Like some of you, I spent the majority of last weekend (Fri-Sun) watching ADCC and the first Craig Jones Invitational.
There’s so many things I could weigh in on… the controversy around holding CJI on the same weekend, which was better and for which reasons (formats, rule sets, etc.), and of course detailed breakdowns of individual matches.
But to keep it simple, I always watch these events with 2 lenses:
1) As a fan of the sport
2) As a practitioner-coach
When it comes to being a fan, I’m just as excited by a match like Andrew Tackett vs. Kade Routolo as anyone. But when it comes to my practitioner-coach lens, then it’s a much more objective and analytical analysis.
This is where I “zoom out” to look at broad, first principles takeaways from what the best athletes are doing, as well as “zoom in” on specific things going on in individual matches.
And after all these years of being a fan of many legendary competitors, there’s a reason why my Big 3 G.O.A.T.s (Rickson Gracie, Roger Gracie, and Gordon Ryan) remain my Big 3…
And that is their control and efficiency. Those two qualities, along with their respective mentalities, are primary reasons for their effectiveness (and dominance).
For many people, they are not the most exciting to watch. They are not known for rapid fire, back & forth exchanges or a barn burner pace.
Which is precisely why I love to watch and study them. All 3 were/are known for their ability to slow down and control the best competitors in the world, and do it without a major reliance on their physical attributes. For example, John Will gets this exactly right with respect to pressure:
How many times do we see even multiple time world champions with their knees on the mat trying to work their way past an opponent’s leg with their arms?
How many times do we see “pressure passing” or “pressure top game” rely on heavily on grips rather than on weight distribution?
This style of passing Gordon is now known for (what recently has been called camping) will be familiar to those of you who have my Pillars: Guard Passing course. I released it 8 years ago, and it was devoted entirely to these principles.
Unfortunately, reasoning-by-analogy (i.e., what most are doing at a high level) is always more popular and gets more attention than first principles (what the very best are doing that’s fundamentally different from the rest).
Ironically, you often don’t gleen these subtleties from their instructionals, which focus on techniques, but rather by watching the principles applied in movement during their matches.
I’ve long seen it as my job to identify those first principles of efficiency and control, and break them down in a way that everyone can apply in real time on the mat.
