Lachlan Giles on Leg Locks, Heel Hooks & ADCC | Interview with The Giant Killer | Ep 37

In this episode, we sit down with Lachlan Giles — ADCC veteran, leg lock specialist, physiotherapist, and head coach at Absolute MMA St Kilda in Melbourne, Australia. With decades in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and a PhD in physiotherapy, Lachlan brings a uniquely thoughtful approach to both competition and coaching.

Instagram lachlan_giles

Absolute MMA St. Kilda

https://absolutemma.com.au/locations/absolute-st-kilda/

SUBMETA

https://submeta.io/

John Will

https://www.redcatacademy.com.au/john_will.html

Hangar 4

https://www.industrialstrengthandfitness.com.au/

Rick Williams

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VyI57BwiQGY

Egan Inoue

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egan_Inoue

Gordon Ryan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Ryan

Eoghan Oflanagan

https://www.bjjheroes.com/bjj-fighters/eoghan-oflanagan

Gene LeBell

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_LeBell

ADCC

https://adcc-official.com/

Marcelo Garcia 

https://marcelogarciajj.com/mgjj/marcelogarcia/

Eddie Bravo

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eddie_Bravo

Craig Jones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craig_Jones_(grappler)

IBJJF

https://ibjjf.com/

UFC BJJ

https://www.ufc.com/ufcbjj

Bob Bass

https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100048928735141

Kade Ruotolo 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kade_Ruotolo

The Ruotolo Brothers

https://ruotolobrothersjiujitsu.com/

Rico Rodriguez

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricco_Rodriguez

The Machado Brothers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machado_family

Black Sheep BJJ

https://www.blacksheepjiujitsu.com/

Livia Giles 

https://www.instagram.com/livia_giles/

Melissa Will

https://www.instagram.com/melissawillbjj/?hl=en

David Mitchell and Lauren Sacks

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaxnka9MSgQzO8tCIQmeLMgcauDp3qHxN

Kit Dale

https://kitdaletraining.com/

Music “Disambiguation” by Robel Borja https://open.spotify.com/artist/7j0DUZ79z4edeLkU2H1UoJ?si=eISl0YfaQ-yLT

This episode was directed and presented by Dave Meyer, editor & coproducer by Ryan Turner, producer & marketing Robbie Lockie, music kindly provided by Robel Borja.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I think passing the guard and taking the back, there's lots of small battles you have to win. Like it's not usually a one move thing. And if you're able to outmatch your opponent in multiple small battles in a row, then it's kind of a clear sign that you're a better grappler. Whereas with leg locks, often it's only one or two moves, then you might be straight into a finish. I think because there's less battles to win to get to a leg lock and a finish, you could beat a better grappler through leg locks. So I think with that in mind, everyone should be working that reliable path. Sweeps, guard passes, back takes, and so on. Because as you get better as a grappler, this is going to be extremely reliable for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:43

Welcome to the AGS Warrior Lab. I'm DJJ Blackbelt and Dirty Dozen member Dave Meyer, here to draw wisdom from Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and the martial arts and explore how it applies to success in business, relationships, your long-term health, and making the most out of your life. What you're about to hear is a discussion I recently recorded with Loughlin Giles. Lachlan is an Australian-Brazilian Jiu Jitsu black belt. He's an elite submission grappler, an elite coach. He holds a PhD in physiotherapy, and he is widely regarded as one of the most influential technical minds in modern no-gi grappling. He has had tons of competitive success and gained global attention at the 2019 ADCC World Championships, when as a relatively small 77-kilogram fighter, he entered into the absolute division, unlimited weight division, and submitted several much larger heavyweights on his way to earning a bronze medal. Giles is known for his analytical approach to grappling and his influence on the modern leg lock game. He's credited with developing or popularizing positions such as the K Guard and innovative uses of outside Sankaku and leg entanglement systems. He's head coach at Absolute MMA in Melbourne, and his students include world-class competitors such as Craig Jones, who he awarded a black belt to back in 2016. He runs the online educational platform SubMeta. And we talked about approaches to training, leg attacks, of course, and more. We had a slight technical issue just in the last couple of minutes, so you may hear my audio cut out just a little bit. But do sit back and enjoy my conversation with Lachlan Giles. Lachlan, thank you so much for making the time on short notice. It's really nice of you. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 2:37

Yeah, thanks, Apes, for having me on.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I should tell you that our mutual friend John Will says hi. Did we ever meet? I visited Hangar 4, where you originally started your jujitsu at least once when Tyrone was there, who is a very fun guy. Did we meet, or is this our first time meeting?

SPEAKER_01 2:52

Yeah, that would meet. Yeah, I've probably known you a lot longer than Jim Known. Been following you.

SPEAKER_00 2:57

Well, I hope I made a good impression. It couldn't have been too bad because you're willing to talk to me.

SPEAKER_01 3:01

So well, in particular, I think just obviously through John Wheel, and he always spoke so highly of you. So I think that's kind of always been the you know.

SPEAKER_00 3:08

Well, I pay him a lot as a publicist.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 3:12

So, Lachlan, you have I want to just ask about some of your skill development a little bit, because you're amazing. You have a PhD in physiotherapy, which I assume that means I should be calling you Dr. Giles for the rest of the interview.

SPEAKER_01 3:26

I never use the term doctor, but yeah, might as well I might as well get that.

SPEAKER_00 3:30

My wife has a PhD in economics and she makes me call her a doctor. So maybe there's something weird going on in our relationship. No, I'll call you Lochlin. But does that connect up with your jujitsu? Has that affected your understanding of like breaking technology and how the body works? And did that lead you to an interest in breaking technology, or did your jujitsu skills lead you to an interest in physiotherapy?

SPEAKER_01 3:53

Yeah, good question. I think actually, yeah, because I think probably leading into becoming a physiotherapist was I would have been like 15 or so. I think I got caught in an Americana, maybe in a tournament, and had a small elbow injury, and I saw a physiotherapist. And that probably made me think that physiotherapy is all you get to work with athletes and it's all sports, and then you do the degree and you realize it's mostly 90-year-olds with the sole hips.

SPEAKER_00 4:18

But that's we will all be 90-year-olds giving enough.

SPEAKER_01 4:21

That's important.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

I'm getting close.

SPEAKER_01 4:23

Yeah, and then so that that might have been sort of where I first got exposed to physiotherapy, and then like so sort of probably jujitsu first, then had an injury or two, and then I thought, oh, okay, that would be an interesting career to get into. It's hard because I've sort of learned anatomy and how the body works and so on. It's kind of hard for me to remember how I thought about how things move and how they work beforehand. So it's been a good 20 odd years since I started my studies. So yeah, it's hard for me to say. Like I try to picture how I would view things differently if I didn't, if I never did that degree, and I don't really know. I will say that I think jujitsu's done a fantastic job of working out how the body shouldn't move without any actual knowledge of the underlying anatomy to some degree. People have learnt very efficient, effective ways of how to break limbs, how to take things where they shouldn't go. Yeah. So I think actually I think they both sort of complement each other. You learn how things are meant to move, and then you also through doing jujitsu, I think you learn a lot of things about like what angles which helps like the physiotherapy side of things. You learn a lot about injuries too. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:27

I agree. I thought you were gonna say jujitsu has done a good job of making a lot of physiotherapists wealthy.

unknown 5:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:36

Well, certainly a lot of orthopedic surgeons.

SPEAKER_01 5:38

I had the perfect business model, but now I don't even work as a physiotherapist anymore.

SPEAKER_00 5:42

But yeah, exactly. What's interesting, I know people who are psychologists, and their interest in psychology came because they went to a therapist at some point and they just thought, oh, this is interesting. That was helpful for me. I want to do that with someone else. And I guess that could be the case in other medical, more hard science stuff as well.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

Yeah, I'd say so for sure.

SPEAKER_00 6:00

I came out of Japanese jujitsu before I got to Brazilian jiu-jitsu. We didn't call it Japanese jujitsu at the time, it was jiu-jitsu now to differentiate non-Brazilian jujitsu. But the style I was doing had this part of it called Sefuku Jutsu, restorative therapy, right? And we were always told, well, if you're gonna hurt someone, you got to learn how to put them back together. And I always wondered, well, or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe we can go to learn how to put them back together so we can better learn how to harm them. But I think it's it can go either way.

SPEAKER_01 6:27

I would say that's very true. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

So in your evolution of jujitsu, which I assume what certainly evolved, are you still evolving? Do you think your game is still evolving at this point?

SPEAKER_01 6:38

Absolutely, yeah. I think you have to actively make that decision. That's very easy to get your game and you're happy with the moves that work for you. And it's very easy to just stick with that. But I just think as a, well, probably primarily as a coach these days, it's important to be learning different things. Like, oh, your students are not all going to be playing the same game. And I want to be able to help people, you know, if they choose to do something different, I want to have enough experience in that that I can help them, at least in the early to mid sort of advancement stages of that. Obviously, that when they become sort of specialists in that area, I they'll probably develop that. If it's something I don't do a lot of, they'll probably develop that to a higher level than I would. But I want to be able to help my students and also like recognize sticking points that you're gonna run into as you're doing that, which I think is pretty crucial. So, yeah. In terms of like as an athlete, look, I'm always trying to improve. I've sort of retired from competition now, but there's always like little things I think you can take from like current trends and so on that you can add to your existing game as well, which can be beneficial.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

So yeah. But I notice when I go visit John every once in a while out in Geelong, like you. I mean, he's just watching video after video and dissecting things and saying, let's get on the mat, because he's an active instructor, right? And I do have the luxury personally, as a competitor, I want to get better, but no one's coming to pay me for my knowledge and I'm not responsible for anyone's development. And I think as a result of that, I am aware of what's going on in jiu-jitsu, but I don't feel the responsibility to stay on top of it like you would need to as an instructor. Cause, like you say, you have responsibility to your students, right?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just enjoyable as well, right? Like I've been doing jujitsu for 22 years now, so to keep it interesting, just having new things to work on. And that's I think that's why I do it as opposed to I played some other sports when I was younger before I found jiu-jitsu. And I think what drew me to jujitsu was the like it felt like there was so much to learn, and that hasn't stopped. Whereas I think you play basketball, lots of fun, but I don't feel like there's the same depth of new things to learn. You kind of quite quickly you understand what you're meant to do, you just got to get better at it.

SPEAKER_00 8:54

Right. I think that is a not probably not totally unique, but a unique thing about jujitsu and about grappling, it's in a state of evolution right now. So I think in some sports, at the highest level of the sport, there's still evolution going on, like an extra twist in crazy extreme sports. They're developing new techniques because they're just now pushing the boundaries of what humans can do. Average people, if the sport is not expanding for average people in that sport, they're just doing what they're doing. Yeah, but jujitsu seems really unique in that way that it really is changing. You come back a year from now or three years from now, it looks different for the average person.

SPEAKER_01 9:30

Yeah. And I think at the elite level in skiing, they might be adding like a new move, but it's very clear most of the time, like what that is they're trying to learn. It's usually pretty easy to understand what it is. I'm not saying it's an easy skill to actually learn, but it's easy to understand what is required. I would, I mean, even myself, sometimes I watch jujitsu and I'm like, I watch a sequence and I go, I don't know what the solution is here. Like there's a lot of unknowns, and that's where I think it adds a lot of complexity. It's very difficult to truly understand what the best response is to a particular situation.

SPEAKER_00 10:01

I think those unknowns, Lachlan, come from the fact that the whole point of our sport is to manipulate joints and move our bodies in different ways, which is probably not actually infinite, but feels sort of infinite. You have all these movements and things. Like there's only so many movements you're gonna do, even if you're a great skier or whatever, mountain bike rider or whatever. And then you're multiplying it times another person. So now it's like, yeah, it might be the thing you're gonna do, but it's not gonna work in this situation against that person. And then there's timing, and then there's speed, and then there's strength differentiation. There's just so many factors.

SPEAKER_01 10:31

Yeah, I agree. I think it's probably infinite. I think probably over time the adjustments, the change in what's popular or the meta per se is probably going to be smaller. You'll probably get more minor adjustments over time. I assume maybe in a hundred years. I don't know if there'll be people coming up with new positions, maybe, but it'll probably be a lot less frequent. But there's probably some little subtle things that are still going on that make a big difference.

SPEAKER_00 10:57

So one of the big advancements or changes that's happened has been the whole leg attack thing. I've been around for a long time for BJJ, as you know. When I started, well, first of all, in even in the styles of jujitsu, I did, there were straight leg bars, there were slicers, there were straight foot attacks, there was heel hook, although I didn't really encounter that until I got into BGJ. So that existed. And then there were courts of people who were doing it early on, like Rick Williams, one of our early black belts, was attacking the feet. I remember when Egan Inno started training with us, he was like, whoa, this guy's going after your feet. But there definitely was a little bit of a stigma around it. And I think the stigma was, eh, you're just doing that because you can't pass the guard, kind of a thing. It's not, it wasn't seen as a control move. I guess there's still probably still some people who see it now, but I mean, careful what you say because someone's gonna rip your leg off. So one thing I've noticed, I'll just share this with you. I'm not a person who bemoans, like, oh my gosh, isn't it terrible or anything like that? I do notice that when I get on the mat with young people one year, two years, three years, four years in, I've been defending my feet for a long time. I'm trying to never even let them get to touch my feet. And they don't seem to have answers for when I just smashed the hell out of them. Because I don't think they're used to that, because they're expecting a very fluid game. And I'm not sure that's a bad thing or a good thing, but I'm just noticing that sort of the sport moves on and people take different focuses. I guess one question I would have for you is because you're a teacher, you have people walking in every day, they're all new. When I started in jujitsu, there was a much more finite number of Brazilian jujitsu techniques, and it was like, okay, we're gonna put you on the mount and you're gonna learn the mount. And if you learn the mount well, your going on the mount is not gonna risk someone else getting on the mount on you. My putting you in a triangle is not gonna risk. But if I start going for feet and I don't know what I'm doing, we're playing a kind of a shootout, and I am risking that. At what point would you teach leg locks? Do you think basic foot attacks is something people should be learning on day one? Should it be reserved? Like, how do you mix that into your curriculum?

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Yeah, it's a tricky question. I have like two opposing viewpoints, I guess, on that. I think the reliable pathway to beat someone is through like the positional hierarchy. Like if you get better than someone at jujitsu, you can repeatedly beat them by the sort of general approach of sweep or takedown, pass the guard, take mount or the back and get the finished. I would say generally, if you can do that to someone once, you can probably do it again. And that's kind of like repeatable. Leg locks, I guess because like I think like passing the guard and taking the back, there's lots of small battles you have to win just to get past the guard. Like it's not usually a one move thing. And if you're able to like outmatch your opponent in multiple small battles in a row, then it's kind of a clear sign that you're a better grappler, I think. Like there's a series of battles that you've won against them or that they've lost, they've kept losing along the way. Whereas with leg locks, it's often it's only potentially like one or two moves. It's like sit in on the leg and then you might be straight into a finish, essentially. I think because there's less battles to win to get to a leg lock and a finish, you can therefore submit people who are a lot better than you. You could beat a better grappler through leg locks because there's more chance of you just winning a couple of little battles versus like the more reliable pathway. You actually have to be the better grappler. To do the guard passing, take the back, and finishing. So I think with that sort of in mind, I think the pathway everyone should be working that sort of reliable pathway. Like you want to just work your sweeps, guard passes, back takes, and so on. Because I think that's just like as you get better as a grappler, this is gonna be extremely reliable for you. If you see that in like uh someone like a Gordon Ryan who at first was leg locking, he first came onto the scene, and in his initial early black belt days, he kind of would beat the better guys with leg locks, and then it sort of over time just became, oh, okay, I'll just pass the guard and sweep past the guard, take the back. That became the more reliable strategy for him. So I think that's important. Like I think it's definitely important to do that. There's definitely an issue with people sitting back for leg locks, choosing not to do the reliable style. They're instead of trying to pass, they sit back on a leg, which of course does work sometimes, but that is also more defendable and less reliable as you go up, as you and your opponent get better as well. So I think if they're practicing in a way that discourages that approach, I think that's generally not good. I try to avoid it. I tend to be totally fine with even beginners using leg entries from guard. If you're on your back, you can get to the leg. You try to put your opponent onto their butt. You can look for the leg lock. If it's not working, come on top. Come on top. Yep. I would probably more try to intervene if it was someone who just is refusing to practice passing the guard and just sitting back on the legs. No, that's not a useful skill. I think we're seeing that now. Like guys like Owen O'Flanagan seem to be sitting back on the legs from top a lot, and it's a good effective strategy. But I again I think it has to be mixed in with threatening guard passing and that sort of stuff. So, yeah, overall, these days I do teach leg locks too, like in our beginner program, particularly like straight foot locks, because most of them aren't going to be able to do heel hooks in their tournaments for a long time. But it'll come from guard entries. They have to enter into a leg entanglement from guard, potentially knock them to their butt, look for the straight footlock, or come up on top to sweep, and then when you're on top, I don't really teach sitting back for leg locks on a mention.

SPEAKER_00 16:26

Because you don't want them to abandon what could be an otherwise good position. Yeah, exactly. That was another thing I was wondering from your point of view. You could look at the all the leg attacks as a add-on to what we were doing in jiu-jitsu, and like I say, some people were doing it, but it's certainly got refined. Absolutely, much more than I know now or ever knew at the time. You could look at it as an adding on, or you could look at it as it's actually changing jujitsu. It's making guard passing unnecessary. So, like 50 years from now, no one will pass guard. I mean, I don't know. Do you view it more of an add-on, or do you view it more of a changing the DNA of the art itself, assuming rules allow you to do it?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Yeah, I think it's just another option. That's how I see it. You can go for the legs, you can look for guard passing. It's obviously like still in terms of the submissions that occur in high-level tournaments, leg locks have been around a while now. They're still quite frequent. So I definitely don't think it's something people should ignore if you're a competitor. I think you should add that to your game. It's not the only way you can go about it, but no, I just I see it as all as part of it. Just like armbars. Armbars are the same as leg locks to me. There's just like it's an upper body attack, you can go for a lower body attack. The only difference is armbars tend to occur more after you've established a control. Some kind of control. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's control positions in the leg locks too. Obviously, like you usually look for some level of like the saddle or some sort of backside 50-50 or some sort of positioning that precedes the actual finish. And those can be linked in with the guard passing and so on, too. I think if like when you do it effectively, you set up a leg lock position, they defend the leg lock, they often give up a guard pass or something else in doing so. So I think they it should all be linked into the whole game.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

To be fair to leg lockers, when you're on the mount, if you go for an arm bar, you are giving up a top position.

SPEAKER_02 18:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:14

And if something goes wrong with that, you very well may have just given up a dominant top position, and now someone's in your guard. So it's not really that different if you're passing someone's guard and you decide to attack a foot instead of completing the pass.

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah. And there are ways to ensure that should the leg lock not work, that you're still able to come back on top of the top. You're still able to come on top. Yeah. But I think it would be a disservice to someone's jujitsu to encourage sitting back for leg locks instead of passing. I think it should be predominantly 90% of the time at least, should be like working to progress through the guard pass. I think.

SPEAKER_00 18:48

I agree with that. I mean, I think there's people, it also kind of depends on what are your goals here. If your goal is to win, like you were saying, somebody who doesn't have a lot of jujitsu, I don't know, bringing a gun to the fight. But it may not be that useful, but if you get a shot off, maybe it'll be really useful. I remember Gene LaBelle, who did lots of weird foot stuff training with him, and he would say, Hey Dave, you could be a black belt in everything else, but if your defense is white belt at a foot and there's a guy who's a white belt at everything else, but he's a blue belt at foot attack, he's got a chance to take you out.

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Oh, for sure. I mean, if you look at the 2019 ADCC run in the open way, I submitted some people who I don't think I could have beaten any other way. Like I don't see myself in that, like fighting a Kainen Duarte of I don't see myself taking him down, passing his guard, and taking his back and finishing. Not saying that's it is possible for someone my size to do that against someone like that, but it's that would require a huge skill gap in my favor for me to be able to do that. Whereas I probably just had a skill gap in my favor in the leg lock realm and I was able to utilize it.

SPEAKER_00 19:55

I think that's true, but I don't think it diminishes in the slightest the accomplishment. Like 10,000 other people might have really good foot locks and whatever, and they would have been smashed. You weren't. I mean, you was is amazing. But again, and to be fair to you, I don't think that's that different than maybe a skinny guy who's just got this amazing triangle and he's really good at getting a triangle. And that's the only thing he's got. And he would never be able to pass anybody's guard, he would never be able to take them down, he would never, but man, can he get you in the triangle from 60 different positions? No one's gonna criticize that.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Yeah, no, I agree. That's it. I think specialize, especially if you want to beat someone who's a tough opponent. You can if you're better than them everywhere, then you can try to beat them anyway. But otherwise, it's better to funnel everything to a particular area that you're very good at.

SPEAKER_00 20:38

Right. You mentioned funnel. John Willigan talks about hourglass training, where you have something in the middle that's quite narrow, but you're very good at it. You have many different ways to get there, right? And then once you're there, you have as many options as you need at the bottom. You can fan out from there. But that's the thing that you want. And like Eddie Bravo, who came out of my school, Jean-Jacques School, that was for a long time, it was he's gonna get you into like mission control or something like that, or Twister. He's got 65 ways to get to it, and then once you're in it, he's got a few main things to do to finish you. So that the hourglass training, and I think that's kind of what you're talking about, is have something you're very specifically good at and you're good at getting there. And then even if it's not an hourglass, even if there's just one option, if it's a reliable option, that may be all you need.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Yeah, for sure. If you're a competitor, you should always be working your whole skill set because let's say you go in a tournament and you're one of the better competitors, but maybe you're not the best like all round. Then I think you want your broad skill set so that if you go against most of the competitors, like this is the reliable wins you can get by just doing the main things a lot of the time. Just like the normal pathway. You can have your like your specialized area, but you can also just reliably look to pass the guard, take the back, score points, and get finishes that way. And then I think. At least if it was me against even like I fought Marcelo Garcia recently.

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Yes, it was amazing.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

I had areas I wanted the match to stay in and areas like I didn't want to wrestle up on him, for example. Like I know he's he's got an amazing guillotine. I wanted to pull guard and play guard because I knew I could try to attack the legs and play like my best game there. I was willing to try to come on top to pass, but I wasn't going to pass on my knees against myself. I was going to try to stay standing because I know like most of his submission threats would have come off like guillotine, shoulder crunch. Uh either.

SPEAKER_00 22:30

So if you were on your knees, he might have stuffed you and then sprawled on top of you and been set up for the guillotine.

SPEAKER_01 22:35

Yeah, I think there was like multiple, like because of the rule set, which was submission only. Like I was trying to keep it in an area which limited his submission options. Maybe he could still like if I was standing, I thought and I got on top, he might get into single leg X, but then he's in a leg entanglement, which I'm sort of happy to play that battle with him a bit more than having to defend a guillotine or have him on my back and that sort of stuff. I think like when you're fighting someone highly skilled like that, I have to be a lot more particular. Whereas like if I went and competed in the local Victorian championships, I would probably be kind of happy to just play wherever it goes and just see what opportunities I see and look to go from there.

SPEAKER_00 23:09

I think a lot of what you should do in terms of focus of what area of passing, not passing, foot attack specialization, whatever, has a lot to do with what's the student's goal. Is their goal to win a competition? Then sure, they want to have this one thing that they can do. Is their goal to just train safely and not get injured? That's sort of another thing. Is their goal to have this directly apply to street? Then maybe they do want upper body control and ways to get the back. But I there's probably not a right answer for many of it. It kind of depends on what's people's goal, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:39

Yeah, I mean, I had another podcast recently, actually, we were talking about like I'm exploring like a the idea about what the fundamentals are and how that relates to your goal. For example, if your goal is self-defense, then knowing how to escape mount, escape the back, all these positions is very important. Like I need to be able to get out, I need to be able to stay safe. If I don't lose, if I don't get obviously in a self-defense scenario, if I don't get knocked out or somehow submitted, if they happen to know that, then I win. Whereas if your goal is a competitor, the escape side of it, like you're stuck under mount, then whilst it's a useful skill to know how to get out of mount, their chance of winning the match now is much lower. You've now had points scored on you that they've managed to get to mount. Like time spent training on guard retention and preventing mount should be a lot higher than getting out of mount for a competitor because their goal is like to win the match, and you can't lose points and then be trying to get out.

SPEAKER_00 24:36

You should be never lose the points in the first place, of course.

SPEAKER_01 24:38

Yeah, so I definitely think goals, even potentially early on, could shift how you're approaching your training.

SPEAKER_00 24:45

I think what's one of the challenges makes it difficult for an instructor, right? So you've got a mat of people, and maybe you've done something to limit at least the it's a beginner class, so at least you've got that, maybe.

SPEAKER_02 24:56

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 24:57

But even amongst all the beginners, like you say, there may be some people in there for health, forgetting the fact that there's some that are big and strong and some that are small and weak, and already you've got a very different jujitsu if they have different goals. It is challenging to teach for everybody.

SPEAKER_01 25:10

And capabilities. There's like some people are I'm pretty flexible. I can play like a tight half-guard game. I know that's sort of tight game, but if you've got someone who wants to be a competitor and they're flexible, they should be using that. Let's use that straight away. But then you can't teach a class that's full of 15% of the room is flexible and the other 85% is not. Then that's a bad class for the other 85%. If they're trying to do things that they're not actually capable of doing or that don't suit their body type particularly well. So that's hard. Yeah, different body types, attributes, goals. That's the hard thing. Like I've got a general fundamentals program which tries to just what's what are things that everyone can do. But I am trying to think about whether I can take some particular students and give them something else based around some of those things.

SPEAKER_00 25:57

Obviously, not everybody can afford it, but that's what privates are for, right? To get some special time. But I do certainly on seminars or and I know that I used to do this when I would teach a lot more, I would tap people on the shoulder at the end and say, Hey, I notice you're different in this way.

unknown 26:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 26:12

Try this. Give them a little bit of something that's useful for them. It's funny, you only ever see classes divided by age, of course, kids and adults, and then skill levels. I could theoretically see a class divided by this is the flexible person's class, this is the not flexible person.

SPEAKER_01 26:29

I've thought about that. Yeah, yeah. I've definitely thought about that one. Really? Yeah. There's too many ways to divide classes, unfortunately. I'm trying to, we're moving to a new location and I'm trying to write out the timetable. And there's there's gifses, no gi classes, introduction classes, intermediate, advanced, fundamental, and there's a short window of time people can train. It's quite difficult getting everything maybe flexible and inflexible as well.

SPEAKER_00 26:52

That could be the that would be a lot because you'd have to now double everything for flexible and inflexible. It's a tough business. I mean, one of the challenges of running a martial arts school is you are paying rent for 24 hours a day, assuming you don't own the building, then you're paying your mortgage for 24 hours a day. But like you say, there's certain hours when more people can train. Obviously, you can have a really early morning training or a midday, I don't know, moms doing yoga or something. But that is a challenge because you have those certain windows and a limited amount of math space.

SPEAKER_01 27:21

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, most people, our busiest time is obviously like 6 p.m. till 7:30. So that's the window you've got to try to fit the main things in somehow. Look, to be honest, the answer I think is that what you will be doing is if you can get two instructors and you split the room and then you can mix up. That's it. If you can split the room, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, like today I want to teach Delaheiva and the flexible people can go on this side, whereas you can teach Half-Guard to these guys over here. And some days it's gonna be by flexibility, sometimes it might be by wreck. It might be just this is an advanced topic and the beginners do this one.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

You see, in some taekwondo schools, it may not be as important in jujitsu, which is maybe not quite as visually based as taekwondo, but they'll have a curtain and they'll just drag the curtain across the mat. And it certainly for younger people, it helps avoid distractions. It obviously doesn't do anything for the sound, yeah, but it does make you feel a little bit more like there aren't two classes happening on the mat at the same time if you're focused on your class.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Yeah, and on your place, we do have like a couple of different mats that are sort of separated by a wall. So Okay, well, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

Yeah, yeah. Do you think being successful as the attacker in leg attacks is more conducive to you having a particular body type? And do you think another body type makes somebody more susceptible to foot attacks?

SPEAKER_01 28:38

I would generally say actually, like shorter and stockier tends to be, especially for the heel hooks, is a better body type. I think if you've got smaller feet, it's harder for them to catch your heel, easier to slip out. Like I find it way easier to catch a heel hook on a big leg. They're just very hard for them to slip their heel out. For straight footlocks, I've noticed two different body types. You get these kind of lanky, wiry sort of people who seem to be able to like go through a very large range of motion. Like when they bridge, it's like their whole body is like getting into it. They seem to be very good at what I would say is like proper straight footlocks that are attacking the ankle. And you occasionally also get a real short, nuggety, strong person who can simply just grab your shin and make you feel like your shin's gonna break. But yeah, it's actually a bit it's funny. Like I feel there's straight ankle locks are a funny one because I feel like there's some people who I think they're doing it technically right, like it feels like they're doing all the right things, but they can't make me tap. And other people just like from it might just be like a strength thing, but it doesn't even feel like it's right. But I feel like I have to tap, like something's gonna break. Yeah, that's straight ankle's a funny one. But for heel hooks, I think it's actually probably a little bit better to be shorter. But I think it also changes the strategy. Like if you're taller, it starts to become more beneficial to start standing up in the entanglements because you're sort of almost like slipping your knee line just through gravity. Whereas if you're shorter and you stand up, often they're keeping your knee line and you can get off balance very easy. So that there's definitely some differences, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:07

Yeah, definitely having smaller feet helps on the defense. There's no question about that. I've got big, gigantic flat feet, like flippers. Like I do not want people touching my feet. One of my training partners who's really great, he's like number one or maybe number two now in IBJGF Nogi Master 2 level, so 40, whatever. He's good at everything. I mean, he just trashes me, but his thing is straight footlock. Like it's David Mitchell, he's just really good at that. And it is the kind of thing, although he does feel strong, but he does a lot of single-leg X finishes there where he really controls the distance. And I think to your point about being the taller person, I feel because I'm kind of a lanky guy myself, if I attack a straight footlock, I feel like I can keep the person far away from me. So it's hard for them to put on the boot. Yeah. And I still have plenty of play because I have sort of the longer body. So it does feel like it's an advantage to me.

SPEAKER_01 30:56

Yeah, I think that probably overall being taller for straight footlooks, I would probably generally agree. Apart from the shin buster, the ones that the nuggety people that just grab your shin, I'm sure you've had.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

But just one more question, because you kind of touched on this. Like, what's jujitsu going to look like in 50 years? Like, what's the next white space? It's hard to predict, right? We're not gonna grow another limb. But I am sure that if we come back in 10 years or 20 years, jujitsu will look somewhat different than it does now. And a lot of that'll be shaped by the rules. But you had mentioned that you thought possibly the pace of innovation might start to slow a bit as we've explored every single way a body can twist. Is that your prediction?

SPEAKER_01 31:37

Yeah, I mean, I think it'll still be occurring, I suspect. It might be a little harder for an observer to like from the outside for it to be noticeable, but like it might be more subtle things. To be honest, I I don't know enough about it. But I know like judo's still a lot, like what moves are in fashion is changing, and I believe some like subtle grip changes are there. I don't believe they're like inventing new throws, as far as I'm aware.

SPEAKER_00 32:00

Well, once the rules are sort of calcified, that places a limit. Yeah, and judo certainly has set rules. And I think also there always is sort of the arms race, like, well, now everybody's good at defending that throw or that guard pass. So now that guard pass is not gonna work anymore, so they'll sort of fall out of fashion. That always forces, if not an evolution of the art, at least a rotation through all the possible things.

SPEAKER_01 32:25

Okay, yeah, yeah. And then eventually everyone forgets about that move and it starts working again.

SPEAKER_00 32:29

That's my plan. That is my plan. Yeah, I just gotta live long enough that everyone forgets everything that's going on right now. So the stuff I learned 25 years ago works again, and then I'll be on top. I just know it. Pretty much. Yeah. Just before I leave leg, is there anything that you think people just don't understand about the leg game? Like if you could tap people on the shoulder and say, hey guys, you're not getting this.

SPEAKER_01 32:50

I mean, I still like having taught a lot of seminars around it, I still think just like the pure digging the heel and actually having like for a heel hook, like having a good bite on the heel hook and being able to lock that in. I often come into a seminar thinking, like, I'm gonna show this and that. And then I end up having to spend a considerable amount of time just like, hang on, let's not go any further until we've got this part right, which is tricky because you got some people who do get it very quickly. I want to show them the rest of the stuff, but you got other people who I'm like, you probably should be staying here before we we move on. So I mean, I end up trying to find some compromise between the two to try to keep everyone happy. But I'd say for a lot of people, it's just get that right first and then moving on from there to some of the more advanced counters.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

Yeah, the bite. I did an interview with Bob Bass, my friend, Higgins' first black belt. And he says he goes out to teach a seminar and then tells everyone, okay, let's shrimp across the mat as a warm-up. And then he ends up like he feels like having to teach the shrimp because it was like it feels like you guys don't understand how to move your hips and best laid plans. So, what about injury prevention and creating a safe environment? You've got competitors on the same mat as your, let's call them normal people.

SPEAKER_01 33:56

Yeah, and how does that go? Injury prevention. I mean, I I I've got an injured knee at the moment. See, I won't tell. So, I mean, generally, I I injured it doing wrestling, which was my main mistake. I always tell people if you don't want to get injured, first thing is avoid stand-up and wrestling, particularly like shots and this sort of stuff. And then for some reason I was just feeling good. I tell myself that normally, and I don't normally wrestle, and then I just was feeling good and I went to do a move and I tore my MCLs. But anyway, it'll be all right. I mean, so there, there's like probably a lot of things injury prevention-wise. I would say like just generally stand-up has higher risk just because you fall. There's ability to fall when you're on the ground. Hopefully, if something goes wrong, the ground kind of cushions that a bit quicker. So yeah, it comes down to like what your goals are. If you want to be competing in ADCC, then you've got to learn to wrestle. That's part of the game. If you just want to roll for as long as possible, and you've got no like self-defense or MMA aspirations or anything like that, then do you need to spend a lot of time doing takedowns? Probably not. I don't know as many old wrestlers as I do old jujitsu people.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

So that's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 35:03

Yeah, and of course, you can do it. There are like safer ways to train it. I'd say probably mostly for training, like just training in general, it's the pace that people roll. People who get injured a lot tend to roll harder than they have to. They're so focused on winning. The speed, maybe just slow things down a little bit. If you try to be methodical, you actually learn, you've got time, you you know what move you're trying to do. You can see where in that stage that it's not working, so you can adjust it. Therefore, it's a deliberate movement, so you can keep all your limbs in good position where they're not gonna get injured. I think the people who get injured a lot tend to just thrash around a lot more. So, and that's where competitors can train with hobbyists, and it should be safer training with a competitor, to be honest. If they're good and they're methodical, then they're not actually gonna do anything that's kind of thrashing around or like could potentially put you in danger. I think you're less likely to get injured with someone who's experienced than you are with a beginner, I think, where there's they're unpredictable. Yeah, I'd say that's probably the main thing. So there's certain things I think people should understand about how legs are supposed to move. I think a lot of people tear their LCL, their lateral ligament of their knee, not understanding the like pulling your foot towards your head together. Yeah, exactly. At a certain point, it doesn't hurt, but your knee's gonna pop and then it'll there's like lots of situations in jiu-jitsu where that movement is useful, but you gotta understand that having someone push that too far or pushing against it and fighting that sort of pressure is high stress on the LCL. So there's probably lots of things. Necks, if you're feeling like it's a neck crank and not a choke, I think you just tap. Don't risk having a bad neck just because it wasn't choking you to tap. You probably shouldn't have got caught in that. It fix how you got caught there, hand fight a bit better next time, but it's not worth it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:47

I'm right with you on that. I did a whole episode on everything I've learned about avoiding injury, which I've mostly have done, but I agree with everything you're saying. One part of it is how are you approaching? What are you doing? Like, are you spazzing out? You're just gonna turn really fast when you shouldn't and get yourself injured, or not tap when you should have tapped. Then there's who are you choosing as a partner? It's certainly someone who just will go slower. And then, of course, there's always the that third wild card, which is the team over there falls into my space. But it's good to control your space. I do actually, I have a very crowded mat that I train Saturday mornings over here at Black Sheep with some really great guys. I always just hug the wall, man. So I only have to worry about things coming at me from that side. I don't want to have to pay attention to 360. There's too many bodies on the mat.

SPEAKER_01 37:27

No, I agree. As a coach, the packed mat's a hard one. I kind of just try to get everyone to when you've got a packed mat, like a lot of people, as a single coach, you can't be running around blocking everyone at legacy. You'll have to take responsibility. Yeah, you gotta kind of get people to understand. Like if people are on the ground, don't do wrestling standing up next to them where you can fall on them and so on.

SPEAKER_00 37:48

Uh yeah, uh everybody can't be against the wall. If it's a really crowded map, I will literally, and I can do this because I'm a coral belt now. I can just say move, I'll take the corner. And then now I got two sides completely protected.

SPEAKER_01 37:59

Yeah, that's a good way to do it, actually.

SPEAKER_00 38:00

Yeah, but everybody can't take a corner.

SPEAKER_01 38:02

No, that's true.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

I gotta bring up because a friend of mine asked me to ask this, but we don't have to talk about it much. So constraint-led approach, ecological. I can tell you in two sentences my opinion on it. And I expect yours might be the same. If it's not, you're just wrong, obviously. No, I'm joking. Yeah. My my take on this of should people just be given constraints and learn themselves? I think it's just a false dichotomy. It doesn't make sense to say one thing or the other. I think it's absurd to think someone can step onto a mat and just sort of figure it out on their own. I mean, they can, but it's way faster to be told what to do. That's why people watch videos. That's why I can help someone by just saying, move your hand and suddenly they can do it better. But I think obviously you need to personalize the moves. You can't say my instructor said to do it this way, so that's the way I'm gonna do it. You do it the way that works, and that's why we have our positional training and things like that. So I don't see them in opposition, and I think when people say they are in opposition, it just confuses me a little bit.

SPEAKER_01 39:00

Yeah, I agree that's a false dichotomy. I read the ecological dynamics. There's two things here. So there's the constraints-led approach, which is basically like create a game, give goals, and within those constraints, people will find good movement solutions. Right. That's been shown compared to strict instruction. Under very specific, personally, I don't think the studies that they're looking at that have that much in common with what happens in jujitsu. But under that, the constraints led approach does seem to have good or and or sometimes better results than uh than like strict instruction or explicit instruction. So that's kind of like when people saying the science says that. Yeah, I think it's a little bit constraints-led approach. Yeah, but the constraints-led approach is not that's just an approach, and that's not necessarily that doesn't say you can't teach or anything like that, like give instruction and explicit instruction and like and combine the two. There's the ecological dynamics, which is like kind of the underlying theory about how the brain works and how we are supposed to learn new movements, and that's where they've kind of got this dichotomy. So, according to the ecological dynamics theory, which basically would say your brain doesn't learn movements, like you don't learn movements through information processing. You don't get like taught things verbally or whatever, and then do it. You kind of learn through experience and movement. This theory is like impossible to actually test. There's no way to falsify whether this is actually how the brain works or not. So I think when people are saying the science, I don't think they can be talking about ecological dynamics. They might be talking about the constraints-led approach. But yeah, overall, I agree. There's so many things throughout my jiu-jitsu where like I've been playing live resistance in a certain area for a long time. I think I'm pretty good at like problem solving on the flight, like figuring out good solutions. And then someone will come along and go, hey, why don't you do this? I'm like, how did I not know this? It's immediately better as not a solution I've come to myself. And you could possibly argue that had you put the right constraints on, somehow I would have come to that conclusion. But then you have to have an extremely good knowledge like of jujitsu, much more than I do to know what game to make for me to come up with that solution. So I just think, yeah, I think it's just all right.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Well, I think we're in agreement, so I will allow you to stay for a couple more minutes. I haven't really looked into it that much, but it just seems pretty obvious to me. Like, yes, get told some basics and start to work it and make it your own. And I'm sure there's better ways to do it. And of course, and there's also people's brains process things differently. They just do. Some people are gonna learn more one way, some people are gonna learn more another way.

SPEAKER_01 41:30

You could get an athlete, I think if you got took like a top competition room, you got more chance for someone to come through that with less instruction because they're getting really good reactions. And if they're trying to like problem solve, they can they're problem solving against really good things. But if you've got someone in like a regular classroom or gym, a lot of the problems they're even running into aren't necessarily as high level or difficult. And having someone like directing them and teaching them, like, hey, this thing will solve problems you're gonna run into later when you run into a good opponent, teaching them down that path, I think, is better.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

That's a very good point. Like, what which constraint are we talking about what you have to do to defeat a white belt, a blue belt, a black belt, because they're all moving in quite different ways.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

Well, that's where you see kids often win by like immediately they'll forget about underhooks just like scarf hole, and they'll get past and they'll pin their opponent, but they're beating other kids, and that doesn't really scale up. Like, as you come up against adults who now like understand underhooks and how to like move around an opponent, like you can do scarf hole, of course. It exists, but like as a way of passing the guard, it's a pretty rare thing, and I would say certainly not the main pathway I'd be teaching people to go for. I'd usually be teaching people to look for an underhook first and not just grabbing around the head. So I think lots of the solutions people come up with to deal with problems will cause them issues later that had you taught them what to do and tried to like get them in line with what we know works well, that would have been a better approach. Not that you couldn't do that with a constraints lit approach, but you'd have to be in some ways telling them what to do, even if it's not explicitly.

SPEAKER_00 43:05

I hear you. I just want to talk for a second about Craig Jones. He's amazing. I mean, obviously he's put in all the work, but I feel like you gave the world Craig Jones. But what he's done in terms of like CJI, I think is really cool. And how he got ADCC to pay more to their people. I mean, he's just done some, I think, really good things. I'm wondering your thoughts on the professional events. I know you had a team. Do you think this is a good thing? Do you want to see more of that? Is there any downsides to the professionalization paying fighters? What's your take on that whole scene?

SPEAKER_01 43:38

I mean, overall, it's good that we've had some events where fighters can get paid good money. I think that's great. It seems to be sort of slowly, but I'd like to see it coming more from the organizations that have a business model that backs it up, if that makes sense. Like, I think a lot of it's coming from like wealthy people who happen to like jujitsu, so they're sort of putting money into it, which is great. But like, I think you got like some. Organization, like there's obviously flow grappling, IBGF, ADCC. I think they can generate a profit out of what the athletes are doing. And it would be good if they're the ones that because they're like it's all ingrained and that they can probably afford to pay out athletes well from there. I think IBGF's made some good moves in that regard. And I know like some of the superfight shows pay quite well as well. So yeah, it's all certainly compared to you know when I was for good 15 years of my competition, I never heard that you could have a quite pay.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

I'd be happy if someone gave me a t-shirt.

SPEAKER_01 44:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:33

We used to get sponsors like the local juice shop. I'd put their patch on my gi, and that way I could come in once a week and get like a free juice or something like that.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

That's perfect.

SPEAKER_00 44:42

But yeah, I think the professionals and you've got now UFC grappling stuff.

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Yeah. The downside of it seems to be that you might not get to see matchups now, like people kind of get in stuck in particular organizations.

SPEAKER_00 44:54

Because they're signing with a particular show, they can't train with other people. That's could be a bad outcome.

SPEAKER_01 44:59

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_00 45:00

What do you think about the rule sets? Is there some rule set that you wish someone would do that no one is doing?

SPEAKER_01 45:06

From a spectator point of view, just punishing stalling more aggressively. I think like people try to change the stalling with different incentives around the rules. Whereas I think it's just like we need to change the perception of what's stalling. It needs to be a good punishment. Like I feel like with the IBJ F4, you gotta be kind of not doing anything for 20 seconds, but you get a warning.

SPEAKER_00 45:24

Then they'll warn you once, and I think it might even, I think the second time they warn you, they give you some minor penalty, and then it gets worse if you keep not doing it.

SPEAKER_01 45:32

But it's even like you get a warning, and then like you kind of only have to do one little like you pretend you're going for a pretend you're doing something kind of resets it for another 20 seconds. It's like, no, it should just be like, I feel like it should just be like a feel. Like, no, that person's like not really overall, they're not really pushing how I want them. Story warning. I like I like ADCC because it encourages wrestling, like from a spectator point of view. You see like lots of wrestling, guard work. Like I spent a very good part of my career just training for IBGF, and I barely do a takedown at all. When I started focusing on ADCC, I had to focus on wrestling, but it's nice to learn like the full spectrum of jiu-jitsu, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 46:08

I agree. What about when you talk to old guys like me? It's interesting because I for this podcast, it's one of the great things is put me in touch with people I haven't seen in a long time, and I really enjoy it. And one theme I notice from the older guys are all saying jujitsu used to be more self-defense focused, straight on that. Now it's become a bit more of a sport. And the one thing that a few people have said that they don't like is the scooting, right? Sitting on your butt, scooting forward thing, which if it's legal, I think it's perfectly fine. You want to get underneath the guy. I mean, who says you can't do that? You could do that on the street in some ways, it would like limit your ability to get knocked out. I don't judge it, but it's interesting to me that they just it's it's like a bridge too far for those guys. Like you just you can't sit down and scoot your butt forward, stand up and fight like a man or whatever. I don't say that or believe that. But do you have an opinion on I better defend it?

SPEAKER_01 47:00

That's your thing. Yeah, no, depending who I'm going against.

SPEAKER_00 47:04

Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 47:04

Yeah, look, I mean, people will find a way to win within the rules. So if the rules allow guard pulling and without contact, then some people are gonna do that. So I guess it's up to the organization. If they don't like that, they've got to change it. So you can't you've got to stand back up or something. I think, yeah, some people get bored of like a guard versus passing match, but a stand-up battle can be just as boring. Anywhere can be boring. It really depends on what both athletes need to be active at trying to engage and make something happen, which is very hard to do with a rule set, except without just good stalling penalties. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:34

I would agree with that. I think it's about the action. It's not about whether you force people to stand or say you can pull to the guard or can't pull to the guard or can't sit down.

unknown 47:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:43

As long as people want to fight and are trying to engage, it's going to be interesting.

SPEAKER_01 47:47

Yeah, for sure. I'm talking about this all from like a spectator point of view, but I don't mind like stalling's part of jujitsu too. It's a real strategy to wait till your opponent overextends and try to capitalize. That's a real part of jujitsu. And like I don't mind that at all. Just as a spectator, it's boring. But like I think it would be a shame if in the gym when you're rolling, you can't use that strategy. If you're going against someone that's doing that, you've got to learn ways to like break through that.

SPEAKER_00 48:12

I completely agree with that. I mean, you're talking to a guy who's old school here. Like, I want nothing more than to pass someone's guard and just crush them until the time runs out. I mean, I'll tap them if I can, but just cook them, at least tire them out, make them try to get out. And I've certainly won a lot of competitions by just doing that. Get ahead on point. But I think, yeah, if you're moving to something where it's constant motion, if it's constant motion because you know, I'm thinking like Rotolo brothers or whatever, because you've got people who are good in constant motion or Marcella. That's their thing, it's constant motion, that's fine. But if people are just doing it because they don't know how to slow down, they don't know what a control position is, they don't know how to control, it starts to feel a little bit to me, a little bit more like kind of catch wrestling and some of the stuff that was coming out of Japan, where man, these people were just pulling attacks out of thin air. They were happening and they were available because people weren't really locking down and controlling and just shutting that down.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

Yeah, I agree. I think that's a part of the sport or the training we do is you can take your time, you can wait. And a lot of times that's the best thing to do. Just wait till they make a mistake.

SPEAKER_00 49:14

What about people who are getting older as they train? Because obviously, as people get older, they do tend to stall more because they just can't move as much, maybe they're not as good a shape, and that becomes a very important part of certainly an important part of my game. If I really want to win, is to I don't want to stay in motion constantly. I want to get to an advantageous position and enjoy the fruits of it. Do you think about that in terms of how people as they get older modify their training?

SPEAKER_01 49:40

Yeah, I definitely think like the classic thing is as you get older, you move towards half guard. It slows. You you want less dynamic sort of jujitsu and you want it to be a bit slower, tighter connections where you can take your time to upgrade grips. So I think that's that's valid. And yeah, I don't know, in terms of like competitions, like if you go up the masters thing, I was talking about like punishing stalling, and maybe maybe you have to be like more lenient as you go up the yeah, I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 50:07

Nah, I don't think so. I mean, I'm in Master Seven. Basically, they keep creating a new master number because a few of us just refuse to die. But no, I don't think so. And they're just a five-minute match. Yeah, yeah. Like there's not that much time to stall at all. I think everything you said about stalling was true, but you shouldn't expect to see like two bees buzzing around each other if you're looking at over 60 competitors. Yeah, no, I agree with that. But you never know. You mentioned your match with Marcelo, which was fantastic. What did that mean to you? I mean, what what caused you to want to take a shot at that? Did you feel pressure? Did you feel like you had nothing to lose? Did you feel like you had a lot to lose? And what is your takeaway from that experience?

SPEAKER_01 50:46

Yeah, I didn't feel like I had too much to lose. I mean, it's Marcelo Garcia, so I think in hindsight, people will probably be like, oh, of course Laughlin was gonna win. But like he was the Marcelo was always the favorite going into it. Like it's it's Marcelo Garcia, so he's incredible. I sort of stopped competing when I didn't feel like I could outdo my best achievement. Obviously, like that 2019 ADCC with the open weight result. I mean, I don't know how to outdo that anyway.

SPEAKER_02 51:10

It's hard to tell when yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:12

I came back for the next ADC after that because I wanted to just see how I could go in my own division. Like I wanted another shot, 77 kilo division. And then I lost to Cade Rotolo. I think he was like 19 and I was 36, and I thought, yeah, this is um it's gonna be hard to progress faster than him now. But then, like Marcelo beat, he was the king of my weight division for probably a good 10, 15 years, and he was three years older than me, so I thought that's a great opportunity to test myself against the best of all time. So it was a bit of a no-brainer to say yes when I got off of the match.

SPEAKER_00 51:45

And you did a great job. Marcelo's a wonderful guy. Yeah. I actually I've trained with him. It's been a while. I was out at his place in New York, and he was being, of course, super nice to me. It's hard when you go in and train with someone because I don't want to be disrespectful, I don't want to try too hard. They probably look at me, think, uh, older guy or whatever, they don't want to try too hard. And sometimes they just want to say, just tap me out, please. Tell me where I'm here. But he had ADC, there was an ADCC that occurred in Los Angeles many years ago. I don't even know what the year was. And he had a match against Rico Rodriguez. I don't know if you remember Rico, super big guy. And Rico was I fought him. You fought Rico at that tournament?

SPEAKER_01 52:22

He came back for I don't know, it was an event called Kinetic. It was like a five-man quintet. Yeah. So I got a heel hook.

SPEAKER_00 52:29

On Rico. Well, that's good. So Rico's a friend. Actually, I just reconnected with him. I'm trying to get him on the show here, but he's kind of gone out of the limelight and he's like, but anyway, we were training partners. Well, he came with the Machados. I hated him when he first showed up. He was this arrogant big wrestler with a foul mouth. And I just thought, I'm just gonna kill this guy. And then weirdly, we became good friends. But in any case, I was there when he fought Marcello, and they had said slams were legal, and Marcelo got Rico's back. And so Rico stood up. He's like twice the size of Marcello, and then in a vicious way, just launched his feet out and then fell. I mean, really smashed Marcelo. But they said smashes were legal, and then of course they stopped the fight. And I kind of thought, like, well, if you stop the fight, it's over. Like, yeah, right. Rico won. I mean, I don't know what to say. He smashed him, but maybe I misunderstood the rules, or maybe Rico did, and then they put him back up, and then he ended up getting Rico in a heel hook, too. So obviously Rico's got to work his heel hook defense.

SPEAKER_01 53:26

I don't know if it was the same back then. I know now the slams are legal when there's a submission on, but not before.

SPEAKER_00 53:32

Legal or not, it was a pretty vicious thing to do for like a 240-pound guy with like, I don't know what it would have been, a 160-pound guy hanging on his back like a piggyback ride, to just go vertical from five feet up and then hit the mat straight down. I mean, but Marcelo was very gracious. I mean, he's just like such an even-killed, wonderful guy. Yeah, he's great.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Yeah, he's a very good role model, I think.

SPEAKER_00 53:54

Your wife Livia, how is it for you to be married to someone who's another high-level competitor? Do you spend a lot of time training together? Is the last thing in the world you want to talk about when you get home training? How's that working for you?

SPEAKER_01 54:07

Yeah, no, it's good. We don't train together as much. She's like 55 kilograms. So we've got enough women like her size that most of her training's there. Occasionally we'll roll together, but it's mostly just talking about like injury prevention. Another good thing is mostly stick to your weight class is usually a good guide.

SPEAKER_00 54:25

By the way, for marriage longevity, it's also a good thing to let your wife stick to her weight class. You don't want to be the one.

SPEAKER_01 54:31

Yeah, we used to have mats in our house. We were in an apartment and we got rid of the coffee table and put mats down. But now we're at the gym enough that when we get home, we don't really do any more jujitsu. Occasionally, if something's ticking over in my brain, I'm like, I want to try this, then I'll grab her. But mostly we don't.

SPEAKER_00 54:47

Did you meet on the mat? Was she a student of yours?

SPEAKER_01 54:49

You know, she's actually she's a physiotherapist as well. So we met through physio and then she started jujitsu after that.

SPEAKER_00 54:56

Oh, okay, very nice. Well, it's always nice to see a couple that's doing martial arts together. I know a few of them, like John and his wife Melissa. Yep. Very successful. I have some other friends like that. My buddy David Mitchell, I mentioned his wife Lauren is also a black belt. That's cool when you have that that you can share.

SPEAKER_01 55:10

For sure.

SPEAKER_00 55:10

Yeah. So I wanna let you go. Just wondering any last thoughts? Is there anything you think people misunderstand about you or just anything you want to share? We have a pretty large and growing audience, and this will be out there kind of forever.

SPEAKER_01 55:25

Misunderstand about me. I don't know if there's anything anyone misunderstands. I don't know what they understand about me. Yeah, I don't, I suppose I can just say if people want to check out my content, follow me on Instagram. I've got Mockland Giles, I've got a YouTube channel, absolute MMA St. Kilda. I also have a online training website, Submeta. So if you want to kind of dive a bit deeper into some of the topics I cover.

SPEAKER_00 55:45

So I just wanted to ask you before we go about your nickname. Am I pronouncing it right? Is it Velocoraptor?

SPEAKER_01 55:52

Pretty much, yeah. Velociraptor. Like Lockie. Velociraptor? Kit Dale gave me that nickname. I think because I, I don't know, got short little arms and I'd often I don't even know. I guess like a T-Rex, short little arms or or a Velociraptor.

SPEAKER_00 56:05

I think I I assume it's meant as a as a compliment.

SPEAKER_01 56:09

Well, it's I guess if you're gonna be named after an animal, you know, a lot of people get derogatory animal names like sloth and those sort of things. So if you get Velociraptor, I figure that's a good one to stick with.

SPEAKER_00 56:19

I think you got off easy, man. I have a nickname that I got in Brazil called Capin, which is Portuguese for a long, thin blade of grass. And I tell people that the reason I got that is because I'm tall and slender, but just like grass, I can eventually break through concrete, but that's not true at all. It's a ridiculous thing that it was I'm not even gonna bother you with it, but basically they were teasing me.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

So the Brazilians are pretty harsh with their nicknames.

SPEAKER_00 56:48

Tell you what, man, you go down to Brazil and you do one stupid thing, and that's gonna be your nickname forever. Well, anyway, thank you for all your time here, and we will be sure to put links to everything. SubMeta is fantastic. I think the level of instruction there is really, really good. And as I mentioned to you, John Will, who is a hard person to please when it comes to types of instruction and instructionals, he just thinks it's fantastic too. I'm wondering your clear way of explaining is that just how you deal with everything, or how did you come to that?

SPEAKER_01 57:22

Honestly, I think I'm kind of lucky. It's something that I don't think I realized at the time just growing up in the environment. But obviously, like I was under John Will's lineage. I was lucky enough to have quite a few seminars from John, and he'd come in as a guest instructor reasonably often at Hangar 4 when I started. I think I was quite lucky because he's a very cerebral teacher. He really thought about how to teach, how to explain things. And I think even just like setting it up for my mindset of viewing jujitsu as a technical battle, a technical art, as opposed to just like a you know, like I'd played lots of sports before. And honestly, like when you play basketball and so on, I just thought about like how to win. You know, I wasn't thinking about like could my technique be improved and that sort of stuff. So coming into martial arts, I think I was lucky to have an environment where that was the way you would approach it. And I think I took it for granted because that's all I knew. But going around and training and traveling at different places, I think I sort of realized that wasn't how it was necessarily taught everywhere. So I was pretty lucky, I think, to have coaches such as John doing that. And of course, because I I learned under, for example, Tyrone Cross, who was taught under John, so he had a similar mindset too. Yeah, so that I think that's just like that made a huge difference. I think now that's kind of the norm. You go around the world, everyone's watching instructionals and having a very technical focus, but I don't think it was always like that. So yeah, I feel pretty grateful for that. And I think that's hopefully played a big part in in my coaching today.

SPEAKER_00 58:45

It does for me too. And I was also very fortunate to start with John. It was almost to have him as a tour guide through Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. So I had these great instructors, the Machado brothers, and the execution was fantastic and they had their point of view. And then John, of course, as you say, was so analytical, and I think he had to be, right? Because he was coming to the United States and he couldn't just drink from the fountain anytime he wanted to, like I could. So he had to pay close attention, and that's sort of the way John approached it. And I would like to think that I'm at least a little bit as technical as you guys, but I think that that's really good. And of course, now there are more people who are teaching in a more technical manner. There's so much stuff on the internet, though, a lot of it can be hard to discern for a student who doesn't know what they're looking at, what is actually good and not good. But yeah, I think the level of instruction has gone up a lot.

SPEAKER_01 59:33

I think the hardest thing now is just it's like the same issue as with social media. Well, it it is social media, a lot of it. When you go on YouTube or obviously, like I I put stuff on my Instagram, like techniques and stuff, which is obviously my best stuff's on the the paid platform, but um yeah, I put stuff out on social media, but I find like if you've got like a controversial take on something, or a wild wacky sort of thing, or like something that looks flashy, like those are the ones that get viewed a lot. And sometimes I'm like, this is gonna change the way you think about this position, but it's kind of a bit boring. Those sort of things, they just they don't get any views, and I'm like, well, I think that's the issue people are gonna run into these days. You're gonna be funneled into watching these sort of perhaps lower percentage moves just because they're the ones that are people are more likely to view, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:24

Yeah, I think you're right. I think that's just the nature of social media. It's the same thing with the news cycle, right? The news grabbing, crazy headlines are the things that people are gonna see, and normal, well thought through things don't uh tend to get the clicks, and I'm sure that's true in jujitsu too. It's almost the weirder you can make something look bad and make it look good, you're gonna get lots of clicks and views, but that doesn't mean it's practical or it's effective or anything like that.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:47

But yeah, I mean something came up recently on my feed, it was like a video of someone saying, like, never do this move, this move sucks. And I'm like, it doesn't suck. There's a video of someone like trying the move and failing in a competition, but I'm like, there's plenty of examples of that also working. Having like a strong opinion on something gets more shared. Like somehow that came across my feed because lots of people were watching this particular video.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:10

Yeah, I think people should be getting their jujitsu instruction either directly from their instructor, they can get ideas from social media or whatever, but they should be going to something like Submeta, go where there's a proven, excellent, qualified instructor who has taken the time to really think through what they want to present, get your information from there. Don't listen to just Joe Yahoo because he did something that was weird and popped up on your Instagram account.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:37

I mean, I think just like a something that's structured well can present a whole system as opposed to just an individual move, but like this is a whole position, this is how I think about it, these are the main concepts you need to understand, these are your options, this is what your opponent's gonna do, like sort of trying to tie all that together. I think that's always gonna be better. It takes a bit longer to get through content like that than a YouTube video, but it's just gonna set you up better to learn, I think.

unknown 1:02:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:02

Yeah. When I teach seminars, which I don't do as much anymore, I try to just pick a principle and I teach a principle, and then there are moods that are examples of it. That's sort of one way to approach. I know my buddy David Mitchell, who I mentioned is a good competitor, he thinks in terms of blueprints, right? So I think very much like you do, like there's a sort of a schematic of all the things that can occur from this, and you're not learning things in isolation in that way. Yeah, you could definitely lead yourself astray if you're just looking at weird technique at your weird technique at social media. Yeah, I'd say so. Well, listen, I hope that your knee heals up really quick. Thank you for taking the time with me. I will definitely uh come by and say hello next time I'm in Australia. And if you ever make it out to the San Francisco Bay Area, definitely let me know and we'll take good care of you.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:48

Yeah, thanks so much. It's been really good and uh be great if we can catch up.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:52

Okay, take care. I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Lachlan Giles. Do check out his online training courses at submeta.io. And I'd love to read and respond to any comments if you're watching on YouTube. And thank you for liking the show and of course for sharing links to the show with any of your friends. I'll be back next week with more lessons from the lab. And until then, keep developing your strength, your wisdom, and go out and do good in the world.