Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another Bulletproof for Business Day podcast the five reasons you are stuck at white belt. Now we've all been there working hard and not making progress, and Joey and I, today, on this episode, break down the five things you need to address which are actually holding you back. Now here's the thing. It may not be obvious what you need to do, and Joey and I actually reveal our own struggles and give you some insight as to how you can overcome these quicker and get to the blue belt. Also, on that, there are some key learnings we can take for some other fields, like business, like gym, which are actually going to help inform the way you train jiu-jitsu, which is going to enable you to stop repeating your mistakes and get better faster. Let's get into the episode Also. You're loving the podcast and what we would love from you is one small favor, one small thing Please like, follow and subscribe. It goes a long way to helping us share good content like this with more good folks like you Better listen very carefully. A good martial artist does not become tense, but ready. Essentially, at this point, the fight is over, so you pretty much flow with the goal. Who is worthy to be trusted with the secret to limitless power. I'm ready.
Speaker 1:The five reasons you are stuck on your white belt. There are some common mistakes. We've all been there. We've probably done them at more than just white belt, but what I have found is very common. We've done various episodes trying to help out our white belt brethren, because they are actually the majority of the jiu-jitsu folks in the world. Yeah, and that's where a lot of people they never get past white belt, like there was a lot of comments, people being like fuck, I've been on my white belt 15 years. You know, I still show up. I love the game, but I wish I could just fucking crack this bad boy. You know 15 years they've been showing up. Yeah, bro, they've been showing up. Obviously there's inconsistencies there. They do many other things.
Speaker 1:I slept with the coach's wife, but no big deal Changed schools 15 times in 15 years. It is tough when there may be some things that are not told to you as to why you're not getting there. I mean the classic line just keep showing up. But let's unpack it a bit more, because these five things I see as commonalities, because when I ask somebody, hey, how about this, how about this? Usually one of the five is not happy. It's not so much fucking up, but they're not aware that hey, I'm doing this thing and you don't know what you don't know. And so we've got to get into it.
Speaker 1:And I actually think one of the biggest issues because this is not uniform in jujitsu is knowing where the fuck to start. You come into a school. You're like I'm just a person, I'm trying to do jujitsu here, and you might go to a beginner's class, but there's no real, even though there could be a fundamentals class at your school, and so they'll say these are the fundamentals, start here. Do that. It's not uniform. You go to a different school and it's totally different. They're like, ah, just jump in, everyone rolls together, it doesn't matter. And you're like, no, we don't even do much technique, we just roll. Or hey, we're ecological, we do it this way. It's like no, we're aoj, we do it that way. You're like what the fuck? It's so confusing, I believe and we've talked about this before in terms of like onboarding in a gym and having a buddy and all this stuff. Where the fuck do you start? Like when you started, joe, as a white belt, obviously I know you would jump guillotining everybody, because Mine was basically- valet tutor.
Speaker 2:I was like hey we've got this class here, anything goes. The only rule is there are no rules.
Speaker 1:But I mean, you at least had a bit of a clue right, because in the sense that you'd seen some stuff on ufc, yeah, I'd watch some, watch some ufc and I think a lot of people awareness of the ufc is pretty big now. Yeah, yeah, and awareness of jujitsu is being pretty effective in terms of like choking people, doing whatever People have a rough idea of. Oh, what's Jiu-Jitsu? It's that ground stuff, you know.
Speaker 2:And yeah, and you know, when you're, there's a privilege to being like a 20-whatever-year-old athletic dude where you can just like fucking go in and just oh, this is how it works, and start playing the sport, go mental yeah, yeah, how it works, and start playing the sport.
Speaker 1:Go mental, yeah, yeah. But if no, but let's, let's. Let's look at it from our well, like a friend of ours, like, say, we talked a friend of ours into doing jiu-jitsu, like I'm trying to talk my friend ilia into doing it and he he said no, no, do it, bruh, do it.
Speaker 1:I mean, he played rugby when he was like younger. But, um, he's lifting weights but he's getting his son into jiu-jitsu and I think this is the common thing. So he's super stoked that he's little, a little. Five year old, four year old kids doing jujitsu, yeah, cause he's a bit of bit of a savage, like just wants to rumble. And so now he's like fuck, I could do it, I should do it. And I'm telling him you got to do it. He's got many. I think there's many things you do in life where-.
Speaker 2:As in, like I don't know which gym to go to Technique.
Speaker 1:Or like should I be wrestling? Should I be playing guard? Like I think for many people when they start jujitsu they just do whatever's default mode, but it's never actually explained to them. Like hey, man, start here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I would think that, yeah, I know that feeling and I've seen it play out so many times in. If you're fortunate enough to be in a gym where, like people are, people communicate well and they foster in new people well, and you might find yourself in the deep end. But you can ask someone like, bro, what you know, what the fuck should I, what should I be working on, and that some can, someone can give you good information. I think that, like, that's great, that's, that's really adequate. Yeah, um, leaning on the coach for that right, you would hope that the coach would be ready to have a conversation with you about what you should do.
Speaker 1:Yes, and sometimes it doesn't always come from the coach. Sometimes it comes from a senior student or like a head instructor, which is not necessarily the head coach per se, but oftentimes it can be your fellow white belts. They're like hey man, I just learned this new wrist lock from flying Choi Ba. You're like, hey man, I just learned this new wrist lock from flying Choi Ba. You're like what? I don't even know what those words are, what does that mean? And that's that can be the confusing thing too, because you're not just learning movement, you're learning terminology and it just it can, it can be very overwhelming. I know for sure.
Speaker 1:I didn't know what the fuck was going on for the first, I don't know, three or four months. I was just getting beat up, basically, and just trying to pay attention and see how it all related, and I just got tougher. I think that was my main thing at White Belt. I just became fucking tough, like took my beatings, accepted them and learned one sweep and one submission and that is all. And look, that's for most people that's maybe's a good start, because you, you're just copying beatings, but, um, knowing where to start and asking that question, I think also people might feel afraid to do like oh, I don't want to. I don't want to be uncool, I want the coach to like me. I don't want to say something stupid, even though everybody's already looking at you with a certain degree of judgment and, of course, yeah, just fucking another white belt talking neutral guy.
Speaker 1:What's he thinking? But but that's the thing, like I, you are not gonna know if you don't ask. So part of the knowing where to start thing is it does take a bit of courage to just grab something like hey man, I've been here four weeks and I fucking still don't know what's going on. And that can that can last a long time if you don't kind of yeah, there's.
Speaker 2:There's so much power in um having a having a deliberate conversation with with. You know the coach um whether it's like hey, coach, can I get five minutes with you after class, or when is a good time to ask? To ask and they'll tell you and and give me a call tomorrow, or whatever, but just be like hey, I feel a bit lost. I would like you to tell me. What should I be focusing on right now?
Speaker 1:Yeah, just a particular thing, not everything.
Speaker 2:And look red flag. If they don't give you a specific response, fob you off. Yeah. If they fo't give you a specific response, fob you off. Yeah, if they, if they, if they I mean it doesn't have to be specific they might be like, hey, you're doing everything right, just keep coming. That's a good response. It's like okay, great. But if they, if you feel like they're just like, ah, just keep showing up Like they're not really respecting the fact that you've come to them with this major red Jim.
Speaker 1:Number two doing too much. I honestly this is the kind of going too broad. So you know, when you start jujitsu, like you're frothing out, like I know that I went from training twice a week to like five times a week, to like trying to train every fucking day, very, very quickly. That turned around for me in about in about three months, cause I was like I'm not getting better, I've got to do more. I've got to do more. And then, um, I've got to get a Gracie mag, I've got to fucking study the extra shit, like I was just it's, this is my obsessiveness coming in. But I know, um, and you know whether you've experienced this, you might be deep in it right now it's that honeymoon period, that initial frost, where you're just like I have to fucking make this my life. And so you know, you've got all the BJJ fanatics instructionals. You're trying to wrestle. You're trying to wrestle up. You're trying to do beer and bolas. You're trying to learn foot locks, leg locks, triangles. You're just trying to learn and do everything. You go in the gym You've got our app You're doing the workouts like.
Speaker 1:The problem with this is, um, if we sounds a bit silly, but like so the scientific method is trying to work out what doesn't work and if you have too many variables, you don't know. If you change 15 variables, you're like and something works, you actually can't tell because you change too much shit. Yeah, you actually got to limit the variables so you can know what's working. And this is where I believe that obviously you've got to go with knowing where to start, but then you've got to try and just dial it into just all right, I'm just going to be content to work on one or two things so you can get better. Doing too much is Bit of an essentialist approach. Oh, look out, less but better. Yes, your boy Dieter Rams, the godfather of design, as they call him.
Speaker 1:And look, I am guilty of this. I am the person who does too much and have fucking suffered, and the longer you do it, the more you suffer. Like, whether it's businesses, whether it's ideas, what you start to realize is you're fucking making. You know, an inch of progress in a hundred directions as opposed to a mile of progress in one direction, and that sucks.
Speaker 1:Like it actually feels shit when people ask you like, oh, how you going with this? And also, and when are you doing this and when are you doing that and you and you're like I'm getting fucking nowhere here, like that's and and and it's. I'm not saying this to shame anyone, because, like I'm the person who is is the worst at this. The amount of stuff that I've had to switch off, say no to and kind of give up on in order to do better at what I'm trying to work on is fucking unparalleled. There's so many things that I wish I could be doing, but I understand that if I want to be good at what I am doing right now, I cannot do those other things, and I struggle with that. It's a battle for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's tough. I yeah, I know, I know the feeling and, um for sure, like you're at jiu-jitsu, you're frothing and you're like I want to do everything that's in my power. So sick yeah. But look, you got to remember, this is like a 10 year strategy. Yeah, 10 years. And so don't sprint. You know, just just walk, just start walking and like follow the leadership and just work. You know, have one thing in your mind that you want to work on and you will get to where you want to go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely, and and it it is difficult because we're not trying to curb anyone's enthusiasm, but when you're in the frost phase, it's the energy is so high.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I mean, you could still you know, tapping into that last episode eat the acai, get the Brazilian other, you know another, you know you can do all those things. These are all part of your jujitsu journey, Rites of passage Take the Duolingo app for Portuguese classes.
Speaker 1:Of course it's the only way. Just start watching.
Speaker 2:Chopper Dillidge. I'm just talking about us, when I when I Chopper Dillidge.
Speaker 1:I'm just talking about us Cause that's our yeah, yeah, for sure, this brazilian film bro it's heavy, bro.
Speaker 2:Have you seen the bit in the jail bro city of god's got nothing on this bro city?
Speaker 1:god was mainstream I still watch it. It's still a classic, right it's a fucking great film great film.
Speaker 2:About six months ago I wasn't able to get to jujitsu class with the same frequency that I normally would. Uh, and for the first time ever, I actually went to an online platform, submetaio and subscribed and it was the first time I'd done that because I found that for me, the whole instructionals, downloadable things, dvds, et cetera just never worked. So I thought I would give Submeta a go, and what I loved about it was that I could jump straight into a stream of learning with a coach that I wanted to learn from, and that was Lachlan Giles, and the way that the lessons were broken down were really easy to understand. It had all the different positions, all the different submissions, and you could basically just choose the one you wanted to learn and then you could choose, like a different level of difficulty so beginner, intermediate, advanced and, I'll be honest, I actually jumped in at some of the beginner stuff. The videos were short, the lessons were concise, and the most awesome thing about it was that it just stepped me through from A to B to C, and so you tick the lessons off.
Speaker 2:It is the most comprehensive learning platform for jujitsu that I've found, and the way that the lessons are structured. It makes it really easy for you to remember what you learn. So it's not just this more information kind of thing, it's really well organized and it's there to help you get better at jujitsu. Our friends at Submeta are offering a discount for Bulletproof listeners. If you go to submetaio and when you check out use the discount code Bulletproof16, you will get $16 off your first payment. Whether you're a white belt or you're a black belt like me, or anything in between, I promise you'll get a lot out of it. Go to Submetaio, use the code BULLETPROOF16 and rip in.
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Speaker 1:Number three fear of failure. I think this is the thing, and I've been pretty brutal on this with beginners in the gym, as also jujitsu folks, and this is probably me. At my less compassionate stage of jujitsu, probably not long after I got my black belt, I was like I'm fucking black belt. Now we're gonna fucking. I'm gonna let people know about this black belt, right, especially people who don't know anything about jiu-jitsu. They're gonna respect this, which is dumb. This is not the way. This is not.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying this is the way, but when, what was that come from? Um, I don't know, I think. Ah, just insecurity, and like wanting to be a black belt forever. And it's like now I got it, you know, like not that I'd arrived, like I definitely was aware that there's a million black belts better than me, but it was like, oh, I'm a black, I'm certified, right, yeah, so your white belt. Let me tell you how this goes. Yeah, right, which is not the best way to communicate any idea, but hey, it's a way. We've all been guilty of doing dumb shit, right, and I'm just a sucker with an opinion. But let me explain how this fear of failure thing. I was trying to cure the fear of failure for people by making them feel not good about, break them down to an atom and then rebuild, maybe, maybe.
Speaker 1:But basically oftentimes I'd be training someone in the gym and they're like, where's the mirrors? And I'm like, why, oh, I wanna check my technique. Bro, you wouldn't know good technique if it fucking kicked you in the face. How the fuck are you going to check your form? You don't know what good form is. Let me tell you what good form is. I know what the fuck the technique is. When I tell you that's a good rep, think about how it feels and cement that let's do a million of those right.
Speaker 1:My Russian coach used to say something similar to me, but in much nicer terms, with the jujitsu thing, people would be like, oh yeah, I just want to know I got my technique right. I'm like, bro, you've done five, do 200. Do it Like you really haven't had the exposure to the skill to know what the right way feels like. And so people are like, yeah, but I don't want to do it wrong. No, like yeah.
Speaker 1:Of course we don't want you to ingrain bad technique, but this fear of failure is really holding people back from or looking silly. You know, I don't look silly, you're a white bell, bro. Like you're gonna look silly, like it's expected. It's like, you know, child children, little little kids don't feel self-conscious, they just do stuff. They're like, oh, I face planted. Well, I get back up. You know it's, it's so important. The difficulty is we're adults. So it's it's so important, the difficulty is we're adults, so it's been very ingrained in us. Don't look stupid. People will hate you, people will fucking, you'll be disowned. No, it is really accepted that you're a white belt and actually being enthusiastic and being willing to fuck up is kind of good. Like I, I think we have too many hangups and, as a result, we get stuck.
Speaker 2:So how do you think that one expresses itself in this person's training?
Speaker 1:Well, I think the way it can be is people hold themselves back from actually learning, like the failure is where the learning occurs. So for some people it's oh, I didn't get tapped, but yeah, you didn't do any jujitsu, right Like. I used to train with a guy who used to you couldn't submit this guy, he would turtle. So for some people it's oh, I didn't get tapped, but yeah, he didn't do any jujitsu, right like. I used to train with a guy who used to, you couldn't submit this guy. Yeah, he would turtle, he'd side control, but at no point was he really like playing any guard, at no point was he trying to do a sweep. He was just like you can't get me, yeah, he won the won the round in his line to his very hard to submit, but it's.
Speaker 1:But yeah, but you didn't actually do any jujitsu. You may not have made any mistakes, but what are you practicing here? Yeah, so I, I believe this, this idea, which is fear of failure. When you're a white belt, it is expected for you to fail and fail many, many times. You having the mindset of oh, I don't want to fail is actually one of the biggest limiting factors and the reason why people don't progress I'll be honest, there's actually something, um, oddly intimidating about a like a junior right in jiu-jitsu beat a white belt, blue, whatever that.
Speaker 2:Um, maybe you catch them with something and then you kind of end up there again and you maybe catch them again, but you can see that they're letting it happen because they're working on something and you're like you're using me to learn some shit, clever girl.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're like you're like motherfucker, but it really is like a sign of like, like advanced development in a way because, like you know, I'm allowing myself to make this mistake because each time I I garner a new lesson from it and and look, man, man, this is the thing that blew me out with Craig Jones when we first started training together.
Speaker 1:We were purple belts and I had actually beaten him in competition prior to. He used to live in Adelaide and when he came I was like, all right, this Adelaide guy, huh. But there was something about Craig where his learning learning loop was fast. If you caught him with something, he would never let you kind of do it again, right from very early, yeah, from very early. So if you've only got about five or six submissions within one training session, he may have just totally shut you down now and now. Now you can't fucking be. What the fuck this guy learned so fast? It wasn't necessarily had any fear of getting submitted, but he's like once you, he worked it out very quickly yeah, okay, he's processing it all.
Speaker 1:He turns it around so fucking fast to the point that you almost can't do anything to him once he's learned what that is. And I'm talking like this is like fucking 12 years ago to you know, it's pretty wild, yeah, wow. So for people who are getting stuck at white belt, I feel that this idea that oh, I don't want to get tapped in front of the coach and I don't want to look silly like no, please do, yeah, it's.
Speaker 2:It's not about.
Speaker 1:It's not about winning the, winning the, the training no, your, your winning is the, is the, is the learning, and and and fuck up as much as you can, as quick as you can. But that feeds into my next point, which is don't repeat mistakes. This is number four. This is a thing where I've had conversations with people where they're like, yeah, I always get caught in the armbar. How long has that been going on for? Like years? Like, oh, yeah, it's just my weakness in my game. Well, fuck you.
Speaker 1:You got to analyze that. We're gonna have to think about that, because making mistakes is good as long as it's not the same mistake like make a mistake, learn what? What are the factors that made that unsuccessful or created that problem? And then tighten that up, and then that will give you new ground to make a new mistake. Yeah, like, I think this is applicable across the board, for for everything business, gym, jiu jitsu, you name it when you're first starting out making mistakes and making mistakes at any point is you know the whole, you win or you learn thing.
Speaker 1:But then my counterpoint to that is if you're winning, does that mean you're never learning? Ooh, maybe true, maybe not. So repeating mistakes I will often ask somebody who's saying they've got a problem in jujitsu and I will say how long have you had this problem? And they're like if it's a short time, no problem, if it's a long time, this indicates that there's been no intervention to stop the person from making the mistake. Yeah, and if I roll with somebody in a playful way, if they keep making the same mistake, I will submit them the same way, multiple, multiple, multiple times until they go what do you fuck? That was fucked. Why did you keep doing that thing to me?
Speaker 2:That was fucked. Thanks for the roll man. Great doing that thing. To me that was fuck.
Speaker 1:Thanks for the role man. See you next time. Bye, that's me. I'm like I don't want to talk about. I gotta go to therapy right now, sick of this.
Speaker 2:Um, yeah, don't, don't be afraid to fail. But if you, if you are failing, like, search for a reason why like, like, have a, have a desire to understand what's going wrong there, and that's, that's the learning.
Speaker 1:That's the analysis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and, and, and it's the new year and you want to get in shape. You've made the decision that you want to get in the gym and start building a strong, robust body for Jiu-Jitsu. Obviously, JT and I are on board with this decision of yours, but the problem is there's so much information out there. It can be really hard to know where to start and what kind of process to follow. This is exactly why JT and I designed the Bulletproof for BJJ app.
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Speaker 1:This actually feeds to the fifth point, which is you need feedback. Lack of feedback is holding people back. This is absolutely number one Making mistakes and not knowing why. Like making mistakes and not knowing why. That's kind of fucked Like. I struggle with that and so I always it sounds strange. I do seek the opinions of other people. I do try to learn and be like why I feel stuck. What's my bottleneck here?
Speaker 1:Like there's got to be someone out there who has the answer to this, and so I always try to seek this information in different ways to get the fucking feedback, because feedback is learning. If you don't know what, you don't know. So you could be doing something and go well, I'm doing what the coach showed me, but until coach comes over and goes, no, you don't put your hand here, you put your hand here, you go. Oh my God, I didn't know that.
Speaker 1:You know like for many years I actually had this thing where I was grabbing the belt because I'd learned a sweep where you grab the belt and I'm like, oh well, grabbing the belt must be really good. But then someone told me, no, if they control your legs, they'll pass your guard, like no, but this belt grip's really good, right. And I'm like, well, no, it doesn't. Unless you're doing that sweep, it doesn't do shit. Why are you grabbing the belt's? Good, right, and they're like no, fucking strong, try both. That's right, fucking. Yeah, you can't. And that's the thing. Like it's, it's so difficult. I mean, you might have experienced this joe where nah never made that mistake no, no.
Speaker 1:Where you, for example, you go to a seminar or you train with someone different and they show you something you're like fuck, I've been doing that wrong for five years, like maybe as long as my whole jiu-jitsu. How come they didn't show me this earlier?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I never went to a seminar where the jiu-jitsu, where the shit they were teaching me was basic enough to actually fucking teach me something about my own jiu-jitsu.
Speaker 1:Okay, fair enough.
Speaker 2:It's always like wow, this is really confusing stuff.
Speaker 1:Quantum physics.
Speaker 2:But oh yeah, for sure, yeah, but oh yeah, for sure yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh God, heaps of mistakes, but even I mean like, for example, like Adam might have said, hey man, when you're here, do this, and you're like, fuck yeah, I've been doing this. You know, I've been doing that same thing for 10 years. I didn't know.
Speaker 2:I remember training with Zane here yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Back when we had the mats downstairs, bro, you don't don't try and like pass, like don't try, and he's like you keep trying to like come around to side control, but you don't have the underhook. And I was like, oh yeah, and he's like you gotta have this underhook. And I'm like, yeah, okay, of course. And then I was thinking about I'm like, oh my god, like I forgot that you need the underhook and it just was a habit I developed right of years of. It was mostly years of not training, sure, and just scrapping. But you know, every now and again I was like gosh, but yeah, like you, you start doing, you can start doing. That was a brown belt, guys. You start doing stupid things but?
Speaker 1:but that can happen. The feedback is the is the breakthrough. Yeah, and if no one says it to you, you're just going to perpetuate. Yeah, and this is this is why this feeds on from the not repeating mistakes thing is if you don't have a feedback mechanism, it is easy to get stuck. And if you've trained at a big gym and you don't get a chance to talk much with your coach, that can get you stuck. And so finding somebody who's better than you at what you're doing and it wouldn't have to be heaps better, it could be just a mate of yours who's trained for a year longer, it could be one of the purple belts or whoever.
Speaker 1:You need allies who do know more than you, who can kind of you can say to them hey man, I'm doing this thing, what am I doing wrong? Yeah, and that can save you so much fucking time. It can help you break through the next level. Absolutely. So there it is. Folks, you got to know where to start. You gotta you know. You gotta kind of hone it in. Try not to do too much. Don't worry about fucking up. Fuck up plenty, but don't make the same fuck ups. Let's not repeat our mistakes. Let's switch it up, get some feedback and you're going to break through and you will no longer be stuck on the white belt. You will be on your way to that blue belt and happy days. There it is, omnibus Peace, fam.