I was.
00:55:10 Gary Tonin, all of my students, I
00:55:14 push them in the direction of giving up bad positions
00:55:19 so that they practice working, getting out
00:55:21 of critical situations.
00:55:22 It’s a huge part of our training program.
00:55:24 But Gary Tonin takes that to a level
00:55:26 that just no one else even gets close.
00:55:28 It’s just amazing.
00:55:30 He will put himself in impossible situations
00:55:34 where it’s a fully locked strangle, 100% on with both
00:55:40 his arms behind his back.
00:55:42 And he’ll try to work out from there.
00:55:44 And seven times out of 10, he does.
00:55:48 But three times out of 10, he gets caught.
00:55:52 I’m a huge advocate of handicap training,
00:55:55 where you handicap yourself to work on skills.
00:55:59 He’s took that to heart to a level that few people, I
00:56:04 believe, can match.
00:56:05 I just wonder what his psychology is like, because there’s.
00:56:08 It goes back to what we talked about before, Lex.
00:56:10 You have to understand it’s skill development.
00:56:13 Don’t take it personally.
00:56:16 I understand.
00:56:16 I hear where you’re coming from.
00:56:18 We’ve all got what you call the ape reflex, where
00:56:21 we want to be dominant, OK?
00:56:22 We all do.
00:56:23 Because there’s thousands of white belts out there
00:56:25 that have tapped Gary Tonan, and they’re walking around,
00:56:28 and they’re posting online.
00:56:30 I tapped Gary Tonan.
00:56:32 Gary Tonan’s one of the best in the world,
00:56:34 so I’m one of the best in the world.
00:56:36 And does Gary get upset about this?
00:56:40 No, of course not.
00:56:41 Because Gary knows that when it counts on stage,
00:56:43 he’s going to be going 100% with a set of skills
00:56:46 that very few people can match.
00:56:49 He can go into an EBI overtime at the 205 pound weight
00:56:53 division against an ADCC champion,
00:56:57 starting in a full arm lock position,
00:57:00 and effortlessly get out with no problems in seconds.
00:57:04 Because he’s been in that situation 25,000 times
00:57:08 with varying degrees of skilled opponents.
00:57:12 And there’s just no panic, no fear.
00:57:16 He’s just doing what he’s done so many thousands of times.
00:57:20 And that’s a fine, fine example of a guy
00:57:24 who didn’t give a damn what happened in the training room,
00:57:26 but when it counted on the stage, in front of the cameras,
00:57:30 it kicked in.
00:57:32 Yeah, he’s an incredible inspiration, actually.
00:57:35 He’s a practitioner of something you’ve recently
00:57:38 talked quite a bit about, which is the power
00:57:40 of escaping sort of bad positions.
00:57:43 I think you’ve talked about it,
00:57:46 which is really interesting framing,
00:57:47 is escaping bad positions is one of the best ways,
00:57:54 if not the best way, to demonstrate dominance
00:57:58 psychologically over your opponent.
00:58:01 That anything they throw at you,
00:58:05 like their weapons are useless against you.
00:58:08 There’s a little bit of Lex Friedman
00:58:10 kicking through on this question.
00:58:11 Your obsession with dominance is skewing your point of view.
00:58:16 It’s a therapy session, it’s a therapy session.
00:58:19 I’m coming from a wrestling perspective.
00:58:22 I think it’s not just Lex Friedman.
00:58:23 I think it’s Dan Gable.
00:58:25 I think it’s dominant.
00:58:26 The Gary Tonin ethic, it just goes against everything
00:58:31 wrestling is about.
00:58:32 You never put yourself in a bad position.
00:58:35 And the fact, it’s a, philosophically,
00:58:39 I don’t know what to do with it.
00:58:40 It’s a total reframing of showing dominance
00:58:45 by escaping any bad position.
00:58:49 Yeah.
00:58:49 Let’s talk about the idea of what is the value of escapes?
00:58:53 Why do I put this in as the first skill
00:58:56 that every Jiu Jitsu student must master?
00:59:01 Believe it or not, when I talked about how it
00:59:07 pertains to dominance,
00:59:09 that’s its smallest value.
00:59:12 Its greatest value has nothing to do with dominance.
00:59:14 It has to do with confidence.
00:59:19 You can train someone and teach them technique
00:59:22 until you’re blue in the face.
00:59:25 But at some point, the athlete in question
00:59:29 has to go out there on the stage and pull the trigger
00:59:33 when the time is right.
00:59:34 What’s going to give you that ability
00:59:37 to go from the physical skills that you’ve learned
00:59:41 to execution under pressure is confidence.
00:59:51 I always talk about skill development.
00:59:54 And yes, skill development is the absolute bedrock
00:59:57 of my training programs.
00:59:58 But you can’t finish at that level.
01:00:02 There has to be something more than that.
01:00:04 And you have to go from the physical element of skill
01:00:08 into the psychological element of confidence.
01:00:11 I can teach you an armbar all day.
01:00:14 You can get to a point where you can flawlessly execute
01:00:17 armbars in drilling and even in a certain level
01:00:20 of competition.
01:00:22 But if you believe that you can do it,
01:00:25 in a certain level of competition, but if you believe
01:00:30 that in attempting an armbar on a dangerous opponent
01:00:34 with good guard passing skills,
01:00:36 say the armbar has been performed from guard position,
01:00:40 that if the armbar fails and your opponent uses that failure
01:00:45 to set up a strong pass and get into a side pin,
01:00:49 possibly into the mount, and you don’t have the ability
01:00:53 to get out of that side pin or mount,
01:00:55 you won’t pull the trigger on the armbar.
01:00:58 And so even though you had all the requisite physical skills
01:01:02 to perform the technique, when push came to shove
01:01:06 and the critical moment came, you backed down.
01:01:10 You didn’t pull the trigger.
01:01:13 Building that confidence is the key
01:01:17 to championship performance.
01:01:19 And the single best way to do it is to take away
01:01:24 the innate fear that we all have of bad outcomes
01:01:29 that makes us naturally risk averse.
01:01:33 When you don’t believe you can be pinned,
01:01:35 when you don’t believe your guard can be passed,
01:01:38 you’ll take risks because there’s no downside
01:01:41 to your actions.
01:01:42 An unpinnable person and an unpassable person
01:01:46 doesn’t have much to fear in a jiu jitsu match.
01:01:48 You can come out and fire with all guns blazing
01:01:51 because then you know at the end of the day,
01:01:53 no one’s gonna hold you down,
01:01:54 no one’s gonna pass you guard.
01:01:56 That’s your first two goals in jiu jitsu.
01:01:58 They’re the most boring goals.
01:02:00 They’re not exciting to learn.
01:02:01 No one wants to come in and their first thing we’re told,
01:02:03 okay, you’re gonna practice escapes
01:02:04 for the next year of your life.
01:02:06 Okay, it’s not going, are you kidding me?
01:02:08 But that’s what you gotta have, that’s your first skill.
01:02:11 And that’s what I push upon all of my students.
01:02:14 You’ll see almost all of them are very, very strong
01:02:17 in escape skills.
01:02:18 They know that if things go wrong,
01:02:21 they can always get out.
01:02:22 They can always live to fight another day.
01:02:26 And that is what gives them the ability
01:02:28 to attack without fear.
01:02:31 I think that is so profound and so rare.
01:02:35 It’s so rare to hear this.
01:02:37 I think it’s because it’s the most painful thing to do.
01:02:41 Always ask yourself,
01:02:43 when you enter a jiu jitsu match,
01:02:48 you already know ahead of time,
01:02:52 if you’re going to lose, how you’re going to lose.
01:02:56 Okay, there’s only a certain number of realistic submissions
01:02:59 that work in the sport of jiu jitsu.
01:03:01 The number is very small.
01:03:03 So ahead of time, you already know
01:03:06 the most likely methods of submission loss in jiu jitsu
01:03:09 are gonna be things like heel hook,
01:03:11 armbar, rear naked strangle, guillotine, et cetera, et cetera.
01:03:14 Just work backwards from that knowledge.
01:03:17 So start off learning how to defend all of those things.
01:03:20 You know what the major losing positions are in jiu jitsu.
01:03:23 Someone gets mounted on you, rear mount,
01:03:25 side control, knee on belly.
01:03:26 Those positions you can only lose from.
01:03:28 So work backwards from there,
01:03:30 getting out of those positions.
01:03:32 And that’s how I always start.
01:03:33 I always say with my students,
01:03:36 I teach beginners from the ground up
01:03:40 and I teach experts backwards.
01:03:44 What does that mean?
01:03:45 When a young student comes to me with no skills,
01:03:48 they learn from the ground up.
01:03:49 They start on their backs, defending pins.
01:03:52 Then they start on their backs working
01:03:54 from half guard bottom,
01:03:55 then on their backs working from variations of guard.
01:03:58 They don’t even get to see top position
01:04:00 until they’re strong off their backs.
01:04:02 Then they go onto their knees and they start passing,
01:04:07 start standing and passing.
01:04:09 And then they work their pins and transitions.
01:04:12 And then ultimately they stand up to their feet
01:04:14 and they work standing position on their feet.
01:04:16 So they work from ground back on the floor
01:04:20 to ground knees on the floor,
01:04:22 ground standing and then both athletes standing.
01:04:24 It’s a gradual progression over time
01:04:26 where they work from the bottom to the top.
01:04:28 With regards to experts, I teach them end game first.
01:04:32 They must become very, very strong
01:04:34 in what finishes the match, which is submission holds.
01:04:37 Okay, in chess, we always talk about end game.
01:04:42 I do the same thing in Jiu Jitsu.
01:04:44 I start experts just looking at the mechanics
01:04:48 of breaking people and all the submission holds that I teach.
01:04:51 You should know that I teach only
01:04:53 a very small number of submission holds, around six.
01:04:57 It’s interesting that my students have by far and away
01:05:00 the highest submission rate in contemporary Jiu Jitsu,
01:05:03 but they only learn around six to seven submission holds.
01:05:06 I start them with mechanics where they learn the end game,
01:05:13 how to break someone.
01:05:19 Once they develop in their mind,
01:05:24 the belief that if, the conditional if,
01:05:29 they can get to one of those six positions,
01:05:32 there’s a very high likelihood they’ll win.
01:05:37 If they truly believe then, when it’s competition time,
01:05:42 they’ll fucking find a way to get to those positions.
01:05:46 That’s confidence.
01:05:47 But if you don’t believe, let’s say you believe,
01:05:50 man, if I get to a finishing position,
01:05:52 an armbar or a strangle,
01:05:53 there’s only like a 20% chance I’ll finish with it.
01:05:56 How hard are you gonna fight to get to that position?
01:05:58 You’re not.
01:06:00 Why, why would you?
01:06:02 But if you believe there’s a 98% chance,
01:06:05 if you get to that position, you’ll finish.
01:06:08 You’ll find a way to get there.
01:06:10 That is so powerful.
01:06:12 There’s certain things,
01:06:13 it may be going back to Judo a little bit,
01:06:15 is there’s a clock choke for people who are listening.
01:06:20 It’s with the gi when a person is in a turtle position,
01:06:25 in a crouching position.
01:06:27 And this is something that’s done in Judo quite a bit.
01:06:30 But I have, it doesn’t matter what the technique is,
01:06:32 I have a belief in my head
01:06:35 that there’s not a person in the world
01:06:37 that I can’t choke with that clock choke.
01:06:40 That’s a good belief to have.
01:06:41 And I’ve done that.
01:06:43 And that it was, it built on itself.
01:06:47 The belief made the technique better and better and better.
01:06:52 Now you’re onto something.
01:06:54 That’s exactly the mindset that I’m trying to coach.
01:06:56 But that’s step one.
01:06:59 You have to believe that once you get there.
01:07:01 But you gotta start somewhere.
01:07:02 And then it’s step one.
01:07:03 But then you have to create a system
01:07:05 how to get there. But it’s a damn important step.
01:07:06 So you coach the end game first,
01:07:08 and then you fill in the details afterwards.
01:07:11 Yeah, that’s a huge confidence builder.
01:07:13 But I just, I have to say, to admit,
01:07:17 and it makes me sad, but I think I’m not alone.
01:07:19 I think a majority of Jiu Jitsu people are like this,
01:07:23 that I didn’t do the beginner step that you talk about,
01:07:27 which is focusing on escapes.
01:07:30 I think I learned the wrong lessons from losing.
01:07:35 I remember in a blue belt competition long ago,
01:07:42 I was, I think it was, yeah,
01:07:44 it was the finals of Atlanta IBJJF tournament.
01:07:47 And there’s a person that passed my guard and he took mount.
01:07:57 And he stayed in mount for a long time.
01:08:01 And I couldn’t breathe.
01:08:02 And it was like one of those things
01:08:04 where I was truly dominated.
01:08:06 I don’t think I’ve been dominated in Jiu Jitsu match
01:08:09 quite like that before or after.
01:08:12 And the lesson I learned from that is I’m not gonna let,
01:08:15 like as opposed to working on escapes,
01:08:20 I’m not gonna let anyone pass my guard.
01:08:22 What you learned is don’t take risks.
01:08:24 Don’t take risks.
01:08:26 Which is ultimately what kills you.
01:08:29 Ultimately, if you become the best you can,
01:08:31 you gotta take risks.
01:08:32 As they say, nothing risk, nothing gain.
01:08:35 Failure usually makes us even more risk averse
01:08:38 than we started.
01:08:39 We’re already mentally biased,
01:08:41 being human beings in that direction.
01:08:43 And failure tends to reinforce that.
01:08:48 I work hard in my training programs
01:08:50 to try and correct that fault.
01:08:52 Is it still possible for a person who’s a black belt
01:08:56 to then just go back to that beginning journey, I guess?
01:08:59 Of course.
01:09:01 Let me tell you something.
01:09:03 I’m probably gonna catch a lot of flack for saying this.
01:09:05 I have a belief.
01:09:07 I won’t say something, I won’t call it knowledge
01:09:10 because it’s not known, but I have a fervent belief.
01:09:14 That human beings in most skill activities,
01:09:19 not all skill activities, but I will say combat sports,
01:09:21 for sure, can reinvent themselves in five year periods.
01:09:27 Now you might be saying five years?
01:09:29 What’s magical about five years?
01:09:33 Mike Tyson was 13 years old
01:09:36 when he was taken in by custom auto.
01:09:38 By the age of 18, he was beating world class boxers
01:09:45 in the gym and had already made a strong name for himself
01:09:51 in international boxing.
01:09:52 He was already a known figure.
01:09:54 It was five years.
01:10:00 Yasuhiro Yamashita, the judo player, began judo at 13.
01:10:05 He placed silver in the All Japans at 17.
01:10:12 I could go on all day with examples of athletes
01:10:17 who within a five year timeframe of starting a sport
01:10:22 were competing at world championship level.
01:10:25 I’m gonna give you a rough and ready definition
01:10:29 of sport mastery, okay?
01:10:31 I believe that if you can play a competitive match
01:10:36 against someone ranked in the top 25 in your sport,
01:10:42 and it’s a serious international sport,
01:10:44 I would call you someone who’s mastered that sport.
01:10:47 Okay, you’re damn good.
01:10:50 If you can go with the number 25 wrestler in the world
01:10:54 and give them a hard competitive match in the gym,
01:10:56 you may not win it, but they had a good workout,
01:10:59 you know, they had a good workout.
01:11:01 You have shown mastery of wrestling
01:11:07 or indeed any other combat sport you care to name.
01:11:13 There are numerous examples of people doing far better
01:11:16 than that in five years, winning medals
01:11:21 at world championships and even Olympic games
01:11:24 in that five year period.
01:11:26 This is not an unrealistic goal.
01:11:28 There is a lot of empirical evidence to show
01:11:30 that people have done this in the past, a lot of it.
01:11:34 So if you fully immerse yourself in a sport
01:11:37 with a well worked out, well planned training program,
01:11:40 there is a mountain of evidence to show
01:11:41 that in a five year period,
01:11:43 you can go from a complete beginner
01:11:47 to like very, very impressive skill level
01:11:53 to the point where you’re competitive
01:11:54 with some of the best people on the planet.
01:11:56 You can reinvent yourself in these five year periods.
01:12:00 What happens with most people is they get to a certain level
01:12:03 and they get complacent, they get lazy
01:12:05 and they just keep doing the same old thing
01:12:07 they’ve been doing.
01:12:08 But if you’re diligent and you’re purposeful,
01:12:11 five years, you can accomplish an awful lot
01:12:14 and as I said, there’s a mountain of evidence to show it.
01:12:18 By the way, as a small aside,
01:12:20 somebody who’s mentioned Tversky and Yamashita
01:12:22 in the same conversation,
01:12:24 you’re one of the most impressive people I’ve ever spoken to.
01:12:27 But as a small aside,
01:12:31 so if there’s this complete beginner,
01:12:33 this is really interesting.
01:12:36 There is empirical evidence
01:12:39 that you can achieve incredible things
01:12:41 in a short amount of time.
01:12:44 There’s a complete beginner standing before you
01:12:47 and that beginner has fire in their eyes
01:12:50 and they want to achieve mastery.
01:12:54 Where do you place most of the credit
01:12:58 for a journey that does achieve mastery?
01:13:01 Is it the set of ideas they have in their mind?
01:13:04 Is it the set of drills or the way they practice?
01:13:09 Is it genetics and luck?
01:13:13 Those are all good insights.
01:13:15 All of those factors you’ve mentioned play a definite role.
01:13:18 Let’s start with luck, okay?
01:13:21 We are all subject to fortune
01:13:24 and fortune can be good and fortune can be bad.
01:13:28 Life is in many ways beautiful, but life is also tragic.
01:13:32 And I’ve had students who showed enormous promise
01:13:36 and just tragic events occurred in their lives.
01:13:41 The vicissitudes of fortune can be
01:13:44 a wonderful thing in your life
01:13:46 and they can be a terrible tragedy.
01:13:48 I’ve had students who died for various reasons
01:13:53 who could have gone on to become world champions.
01:13:56 I’ve had students who on a much lighter note
01:13:59 just fell in love and just wanted to have kids
01:14:03 and move away and that’s a wonderful thing,
01:14:06 but different direction.
01:14:09 You just never know.
01:14:10 So luck does play some role.
01:14:13 Even things like where you’re born, the location of,
01:14:17 your physical location in the world
01:14:20 or even the socioeconomic location can play a role
01:14:24 which could be detrimental or favorable.
01:14:26 So yeah, luck does play some role.
01:14:28 Thankfully, it’s one of the smaller elements.
01:14:31 And I do believe that a truly resourceful mind
01:14:36 can overcome the majority of what fortune throws at us
01:14:41 and get to goals provided you’re sufficiently
01:14:44 mentally robust.
01:14:47 Other things you mentioned, genetics.
01:14:51 I do believe in certain sports,
01:14:53 genetics really do play a powerful, powerful role.
01:14:58 For example, in any sport where power output
01:15:02 and reaction speed, ability to take physical damage,
01:15:07 then there are genetic elements which will help.
01:15:11 For example, I couldn’t imagine a world
01:15:15 in which even if I have a crippled leg,
01:15:17 so even if I grew up in a world where my leg was normal
01:15:22 and I had normal legs and everything was fine with my body,
01:15:25 I don’t believe that I could win the Olympic gold medal
01:15:30 in 100 meter sprinting, for example.
01:15:32 I just don’t have enough fast twitch muscle fibers.
01:15:35 But the more a sport involves skill and tactics,
01:15:40 the less you will see genetics playing a role.
01:15:44 If you look at the medal podiums in jiu jitsu, for example,
01:15:49 you will see that no one body type
01:15:52 is definitively superior to another.
01:15:54 You will see every variation of body type
01:15:57 and the medal platforms in jiu jitsu.
01:16:01 As skill and tactics become more and more important
01:16:03 and things like just power output over time
01:16:06 become less and less important,
01:16:08 then you will see that genetics play
01:16:11 less and less of a role.
01:16:12 I’m happy to say that the sport of jiu jitsu,
01:16:15 the evidence seems pretty clear
01:16:17 that there’s no one dominant body type
01:16:19 in the sport of jiu jitsu.
01:16:19 Rather, there’s just advantages for one type
01:16:22 and there’s advantages for another.
01:16:24 You just have to learn to tailor your game to your body.
01:16:30 With regards to training program,
01:16:32 yes, I believe with all my heart and all my soul
01:16:36 that your training program does make a difference.
01:16:40 I’ve dedicated my life to that.
01:16:41 Obviously, I’m biased in this regard.
01:16:44 I do believe that all of the students that I taught
01:16:47 who became world champions would have been great athletes
01:16:50 whether or not they had met me or not.
01:16:51 I believe that.
01:16:53 But I do also believe it would have taken them a lot longer
01:16:56 and they may not have gotten to the level that they did.
01:17:00 I’m sure they would have been impressive,
01:17:01 but I do believe that the nature of a training program
01:17:06 plays an enormous difference.
01:17:08 I don’t mean to say this in an arrogant way.
01:17:10 I believe that there’s, again,
01:17:13 a mountain of evidence to suggest this is true
01:17:15 because you see it in many different sports.
01:17:17 Let’s talk, for example, about your country, Russia,
01:17:21 and its wrestling program.
01:17:25 Russia is an enormous country,
01:17:28 but the location where Russia’s wrestling program comes from
01:17:32 is actually very small
01:17:34 and the population is actually very small.
01:17:36 I can’t verify this, but I was told once,
01:17:39 I can’t verify this, but the number of people
01:17:41 who wrestle in Russia is actually significantly smaller
01:17:44 than the number of people who wrestle in the United States.
01:17:47 It’s also not part of the school athletics
01:17:51 and it is in the United States.
01:17:52 Yes, that’s a different point.
01:17:54 We’ll come back right to that
01:17:55 because that’s also an important point.
01:17:57 But if you look at the actual numbers of people there,
01:18:00 they’re actually pretty small.
01:18:02 So ostensibly, if it comes down to a numbers game,
01:18:04 America should dominate at the Olympics
01:18:06 because we have more wrestlers.
01:18:07 Now, the story gets more complicated
01:18:09 because America has a different style of wrestling,
01:18:12 the collegiate style than the international freestyle.
01:18:14 That is a complicating factor.
01:18:18 But nonetheless, what you see there
01:18:21 is that numbers aren’t everything.
01:18:24 Rather, the manner in which people are trained
01:18:27 clearly has an impact.
01:18:29 And we know very little about the,
01:18:32 there’s very little reliable information
01:18:34 about the training program for wrestling
01:18:36 in the Russian States.
01:18:39 But one thing is incontestable is the amount of success
01:18:43 that they’ve had in international world championship
01:18:45 and Olympic competition.
01:18:48 They are disproportionately successful
01:18:52 despite their relatively small numbers.
01:18:54 There’s nothing genetically special about them.
01:18:57 You can talk about performance enhancing drugs,
01:19:01 but those are a worldwide phenomenon.
01:19:03 They don’t have any access to technology
01:19:05 that the rest of the world doesn’t have.
01:19:10 At some point, you gotta start asking,
01:19:11 what are they doing differently in the training room?
01:19:14 And there are many other examples of similar situations.
01:19:19 My country, New Zealand, has an insanely successful
01:19:26 rugby program, the sport of rugby,
01:19:28 which they have dominated for literally generations
01:19:34 despite the fact that our population is very, very small
01:19:38 compared with the rest of the country.
01:19:39 And we don’t excel in many other sports.
01:19:41 New Zealand does fairly well in sports overall,
01:19:45 but nothing like they do in rugby.
01:19:47 And you’ve got to ask yourself, is there a culture there
01:19:50 which built this up?
01:19:52 And the world is full of examples of seemingly small
01:19:57 and unpromising areas or locations
01:19:59 putting out disproportionately high numbers
01:20:02 of successful athletes.
01:20:05 And that points to the idea that different training programs
01:20:10 have different success rates.
01:20:12 And so I truly believe with all my heart and all my soul
01:20:15 that how you train does make a significant difference.
01:20:20 I would even go further and say
01:20:21 it makes the most difference.
01:20:23 Is it the only thing?
01:20:24 Absolutely not.
01:20:25 We’ve already talked about fortune.
01:20:26 We’ve talked about genetics.
01:20:29 If you wanna get nasty, you can even talk about things
01:20:30 like performance enhancing drugs
01:20:32 that obviously plays a role in modern sports.
01:20:36 But I do believe that the majority of what creates success
01:20:41 is the interaction between the athlete
01:20:43 and the training program.
01:20:45 Now, the training program is one thing.
01:20:47 I do believe that’s the single most important,
01:20:49 but right behind it is the athlete themselves.
01:20:54 In my own experience, people talk about athletes
01:20:57 that I’ve trained successfully,
01:20:59 but they never talk about athletes
01:21:00 that I’ve trained unsuccessfully.
01:21:03 Always remember that for every champion coach produces,
01:21:06 there’s always going to be a difference.
01:21:08 Always remember that for every champion a coach produces,
01:21:11 there’s a hundred people that they coach
01:21:14 that no one ever heard of, and this is completely normal.
01:21:20 A coach can never take the lion’s share of the credit.
01:21:24 A coach creates possibilities,
01:21:27 but it’s the athlete who actualizes the possibilities.
01:21:31 And so building that rapport and finding the right people
01:21:35 to excel in your training program is also a big part of it.
01:21:39 What makes the difference between the successful,
01:21:42 your successes and your failures as a coach?
01:21:45 A range of reasons.
01:21:47 The single most important is persistence.
01:21:52 People will point to all kinds of virtues amongst athletes.
01:21:55 This guy’s the most courageous.
01:21:56 This guy’s the strongest.
01:21:58 These are all virtues,
01:21:59 but the one indispensable virtue is persistence,
01:22:04 the ability just to stay in the game long enough
01:22:07 to get the results you seek.
01:22:09 But what does persistence really look like?
01:22:12 If we can just break that apart a little bit.
01:22:14 It’s actually, this is a great question you’re asking
01:22:17 because most people see it
01:22:18 as a kind of simplistic doggedness
01:22:22 where you just show up every day.
01:22:23 That’s not it.
01:22:25 The most important form of persistence
01:22:27 is persistence of thinking,
01:22:30 which looks to push you in increasingly efficient,
01:22:34 more and more efficient methods of training.
01:22:38 Famously, people talk about the idea
01:22:40 that the hardest work of all is hard thinking,
01:22:42 and they’re absolutely right.
01:22:44 Okay, coming into the gym
01:22:45 and just doing the same thing for a decade
01:22:48 isn’t going to make you better.
01:22:50 What’s going to make you better
01:22:51 is progressive training over time
01:22:53 where you identify clear goals marked out
01:22:56 in time increments, three months, six months,
01:22:58 12 months, five years,
01:23:00 and build those short term goals
01:23:03 into a program of long term goals,
01:23:07 making sure that the training program changes over time
01:23:10 so that as your skill level rises,
01:23:11 the challenges you face in the gym
01:23:13 become higher and higher.
01:23:15 Don’t kill them at the start
01:23:16 with challenges that are too hard for them
01:23:18 to deal with, they get discouraged and leave.
01:23:20 Build them slowly over time,
01:23:22 but make sure they don’t just get left in a swamp
01:23:25 where they’re just doing the same thing
01:23:26 they were doing three years ago and they get bored.
01:23:28 And there’s two ways you can leave in a gym.
01:23:31 You can leave from adversity, it was too tough,
01:23:35 or you can leave from boredom.
01:23:37 Everyone talks about the first,
01:23:40 no one talks about the second.
01:23:42 Most people, when they get to black belt,
01:23:45 they get bored.
01:23:46 They know what their game is,
01:23:47 they know what they’re good at,
01:23:48 they know what they’re not good at.
01:23:50 When they compete, they stick with what they’re good at,
01:23:52 and they avoid what they’re not good at,
01:23:54 and they get bored.
01:23:56 They reach a plateau, and that’s it.
01:23:59 My whole thing is to make sure it’s not so tough
01:24:02 at the start that they leave because of adversity,
01:24:05 and then for the rest of their career
01:24:06 to make sure it’s not boring
01:24:07 so they leave because of boredom.
01:24:10 Travis Stevens actually said something
01:24:11 that changed the way I see training.
01:24:13 He said it as a side comment,
01:24:15 but he said that at the end of a good training session,
01:24:19 your mind should be exhausted, not your body.
01:24:22 And I’ve, for most of my life,
01:24:27 saw good training sessions where my body was exhausted.
01:24:31 Yes, I believe that’s the case with most people.
01:24:35 You should come out of the training session
01:24:37 with your mind buzzing with ideas,
01:24:39 like possibilities for tomorrow.
01:24:41 And by the way, on that note,
01:24:42 I would go further and say that the training session
01:24:45 doesn’t finish when your body stops moving.
01:24:48 It finishes when your mind stops moving,
01:24:51 and your mind shouldn’t stop moving.
01:24:53 After that session, there should be analysis.
01:24:55 What did I do well?
01:24:55 What did I do badly?
01:24:57 How could I do better with the things that I did well?
01:25:00 Can I ask you about something that I truly enjoy
01:25:03 and I think is really powerful,
01:25:05 but most people don’t seem to believe in that,
01:25:07 but is drilling?
01:25:10 I don’t know.
01:25:11 Maybe people are different, but I love the idea,
01:25:15 maybe even outside of jiu jitsu,
01:25:16 of doing the same thing over and over.
01:25:19 It’s like Jiro dreams of sushi.
01:25:21 I love doing the thing that nobody wants to do
01:25:27 and doing it 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times
01:25:30 more than what nobody wants to do.
01:25:34 So I’m a huge fan of drilling.
01:25:36 Obviously, I’m not a professional athlete,
01:25:38 but I feel like if I actually gave myself,
01:25:42 if I wanted to be really good at jiu jitsu,
01:25:44 like reach the level of being in the top 25
01:25:47 when I was much younger, like really strive,
01:25:52 I think I could achieve it by drilling.
01:25:56 I had this belief untested.
01:25:59 Can you challenge this idea or agree with it?
01:26:03 First off, fascinating.
01:26:05 However, we’re going to have to disagree.
01:26:08 No, no.
01:26:09 We’re just gonna have to start to understand
01:26:13 what are we talking about when we talk about drilling?
01:26:15 It’s a very vague term.
01:26:17 Okay, at this moment, many of your listeners
01:26:22 are probably having the same thought process,
01:26:25 which is, oh, drilling.
01:26:26 Yeah, I know what that is.
01:26:27 We go into the gym and we pick a move
01:26:30 and we practice it for a certain number of repetitions.
01:26:34 And if I do that, I’m gonna get better at the technique.
01:26:38 Okay, they’re wrong.
01:26:46 We’ve got to have a much more in depth understanding
01:26:53 of what the hell we’re talking about
01:26:54 when we talk about drilling.
01:26:57 Ultimately, any movement in the gym
01:27:02 that doesn’t improve the skills you already have
01:27:07 or build new skills is a waste of time,
01:27:11 a waste of resources.
01:27:13 Everything you do should be done with the aim
01:27:16 and the understanding that this is gonna make me better
01:27:18 at the sport I practice.
01:27:20 If it’s not, shouldn’t be there.
01:27:24 The majority of what passes for drilling
01:27:27 in most training halls will not make you better,
01:27:32 including some of the most cherished forms of drilling,
01:27:37 which is repetition for numbers.
01:27:41 The moment you say to someone,
01:27:42 I want you to do this a hundred times,
01:27:45 what are they really thinking about?
01:27:47 Volume.
01:27:50 They’re saying, okay, I’m at repetition 78.
01:27:53 I’m at 80, 20 more to go.
01:27:55 All they’re talking, their primary thought process
01:27:58 is on numbers.
01:28:00 That’s not the point of drilling.
01:28:03 The point is skill acquisition.
01:28:06 When people drill, don’t get them focused on numbers,
01:28:09 get them focused on mechanics.
01:28:12 That’s what they have to worry about.
01:28:14 I never have my students drill for numbers ever.
01:28:17 Just one, two, three, get the fuck out of here.
01:28:20 Are you kidding me?
01:28:21 Like how are you gonna get better with that?
01:28:23 Okay, get them working on the sense of gaining knowledge.
01:28:28 That’s my job.
01:28:30 I have to give them knowledge.
01:28:31 I have to explain to them what they’re trying to do.
01:28:34 That starts them on the right track.
01:28:36 But knowledge is one thing.
01:28:38 Skill is another.
01:28:41 If jiu jitsu was just about knowledge,
01:28:44 then all the 60 and 70 year old red belts
01:28:48 would be the world champions.
01:28:49 They’re not.
01:28:50 Jiu jitsu isn’t won by knowledge, it’s won by skill.
01:28:53 Knowledge is the first step in building skill.
01:28:58 So my job as a coach is to transmit knowledge.
01:29:01 Then I have to create training programs
01:29:04 with a path from knowledge to polished skill
01:29:09 is carried out.
01:29:11 That’s the interface between me and my students.
01:29:13 And so I give them drills where the whole emphasis
01:29:18 is upon getting a sense where they understand
01:29:23 what are the problems they’re trying to solve
01:29:26 and working towards practical solutions.
01:29:30 They never work with numbers.
01:29:32 They work with mechanics and feel.
01:29:36 Then you have to bring in the idea of progression.
01:29:41 When you drill, there’s zero resistance.
01:29:44 When you fight in competition, there’s 100% resistance.
01:29:48 You can’t go from zero to 100.
01:29:52 There has to be progress over time
01:29:55 where I have them work in drills
01:29:59 with slightly increasing increments of resistance.
01:30:04 And just as we talked about earlier with the weightlifter
01:30:06 who doesn’t start with 500 pounds,
01:30:08 but who begins with the bar and then over time
01:30:11 builds the skills that one day out there in the future
01:30:14 he will lift 500 pounds.
01:30:16 So too, that Jujikutami that you’re working on today
01:30:19 is feeble and pathetic, but five years from now
01:30:22 you’ll win a world championship with it.
01:30:25 You can’t have this naive idea of drilling.
01:30:28 It’s something you just come out,
01:30:30 you randomly pick a move and you work for numbers
01:30:34 until you’ve satisfied a certain set of numbers
01:30:36 that your coach threw at you
01:30:37 and then think you’re gonna get better.
01:30:39 There’s even dangers with drilling.
01:30:45 There is no performance increase that comes
01:30:52 once you get to a certain level
01:30:54 and you just keep doing the same damn thing.
01:30:58 Let’s say, for example, you come out
01:31:01 and you hit a hundred repetitions of the arm
01:31:04 by Jujikutami from guard position.
01:31:06 And you’re all proud of yourself
01:31:07 because you hit a hundred repetitions
01:31:09 and your body’s tired and you’re telling yourself,
01:31:11 man, I got a good workout.
01:31:12 And you come in tomorrow, you do exactly the same thing.
01:31:16 You come in the day after that and a week goes by
01:31:18 and you’ve done the same thing.
01:31:20 Then a year later, you do the same thing.
01:31:24 Ask yourself, has your Jujikutami really gotten better?
01:31:30 No, you’ve performed literally thousands
01:31:32 and thousands of repetitions.
01:31:34 You’ve spent an enormous amount of training time
01:31:38 and energy that could have gone in different directions
01:31:40 on something which didn’t make you any better.
01:31:45 Drills have diminishing returns.
01:31:49 Once you get to a certain skill level,
01:31:51 if you just keep hammering on the same thing
01:31:54 in the same fashion for the same amount of time,
01:31:58 you stop getting better.
01:32:01 Can I, partially for fun, partially for Dallas Advocate,
01:32:04 but partially because I actually believe this
01:32:05 to push back on some points, is it possible?
01:32:10 So everything you said, I think is beautiful and correct.
01:32:13 But the asking yourself the question, am I getting better?
01:32:18 It’s a really important one
01:32:19 and you could do that in training.
01:32:21 Is there a set of techniques,
01:32:24 maybe a small subset of all the techniques
01:32:26 that are in Jiu Jitsu,
01:32:27 where you can have significant skill acquisition
01:32:34 if you put in the numbers or the time, whatever,
01:32:37 on a technique against an opponent who’s not resisting?
01:32:41 Here’s, let me elaborate.
01:32:43 What I’ve, in my, maybe I’m different.
01:32:45 You’ll probably have to finish an example.
01:32:47 Yes.
01:32:49 Let me first make a general statement
01:32:51 and then I can give examples.
01:32:53 The general statement is I found that through repetitions,
01:32:56 and this is high repetitions combined with training,
01:33:00 but high repetitions against a non resisting opponent,
01:33:03 I’ve gotten to understand the way my body moves,
01:33:09 the way I apply pressure on a human.
01:33:11 Because it’s not actually zero resistance.
01:33:13 The opponent’s still laying there.
01:33:14 They’re still keeping their legs up.
01:33:16 They’re still doing, they might not be resisting,
01:33:19 but they’re still creating a structure.
01:33:21 Yes.
01:33:22 A non dynamic structure.
01:33:23 They’re presenting a target.
01:33:24 Yes.
01:33:25 But it’s not dynamic.
01:33:27 So you can’t master the timing of things,
01:33:31 but you can master the, not master,
01:33:34 but I felt like I could gain an understanding
01:33:37 of how to apply pressure to the human body
01:33:40 over thousands of repetitions.
01:33:43 Now, for example, I just, just to give you an example
01:33:45 to know what we’re talking about.
01:33:48 There’s a guy named Saulo Herbaro and Shanji Herbaro
01:33:52 that have this, I guess, I already forgot,
01:33:55 but the headquarters position or something like that.
01:33:57 But putting pressure as you pass guard,
01:34:00 like medium passing distance kind of pressure.
01:34:04 I’ve did thousands of repetitions of that
01:34:06 to understand what putting pressure with my hips feels like.
01:34:12 To truly understand that movement,
01:34:13 I felt like I was getting much better.
01:34:17 It’s like, it’s hard to put into words,
01:34:19 but that skill acquisition is so subtle.
01:34:22 Just the way you turn your hips.
01:34:25 But you’re already talking about
01:34:27 a better form of drilling now.
01:34:28 You’re going beyond the basic numbers
01:34:30 and you’re getting the sense of feel and mechanics,
01:34:32 which is what we want in drilling.
01:34:33 But the reason I say numbers,
01:34:36 and maybe you can speak to this,
01:34:37 but this might be an OCD thing,
01:34:39 but it allows you to take a journey
01:34:43 that doesn’t just last a week or two weeks,
01:34:46 but a journey where you stay with the technique
01:34:48 for two, three years.
01:34:50 And there’s a dedication to it.
01:34:53 Where it’s a long term commitment
01:34:57 to where you’re forcing yourself,
01:34:59 perhaps there’s other mechanisms,
01:35:00 but you’re forcing yourself to stay with a technique
01:35:03 longer than most people around you
01:35:05 are staying with whatever they’re working on.
01:35:07 And you’re taking that long journey.
01:35:09 And the numbers somehow enforce that persistence
01:35:12 and that dedication.
01:35:14 First thing, that journey’s a wonderful thing.
01:35:18 And if that technique is a crucial part of what you do,
01:35:23 then it’s time well invested.
01:35:24 But always understand
01:35:25 that it comes at an opportunity cost.
01:35:27 That by spending that amount of time on that one technique,
01:35:30 you’ve sacrificed other things
01:35:31 that you could have learned that could have won you matches.
01:35:35 So understand that every focus upon one element of the game
01:35:40 comes at the opportunity cost of other elements.
01:35:43 Now, as long as you’re playing a part of the game
01:35:46 where, okay, this is central to what I do.
01:35:48 Yes, okay, that’s fine.
01:35:50 But just be aware of the danger of opportunity cost.
01:35:53 That’s something no one talks about in the training room,
01:35:55 but it becomes very important.
01:35:57 Secondly, the other question you have to start
01:35:59 asking yourself is, okay,
01:36:01 that training clearly had benefits for you early on.
01:36:05 But when the point of diminishing return starts coming
01:36:08 and if you feel you’re just doing the same thing,
01:36:11 then it’s time to switch.
01:36:12 Now, if you feel you’re still getting benefit from it,
01:36:15 by all means, continue.
01:36:17 That will be a call on your part.
01:36:18 You’ve been playing this game a long time now,
01:36:21 so I would trust your call on that.
01:36:25 But my job as a coach is to look out and say,
01:36:28 okay, this kid’s been working
01:36:31 cross Ashigarami for six months
01:36:34 and I feel he’s gotten to a good skill level.
01:36:37 If he stays any further on it,
01:36:40 the opportunity cost becomes greater
01:36:43 than the expected benefits of continuing it.
01:36:45 And that’s my job as a coach,
01:36:47 is to direct things in that fashion.
01:36:48 If I can do a good job with that,
01:36:50 then I can take them to the next level of drilling
01:36:52 and start amping it up.
01:36:54 And that’s how I keep progress over time.
01:36:56 My biggest fear is to have students
01:37:00 run past the point of diminishing returns,
01:37:03 staying stagnant where opportunity costs comes in
01:37:07 and they’re not making the progress they could
01:37:10 in the time that they’ve been working.
01:37:13 I mean, that was,
01:37:14 it was almost a philosophical question for me.
01:37:16 That’s what I was always on a search on
01:37:18 because I know my mind is likes drilling.
01:37:22 I don’t like relying on other people for improvement
01:37:26 and drilling allows me to do something
01:37:30 that is 100% me.
01:37:33 It’s interesting Lex,
01:37:34 you say you don’t like relying on other people in drilling,
01:37:36 but in drilling, you really do rely a lot on your partner.
01:37:39 One of the first things I do when I coach people
01:37:40 is I teach them how to drill.
01:37:43 That’s a skill in itself.
01:37:44 And drilling is in a sense,
01:37:49 the opposite of sparring.
01:37:53 Drilling is a cooperative venture
01:37:55 where you work as dance partners,
01:37:58 complimenting each other’s movement.
01:38:01 If I drill with Gordon Ryan and I want him to work on bars,
01:38:04 I will move my body in ways
01:38:05 which make it an interesting exercise for Gordon.
01:38:11 I’m not just sitting there and he does a repetition
01:38:15 and I’m, okay, he does 10.
01:38:18 I can’t wait for this to be over so I can do my 10
01:38:20 and I can’t wait for all this to be over
01:38:22 so we can just spar and get over all this bullshit.
01:38:25 That’s the sad truth of most drilling in Jiu Jitsu.
01:38:30 There’s a sense in which when good people drill,
01:38:33 it’s like watching good people dance.
01:38:36 They move in unison and compliment each other’s movement
01:38:39 and make each other look better.
01:38:42 Sparring, on the other hand, is the exact opposite of that.
01:38:44 That’s resistance where you’re trying to make
01:38:46 the other person look as bad as possible.
01:38:48 And once you understand the different directions
01:38:51 in which drilling and sparring go,
01:38:52 that’s when things start getting interesting.
01:38:54 You start getting fast progress.
01:38:56 Yeah, you’re absolutely right.
01:38:59 I think I was not very eloquent describing what I mean.
01:39:02 I found myself not able to find in Jiu Jitsu
01:39:07 too many people that are willing to dedicate
01:39:09 a huge amount of time to a particular technique.
01:39:12 I concur with you on Netflix.
01:39:15 Now, answer the interesting question, why?
01:39:18 Why can’t you get people to drill with you?
01:39:21 By the way, if I could just shout out
01:39:24 the people that did drill with me
01:39:25 is usually blue belt women because they’re smaller,
01:39:30 they don’t like training because they get their ass kicked
01:39:34 because they’re much smaller.
01:39:36 So they’re willing to invest a significant amount of effort
01:39:40 into training.
01:39:44 That’s good, but their motivation for doing so is not good.
01:39:49 Well, yes.
01:39:49 But your motivation for drilling is
01:39:51 because you don’t want to get your ass kicked.
01:39:52 That’s not a good motivation. No black belt ever.
01:39:55 I could never find a black belt
01:39:57 that I could drill with like this.
01:39:59 Now let’s go back to that question, why?
01:40:01 I don’t mean this, I am somebody
01:40:05 who likes to say nice things about people.
01:40:06 So let me answer for you.
01:40:08 Yeah.
01:40:09 Two reasons, because they find it boring.
01:40:12 Yes.
01:40:13 And secondly, perhaps more importantly,
01:40:14 they don’t believe it works.
01:40:16 Yeah, those are good answers.
01:40:18 And now let’s go further
01:40:20 and ask the truly interesting question.
01:40:22 Why do they believe that?
01:40:23 If I were to answer it in the context of Russian wrestling,
01:40:29 where drilling is much bigger part,
01:40:32 is I think culturally that was knowledge
01:40:35 that everybody tells each other in Jiu Jitsu
01:40:38 that drilling doesn’t work.
01:40:44 Because they never taught how to drill.
01:40:47 No one ever sits you down one day and says,
01:40:49 okay, this is how you drill.
01:40:50 And so the exercise feels futile.
01:40:54 They don’t feel their skill level is going up.
01:40:55 They don’t associate drilling with increased skill level.
01:40:59 They associate sparring with increased skill level,
01:41:01 but not drilling, which is a tragedy
01:41:03 because it is a fantastic way to introduce
01:41:08 and expand the repertoire of a developing student.
01:41:11 It’s an essential part of every workout I teach.
01:41:14 I always say the game of Jiu Jitsu begins with knowledge
01:41:17 and builds up to skill.
01:41:20 Who wins is the one who has greater skill
01:41:23 and nine times out of 10.
01:41:25 So to me, it’s a tragedy that what you’re saying
01:41:28 breaks my heart to hear that you couldn’t get a black belt
01:41:31 to drill with you, that’s shameful.
01:41:34 But I understand, I sympathize with those black belts too
01:41:38 because the way in which most people are told to drill
01:41:41 does feel ineffective and it is damn boring.
01:41:44 They’d rather just spar.
01:41:46 They feel like they get more out of the workout.
01:41:48 And that’s, if anything, an indictment
01:41:51 upon most of the training programs around the nation.
01:41:54 Would you say that drilling,
01:41:56 if you were to build a black belt world champion,
01:42:01 would drilling be, what percent of their training,
01:42:05 in the entirety of their career would be drilling?
01:42:08 Great question.
01:42:10 Let’s first put a proviso on it
01:42:11 that I don’t do the same thing for all athletes.
01:42:14 Everyone’s got a different personality.
01:42:16 And like Nicky Rod, I can only hold his attention
01:42:19 for two minutes at a time.
01:42:20 And Gary Tonin, five minutes.
01:42:26 Gordon Ryan, five hours.
01:42:28 Like George St. Pierre, five hours.
01:42:31 Travis Stevens, five hours.
01:42:33 They are just laser focused.
01:42:35 So everyone’s different.
01:42:36 Let’s put that down as our first proviso.
01:42:40 You probably knew those answers already.
01:42:42 Yeah.
01:42:44 That’s hilarious.
01:42:45 But as a general rule,
01:42:49 if I run a two and a half hour class,
01:42:53 you can expect an hour and a half of it to be,
01:42:57 I’m going to use the word drilling,
01:42:59 but I’m also going to say that this is too complex
01:43:01 of a story to give now with words.
01:43:03 I would need to demonstrate it.
01:43:05 But the way in which we drill
01:43:06 is not your standard method of drilling.
01:43:08 And then it’s into sparring.
01:43:11 But if you give me a choice
01:43:12 between a bad drilling partner and sparring,
01:43:16 I could make the same choice that most black belts make,
01:43:19 which I would go with sparring.
01:43:21 Because you can create drilling
01:43:22 within the sparring environment.
01:43:26 Like good drilling is a wonderful thing.
01:43:28 Bad drilling is just a worthless waste of time.
01:43:33 Okay, before, I have a million questions for you,
01:43:36 but I have to ask,
01:43:37 can you, we’ve described the fundamentals of jiu jitsu.
01:43:41 Can we describe the principles, the fundamentals
01:43:44 of one of the interesting systems you’ve developed,
01:43:46 which is the leg lock system?
01:43:49 Yeah, anything in particular
01:43:50 or just like a general understanding
01:43:53 of what are some of the major principles of it?
01:43:55 Well, it’s like me coming to Miyamoto Musashi and asking,
01:43:59 can you describe the principles of sword fighting?
01:44:03 You’re too generous.
01:44:06 Let’s start off with some context.
01:44:08 When I began the sport of jiu jitsu,
01:44:13 I was taught a fairly classical approach to jiu jitsu,
01:44:20 which leg locks were a part of it,
01:44:23 but not an emphasized part of it.
01:44:26 The overall culture of the times is the mid 1990s.
01:44:30 The overall culture of the time saw leg locks
01:44:34 as largely ineffective.
01:44:41 It was, we were told that against good opposition,
01:44:44 they just didn’t work very well.
01:44:46 They were low percentage techniques.
01:44:48 We were also told that they were tactically unsound
01:44:52 because if you ever attempted them
01:44:54 and you lost control of the leg lock,
01:44:58 your opponent would end up on top of you
01:44:59 or in some kind of good position
01:45:01 and you’d be in terrible trouble.
01:45:04 And we were also told that they were unsafe,
01:45:06 that if they were applied in the gym,
01:45:09 there’d be far too many injuries
01:45:10 and people would be badly hurt.
01:45:13 And that was the received wisdom of that time.
01:45:16 And so I didn’t even work with them at all.
01:45:21 And they would be shown occasionally in the gym
01:45:24 and you’d learn them, you’d drill them.
01:45:26 But in sparring, I showed no interest.
01:45:33 You probably know that change when I met
01:45:35 the great American grappler, Dean Lister,
01:45:38 who early in his career was using Achilles locks
01:45:41 with considerable success.
01:45:42 I met him in the gym, wonderful fellow.
01:45:45 And…
01:45:46 Achilles locks is like a straight full lock.
01:45:48 Yes, that’s correct, yes.
01:45:49 And he went on to become a heel hooker
01:45:53 and win 280 CCs later on in his career.
01:45:56 But we never met again after that.
01:45:59 And that opened some doors of inquiry and…
01:46:06 Well, he asked this first principles question
01:46:09 is why would you only use half the body in a game
01:46:13 that involves the human body?
01:46:14 Perfect sense.
01:46:15 So that opened doors to inquiry.
01:46:18 And if you looked around the Jiu Jitsu world at that time,
01:46:22 the number of specialized leg lockers was very small.
01:46:27 And most of them were from outside of conventional Jiu Jitsu.
01:46:34 For example, you could look around and see people
01:46:35 like Romina Sato had sharp leg locks
01:46:39 for that time period in the 1990s.
01:46:43 So they were out there, they existed.
01:46:45 And you’d see people like Ken Shamrock
01:46:47 would use heel hooks in competition
01:46:50 and he had some good success with them.
01:46:55 When I began experimenting in the gym,
01:46:59 fairly soon, certain truths started to become evident.
01:47:03 And the most important of these
01:47:07 can be understood very quickly.
01:47:09 And they were relatively easy to discover.
01:47:13 The first was that most people,
01:47:17 when they went to understand and study leg locking.
01:47:24 And when I talk about leg locking,
01:47:26 I’m gonna talk about one specific type,
01:47:27 which is the most high percentage type.
01:47:29 This is leg locks, which are performed
01:47:31 with entanglements of your opponent’s legs with your legs.
01:47:35 There are other forms of leg lock,
01:47:36 but these are relatively low percentage
01:47:38 and don’t figure heavily in competition.
01:47:39 So I’ll ignore them.
01:47:43 Most people made no distinction
01:47:45 between the mechanism of control
01:47:48 versus the mechanism of breaking.
01:47:51 The heel hook is what ultimately breaks the ankle.
01:47:56 But the mechanism of control
01:47:58 is the entanglement of your legs to your opponent’s legs.
01:48:01 The Japanese term ashigurami
01:48:03 literally just means like leg entanglement.
01:48:05 It’s a generic term.
01:48:06 It could apply to any form of entanglement.
01:48:08 There are many options.
01:48:10 My idea was let’s focus on the entanglement first
01:48:16 and worry about the breaking mechanism second.
01:48:19 This was analogous to the idea of position before submission.
01:48:23 Only you couldn’t talk about it
01:48:25 in terms of conventional positions
01:48:27 because ashigurami doesn’t really fit
01:48:29 into the traditional hierarchies,
01:48:31 positional hierarchies of jiu jitsu.
01:48:33 So the conversation was switched from position to submission
01:48:38 to control to submission.
01:48:40 Now, wrapping two of your legs
01:48:44 around one of your opponent’s legs
01:48:45 gives you many different options.
01:48:46 You can do it with your feet on the outside,
01:48:48 so called 50, 50 variations.
01:48:50 You can do it with your feet on the inside
01:48:52 and form what we call inside foot position.
01:48:59 There’s pros and cons to both.
01:49:00 There’s also methods of harmonizing the two.
01:49:03 So you have one foot on the inside
01:49:04 and one foot on the outside.
01:49:05 You can do it with a straight leg
01:49:09 where you heel hook from the outside
01:49:11 or you can bring the leg across your center line
01:49:13 and heel hook from the inside.
01:49:15 You will start to notice
01:49:18 as you work through these different variations
01:49:20 that some present advantages over others.
01:49:24 All of them come at a price to some degree,
01:49:29 regardless of which ashigurami option you use.
01:49:32 There will be some degree of foot exposure
01:49:34 on my part to my opponent
01:49:36 and some degree of back exposure
01:49:38 on my part relative to my opponent.
01:49:40 So that’s the downside of it.
01:49:42 Variations within those different ashigurami
01:49:46 enable you to lessen danger in some respects
01:49:51 and at the price of gaining dangers in others.
01:49:54 So you get this wide array of choices.
01:49:58 There’s not this kind of simplistic hierarchy
01:50:01 that you see in the basic position.
01:50:03 The basic positions of jiu jitsu,
01:50:05 but there are hierarchies.
01:50:07 I do, for example, generally favor inside heel hooks
01:50:10 over outside heel hooks.
01:50:13 If I feel my opponent is very good at exposing my back
01:50:19 while I’m in ashigurami,
01:50:20 I generally prefer 50, 50 situations.
01:50:23 If I believe my opponent is very good at counter leg locks,
01:50:25 I generally prefer my feet on the inside
01:50:28 working with variations of insides and kaku,
01:50:31 et cetera, et cetera.
01:50:32 So there are broad heuristic rules
01:50:35 that we can give to work in these situations.
01:50:41 Once you start to understand
01:50:43 there’s a variety of entanglements you can use,
01:50:48 then you start getting into the really interesting ideas
01:50:50 that as you perform one given attack, one given heel hook,
01:50:56 you can flow through different forms of ashigurami
01:51:01 where you can create new dangers
01:51:04 and avoid possible pitfalls in a very short timeframe
01:51:11 as you switch from one ashigurami to another over time.
01:51:14 So that as your opponent’s lines of resistance
01:51:16 to an initial attack change,
01:51:18 you can accommodate those
01:51:19 by switching to another form of ashigurami
01:51:22 so that your mechanism of control
01:51:24 is always pointing in opposite directions of his escape.
01:51:28 And if you focus on this idea of control through the legs,
01:51:32 you can completely change the nature of leg locking
01:51:36 and take it away from what it was in the 1990s
01:51:39 an opportunistic method of attack
01:51:42 based upon surprise, speed and power
01:51:45 into one based on control.
01:51:47 If you can do this,
01:51:49 you can undermine many of the basic criticisms
01:51:55 of leg locking which were prevalent when I began.
01:51:57 I began the sport of jiu jitsu.
01:52:01 For example, if I can completely control and immobilize you,
01:52:06 I can perform the lock very, very safely.
01:52:10 If my only way of breaking your leg
01:52:11 is to be faster and more powerful than you,
01:52:14 nine times out of 10 when I apply it,
01:52:16 I’m gonna hurt your leg as much by accident as anything.
01:52:19 But if I can completely immobilize you
01:52:22 and as every attempt you make to escape,
01:52:24 I can follow you and immobilize you in new directions,
01:52:28 then I can apply the lock with as much force
01:52:31 or as little force as possible.
01:52:33 And so you’ll see in our training room
01:52:35 despite over considerably more than two decades,
01:52:40 sorry, a decade and a half now
01:52:42 of heel hooking using these methods,
01:52:46 the number of people severely injured by heel hooks is tiny.
01:52:50 I would say I’ve seen more people injured by far
01:52:55 by kimuras in the time I’ve been training
01:52:58 than I have by heel hooks,
01:53:00 despite them having a similar twisting dynamic to them.
01:53:05 If you build a culture where people focus on control
01:53:09 rather than speed of execution,
01:53:11 then the injury rate goes down appreciably.
01:53:15 The whole idea of positional loss,
01:53:16 everyone was critical of leg locks.
01:53:18 Now, if you go for leg locks and they don’t work,
01:53:20 well, now you’re in trouble.
01:53:21 The guy’s gonna be on top of you.
01:53:23 They never make that criticism with armbars.
01:53:26 Okay, you can be in the mounted position,
01:53:27 go for an armbar, end up on bottom,
01:53:29 lose the armbar and lose position,
01:53:30 but I’ve never heard anyone criticize armbars
01:53:33 on that account.
01:53:34 More importantly, I believed from early on
01:53:38 that the best place to attack leg locks is not top position,
01:53:41 it’s bottom position.
01:53:43 You’ll see that over 90% of my athletes
01:53:45 attack leg locks from underneath people,
01:53:47 not on top of people.
01:53:48 So there is no positional loss.
01:53:50 You’re already underneath them.
01:53:51 And so that criticism was null and void.
01:53:56 And by focusing on this idea of breaking down
01:54:01 and distinguishing between the mechanism of control
01:54:04 and the mechanism of breaking,
01:54:06 that created something new and something interesting.
01:54:09 There was also another advantage that I had
01:54:13 in terms of creating influence with leg locking.
01:54:17 When you look at the great leg lockers of the past,
01:54:19 they were basically iconoclasts.
01:54:21 They were people who came out of nowhere
01:54:24 who just had this remarkable success with leg locks.
01:54:30 But they were just seen as unique individuals.
01:54:36 They had their game and they were good at it.
01:54:39 What was unique about the squad
01:54:40 is you had not just one person,
01:54:43 but a team of people who came out
01:54:45 and did pretty much the same thing.
01:54:47 These people had very different body types
01:54:50 and very different personalities.
01:54:52 So it wasn’t that one kind of body type was good at it.
01:54:55 You had tall people like Gordon Ryan.
01:54:57 You had short people like Nikki Ryan.
01:55:00 You had someone in the middle like Gary Tonin.
01:55:03 You had fast people like Gary Tonin.
01:55:05 You had slow people like Gordon.
01:55:08 There was every kind of body type involved.
01:55:12 And it was like, people could see this was different
01:55:14 because it worked for an entire team
01:55:17 as opposed to a unique individual
01:55:19 who had unique attributes.
01:55:21 And then started to foster the belief
01:55:23 that if it can work for a team, it can work for anyone,
01:55:28 which means it can work for me.
01:55:31 And I think that had a big effect.
01:55:33 That’s why I owe a lot to those early students,
01:55:39 Gordon Ryan, Gary Tonin, Eddie Cummings, and Nikki Ryan.
01:55:44 And those four kids came from nowhere.
01:55:50 Gary had some success in grappling,
01:55:53 like low level success in grappling
01:55:55 before becoming a full time member of the squad.
01:56:00 But the others were just nobodies who no one had known.
01:56:04 And yet within a five year timeframe,
01:56:07 they were all going up against world championship competition
01:56:10 and doing exceedingly well.
01:56:13 And which gives further credence
01:56:16 to the idea of the five year program.
01:56:18 And I think by operating as a team,
01:56:24 those young men did an incredible job
01:56:26 of convincing the grappling world
01:56:28 that this wasn’t just about, well, they’re just different
01:56:31 or it works for their body type or them as individuals.
01:56:35 It was like, no, if a team can do it, anyone can do it.
01:56:39 And I think that’s what really convinced people
01:56:41 that this was something worth studying.
01:56:44 This is something that could be a big part of their lives.
01:56:46 But also convinced you and convinced each other
01:56:49 in those early days when you’re developing the science.
01:56:52 Essentially what was missing
01:56:53 is an entire science and system of leg locks.
01:56:57 Because it’s not like you knew for sure
01:57:01 that there’s a lot here to be discovered
01:57:03 in terms of control.
01:57:04 You perhaps hadn’t, just like you said, an initial intuition,
01:57:08 but you have to have enough,
01:57:12 there’s perseverance required to take,
01:57:14 it’s the Johnny Ive thing to take from the initial idea
01:57:16 to an entire system.
01:57:17 Is there a sense you have about how complicated
01:57:22 and how big this world of control in leg locks is?
01:57:30 How complicated is it?
01:57:31 You’ve achieved a lot of success.
01:57:33 You have a lot of powerful ideas
01:57:35 in terms of inside, outside,
01:57:36 what’s high percentage, what’s not,
01:57:38 what’s higher reward, what’s a low risk,
01:57:40 all those kinds of things.
01:57:42 And then you also mentioned kind of transitions,
01:57:45 not transitions, but how you move with your opponent
01:57:49 to resist their escape through control.
01:57:53 How much do you understand about this world?
01:57:55 This is a fascinating question.
01:57:59 As a general rule, the most powerful developments
01:58:04 are always at the onset of a project, okay?
01:58:08 Let’s give an example.
01:58:10 The jet engine was, I believe, first conceived
01:58:16 in the late 1930s, just around the time of World War II.
01:58:20 It was developed with great pace because of World War II.
01:58:25 Obviously, military research was a huge thing back then.
01:58:28 And first fielded, I believe, by the jet engine,
01:58:32 first fielded, I believe, by the Germans in around 1943.
01:58:40 Jet aircraft didn’t play a big role in World War II.
01:58:44 They were there at the end
01:58:45 and they did play a significant role,
01:58:47 but in terms of numbers, they just weren’t there.
01:58:52 So by around 1945, you had the onset of the jet age
01:58:57 and the jet engine began to replace the piston engine
01:59:00 in most aircraft.
01:59:01 It was the new way of doing things.
01:59:06 If you look at the pace of development
01:59:10 of jet engine aircraft technology from 1945 to 1960,
01:59:17 it is unbelievable.
01:59:21 There was a solid decade where they were gaining
01:59:25 almost 100 miles an hour per year for a decade.
01:59:29 That’s a form of growth that, I mean,
01:59:33 in the world of engineering,
01:59:35 that’s the only time you see growth like that
01:59:38 is in things like Bitcoin and that’s about it, okay?
01:59:43 Let’s put things in perspective, okay?
01:59:47 In World War II, the standard US aircraft bomber
01:59:51 was the B17, which was a midsize bomber
01:59:55 with a fairly limited load capacity
01:59:57 and I think top speed well below 300 miles an hour.
02:00:04 Just 10 years later, you had the B52,
02:00:08 which could fly across continents
02:00:10 and deliver nuclear weapons
02:00:12 and carry bomb loads of up to 70,000 pounds.
02:00:17 In a decade, that happened.
02:00:21 If you took a B17 pilot in 1943
02:00:24 and put them inside a B52 a decade later,
02:00:27 he would literally think he was on a UFO,
02:00:30 a ship from another planet.
02:00:32 That was the speed of development.
02:00:36 Now, contrast that with the speed of modern development.
02:00:40 If I took you in a time machine
02:00:43 and I put you in a civil airliner in 1972,
02:00:49 let’s say a Boeing 737,
02:00:52 it’s not that different from what you fly in today.
02:00:55 Flies at the same speed, has the same range,
02:00:59 flies at the same altitude.
02:01:01 It’s not that different.
02:01:02 The amount of progress between 1973 and 2020
02:01:08 isn’t very impressive,
02:01:10 but the amount of progress from 1945 to 1955,
02:01:14 or even better, 1960 was staggering.
02:01:18 And so the initial progress tends to be meteoric,
02:01:23 but after that, it tends to be incremental.
02:01:25 That said, there’s a guy named Elon Musk.
02:01:30 There’s been almost no development
02:01:32 in terms of space rocket propulsion
02:01:38 and rocket launches and going out into orbit
02:01:43 or going out into deep space.
02:01:45 And one guy comes along,
02:01:47 one John Donahue type character,
02:01:50 and says, it doesn’t make sense why we don’t use
02:01:53 reusable rockets, why we don’t make them much cheaper,
02:01:56 why we don’t launch every week
02:01:58 as opposed to every few years.
02:02:00 It doesn’t make any sense why we don’t go to the moon again
02:02:04 over and over and over.
02:02:05 It doesn’t make any sense why we don’t go to Mars
02:02:07 and colonize Mars.
02:02:09 It feels like it’s not just a single jump to a B52.
02:02:15 It’s a series of these kinds of jumps.
02:02:18 So the question is, is there another leap
02:02:21 within the leg locking system?
02:02:24 Time will tell.
02:02:26 I do believe that we’re in a phase now
02:02:30 where the really big jumps have already been made
02:02:33 and we’re in the incremental phase at this point.
02:02:37 What I do believe is that you will start
02:02:39 to see new directions start to emerge,
02:02:42 where you start to see the interface
02:02:44 between leg locking and race link, for example.
02:02:46 The interface between leg locking and back attacks.
02:02:49 And that will provide new avenues of direction
02:02:52 which will create new spurts of growth.
02:02:57 But in terms of breaking people’s legs,
02:03:00 just the simple act of breaking legs,
02:03:03 I believe we’re in the incremental phase now
02:03:04 rather than the meteoric phase.
02:03:06 Let me ask you a ridiculous question.
02:03:08 How hard is it to actually break a leg?
02:03:10 Is this something you think about?
02:03:12 I remember, because I’m a big fan
02:03:13 of the straight foot lock, not, again,
02:03:17 we’re talking about to the standing Seoi Nage.
02:03:19 Maybe it’s my Russian roots with Samba
02:03:22 or something like that.
02:03:22 Maybe it’s the Dean Lister, Achilles lock.
02:03:26 But I love, maybe it’s my body, something like that.
02:03:30 I just love the squeeze of it, the control
02:03:34 and the power of a straight foot lock.
02:03:38 And I remember trying to,
02:03:42 there’s a few people in competition
02:03:44 that didn’t want to tap.
02:03:45 Absolutely.
02:03:47 And I remember in particular, there was one person,
02:03:52 again, the finals match, Purple Belt.
02:03:54 I remember it was a straight foot lock, it was perfect.
02:03:56 Everything just perfect.
02:03:58 And I remember going all in and there was a pop, pop, pop.
02:04:03 And I couldn’t do anything more.
02:04:05 It wasn’t breaking.
02:04:06 It was just bending and bending and bending.
02:04:09 And there’s damage to it of some kind.
02:04:12 But I wanted to like, you know, I wanted to see,
02:04:15 first of all, it’s very difficult psychologically
02:04:18 because it’s like, can I be violent here?
02:04:20 That was a whole nother thing.
02:04:22 With adrenaline, you can’t really think that fast.
02:04:25 But I also thought like, where else is there to go?
02:04:27 Like, is it the shin going to break?
02:04:29 What is it supposed to break?
02:04:31 So I wondered that.
02:04:31 Yeah, in the case of the Achilles lock,
02:04:33 it’s going to be the anterior tibialis tendon.
02:04:35 What’s that?
02:04:36 That’s the, it runs down, there’s two of them.
02:04:39 It’ll be the minor one that runs on the outside
02:04:41 of the front of the ankle.
02:04:42 It’s not going to be the Achilles tendon.
02:04:44 A lot of people promulgate this absurdity.
02:04:47 The Achilles tendon can rupture, but not from pressure.
02:04:51 Does the tendon or the bone, it’s going to break?
02:04:54 The bone won’t break.
02:04:56 I have seen on one occasion,
02:04:57 a shin bone break from an Achilles lock,
02:05:01 but there was an enormous size and strength disparity.
02:05:04 And there may have been other complicating factors too.
02:05:07 But in the vast majority of cases,
02:05:11 the Achilles lock doesn’t really do tremendous damage.
02:05:15 It can do significant damage.
02:05:17 You’ll definitely feel it the next day,
02:05:18 but it’s, of all the major locks,
02:05:20 it’s the one where it is most likely
02:05:23 a psychologically strong opponent
02:05:25 will be able to absorb damage and go on to win a match.
02:05:28 In answer to your first question,
02:05:30 how difficult is it to break a leg?
02:05:33 Not very difficult.
02:05:34 It will come down to what is the skill level
02:05:37 of my opponent’s resistance?
02:05:38 If your opponent is not resisting
02:05:40 and you have an inside heel hook,
02:05:41 it is absurdly easy to break a man’s leg.
02:05:44 Not a challenge at all.
02:05:46 You can be a 105 pound woman,
02:05:48 could easily snap the relevant knee ligaments
02:05:54 in a 240 pound man’s leg
02:05:56 if he doesn’t know how to defend himself.
02:05:58 That’s an easy thing, very easy to accomplish.
02:06:02 So the basic answer is yes, it’s very easy.
02:06:06 If your opponent does know how to defend
02:06:08 and they can position their foot,
02:06:10 play tricks of lever and fulcrum,
02:06:13 it becomes significantly more difficult.
02:06:14 It becomes still more difficult under match conditions
02:06:17 where they’re actively looking to position their body
02:06:21 and work their way out of the lock,
02:06:23 then it can become very difficult indeed.
02:06:26 Always bear in mind that there have been some cases
02:06:32 in our history as a team where people have literally
02:06:35 just let their knees snap and continue fighting.
02:06:43 Always remember that submission is a choice
02:06:45 when it comes to the joint locks.
02:06:47 And we’ve had some people who just made the choice
02:06:51 that I’m willing to let my knee break
02:06:54 so that I can continue in this match.
02:06:56 That’s a tough decision to make and I admire their bravery.
02:07:00 Is there something about that,
02:07:02 just to speak to that, that you admire?
02:07:04 Yes, it’s mental toughness.
02:07:07 Would I agree with it, would I advocate it?
02:07:09 No, but that doesn’t mean I can’t admire aspects of it.
02:07:14 Who is the greatest grappler ever?
02:07:18 You were very astute in the way you asked that question.
02:07:23 You didn’t say the greatest jiu jitsu player of all time,
02:07:26 you specified grappler.
02:07:28 What’s the bigger category?
02:07:29 Jiu jitsu is the bigger category.
02:07:31 Jiu jitsu has four faces.
02:07:33 There is gi competition, there is no gi competition,
02:07:37 there is mixed martial arts competition,
02:07:40 and there is self defense.
02:07:41 So jiu jitsu has four aspects.
02:07:44 Grappling typically refers only to the no gi
02:07:49 aspect of jiu jitsu, so it’s one out of four possibilities.
02:07:53 So who’s the greatest jiu jitsu practitioner ever,
02:07:56 and then who is the greatest grappler ever?
02:07:58 I believe that the greatest jiu jitsu player,
02:08:02 certainly that I ever met, and I believe of all time,
02:08:05 I don’t want to sound arrogant on that
02:08:08 because really you can only go with your own experiences
02:08:10 and there are some great athletes that other people mention
02:08:13 that I just never met.
02:08:15 So, but in my estimation, the greatest jiu jitsu player
02:08:19 is Haja Gracie, my reasoning for that is
02:08:25 out of the four faces of jiu jitsu, he excelled in three.
02:08:31 And in two of them in particular,
02:08:34 he was the best of his generation by a landslide.
02:08:38 In gi grappling, no gi grappling,
02:08:41 Haja dominated his generation to a degree
02:08:46 that is truly impressive.
02:08:51 What do you attribute that dominance to, by the way?
02:08:53 Is there something, if you were to analyze him?
02:08:56 Fascinating question, I’ll come back to it.
02:08:58 In mixed martial arts, he was at his peak,
02:09:03 I believe ranked in the top 10
02:09:05 in the world of mixed martial arts.
02:09:09 He wasn’t the best in mixed martial arts
02:09:11 the way he was in grappling, but he was damn good.
02:09:14 And he beat some significant people.
02:09:17 So he showed tremendous versatility,
02:09:19 gi, no gi, mixed martial arts.
02:09:21 He’s not really known in the world of self defense,
02:09:24 but there’s no real criteria by which
02:09:26 you would become dominant in self defense.
02:09:28 So that’s kind of a, you can’t really judge people by that.
02:09:31 Believe me, if Haja got into a fight in the street,
02:09:34 I’m sure he would do just fine.
02:09:36 So I have no concerns about that.
02:09:40 So I would say that if you look at jiu jitsu
02:09:42 for what I believe it is, a sport with four faces,
02:09:46 I believe you have to go with Haja Gracie
02:09:50 as the one who went out and empirically proved
02:09:53 his ability to go across those elements
02:09:58 and do extraordinarily well in all of them.
02:10:01 He even made the extraordinary step
02:10:04 of coming out of retirement and beating the best
02:10:06 of the generation that came after him.
02:10:09 That’s Asha?
02:10:10 Yes, that’s a truly difficult feat.
02:10:11 That was incredible.
02:10:12 Yeah, and a sport which progresses very, very rapidly,
02:10:15 that’s a truly impressive accomplishment.
02:10:18 If you ask the question who is the greatest grappler
02:10:22 that I’ve ever seen, I would say I’ve never seen
02:10:26 anyone better than Gordon Ryan.
02:10:29 Now people are gonna jump when I give these two names.
02:10:32 They’re gonna say, well, Dan, you’re close friends
02:10:34 with Haja and you’re close friends with Gordon,
02:10:37 so you’re biased.
02:10:38 I can’t answer them to that, it’s true.
02:10:42 I’m good friends with both of them.
02:10:45 I’m also a notoriously cold and unemotional person
02:10:49 and I’m saying this based upon things that I’ve observed.
02:10:54 If I honestly believed that I’d seen other people
02:10:57 who were better, I would have said it.
02:11:02 Will that convince the people who criticize me
02:11:06 are biased, probably not, but those are the two names
02:11:08 that I will mention.
02:11:09 I think it’s an uncontroversial statement to say
02:11:11 that Gordon Ryan is one of the greatest grappler ever.
02:11:17 Yeah, Gordon’s obviously a very polarizing figure
02:11:19 and people tend to react to Gordon on an emotional level
02:11:23 rather than a statistical level
02:11:26 and that colors a lot of people’s minds,
02:11:29 but I also have the benefit that I’ve seen both
02:11:31 of these guys extensively in the gym
02:11:33 and that adds a whole new perspective.
02:11:36 If you think those guys are dominant on the stage,
02:11:40 wait till you see them in the gym.
02:11:41 It’s even a different level of domination
02:11:43 above and beyond what they did in competition.
02:11:47 Have they trained against each other in the gym?
02:11:50 No, they never trained together.
02:11:51 They’ve been in the same gym, I think, only on one occasion.
02:11:53 When Hodger was stopped by New York,
02:11:55 he came by to say hello and Gordon was here at the time.
02:11:59 They shake hands, they know each other
02:12:01 and they’re both wonderful people in their own way.
02:12:04 So I’d like to talk to you about Gordon,
02:12:08 Hodger and George GSP.
02:12:13 Let’s first talk about what do you think,
02:12:14 because it’s very different from my perspective,
02:12:17 maybe you can correct me, but very different artists,
02:12:21 masters of their pursuits.
02:12:24 So what makes Hodger so good?
02:12:28 Hodger was probably the living embodiment
02:12:32 of someone who played a classical jiu jitsu game
02:12:36 based around the fundamental four steps of jiu jitsu.
02:12:40 And like if you took someone
02:12:44 who had taken introduction lessons in jiu jitsu
02:12:49 for three months, they would recognize the outlines
02:12:55 of Hodger’s game with many of the techniques
02:12:59 they learned in those first three months.
02:13:02 Hodger was the best example of the dichotomy
02:13:06 between the fundamentals of jiu jitsu,
02:13:09 but also a kind of hidden sophistication
02:13:13 underneath those fundamentals.
02:13:17 People always say, oh, Hodger’s game was so basic.
02:13:20 No, the outlines of Hodger’s game were basic,
02:13:24 but the degree of sophistication
02:13:26 and the application was extraordinary, and his ability
02:13:32 to refine existing technology was truly impressive.
02:13:39 I never saw anyone in his generation
02:13:42 that even came close to his ability,
02:13:45 both in competition and in the gym.
02:13:49 So for people who don’t know,
02:13:50 Hodger Gracie basically used, just like you said,
02:13:53 a very simple techniques on the surface
02:13:57 from the outsider’s perspective that most people learn
02:14:02 when they start jiu jitsu, like passing guard
02:14:05 in a very simple way, taking mount and choking from mount.
02:14:09 Also, when he’s on his back, it’s closed guard
02:14:13 and all the basic submissions from closed guard,
02:14:15 arm bar and triangle, and just, that’s it.
02:14:20 And being able to dominate, shut down, and submit.
02:14:25 So control and submit the best people in the world
02:14:29 for many, many years, just like you said,
02:14:32 including coming out of retirement and beating the best,
02:14:37 perhaps by far the best of the next generation.
02:14:40 So that just kind of lays out the story.
02:14:43 Is there some lessons about his systems
02:14:48 that you learn in developing your own systems?
02:14:52 Excellent question.
02:14:54 The thing which always impressed me the most about Hodger
02:14:58 was his relentless pursuit of position to submission.
02:15:05 Everything was done with the belief
02:15:09 that no victory was worthwhile
02:15:14 if it didn’t involve submitting his opponent.
02:15:16 That’s a mindset that I tried very, very hard
02:15:20 to imbue in my students.
02:15:22 The easiest path to victory in jiu jitsu
02:15:24 is the one which takes the least risk.
02:15:27 So for example, you will see many modern athletes
02:15:30 focus on scoring the first point or the first advantage,
02:15:34 and then doing the minimum amount of work
02:15:36 to eke out a victory once they’ve done that.
02:15:40 They get a small tactical advantage,
02:15:42 they realize they’re ahead, take no more risks,
02:15:44 and just do the minimum amount of work to get the victory.
02:15:49 Hodger’s mindset was always to take
02:15:52 the riskier gambit of submission,
02:15:54 which entails a lot more work,
02:15:56 and in many cases, a lot more skill.
02:16:01 What I always liked about Hodger
02:16:03 is he never tried to play tactics.
02:16:05 It was always just go out there
02:16:08 and try to win by submission.
02:16:11 And that more than anything,
02:16:14 that mindset of looking for the most perfect victory
02:16:19 rather than the victory that takes the least skill
02:16:23 and the least effort is probably the thing
02:16:26 I took from his career the most
02:16:28 and tried to work on in my students.
02:16:32 I always wonder what are the little details
02:16:35 he’s doing under there when he’s in mount,
02:16:38 the little adjustments.
02:16:39 But perhaps that’s almost indescribable,
02:16:43 the details of that control.
02:16:47 What makes Gordon Ryan, the greatest grappler of all time,
02:16:52 so good?
02:16:53 With Gordon, he’s also very strong on fundamentals,
02:16:56 all of my students are,
02:16:58 but he’s also obviously a member
02:17:01 of a new generation of no geek grapplers
02:17:04 that also bring in technologies
02:17:06 that weren’t really emphasized
02:17:09 in previous generations specifically.
02:17:12 The prolific use of lower body attacks,
02:17:16 especially from bottom position.
02:17:20 This means that he can play a game
02:17:22 between upper body and lower body,
02:17:24 which was not really a part of Hodges game.
02:17:29 Nonetheless, you will also see significant similarities.
02:17:32 He’s got a very strong and crushing passing game to mount
02:17:35 and a very strong and crushing passing game to the back.
02:17:42 You will see that the major differences
02:17:46 between the two are from bottom position.
02:17:49 Hodges bottom game is essentially based
02:17:51 around his close guard.
02:17:52 Gordon Ryan’s game is based around his butterfly guard.
02:17:55 So one is based on outside control
02:17:57 and one is based on inside control.
02:18:00 One focuses almost entirely on the classical notion
02:18:03 of getting past the legs to the upper body
02:18:05 and the other one works between the two as alternatives
02:18:08 and sees them as competing alternatives
02:18:10 where the stronger you become at one,
02:18:12 the more your opponent has to overreact
02:18:14 and become vulnerable to the second.
02:18:16 So they have strong similarities in top position
02:18:19 but are very different in bottom.
02:18:22 He has, from an outsider’s perspective,
02:18:25 a calm to him in the heat of battle
02:18:30 that’s inspiring and confusing.
02:18:35 Is there something you could speak
02:18:37 to the psychological aspect of Gordon Ryan?
02:18:40 Yes.
02:18:42 People will talk all day about sports psychology
02:18:47 and they will often have heated arguments
02:18:52 as to what’s the right psychological state to be in
02:18:55 when you go out to compete.
02:18:56 I’ve never seen any one school of thought
02:18:59 which gave noticeably better sports performance than another.
02:19:03 I’ve never seen any psychological mindset
02:19:07 prove to be reliably more efficient
02:19:11 or effective than another.
02:19:13 I’ve seen fighters that were scared out of their minds
02:19:17 when they went out every time to fight
02:19:19 and yet they were very successful.
02:19:20 I’ve seen fighters go out who were relaxed and calm
02:19:23 and they too can be successful.
02:19:25 I’ve seen both mindsets win, I’ve seen both mindsets lose.
02:19:29 I’ve seen every extreme between them.
02:19:31 What I generally recommend
02:19:32 with regards your mind and preparation going in,
02:19:36 find what works for you.
02:19:37 Everyone’s different.
02:19:39 Don’t try to give a one size fits all
02:19:41 in something as vague and confusing as the human mind.
02:19:47 Having said that, my preference,
02:19:50 I don’t force it on people because everyone’s different,
02:19:53 but my preference is to try and advocate
02:19:56 for a mindset of unexceptionalism.
02:20:00 Most people see competition as something exceptional.
02:20:03 It’s not your everyday grappling session.
02:20:05 You train 300 times for every time you compete
02:20:08 and so they see competition as something exceptional,
02:20:11 different, scarier, more nerve wracking.
02:20:14 There’s a crowd watching, there’s cameras.
02:20:16 My reputation is on the line.
02:20:17 I’m gonna be observed and judged
02:20:20 and so they see it as this exceptional event.
02:20:22 My general preference is to see it
02:20:25 as an unexceptional event, to see everything else,
02:20:28 the noise, the cameras, the crowd as illusions.
02:20:34 The only reality is a stage,
02:20:36 an opponent on the other side of it
02:20:37 and a referee adjudicating you
02:20:39 and to make it as unexceptional as possible.
02:20:43 Gordon does an extraordinarily good job of doing that.
02:20:48 Gordon looks more tense in most of his training sessions
02:20:52 than he does in his competitions
02:20:54 because he knows his training partners
02:20:55 are typically better than the people
02:20:57 he’s actually going out to compete against.
02:21:01 And you see it in his demeanor.
02:21:03 It’s one of just complete calm.
02:21:06 It also goes back to what we talked about earlier
02:21:08 about the power of escapes.
02:21:11 Gordon Ryan is almost impossible to control
02:21:13 for extended periods of time
02:21:16 in most of the inferior positions in the sport
02:21:19 and most of the submissions.
02:21:21 So he goes out in the full knowledge
02:21:23 that the worst case scenario isn’t that bad for him
02:21:27 and so nothing could really go that badly wrong.
02:21:29 He can always recover from any given mistake
02:21:32 and go on to victory.
02:21:33 When you believe those things,
02:21:35 you’re gonna have a calm demeanor.
02:21:37 Then if you look at somebody who is quite a bit different
02:21:41 than that, George St. Pierre,
02:21:43 who at least in the way he describes it,
02:21:46 he’s basically exceptionally anxious
02:21:50 and terrified approaching a fight
02:21:53 and he loves training.
02:21:56 And hates fighting.
02:21:56 And hates fighting.
02:21:58 So and just like you said, he made it work for him.
02:22:02 But he’s somebody, he speaks very highly of you.
02:22:06 He’s worked with you quite a bit in training.
02:22:10 And you’ve studied him.
02:22:11 You’ve worked with him.
02:22:13 You’ve coached him.
02:22:15 Interesting, I’ve actually coached George
02:22:17 for twice the length of any of the squad members.
02:22:20 So my knowledge of him is far greater than it is
02:22:23 for the contemporary squad.
02:22:26 So can you speak to what makes George St. Pierre,
02:22:29 who I think even though I’m Russian
02:22:31 and a little bit partial towards Fedor and the Russians,
02:22:35 but I think he is in the four categories you mentioned,
02:22:39 the greatest mixed martial artist of all time.
02:22:43 What makes him so good?
02:22:44 His approach, his techniques, his mind.
02:22:48 His approach is certainly part of it.
02:22:50 George started mixed martial arts at a time when the sport
02:22:57 was in a pretty wild phase.
02:23:00 It was illegal to show on most American TV networks.
02:23:04 And there was talk about it being banned as a sport.
02:23:09 In his native Canada, it was banned.
02:23:12 You could only fight on Indian reservations in Canada.
02:23:15 I believe his first fight may have
02:23:17 been on an Indian reservation.
02:23:20 So the sport at that stage was very much in its infancy.
02:23:26 And it’s probably fair to say that most
02:23:28 of the athletes involved in the sport
02:23:31 came from a training program that would probably
02:23:37 describe as unprofessional in the contemporary scene.
02:23:45 George is one of a handful of people
02:23:48 who started approaching the sport in a truly
02:23:50 professional fashion.
02:23:51 It was like, OK, here’s what great athletes
02:23:53 in other sports do.
02:23:54 I’m going to try to emulate that.
02:23:57 And his ability to invest in himself.
02:24:04 In my own experience, for example,
02:24:06 George, when I first met him, was a garbage man.
02:24:10 And he would jump on a bus from Montreal to New York.
02:24:15 Now, that’s a long bus ride.
02:24:16 He would come down on a Friday afternoon
02:24:18 when he finished work as a garbage man,
02:24:20 stay for the weekend, and then late on Sunday night,
02:24:22 he would jump on a bus all the way back to Montreal
02:24:24 and work as a garbage man.
02:24:28 That’s an extraordinary commitment
02:24:30 for a young man to make.
02:24:34 And George was a blue belt at the time.
02:24:38 And so he would come down.
02:24:39 And we had a very talented room.
02:24:42 So he didn’t do well in the room when he first came in.
02:24:46 He was inexperienced in jiu jitsu.
02:24:47 And the people who went against were considerably better
02:24:52 than him at jiu jitsu.
02:24:53 So imagine investing 25% of your weekly income, maybe even more.
02:24:59 New York’s an expensive town, 50%,
02:25:03 to come down and just get your ass kicked month by month.
02:25:07 Yeah, that says a lot about who he is.
02:25:09 Tells you a lot.
02:25:11 First of all, let’s talk about the whole idea
02:25:13 of delayed gratification here.
02:25:14 I mean, that’s a guy who’s saying,
02:25:17 this is highly unpleasant.
02:25:19 But I have a vision of myself in the future.
02:25:22 And I have to go through this extreme case
02:25:24 of delayed gratification to get to that distant goal, which
02:25:27 may never happen.
02:25:29 And that’s a level of commitment and self belief,
02:25:33 which is just extraordinary.
02:25:35 I always laugh when people say, oh, George was afraid,
02:25:38 so he was mentally weak.
02:25:41 No, that’s a very, very shallow understanding
02:25:45 of mental strength and weakness.
02:25:50 George felt anxiety.
02:25:53 But let’s understand from the start,
02:25:55 there’s different kinds of mental strength.
02:25:57 And the most important kind isn’t
02:26:00 whether you feel fear or don’t feel fear
02:26:02 before you step into fight.
02:26:03 The most important form of mental strength
02:26:07 is discipline and training.
02:26:09 That’s where most people break.
02:26:11 I know dozens of people who are fearless to fight,
02:26:14 but you couldn’t get them to come into the gym
02:26:16 for three months in a row and work on skills.
02:26:19 So they’re mentally strong one way, they don’t feel fear.
02:26:22 But they’re mentally weak in another,
02:26:24 which is to instill the discipline which keeps you
02:26:26 on a road to progress over time.
02:26:29 That’s much tougher than not feeling fear
02:26:31 before you go out to fight.
02:26:33 Understand also that when George talks about fear,
02:26:36 he’s not afraid of his opponent.
02:26:39 He’s afraid of failure.
02:26:43 He’s got high standards.
02:26:45 Someone who’s got high standards can change the world.
02:26:50 His standards were very, very high.
02:26:52 That’s what he was afraid of.
02:26:54 He wasn’t afraid of his opponents.
02:26:56 And yet, that’s always been the misinterpretation.
02:26:58 He wasn’t mentally weak.
02:26:59 He was mentally strong as an ox.
02:27:02 To stay in his training regimen year after year after year
02:27:08 and do so while he became one of the first stars
02:27:10 in mixed martial arts to actually make money.
02:27:13 And it gets tough to stay in the training gym
02:27:16 with people who are young and hungry
02:27:18 and want to punch you in the face.
02:27:19 You’re coming out of a luxury room,
02:27:21 living in finery towards the end of his career
02:27:24 and still training as hard as ever.
02:27:26 That’s an impressive thing.
02:27:28 And always he valued perfection.
02:27:30 And you’re right, the fear was not achieving the perfection.
02:27:34 Is there something you’ve observed
02:27:39 about the way he approaches training that stands out to you?
02:27:46 Or is it simply the dedication?
02:27:48 No, it’s never just about dedication.
02:27:49 There’s lots of dedicated people in the world,
02:27:51 but most of them are unsuccessful.
02:27:56 If you want to be the best in the world at anything,
02:28:01 you have to do, out of the many skills of whatever industry
02:28:06 you’re in, you have to take at least one of those skills
02:28:13 and be the best in the world at it.
02:28:18 There’s many skills in mixed martial arts.
02:28:21 But George identified one skill, which
02:28:25 is the skill of striking to take downs.
02:28:28 He calls it shootboxing.
02:28:32 Shootboxing was barely even a category of skill
02:28:37 when George began.
02:28:38 It was just the idea that wrestlers grabbed people
02:28:40 and took them down the same way they did in wrestling.
02:28:44 And you threw some punches before you did it.
02:28:48 George largely pioneered the science
02:28:56 of creating an interface between striking and take downs.
02:29:02 He did it at a time where no one else before him
02:29:08 had made it into a system or a science.
02:29:11 He did it largely on his own.
02:29:14 And I’ve always said George is the only athlete
02:29:20 that I ever coached who taught me more than I taught him.
02:29:25 And almost singlehandedly, he created this strong sense
02:29:35 of shootboxing as a science, which
02:29:38 enabled him throughout his career
02:29:41 to determine where the fight would take place.
02:29:44 Would it be standing, or would it be on the ground?
02:29:47 And that, more than anything else,
02:29:49 was the defining characteristic of his success.
02:29:51 I will always be immensely impressed
02:29:55 by his accomplishment in that regard.
02:29:57 He was an innovator.
02:29:58 He did things differently.
02:30:00 This is such an important point.
02:30:02 You can’t go out there in combat sports
02:30:05 and do the same things that everybody else is doing
02:30:08 and expect to get different results.
02:30:11 Life doesn’t work that way.
02:30:13 If you want to be dominant, you’ve
02:30:15 got to find one important part of the sport,
02:30:17 and preferably more important than the rest of the sport,
02:30:20 and preferably more than one, and be the best in the world
02:30:23 at it.
02:30:24 You can’t be weak at anything, but you can’t be strong
02:30:27 at everything either.
02:30:28 Life’s not long enough for us to develop
02:30:30 a truly complete skill set.
02:30:32 So you’ve got to be good at everything,
02:30:34 and you’ve got to be the best at at least one thing.
02:30:36 And George was the best at two.
02:30:38 In his era, he was the best at striking to takedowns,
02:30:43 and he was the best at integrating striking
02:30:45 and grappling on the floor.
02:30:49 Let me ask you a completely ridiculous question,
02:30:52 but it’s a fascinating one for me
02:30:54 from an engineering and a scientific perspective.
02:30:58 When I look at a sport, really any problem,
02:31:02 one way to ask how difficult is this problem
02:31:07 is to see how can I build a machine that competes
02:31:11 with a human being at that problem.
02:31:13 You can look at chess.
02:31:14 You can look at soccer, Robocup,
02:31:20 and then you can look at grappling.
02:31:22 There’s something about when you start to think,
02:31:25 how would I build an AI system, a robot that defeats somebody
02:31:30 like a Gordon Ryan, where it forces you to really think
02:31:34 about formalizing this art as an engineering discipline
02:31:41 in the same way you do, but you still have some art
02:31:45 injected in there.
02:31:46 There’s no space for art when you actually have
02:31:48 to build the system.
02:31:49 That’s not a ridiculous question.
02:31:50 That’s a damn interesting question.
02:31:52 Let’s put aside, like I mentioned
02:31:55 with the Boston Dynamics spot robots,
02:31:58 what people don’t realize is the amount of power
02:32:01 they can deliver is huge.
02:32:02 So let’s take that weapon aside,
02:32:04 just the amount of force you’re able to deliver.
02:32:07 Yeah, I’m glad you’re specifying that.
02:32:10 So essentially, your question is, can a talented group
02:32:16 of engineers create a robot which could defeat Gordon Ryan?
02:32:18 On the face of it, as you just pointed out,
02:32:22 that’s the easiest project in the world,
02:32:24 just create a robot that carries a nine millimeter automatic
02:32:27 and shoot them five times in the chest.
02:32:28 Okay, that’s it, Gordon Ryan’s done.
02:32:30 So that’s not the interesting question.
02:32:32 The interesting question, and if I understand you correctly,
02:32:35 is if we had the ability to create a robot
02:32:41 whose physical powers were identical to Gordon Ryan,
02:32:45 not inferior and not superior, what would it take
02:32:49 to create a mind inside that robot that would beat
02:32:51 Gordon Ryan in the majority of matches?
02:32:53 Yeah, and there’s two ways to build AI systems.
02:32:56 This is true for autonomous driving, for example,
02:33:00 which has been quite contested recently.
02:33:03 So one is you basically, one way to describe it
02:33:06 is you have a giant set of rules.
02:33:09 It’s like this tree of rules where you apply
02:33:12 in different condition when there’s a pattern you see,
02:33:14 you apply a rule and they’re hard coded in.
02:33:17 You basically get like a John Donr type of character
02:33:20 who tries to encode, hard code into the system,
02:33:26 all the moves you should do in every single case.
02:33:29 Of course, you can’t actually do that fully.
02:33:32 So you’re going to be taking shortcuts,
02:33:34 what are called heuristics,
02:33:36 just a basic kind of generalizations
02:33:41 and apply your own expertise as an expert of,
02:33:44 in this case, grappling,
02:33:47 to see how that can be coded as a rule.
02:33:49 Now, the other approach,
02:33:50 Elon Musk and Tesla are taking this approach,
02:33:53 which is called machine learning,
02:33:55 which is create a basic framework
02:34:01 of the kind of things you should be observing
02:34:05 and what are the measures, metrics of success,
02:34:09 and then just observe and see which things lead to success,
02:34:13 more success and which lead to less success.
02:34:16 And there’s a delta.
02:34:17 Like when you see a thing,
02:34:20 first of all, the way machine learning works
02:34:22 is you predict, you see a position or you see a situation
02:34:26 and then you predict how good that is
02:34:28 and then you watch how it actually turns out
02:34:31 and if it’s worse or better, you adjust your expectations.
02:34:34 And through that process, you can learn quite a lot.
02:34:39 The challenge is,
02:34:43 and this might be a very true challenge in grappling,
02:34:46 is like in driving, you can’t crash.
02:34:52 So there’s a physical world.
02:34:55 In chess, for example,
02:34:56 where this approach has been exceptionally successful,
02:35:00 you can work in simulation.
02:35:02 So you can have AI system that, for example,
02:35:07 as in the case with AlphaZero by DeepMind,
02:35:10 Google’s DeepMind,
02:35:11 it can play itself in simulation millions of times,
02:35:14 billions of times.
02:35:16 It’s difficult to know if it’s possible to do that
02:35:19 in simulation for anything that involves human movement,
02:35:25 like grappling.
02:35:28 So that’s, my sense is,
02:35:31 if we first look at the hard encoding,
02:35:34 if you were to try to describe Gordon Ryan to a machine,
02:35:39 how many rules are in there, do you think?
02:35:41 Yeah, first off, let me tell you,
02:35:43 that’s one of the most fascinating questions
02:35:45 I’ve ever been asked.
02:35:46 And I’m tremendously happy to answer this.
02:35:51 How about what we do is,
02:35:52 this is a massive question you’ve asked.
02:35:55 There’s a huge amount of ways
02:35:56 this could get very interesting and very confusing.
02:35:59 Let’s set some ground rules for the discussion.
02:36:04 Lex alluded to the idea of man versus machine and chess.
02:36:11 Okay, and I think that’s a really good place
02:36:12 for us to start the discussion.
02:36:16 I’m gonna just tell people about a little bit,
02:36:20 the history of man versus chess,
02:36:22 to give you guys some background on this.
02:36:25 In 1968, there was a party in which a highly ranked,
02:36:29 not a world champion, but a highly ranked chess player,
02:36:31 his name was Levy,
02:36:33 and he met a computer engineer at a party,
02:36:40 and they had a lighthearted bet
02:36:45 that in a 10 year timeframe,
02:36:48 a human chess player would be defeated by a computer.
02:36:53 Now, you gotta remember, 1968,
02:36:55 computing power was very, very low.
02:36:57 The computers that got America to the moon
02:36:59 were actually pretty damn primitive.
02:37:02 Your iPhone would kick all of their asses.
02:37:06 So computational power was very, very low in those days.
02:37:09 So interestingly, the chess player fully believed
02:37:12 that no computer could beat him in the 10 year timeframe,
02:37:15 and the computer engineer was very optimistic
02:37:18 that he was wrong, and in fact,
02:37:20 10 years, the computer would win.
02:37:24 10 years later, they had a competition,
02:37:26 and the human won, decisively, in fact.
02:37:29 So computational power simply hadn’t risen to that level yet.
02:37:35 Through the 1980s, computational power increased,
02:37:38 but not sufficient to get to championship level.
02:37:43 There were computer programs in the 1980s
02:37:45 which were competitive with good, solid chess players,
02:37:49 but not world beaters.
02:37:54 Understand right from the start
02:37:57 that there’s a fundamental problem here.
02:38:00 The number of options that the two players in a chessboard
02:38:06 can run through is astronomically high.
02:38:11 There are 64 squares on a chessboard.
02:38:14 The number of possible options that could work
02:38:18 or could play out on a chessboard,
02:38:22 and this is a truly shocking thing for you to think about,
02:38:26 the number of possible options is higher
02:38:29 than the number of atoms in the known universe.
02:38:34 Think about that for a second in terms of complexity, okay?
02:38:38 The number of atoms on this table is massive, okay?
02:38:44 That is an unbelievably large number.
02:38:48 We’re talking about a situation where if a computer
02:38:51 had to go through all the options at the onset of a match,
02:38:53 they would have to run numbers greater
02:38:57 than the number of atoms in the known universe.
02:39:00 The number of galaxies in our universe is vast, okay?
02:39:05 It’s measured in the billions.
02:39:06 Like, the number of atoms,
02:39:08 that’s just a number so mind blowing it’s impossible, okay?
02:39:12 So no computer is ever going to be able to work
02:39:17 with those kinds of numbers, okay?
02:39:19 I didn’t even know future generations of quantum computers
02:39:22 could work with those kinds of numbers.
02:39:24 So that’s the fundamental problem, okay?
02:39:26 The number of options in a chess match
02:39:28 is just so astronomically large
02:39:31 that no computer could ever figure out
02:39:34 all the available options
02:39:36 and make decisions in a given timeframe.
02:39:37 So that’s the fundamental problem.
02:39:40 So as Lex correctly pointed out,
02:39:43 the way you get around this is by the use of heuristics.
02:39:46 These are rules of thumb,
02:39:48 which give general guidelines to action.
02:39:51 So for example, in jiu jitsu,
02:39:53 I could give you a general rule of thumb.
02:39:55 Don’t turn your back on your opponent, okay?
02:39:57 That’s a solid piece of advice.
02:39:59 There are obviously some exceptions to that rule,
02:40:01 but it’s a good solid piece of advice to give a beginner.
02:40:04 The moment you give that heuristic rule,
02:40:06 you rule out a lot of options, okay?
02:40:09 You’ve already told someone don’t turn your back,
02:40:11 don’t turn your back on someone.
02:40:12 So a lot of possibilities
02:40:14 have just been turned away right there.
02:40:16 So you’ve cut the number of options in half right there
02:40:18 just by giving one heuristic rule, okay?
02:40:22 If you were decent at chess, not great, but decent,
02:40:26 and you knew enough to give say 10 heuristic rules,
02:40:30 you could chop that initially vast number of options down
02:40:34 by a vast amount.
02:40:36 And now you’re starting to get to a point
02:40:38 where if a computer had sufficient computational power,
02:40:41 it could start getting through the number of options
02:40:45 in that acceptable timeframe.
02:40:46 So that’s the general pattern of the development.
02:40:50 Now, things started getting very interesting
02:40:52 in the mid 1990s with IBM’s computer Deep Blue.
02:40:58 There was a great chess champion of the late 1980s
02:41:01 and early through the 1990s called Gary Kasparov,
02:41:05 who had been more or less undefeated for a decade.
02:41:08 In 1996, he took on IBM’s computer Deep Blue.
02:41:12 Just to correct the record, he was undefeated.
02:41:18 I apologize, Russian, gotta make sure.
02:41:20 They get very nationalistic about their chess.
02:41:21 Be careful of these guys.
02:41:23 Deep Blue lost the first confrontation, I believe, in 1996.
02:41:26 It was competitive, but lost.
02:41:28 Then in 1997, Deep Blue won.
02:41:32 And it wasn’t a complete walkover.
02:41:35 Kasparov, I believe, won one of the matches.
02:41:38 But they did, Deep Blue unequivocally won the confrontation.
02:41:43 And it was seen as like this watershed moment
02:41:45 where a computer beat the best human chess player
02:41:49 on the planet, and that was it.
02:41:52 There’s no coming back from that.
02:41:54 I think it would be remembered as one of the biggest moments
02:41:57 in computing history, is really when the first time
02:42:00 a machine beat a human at a thing
02:42:02 that humans really care about
02:42:04 in the domain of intellectual pursuits.
02:42:06 Yeah, it was a powerful, powerful moment.
02:42:10 Now, not only was that a powerful moment,
02:42:13 but things started getting truly interesting
02:42:15 from that moment forward,
02:42:17 because then you started having
02:42:18 different areas of development.
02:42:25 The general way in which the progress is made
02:42:30 from those early starts in 1968,
02:42:32 all the way through to Deep Blue’s victory,
02:42:36 was of the use of heuristic rules
02:42:39 that brought down the number of potential options
02:42:42 to a manageable level.
02:42:44 As computer power increased,
02:42:46 then it could make faster and faster
02:42:48 and wiser and wiser decisions,
02:42:50 and make them at a rate which no human,
02:42:52 even the best human, could keep up with.
02:42:54 So that was the general way in which the debate went.
02:42:58 But things got more interesting after this,
02:43:01 with the advent of computers that, as you pointed out,
02:43:06 make use of so called machine learning.
02:43:10 There were, a company put out a program, AlphaZero,
02:43:18 which can look at the basic rule structures of chess,
02:43:23 and then ultimately play itself in trials,
02:43:27 and make trial and error assessment
02:43:28 of what are good and bad strategies,
02:43:30 so that with no human intervention,
02:43:34 a computer could start doing remarkable things.
02:43:38 Not only did this company create AlphaZero,
02:43:44 and there were some other ones too,
02:43:45 they fought not only in chess,
02:43:47 but in the much more complex Asian game of Go,
02:43:51 which has far more potential options
02:43:55 than chess does, by a very significant margin.
02:44:00 These machine learning programs,
02:44:02 not only easily defeat any human in chess,
02:44:05 but in Go as well.
02:44:08 And what’s truly remarkable
02:44:10 is they weren’t just beating them.
02:44:13 When AlphaZero took on a rival chess program,
02:44:16 which by itself was already superior to any human,
02:44:19 it only required four hours,
02:44:23 starting from learning the rules of chess,
02:44:26 to figuring out how to beat
02:44:28 the second most powerful chess program in the world.
02:44:31 That’s insane.
02:44:34 That’s literally like taking a human,
02:44:36 telling the rules of chess,
02:44:38 they play some games with themselves for four hours,
02:44:41 and they go out and beat Garry Kasparov.
02:44:44 This is, I don’t know,
02:44:46 this is, to me, this is a truly exciting development,
02:44:53 far beyond even what Deep Blue did.
02:44:55 I like how you said exciting, not terrifying,
02:44:57 because I agree with you on the exciting.
02:44:59 Now, things also get exciting in a different direction.
02:45:03 There is another possibility,
02:45:05 which few people foresaw after the Deep Blue episode.
02:45:10 This is where a new form of chess started to emerge,
02:45:14 sometimes called cyborg chess or centaur chess,
02:45:18 where humans of moderate chess level playing ability,
02:45:23 not world champions, just decent, but not great,
02:45:27 I guess you might say like purple belts in jiu jitsu,
02:45:30 allied themselves with computers.
02:45:33 So the humans and computers worked as a cyborg team.
02:45:38 The humans supplied the heuristic insight.
02:45:43 The computers supplied the computational power.
02:45:46 And fascinatingly, they proved to be superior
02:45:51 to both the best humans and the best chess programs.
02:45:56 The united force of human insight with heuristics,
02:46:01 with computers ability to go through numbers
02:46:04 in far more rapid form than any human could ever hope to do,
02:46:08 proved to be one of the strongest combinations
02:46:10 and enabled that pairing of human and computer
02:46:15 to overwhelm both the best single human
02:46:18 and the best single computer.
02:46:21 That adds a whole new level of fascination to this topic.
02:46:26 So to wind things up here,
02:46:29 we’ve got this fascinating initial question from Lex,
02:46:33 the idea of could there be a computer inside a robot
02:46:38 which doesn’t have any special physical properties?
02:46:42 This is mind versus mind
02:46:44 because the bodies negate each other.
02:46:46 The robot is the same body as Gordon Ryan.
02:46:48 This is a thought experiment.
02:46:50 What would it take to create a mind
02:46:53 that would defeat the mind of Gordon Ryan?
02:46:58 Based on the chess example,
02:47:02 it would appear that this is entirely feasible
02:47:04 at some point in the future.
02:47:06 And in fact, I would go further and say,
02:47:07 it’s actually quite likely
02:47:09 based on what we’ve seen from the example of chess.
02:47:13 The rate of progress in AI in the last 20 years
02:47:19 has dwarfed anything from the previous 50 years.
02:47:24 And the rate continues to increase.
02:47:28 We’re talking now at a level where the machine learning
02:47:31 of defeating world champions in chess and Go in four hours,
02:47:37 like just from starting from the rules of the sport,
02:47:44 this is gonna be difficult for humans to keep up with.
02:47:47 Now in humans favor, could we take Gordon Ryan
02:47:52 and put a chip inside his brain
02:47:54 that created the same cyborg effect
02:47:56 as we saw in centaur chess and cyborg chess,
02:47:59 and then take Gordon Ryan to a new level
02:48:01 and suddenly his computational powers
02:48:03 were massively increased.
02:48:05 He still has his heuristic insight,
02:48:08 but he has vastly augmented computational powers.
02:48:11 That’s the interesting battle.
02:48:15 You asked a great question, Lex.
02:48:16 Let me give you my initial push for an answer
02:48:19 would be that if it’s just Gordon Ryan
02:48:22 versus your robot technology,
02:48:27 in 10 years, I would say with machine learning,
02:48:29 I’d say you guys win every time.
02:48:31 But if it is cyborg Gordon Ryan,
02:48:36 where he’s part Gordon Ryan with heuristics
02:48:40 and part machine, then, and now that’s where I throw
02:48:43 the question back at you, young man, what do you think?
02:48:48 Well, I’m fascinated to hear your answer.
02:48:49 That’s very interesting because there’s a lot
02:48:52 of different ways you can build a cyborg Gordon Ryan.
02:48:55 So one is there’s the Neuralink way,
02:48:58 which is basically doing what you’re suggesting,
02:49:03 which is expanding the computational capabilities
02:49:06 of Gordon Ryan’s brain,
02:49:09 like directly being able to communicate
02:49:11 between a computer and the brain.
02:49:13 So you preserve most of what there is in the human body,
02:49:20 including the nervous system and the computing system
02:49:22 we currently have that’s biological
02:49:24 and expanding over the computer.
02:49:26 There’s also on the cyborg chess front,
02:49:30 like Magnus Carlsen, the current world champion in chess,
02:49:35 he studies AlphaZero games.
02:49:38 Like it’s not a regular thing for high level grandmasters.
02:49:42 From what I understand, almost every chess master
02:49:45 now studies computer games for inspiration.
02:49:48 Like just as great chess players from the past
02:49:53 used to go back into old leather bound books
02:49:56 of previous grandmasters and study games and books.
02:50:00 Nowadays, most people, when they wanna study
02:50:03 the most perfect games,
02:50:04 they actually study programs like AlphaZero.
02:50:06 Yeah, and it’s not just for inspiration, it’s education.
02:50:09 I mean, it’s literally part of their training regimen.
02:50:12 This isn’t like a fun side thing.
02:50:14 This is the main way to get better.
02:50:18 So there’s a certain element there
02:50:21 where even our human brains can be trained
02:50:24 by observing the partial explorations
02:50:29 of an AI systems in the space of grappling.
02:50:32 That could be actually in simulation.
02:50:34 It doesn’t have to be in the physical world.
02:50:35 It could be in, if we construct sufficiently good
02:50:41 biomechanical models of human beings,
02:50:43 machines can learn how they grapple.
02:50:46 There’s quite a bit of that already.
02:50:49 OpenAI has the system of, they’re like sumo wrestlers
02:50:53 with some basic goals of pushing each other off of a platform.
02:50:58 And you know nothing from the, you don’t even know.
02:51:01 So you have a basic model of a bipedal system.
02:51:04 It doesn’t even know in the beginning how to stand up.
02:51:07 It just falls, right?
02:51:08 So it has to learn how to get up
02:51:10 and they do that through self play.
02:51:13 They learn how to get up, they learn how to move
02:51:15 enough to achieve the final goal
02:51:18 which is to push your opponent off of the thing.
02:51:20 So they learn that.
02:51:22 Now OpenAI is not, those folks are currently
02:51:26 not that interested in the grappling world.
02:51:28 So they kind of stop there.
02:51:30 But it’s very possible in simulation to then develop ideas.
02:51:36 In fact, this is something that I should probably do,
02:51:38 but it’s pretty natural to do it easy,
02:51:41 is ideas of control and submission and all the,
02:51:45 you add the ability to, I don’t know how to put it nicely,
02:51:49 but to choke your opponent
02:51:54 and to break their body parts off,
02:51:57 which is what jiu jitsu is.
02:52:00 Add that in and what kind of ideas it’ll come up with
02:52:03 is very fascinating.
02:52:05 I actually don’t know, until this conversation,
02:52:07 I don’t know why I never even thought about that.
02:52:08 I’ve been very obsessed with just like walking
02:52:11 and running and all those kinds of things,
02:52:13 like evolving different strategies
02:52:16 for when you have a bunch of,
02:52:18 so one difficult thing for robots
02:52:21 is when you have uneven terrain
02:52:22 and there’s uncertainty about the terrain
02:52:24 is how to keep walking.
02:52:25 Or when there’s a bunch of things being thrown at you,
02:52:28 all that kind of stuff,
02:52:29 and you learn through self play
02:52:32 how to be able to navigate those uncertain environments
02:52:35 when there’s a lot of weird objects
02:52:36 and all those kinds of things.
02:52:38 There’s no reason why you can’t just do that
02:52:40 with submissions and so on in simulation.
02:52:43 That’ll be actually fascinating.
02:52:44 But once we might be surprised
02:52:49 by the kind of strategies in simulation
02:52:52 these AI systems will develop,
02:52:54 and that might make a much better Gordon Ryan
02:52:57 and much better John Donahar
02:52:58 in asking the Dean Lister question of like,
02:53:01 why are we only using,
02:53:03 why are we not doing X?
02:53:06 But on the actual sort of grappling event
02:53:10 in the physical space,
02:53:12 I’ve been very surprised and a little bit disappointed
02:53:15 by how difficult it’s to build
02:53:20 a system that’s able to have the body of Gordon Ryan
02:53:26 or a human being actually,
02:53:28 which means it’s not just the biomechanics
02:53:31 which is very difficult to do,
02:53:33 but also all of the senses that are involved.
02:53:37 Be able to perceive the world as richly,
02:53:40 to be able to, there’s something called soft robotics,
02:53:43 which is incredibly difficult to do through touch,
02:53:47 understand the hardness of things.
02:53:50 We don’t understand as human beings
02:53:52 just how much we’re able through touch
02:53:56 to experience the world and to manipulate the world.
02:53:59 Like the process of picking up a cup
02:54:03 is very similar to the process of grappling.
02:54:05 All the feeling that you do,
02:54:07 all the leverage that you’re applying,
02:54:09 there’s so many degrees of freedom
02:54:11 in both the, in the interactive sense,
02:54:14 in the sensing and the applying,
02:54:16 sensing and applying,
02:54:17 you’re doing that through so much of your body,
02:54:20 that it’s just going to be very difficult
02:54:23 to build a system that’s able to experience the world
02:54:26 and act onto the world as richly as we humans can.
02:54:30 Yeah, if picking up a cup
02:54:33 is a seemingly insurmountable challenge,
02:54:36 then taking someone down, controlling them,
02:54:39 getting past their legs,
02:54:40 that’s going to be one hell of a project.
02:54:42 Exactly, I mean, there could be shortcuts,
02:54:44 but I mean, currently that’s the field
02:54:49 called robotic manipulation, which is picking up objects.
02:54:52 Usually they have like a ball and a triangular object
02:54:55 and your whole task is to like pick it up
02:54:57 and move it around.
02:54:59 Generalizing that to the human body is harder,
02:55:04 but perhaps not as hard as we might think.
02:55:09 The question is, how do you construct experiments
02:55:11 where you can do that safely?
02:55:13 In chess, that’s very easy,
02:55:15 but here it’s very, very problematic.
02:55:22 I guess you could just have robot versus robot
02:55:25 teamed up with each other and then they learn
02:55:27 and then they go out to take on a human opponent.
02:55:29 Yes, exactly, so you have two physical robots
02:55:33 that interact with each other.
02:55:35 Everything you’ve said so far suggests
02:55:37 that many of the problems, these tactile elements,
02:55:40 they’re easy tasks for humans.
02:55:43 So which becomes more powerful more quickly?
02:55:47 Robots that are taught to think like humans
02:55:49 or humans that are given the computational power
02:55:52 of computers and robots themselves,
02:55:56 which wins first, a cyborg Gordon Ryan
02:55:59 or an artificial robot Gordon Ryan?
02:56:03 Really, really strong question,
02:56:05 and I think by far the cyborg Gordon Ryan.
02:56:09 Yeah, that’s what I’m thinking here.
02:56:11 The problems you’re talking about
02:56:14 with regards to the robots, those are deep problems.
02:56:16 Like if picking up a cup is problematic,
02:56:20 it’s gonna be damn difficult,
02:56:22 but to a human, a two year old can do that.
02:56:25 You’re highlighting a very important difference
02:56:28 is human beings have something called common sense
02:56:32 that we don’t know how to build into computers currently.
02:56:35 That’s what picking up the cup is.
02:56:37 It’s some basic rules about the way this world works.
02:56:41 We’re able to, this is when we’re children
02:56:43 and we’ll crawl around and we pick up.
02:56:46 What humans don’t have that machines have
02:56:48 is incredible computational power
02:56:52 and access to infinite knowledge.
02:56:54 Computers can do that.
02:56:55 So if you have a Gordon Ryan with the infinite knowledge
02:56:58 and compute power, that’s just going to,
02:57:01 because we know how to do that,
02:57:03 that’s going to blow out of the water
02:57:07 a robot that’s trying to learn to crawl.
02:57:08 Has there been any update on the phenomenon
02:57:12 of cyborg or centaur chess?
02:57:14 There was some debate as to whether or not
02:57:19 cyborg chess teams could stay competitive
02:57:22 with the latest machine learning.
02:57:25 Has there been any update on that?
02:57:27 I believe at this point machines dominate
02:57:31 over the machine human pairs.
02:57:34 With the human pairs, when they first came out,
02:57:37 they were good chess players, but not great chess players.
02:57:41 Does it make any difference if you have, say,
02:57:43 Garry Kasparov and a computer working in unison
02:57:48 versus Joe Blow from?
02:57:52 It does make a huge difference,
02:57:53 but yeah, both are destroyed by machines at this point.
02:57:56 And it’s not even competitive now?
02:57:58 No, it’s not competitive.
02:57:59 But they also lost interest in this kind of idea.
02:58:03 So I think there’s still competitions
02:58:04 between human machine pairs versus human machine pairs,
02:58:09 almost like to see how the two work together.
02:58:12 But in terms of machine versus human machine pair,
02:58:14 machines still dominate.
02:58:16 Interesting.
02:58:16 So, and now we’ve retrieved back as human beings
02:58:21 caring mostly about human versus human competitions,
02:58:24 which is probably what the future will look like.
02:58:27 It’s very interesting to think,
02:58:29 but like that in chess happened really quickly.
02:58:32 It won’t happen, and it wasn’t so painful in chess
02:58:36 because we care about chess,
02:58:37 but it’s not so fundamental to human society.
02:58:41 And when you started talking about cyborg Gordon Ryans,
02:58:46 which really beyond grappling is referring
02:58:49 to robots operating physical space
02:58:52 or human robot hybrids operating physical space,
02:58:56 you’re talking about our society is now full of cyborgs.
02:59:00 Yes.
02:59:00 And that transition might be very painful
02:59:05 or transformative in a way we can’t even predict.
02:59:10 And that very much has applications
02:59:13 as both China and US now have legalized
02:59:18 is autonomous weapon systems.
02:59:20 So use of these kinds of systems in military applications.
02:59:24 So it used to be, there’d been a big call
02:59:27 in the AI community to ban autonomous weapons.
02:59:29 So the use of artificial intelligence in war,
02:59:33 just like bioweapons are banned internationally.
02:59:37 So you’re not allowed to use bioweapons in war.
02:59:40 And actually most people, even terrorists,
02:59:43 have kind of agreed on this ban.
02:59:46 It’s not like, there’s been a quiet agreement,
02:59:49 like we’re not going to be doing this
02:59:51 because everybody’s gonna get really pissed off.
02:59:54 With autonomous weapon systems, that’s not been the case.
02:59:59 China has said that they’re going to be using AI
03:00:01 in their military.
03:00:03 And the US in 2021 just released a report
03:00:08 saying that they’re going to add
03:00:12 increasing amounts of artificial intelligence
03:00:15 into our military systems.
03:00:17 Into drones, into just everything that’s doing
03:00:19 any kind of both strategic and actual bombing
03:00:24 and defense systems.
03:00:27 I presume a drone army would easily defeat
03:00:31 a human army in the near future.
03:00:33 Like, I mean, just off the top of my head,
03:00:38 just think about the implication of kamikaze drones
03:00:40 versus a naval fleet.
03:00:42 I mean, kamikazes was humans in World War II,
03:00:45 did terrible damage to our navy.
03:00:47 Imagine swarms of mechanical kamikazes
03:00:53 which have no fear, no remorse, I mean.
03:00:55 But it’s very inefficient.
03:00:58 Kamikaze is very inefficient.
03:00:59 You want to be very, like war is,
03:01:03 it’s the same discussion to jiu jitsu, right?
03:01:06 You want to be, you want to create an asymmetry of power
03:01:10 and you want to be efficient is in the way you deliver
03:01:12 that power.
03:01:13 It’s actually goes back to the picking up a cup.
03:01:17 Currently, a lot of things we do in war,
03:01:21 like most of the drones that you hear about,
03:01:24 they’re not autonomous, not most, all.
03:01:26 They’re usually piloted by.
03:01:27 They’re piloted remotely by humans.
03:01:30 And humans are really good at this kind of
03:01:33 what’s necessary to deliver the most damage,
03:01:35 targeted damage, effective as part of the largest strategy
03:01:39 you have about bombing the area or all that kind of stuff.
03:01:43 I don’t know how difficult that is to automate.
03:01:45 I think the biggest concern,
03:01:47 I actually have a sense that it’s very difficult to automate.
03:01:51 The biggest concern is almost like
03:01:53 an incompetent application of this
03:01:56 and consequences that are not anticipated.
03:02:01 So you have a drone army where you say,
03:02:05 we want to target,
03:02:06 you give it power to target a particular terrorist.
03:02:09 And then there’s some bug in the system
03:02:12 that has a, like for example,
03:02:15 has a large uncertainty about the location of that terrorist.
03:02:18 And so it decides to bomb an entire city.
03:02:22 You know, almost like there’s a bug, a software bug.
03:02:25 I’m much more concerned about like bad programming
03:02:28 and software engineering than I am about
03:02:31 like malevolent AI systems that destroy the world.
03:02:36 So the more we rely on automation,
03:02:38 this is the lesson of human history.
03:02:40 The more we give to AI, to software, to robotic systems,
03:02:45 the more we forget how to supervise
03:02:49 and oversee some of the edge cases,
03:02:52 all the weird ways that things go wrong.
03:02:54 And then the more stupid software bugs
03:02:58 can lead to huge damage.
03:02:59 Like, you know, even like nuclear explosions,
03:03:03 those kinds of things.
03:03:05 If we add AI into the launch systems
03:03:09 for nuclear weapons, for example,
03:03:13 I think human history teaches us that software bugs
03:03:17 is what will lead to World War III,
03:03:21 not malevolent AI or human beings.
03:03:25 Interesting.
03:03:26 By the way, I deeply appreciate how knowledgeable you are
03:03:29 about the history of artificial intelligence.
03:03:31 That was awesome.
03:03:32 Oh no, it’s fascinating stuff.
03:03:33 You know, I remember reading when I was a child
03:03:36 about, you know, Turing tests and things like this,
03:03:38 and visionaries from the 1950s had ideas.
03:03:42 To see it come this far is just so fascinating to me.
03:03:47 Okay, so what can we as jiu jitsu players
03:03:50 take away from this?
03:03:51 We saw that when it comes to computers versus humans
03:03:55 in chess tournaments,
03:03:57 humans had something truly valuable
03:04:01 to give to the computers.
03:04:03 That was heuristic rules.
03:04:05 In every coaching program that I run,
03:04:09 I make an endless quest to search out
03:04:14 and find effective heuristic rules.
03:04:17 That’s the basis of a good training program.
03:04:21 Heuristic rules and principles
03:04:24 give vast informational content,
03:04:27 which can rapidly increase your performance on the mat,
03:04:30 just as they rapidly increase the performance
03:04:33 of chess computers to overcome their human adversaries.
03:04:39 The great human weakness is computational power.
03:04:43 Most people vastly overestimate their ability
03:04:47 to reason and problem solve under stress.
03:04:51 In fact, numerous psychological studies have shown
03:04:54 that humans can balance a relatively small number
03:04:57 of competing options in stressful decision making.
03:05:03 But what we do have,
03:05:05 what is the great and unique human gift
03:05:09 is this idea to come up and arrive
03:05:11 at heuristic rules and principles,
03:05:14 which turn out to be very effective guides to behavior
03:05:17 for both human behavior
03:05:19 and artificially intelligent behavior.
03:05:21 Make that your focus in study.
03:05:27 Don’t try to remember 10,000 different details on a move.
03:05:31 Okay, that’s human weakness, not human strength.
03:05:34 Our strength is heuristics.
03:05:36 Make that your focus,
03:05:38 not endless computations over 25 details here
03:05:42 merged with 27 details here.
03:05:44 That’s not what humans are good at.
03:05:46 The uniquely human strength is arriving
03:05:51 at these heuristic rules and principles
03:05:53 which guide our behavior,
03:05:54 which provides simplifications,
03:05:56 which enable us to take vast amounts of information
03:06:00 and parry it down to a few simple rules
03:06:02 that effectively guide our behavior.
03:06:04 Take that core insight from the discussion
03:06:06 that Lex and I just had.
03:06:07 It was a complex discussion.
03:06:08 We both apologize for going a little bit overboard.
03:06:10 That was awesome.
03:06:11 Then dragging you into some details there,
03:06:13 but take that away from it.
03:06:14 I love it.
03:06:14 It’ll make you better at jujitsu.
03:06:16 Sorry, Lex.
03:06:18 That was a really exciting discussion,
03:06:21 and the depths of knowledge
03:06:25 in the dimensions of knowledge you have
03:06:27 and interests you have is just fascinating.
03:06:30 Is there advice you have for complete beginners,
03:06:33 for white belts that are starting jujitsu,
03:06:36 that are listening to this,
03:06:37 that haven’t done jujitsu?
03:06:38 I know there’s a lot of people
03:06:39 who are super curious to start.
03:06:42 Is there advice you would give them on their journey?
03:06:45 Yeah, I’m just gonna talk about
03:06:47 just getting better on the mat, okay?
03:06:50 Because there’s a thousand other things
03:06:51 you can talk about in terms of morale and persistence
03:06:54 and how often that you’re trained
03:06:56 is a thousand things you’d give.
03:06:57 Break up with your girlfriend or boyfriend.
03:06:59 That’s one.
03:07:00 I’m just kidding.
03:07:01 Let’s put that aside.
03:07:02 That’s probably the best advice we could give.
03:07:05 It goes back to what we said earlier.
03:07:07 I always advocate start your training from the ground up.
03:07:11 Okay, your first sessions in jujitsu,
03:07:15 you’re going to find to your horror
03:07:18 that everyone gets on top of you and you can’t get out.
03:07:21 And it’s a dispiriting, crushing kind of feeling
03:07:24 that you just have no skills
03:07:26 and you have no prospects in the sport.
03:07:28 So your first skill is the skill of being able
03:07:31 to free yourself from positional pins.
03:07:35 Most of the escapes in jujitsu go to guard position.
03:07:38 And so once you get someone in your guard,
03:07:41 they’re going to be looking to pass your guard
03:07:43 and get back into those positional pins
03:07:45 that you just escaped from.
03:07:47 And that’s just as crushing as getting pinned.
03:07:49 You feel like every time you try to hold someone in guard,
03:07:51 they just effortlessly pass you by.
03:07:54 So your first two skills,
03:07:56 you got to be able to get out of any pin
03:07:58 and you got to be able to hold someone in your guard.
03:08:00 So pin escapes and guard retention
03:08:02 are your first two skills.
03:08:04 I generally advocate the idea of learning to fight
03:08:08 from your back first and then learning to fight
03:08:12 from on top second.
03:08:13 Why?
03:08:14 Because the brute fact is when you first start off,
03:08:16 you just don’t have enough skills to hold top position
03:08:19 or gain top position through a takedown.
03:08:21 So inevitably you’re going to end up underneath people
03:08:23 for most of your training time.
03:08:25 Your training should reflect that in the early days
03:08:28 as a white belt.
03:08:30 Start with the first two skills you need.
03:08:32 They’re not the most exciting.
03:08:33 They’re not sexy skills that are going to make you look
03:08:35 like a stud in the training room,
03:08:36 but they’re going to keep your life long enough
03:08:38 to learn those sexy skills in the future
03:08:40 that will make you look like a stud.
03:08:43 Start with pin escapes, go to guard retention
03:08:46 and focus heavily on those two.
03:08:49 When you start to get into offense,
03:08:51 start with bottom position.
03:08:53 So there’s a clear continuity between your pin escapes,
03:08:56 your guard retention, and then your guard itself.
03:09:00 Okay?
03:09:01 You’ve got different options with guard.
03:09:03 Some of you are going to like closed guard.
03:09:05 Some of you are going to like variations of open guard.
03:09:08 Some of you are going to like to be seated.
03:09:09 Some of you are going to like to be supine.
03:09:11 Some of you are going to like half guard.
03:09:13 As a general rule, this is a heavy generalization,
03:09:17 but I’m going to give it to you.
03:09:18 In my experience, most people benefit the most
03:09:22 by starting with half guard first.
03:09:24 I know that traditionally Jiu Jitsu has been taught
03:09:27 closed guard first,
03:09:28 and then all the other guards come after that.
03:09:30 I’m a big believer in the idea of start with pin escapes,
03:09:34 then go to guard retention,
03:09:36 and then start with half guard bottom.
03:09:38 That way you get a nice continuity
03:09:39 between your first three skills,
03:09:41 and you’ll make good progress
03:09:43 over those first critical six months in Jiu Jitsu.
03:09:46 What does it take to get a black belt in Jiu Jitsu?
03:09:50 Very little.
03:09:51 Ha ha ha.
03:09:55 To show up, pay your fees.
03:09:58 Don’t set your goals low, okay?
03:10:00 Don’t even ask yourself that question.
03:10:01 No one cares if you’ve got a black belt, okay?
03:10:03 The only thing that counts is the skills you have.
03:10:06 I know plenty of black belts that suck, okay?
03:10:09 There’s a lot of them out there.
03:10:11 Don’t lower your standards by saying,
03:10:13 I want to get a black belt.
03:10:16 Ask yourself something much more important.
03:10:18 How good do I want to be?
03:10:20 You want to be damn good, right?
03:10:21 You want to do something in this time,
03:10:23 and you want to be the best you can.
03:10:24 Wearing a belt around your waist doesn’t guarantee that.
03:10:27 Build skills, focus on that.
03:10:31 Let me ask you about the fourth thing
03:10:33 in facet face of Jiu Jitsu, which is self defense.
03:10:39 Let’s say the bigger things,
03:10:42 I don’t know why it’s called self defense.
03:10:44 Let’s call it street fighting.
03:10:46 Let’s call it fighting, okay?
03:10:49 Maybe you can contest that terminology.
03:10:51 How about non sport fighting?
03:10:53 Non sport fighting.
03:10:54 It’s funny, like street fighting.
03:10:55 What happens if you go out on a playground,
03:10:57 and you’re fighting on grass?
03:10:58 Is there no longer street fighting?
03:11:00 It’s like tennis.
03:11:00 You have like Wimbledon, like grass courts,
03:11:04 it’s a whole nother thing.
03:11:07 What do you think is the best martial art
03:11:09 for street fighting?
03:11:11 What is the best set of,
03:11:14 we talked about advice for white belts
03:11:16 to advance in grappling in Jiu Jitsu.
03:11:22 What is the set of techniques,
03:11:24 maybe martial art that is best for street fighting?
03:11:27 Okay, again, you’re asking some
03:11:31 truly fascinating questions here.
03:11:37 The way this gets framed as a question
03:11:39 is often condemns you to bad answers from the start.
03:11:44 This is…
03:11:46 As a questioner, I’m trying to achieve asymmetry of power.
03:11:50 And I’m winning.
03:11:53 Put you in a bad position.
03:11:55 Don’t worry so much about…
03:11:58 People are always gonna say,
03:11:58 you know, is this martial art better?
03:12:00 Or is this martial arts better?
03:12:01 The truth is there’s only one way to say this.
03:12:09 Combat sports are your best option for self defense.
03:12:15 There are many martial arts,
03:12:17 and there is a rough divide between the two.
03:12:20 Those that fall into combat sports,
03:12:22 and those that fall into non sporting martial arts,
03:12:27 where there’s no competitive live sparring element,
03:12:36 where most of the knowledge is limited
03:12:40 to theoretical knowledge reinforced by passive drilling.
03:12:46 If you have a choice between a combat sport
03:12:48 versus a non sporting art
03:12:52 based around theoretical knowledge and passive drilling,
03:12:55 go with a combat sport.
03:12:58 Nothing will prepare you for the intensity
03:13:04 of a genuine altercation better than combat sports.
03:13:10 Many people, as I say these words,
03:13:13 they’re probably horrified to hear me say this,
03:13:15 and immediately going to rebut and say,
03:13:19 no, combat sports is exactly the wrong thing for you to do
03:13:23 because they have safety rules, et cetera, et cetera,
03:13:26 which would easily be exploited in a real fight.
03:13:30 And if I fought a world championship boxer,
03:13:32 I would just poke him in the eye
03:13:33 or kick him in the groin, et cetera, et cetera.
03:13:35 You’ve heard these arguments a thousand times.
03:13:38 Yes, there is some validity to these things,
03:13:40 but as a general rule,
03:13:42 if you ask me to bet in any form of street fight,
03:13:47 call it what you want,
03:13:48 between a combat sport adherent
03:13:52 versus someone who simply trains with drills
03:13:56 and talks in terms of theories
03:13:59 of what they would do in a fight,
03:14:00 I’m gonna go with the combat sport guy every single time.
03:14:05 Now, having said that,
03:14:08 combat sports need to be modified
03:14:11 for the use of self defense street fighting.
03:14:14 We haven’t agreed on a term yet.
03:14:15 We’ll figure it out later.
03:14:18 What does this modification consist of?
03:14:21 Well, some of it is technical, okay?
03:14:23 For example, a boxer in a street fight
03:14:27 now has to punch without wrapped or gloved hands,
03:14:31 and that’s problematic, okay?
03:14:32 Your hands are not really designed
03:14:35 for heavy extended use of clubbing hard objects.
03:14:38 There’s a very high likelihood of breaking your hands.
03:14:41 Mike Tyson was one of the finest punchers that ever lived,
03:14:44 but in one of his more famous street fights
03:14:46 against Mitch Green in the late 1980s,
03:14:50 he broke his hand with one punch
03:14:52 that he threw at his opponent.
03:14:53 He hit the wrong part of the head and broke his hand,
03:14:56 and he was one of the most gifted punchers of all time.
03:14:58 If he can do it,
03:14:59 you’ll certainly have trouble protecting your hands
03:15:02 when you go to throw blows.
03:15:06 Nonetheless, this was easily modified,
03:15:09 and so a boxer can throw with open hands or with elbows,
03:15:16 and so just a small modification and technique
03:15:19 can overcome that problem.
03:15:21 So what you’ll find is that the general physical,
03:15:26 mental conditioning, and skill development
03:15:28 that comes from combat sports
03:15:31 allied with technical modifications,
03:15:36 and then the most important of all,
03:15:38 tactical modifications will provide your best hope
03:15:43 in altercations outside of sports in the street
03:15:47 or wherever you find yourself.
03:15:52 The least effective approaches to self defense
03:15:55 that I have observed in my life
03:15:56 have been those where, as I said,
03:15:59 people talked theory, drilled on passive opponents,
03:16:04 and generally had no engagement in live competition
03:16:08 or sparring in their training programs.
03:16:13 The most effective by a landslide
03:16:16 were those that put a heavy emphasis on live sparring
03:16:21 and sporting competition modified both technically
03:16:26 and tactically for the circumstances
03:16:28 in which they found themselves.
03:16:30 People talk, for example, about how, you know,
03:16:33 and with some validity that weapons
03:16:37 will change everything in a street fight.
03:16:39 There’s absolute truth to that,
03:16:41 but this extends into weapons as well, okay?
03:16:44 The most effective forms of knife fighting that you’ll see
03:16:49 will be those who come from a background in fencing
03:16:53 because it has sparring and a competitive sport aspect to it,
03:16:56 but would pure fencing be the appropriate thing?
03:16:59 Of course not, you’d have to modify it,
03:17:01 but the reflexes, endurance, physical mobility
03:17:03 that you gain from the sport of fencing
03:17:05 could easily be modified to bladecraft in a fight situation.
03:17:10 What you want to look for with regards street
03:17:14 and self defense is not, okay, which style should I choose?
03:17:18 Should I choose taekwondo?
03:17:19 Should I choose karate?
03:17:20 Should I choose this variation of kung fu?
03:17:22 No, focus on the most important thing.
03:17:24 Does it have a sport aspect to it?
03:17:27 Then once you’ve made sufficient progress
03:17:30 in the sport aspect of that martial art,
03:17:32 start asking yourself, what are the requisite modifications
03:17:35 and technique and tactics that I have to use
03:17:38 or to input to make it effective for street situations?
03:17:43 That’s always the advice that I give.
03:17:45 Let me zoom in on a very particular aspect
03:17:47 of street fighting where, with all due respect,
03:17:50 I disagree with Mr. Joe Rogan and George St. Pierre on,
03:17:54 which is the suit and tie situation.
03:17:57 Now, to criticize GSP, yeah, yeah,
03:18:00 he’s very accomplished and everything,
03:18:01 but to criticize him for a bit,
03:18:03 he made claims about how dangerous the tie is
03:18:07 in a street fighting situation
03:18:09 without ever having used it in a fighting situation.
03:18:12 So he made sort of broad proclamations
03:18:15 without understanding the fundamentals.
03:18:18 So I thought I would go to somebody who thinks in systems.
03:18:23 What do you think, is it dangerous to wear a tie
03:18:29 or not in a grappling situation
03:18:32 versus all the other weapons?
03:18:33 Yeah, but we would do it in a street fight, yeah.
03:18:35 It would be rather strange to wear a tie
03:18:37 in a grappling competition.
03:18:38 It would be, it would be.
03:18:40 Yes, in a street fight situation.
03:18:42 Okay, yeah.
03:18:43 Joe Rogan thinks it is like the most dangerous,
03:18:47 it’s like it becomes your weakest point
03:18:50 if you wear a tie because it’s very easy to choke.
03:18:52 George St. Pierre seemed to have agreed with that.
03:18:55 Also, George added that you can grab the tie
03:18:59 and pull the person down to a knee.
03:19:03 Yeah, this is the go to.
03:19:04 Joe Rogan will go for the choke,
03:19:06 George St. Pierre will go for the tie to the knee,
03:19:08 which I was saying is ridiculous.
03:19:10 So what do you think?
03:19:11 Okay, first off, I actually can speak with experience
03:19:15 on this because I worked as a bouncer for over a decade
03:19:17 and most of the clubs I worked at
03:19:19 did not require a suit and tie,
03:19:21 but occasionally they did.
03:19:25 Okay, let’s first differentiate
03:19:27 between the kinds of threats when you wear a tie.
03:19:30 If you wear a tie, if there is gonna be a threat,
03:19:33 by far the more important threat is not strangulation.
03:19:36 Okay, being strangled by your tie is possible,
03:19:40 but it is a poor choice.
03:19:42 There are many other ways to strangle people
03:19:43 that are far more efficient.
03:19:45 If I strangle by your tie, I’m literally in front of you.
03:19:49 That means as I go to apply the strangle hold,
03:19:52 I can easily be eye gouged, et cetera, et cetera.
03:19:54 If you’re gonna strangle people in the street,
03:19:56 do it from behind and there’s just much better ways
03:19:59 to do it than that.
03:20:00 Hear that, Joe Rogan?
03:20:02 With regards to the snap down question,
03:20:04 that is more a problem.
03:20:07 I always recommend if you are going to work as a bouncer
03:20:09 with a tie, wear a clip on tie
03:20:12 so it just comes off immediately.
03:20:14 If you don’t like clip ons, then you can use a bow tie.
03:20:17 I used to work for years in hip hop clubs
03:20:22 with members of the Nation of Islam security team.
03:20:26 They were known, they had various factions,
03:20:28 but the one I worked with were the X Men,
03:20:30 and they would always wear bow ties,
03:20:32 which of course can’t be grabbed.
03:20:34 Now, the bow tie was a recognizable part of their brand
03:20:40 as security guards, so everyone knew
03:20:42 that that’s what they wore.
03:20:43 If I wore a bow tie in a security situation,
03:20:46 people would probably think that I was some kind
03:20:48 of Nancy boy and want to fight with me,
03:20:52 so I couldn’t wear one.
03:20:53 So I would always wear a tie
03:20:56 which you should become familiar with, Mr. Freeman.
03:21:00 That’s the Texas bolo tie, which is a kind of shoestring tie
03:21:04 which is very, very thin, almost like shoestring
03:21:07 and rather short and just has a simple pendant in the middle.
03:21:11 This is perfect if you need to wear a tie
03:21:13 in a situation where you believe
03:21:14 there’s a high likelihood of you being grabbed.
03:21:17 Because it can’t be grabbed.
03:21:18 Yeah, there’s nothing to grab.
03:21:19 It’s literally like string.
03:21:20 Like if you pulled it,
03:21:22 it would just slip through your hand.
03:21:24 That tie that you’re wearing now,
03:21:26 that would give me tremendous control of your head,
03:21:29 and I could easily turn it into a hockey fight situation
03:21:32 where your head was being pulled down out of balance,
03:21:35 and you would have a hard time recovering.
03:21:38 So strangulation, not really a problem.
03:21:41 Getting pulled down, possible problem.
03:21:44 Solutions, clip on tie, bow tie,
03:21:48 or if you don’t want to look like a Nancy boy,
03:21:50 wear a bolo tie.
03:21:54 Beautiful, so you disagree with Joe Rogan,
03:21:55 agree with George St. Pierre, I love it.
03:21:58 I feel like this is an instruction we put together
03:22:01 here on street fighting and the tie.
03:22:06 Speaking of Joe Rogan, let me ask the following question.
03:22:11 He’s currently doing a podcast with Gordon Ryan,
03:22:16 and probably going to try to convince him and you,
03:22:20 as he’s already been doing, to move to Austin.
03:22:23 What are the chances of the Donoher Death Squad
03:22:27 coming to Austin and opening a school in Austin
03:22:30 and making Austin home so I can attend the classes there?
03:22:34 I would definitely have to think about that.
03:22:36 I do know that I personally love New York,
03:22:43 but every single person in the squad despised New York
03:22:49 and wanted to leave for a long time.
03:22:54 What was the nature of your love for New York, by the way?
03:22:57 It was truly an international city.
03:22:59 I’m a big believer in the idea of breadth of experience,
03:23:03 and if you want, breadth of experience
03:23:07 usually requires extensive travel,
03:23:09 but training people means you have to be in a fixed location
03:23:14 working according to a schedule,
03:23:16 and those two push in different directions.
03:23:21 New York was the compromise
03:23:23 where everyone from around the world came there
03:23:26 so you had breadth of experience of world culture,
03:23:29 but at the same time, you had a fixed location
03:23:31 so you could run a training program
03:23:32 that produced world champions,
03:23:34 so it was the ideal compromise.
03:23:37 It was a fascinating thing to teach classes
03:23:40 of over 120 people where literally the entire world
03:23:43 was represented on the map
03:23:45 and go outside and see the same thing.
03:23:48 It was truly the world’s leading international city.
03:23:54 It was like the world’s unofficial capital,
03:23:58 a fascinating place to live,
03:24:00 so I loved it, but the squad hated it.
03:24:03 For them, it was like an expensive thing.
03:24:07 They never actually lived in Manhattan.
03:24:08 They always lived in New Jersey or Long Island,
03:24:10 had to commute in,
03:24:11 so all they ever saw was the bridges and the tunnels,
03:24:14 the expensive daily parking fees.
03:24:16 They only saw the worst of New York,
03:24:18 and despite my pleas for them to move into Manhattan,
03:24:22 they never did, and so they hated it
03:24:25 because when all you see of New York
03:24:27 is the bridges and the tunnels
03:24:28 and the parking garage, that’s not a pleasant thing,
03:24:32 so I understand where they’re coming from,
03:24:35 so then when COVID broke out,
03:24:39 they wanted to move to Puerto Rico and work there.
03:24:45 Now, Puerto Rico is a beautiful alternative to New York.
03:24:50 In many ways, it has many advantages over New York.
03:24:52 It’s physically beautiful.
03:24:53 The people are wonderful,
03:24:55 and it’s just a wonderful place to spend time.
03:25:02 Freedom, low taxes, all those kinds of things
03:25:06 that Puerto Rico stands for.
03:25:08 It’s Texas, on the other hand.
03:25:10 I know everyone in the squad.
03:25:11 It’s a compromise, right?
03:25:12 Texas is a compromise between those two.
03:25:14 Actually, I must say that everyone on the squad,
03:25:17 myself included, loves Texas.
03:25:20 There’s no question about that.
03:25:21 I know Gordon loves it, Gary, Craig, Nicky,
03:25:27 everyone who comes here just loves Texas.
03:25:29 That is incontestable.
03:25:34 Of course, in Texas, there’s many great cities.
03:25:37 Austin has always been one of my favorites.
03:25:41 I love Dallas, I love Austin,
03:25:44 and it has the advantages of better infrastructure
03:25:49 as a place to train.
03:25:52 It has a much higher population density
03:25:54 so that you could get a larger number
03:25:56 of prospective students and form a larger squad.
03:26:01 It would definitely be a fantastic place to open up a gym.
03:26:07 I couldn’t give an answer off the top of my head.
03:26:09 It would be a big move if we did make that move,
03:26:12 but the basic idea would be very agreeable
03:26:17 to everyone on the team, I will say that.
03:26:21 Well, I’ll just have to call on my Russian connections
03:26:24 to threaten the right kind of people,
03:26:25 and I definitely would love,
03:26:28 the way you approach training,
03:26:31 the way you approach the martial arts
03:26:32 is something that I deeply admire
03:26:37 as a scholar of these arts,
03:26:38 so it would be amazing if you do come here,
03:26:41 but either way, it’d be amazing to train together.
03:26:44 Let me ask a big, ridiculous question.
03:26:46 What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing?
03:26:53 We talked about at the beginning of the conversation
03:26:55 about death and the fear of it.
03:27:00 The other big question we ask about life is its meaning.
03:27:04 Do you think there’s a meaning to our existence here
03:27:07 on this little spinning ball?
03:27:09 That’s, you’ve thrown some powerful questions.
03:27:13 That’s the most powerful.
03:27:21 For most of human existence,
03:27:24 the meaning of life was very, very simple, survival.
03:27:30 The only thing that humans cared about was just surviving
03:27:35 because it was so damn difficult
03:27:38 for the early years of human existence on this Earth.
03:27:43 If you look at ourselves as biological agents,
03:27:48 everything about our body is set up for one mission,
03:27:52 and that is survival.
03:27:54 Every reflex we have, every element of our structure
03:27:58 is just built up on the battle to survive.
03:28:03 And then humans did something remarkable.
03:28:05 They elevated themselves through the use of technology
03:28:10 and social structure to the top of the food chain
03:28:15 so that they went from extremely vulnerable.
03:28:20 If you take a naked human being alone
03:28:24 and put them in the Serengeti Plains in Africa,
03:28:27 they’re in some deep shit.
03:28:29 If you look at a human being as a survival organ,
03:28:33 just by itself, naked, they are among the most feeble
03:28:38 at that task in the entire animal kingdom.
03:28:46 You compare us with predatory animals.
03:28:49 We are weak and soft and easily killed.
03:28:57 But if you take that same human and put them in the Serengeti
03:29:01 human and put them in a group,
03:29:04 and you give them basic technology,
03:29:07 steel, a spear, a knife,
03:29:14 he goes from the bottom of the food chain
03:29:17 to pretty much at the top.
03:29:20 And so humanity found itself in a crisis
03:29:25 that emerged out of its own success.
03:29:28 For most of its history, their only interest
03:29:31 was the battle to survive, and they did it.
03:29:33 I don’t know how they did it, but they did it.
03:29:34 They got through ice ages, droughts, famines,
03:29:38 disease, everything, and they found a way
03:29:40 to get to the top of the food chain.
03:29:44 And that’s where it all got interesting.
03:29:47 Because an organism whose only interest was in survival
03:29:51 had for the first time in their history
03:29:54 a more or less guaranteed survival.
03:29:59 And so the big question now is, now what?
03:30:03 We survived.
03:30:04 There’s no more danger.
03:30:06 The average human being finds himself in a world now
03:30:09 where there’s almost zero danger from predatory animals,
03:30:14 where getting a meal is the easiest thing ever,
03:30:18 where getting to and from work is not problematic at all,
03:30:23 where the majority of infectious diseases,
03:30:28 medical complaints can be resolved
03:30:31 in a hospital fairly easily.
03:30:35 And so they start casting their mind around,
03:30:38 okay, what do I do now?
03:30:42 And so the minute mankind’s existence
03:30:47 became more or less guaranteed,
03:30:48 the problem shift from survival to meaning.
03:30:55 And we found ourselves grappling with a whole new issue
03:30:59 that had never occurred to our ancient forefathers,
03:31:03 but which now becomes one of the centerpieces
03:31:06 of our modern lives.
03:31:09 I mean, when you look at your own life,
03:31:11 when you look back, you think, I did a hell of a good job.
03:31:16 You know, Hunter S. Thompson has this line
03:31:18 that I often think about,
03:31:21 that life should not be a journey to the grave
03:31:23 with the intention of arriving safely
03:31:26 in a pretty and well preserved body,
03:31:29 but rather to skid in roadside in a cloud of smoke,
03:31:33 thoroughly used up, totally worn out,
03:31:35 and loudly proclaiming, wow, what a ride.
03:31:38 Which is the complete opposite of survival.
03:31:43 Well, not complete opposite of survival,
03:31:45 but basically embracing danger, embracing risk,
03:31:49 going big, just living life to the fullest.
03:31:54 So within that context,
03:31:57 what would make you proud of a life well lived?
03:32:01 When you look back, you, John Donahart,
03:32:03 looking back at your life.
03:32:05 First, I will address that question,
03:32:07 but let’s first look at why Hunter Thompson could say that.
03:32:11 Why Hunter Thompson could say that?
03:32:13 Because his life was more or less guaranteed and safe.
03:32:17 If you look at animals in the animal kingdom,
03:32:20 the pattern of their life is very simple.
03:32:22 They take the least risk possible to secure their existence.
03:32:26 Lions are powerful creatures, but when they go hunting,
03:32:29 they typically go for the weakest animals they can kill
03:32:32 in order to eat,
03:32:33 because they don’t want to take the risk
03:32:34 of injuring themselves, knowing that if they do, they die.
03:32:38 So the brute reality is the only people
03:32:41 who can talk about having casual danger in their lives
03:32:46 are those whose lives are guaranteed.
03:32:48 And a fascinating small tangent,
03:32:51 Hunter Thompson took his own life.
03:32:54 So that seems like a deeply human thing, suicide.
03:32:58 Yes.
03:33:00 That’s a fascinating question in itself.
03:33:03 If you look at the number of suicides per year,
03:33:07 it’s a shocking, shocking statistic
03:33:09 that gets almost no recognition.
03:33:11 And yes, uniquely human.
03:33:12 You don’t, very, very few animals, you see,
03:33:16 killing themselves because their whole thing
03:33:17 is just survival.
03:33:18 And that humans paradoxically,
03:33:20 when survival is more or less guaranteed,
03:33:22 are killing themselves in vast numbers.
03:33:24 It’s usually linked back to the idea of meaning
03:33:28 because it’s so hard.
03:33:30 It was hard to win the battle for survival,
03:33:34 but it’s 10 times harder to win the battle for meaning.
03:33:42 When I think about it,
03:33:44 first off, I’ll say right from the bat,
03:33:46 there’s never going to be an agreed upon sense of meaning.
03:33:53 As I said, there was one thing
03:33:55 that our physical bodies agreed upon
03:33:57 and which is hardwired biologically into us
03:34:00 and that’s survival.
03:34:01 But once we got to a more or less guaranteed survival,
03:34:05 then all bets were off.
03:34:06 At that point, you just have to start
03:34:09 listing your own criteria
03:34:10 and what one person will describe as a meaningful life,
03:34:13 another person will decry as meaningless or wasted.
03:34:21 There’s something terrible about the idea
03:34:24 that we’re sitting around waiting for meaning
03:34:27 to show up on our doorstep.
03:34:29 But what I find the best people do
03:34:30 is they take charge of it
03:34:32 and they look at their lives in a form of authorship
03:34:36 where they see their life as a tale to be written
03:34:41 and they do their best to write that tale
03:34:44 and put as much control over the direction of the story
03:34:48 as they can.
03:34:52 In the end, we all have to just try and write our own story.
03:34:57 We all have our own interests.
03:34:59 I try to bring in the sense that even though I’m an atheist,
03:35:05 I don’t believe that we go on to live after this.
03:35:09 I believe that there’s a possibility of God in an afterlife.
03:35:13 I don’t say it’s impossible,
03:35:15 but in order for me to believe that they exist,
03:35:18 I’d have to see better evidence than I see currently.
03:35:22 Nonetheless, I do believe that there is a great value
03:35:26 in the idea of living for something bigger than yourself.
03:35:31 The moment you see yourself as the be all
03:35:34 and end all of your existence,
03:35:36 you’re in for a meaningless life
03:35:38 and nothing will ever satisfy you.
03:35:40 You can have all the money in the world.
03:35:41 You can have all the power in the world.
03:35:42 You’ll be empty inside.
03:35:45 I do believe that humans have a deep and abiding need
03:35:51 to follow the interests of a group
03:35:53 bigger than themselves as an individual.
03:35:57 Is it ideal?
03:35:58 No.
03:35:59 Is it an answer to the meaning of life?
03:36:00 Nope, because eventually that group will itself die out.
03:36:03 So there’s a sense in which it just plays
03:36:06 a kind of delaying game.
03:36:10 But I do believe that in order to live a happy life,
03:36:17 meaning is a central part of that.
03:36:19 And the deepest sense of meaning,
03:36:21 not a fully complete answer, but a better answer
03:36:24 than most people give is to find something
03:36:28 which hopefully does very little harm
03:36:31 to the people around you and mostly benefits them,
03:36:34 which enables you to become part of a community
03:36:38 and to live, as I said,
03:36:42 for something larger than you as an individual.
03:36:46 If there is such a thing as a perfect conversation,
03:36:50 it would be a conversation on death, meaning, and robots
03:36:56 with the great John Donoher.
03:36:58 John, I’ve been a fan.
03:37:01 It’s a huge honor that you would waste all your time today.
03:37:04 Thank you so much for talking today.
03:37:05 My pleasure.
03:37:06 Thank you, Lynx.
03:37:08 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:37:09 with John Donoher, and thank you to Onnit,
03:37:12 SimplySafe, Indeed, and Linode.
03:37:15 Check them out in the description to support this podcast.
03:37:19 And now let me leave you some words
03:37:21 from John Donoher himself.
03:37:23 In fighting and competition, the objective is victory.
03:37:27 In training, the objective is skill development.
03:37:31 Do not confuse them.
03:37:33 As such, one of the best ways to train
03:37:35 is to identify the strengths of your various partners
03:37:38 and regularly expose yourself to those strengths.
03:37:41 Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.