Home » 123: Jiu Jitsu Rules / Ego / Leglocks with BJJ Black Belt John Lawrence

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123: Jiu Jitsu Rules / Ego / Leglocks with BJJ Black Belt John Lawrence

Jiu Jitsu black belt, John Lawrence from Hurricane Jiu Jitsu Academy is back! John will be talking to us about Jiu Jitsu rules that incentivize a more true-to-real-life combat scenario. Other topics that we touch on are safe training with leg locks, keeping the ego in check, periodization, and letting go of submissions.

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Episode Transcript

This transcript was created by an automated system and contains errors.

0:05 – Edgar OtraVez
Welcome to another episode of the flow row podcast. I am Edgar OtraVez. And today on the show we have a very special guest jiu jitsu blackbelt. John Lawrence, owner and head instructor of Hurricane Jiu Jitsu out in Cleveland, Ohio. And the subject matter for today will be jujitsu rule sets, and kind of finding something that makes sense in terms of keeping jujitsu as a martial art and less of a sport. Now, if you’d like more of this kind of stuff, make sure you head on over to our website, the Flow Roll Podcast.com. There, you’ll find a complete catalogue of all our episodes. But also, I have put up a category on the website that puts together all the episodes having to do with jujitsu. I’m going to do a little bit more of that as time goes by, but of course, you know, it’s kind of tough to make time for all these things. I have ideas for the site. If you go there now. And you just want to listen to just two podcast episodes, you will find that on the homepage. It’s one of the three call outs at the very top, you land on the homepage, and boom, there you have it. Also we have a store, you can buy some merchandise, and in doing so you’re going to continue to support this podcast. So we go in deep bungee to talk. I love the stuff. I love hearing more. So we get in deep on the jujitsu talk. I hope you guys liked this episode. I have fun talking to John, as always, I hope you like it now with this show. All right. So welcome to another episode of the floral podcast. I am Edgar OtraVez. And today on the show, we have John Lawrence jujitsu, black belt, and owner of hurricane j ujitsu and head instructor. Welcome back, John!

1:46 – John Lawrence
Good to be back.

1:48 – Edgar OtraVez
Awesome, man. I’m glad I’m glad you came back. Soon, too. I enjoy your talks. One of the things you wanted to talk about this time was you want to talk about rulesets a little bit. And so what are what are one of the things that you wanted to start with? Well,

2:04 – John Lawrence
maybe maybe I’ll start by asking you a very simple yes or no question. Would you would you agree or disagree? just yes or no that just the fact that it seems like nobody’s ever really been? As far as long as we’ve been trained. Nobody’s ever really been ultimately satisfied with the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu rule set, whether that’s like IBJJF or, you know, I mean, there’s always there’s always been like some discontent.

2:28 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I absolutely. I don’t think I don’t think people have really liked any of the rule sets, which is why we have such you know, so many different versions. We have all the VI rules. We have combat jujitsu we have we have meta mores at one point, all these different roles and stuff. And yeah, I can see your face Your face is like You’re like fuck all that shit. Your face is like

2:53 – John Lawrence
Yeah, so I just don’t I don’t think that I think it’s probably best to start at the beginning, which in my eyes for jujitsu was the birth of the UFC. jujitsu didn’t popular as MMA, MMA made jiu jitsu popular. So you have that first UFC where and you can talk about how setup it was. But we’re hoist Gracie basically goes in and smokes everybody. And people are going What is this? What is this guy doing? He’s just grabbing people and squeezing them and they’re like, they’re quitting what you know. And, and so jujitsu gets, you know, slowly but steadily popularized from from that point. And my worry with really most rule sets that exist these days is that I still being a school owner. I still notice that most people are brought to jujitsu because of MMA or because of some peripheral connection to MMA. So I’ll get I basically get people come and want to train based on one of force forces Joe Rogan Jocko there’s obviously UFC fans. And then there’s there’s a third podcast I can’t I can’t quite place right now but it’s like so let’s just say like Rogan Jocko in the UFC right now, I’m not saying that I’m a fan of everything that Rogan and Jocko do I’m not but those guys sell memberships at my school in the craziest way. I mean, most most guys who come in they’re like you know what, listen Jocko. This is tried jujitsu as a sort of Rogan. He said try Jiu Jitsu. Or, you know, I watched Charles Olievera Strangle this dude in the UFC. I thought I would try Jiu Jitsu. And that and obviously, I want you to to to be around in both from a business standpoint and then a cultural standpoint, just because it’s a really cool sport really cool martial art. But I feel like you did too, right now is very much in danger of going away of point karate, taekwondo based on based on what I’m seeing in the evolution of the rule set. So I guess that’s what does that need any clarification? Is that point clear?

4:58 – Edgar OtraVez
Oh, no. The point is that Very clear. And I don’t know how you escaped that, because there’s been there was a time where MMA fighters would go out, win a fight and then get their black belt, you know? And then it’s just like, Okay, well, that’s, that’s great, you know that. But it’s like, you see those guys on the mat? And sometimes you think like, whoa, you know, he’s a black belt, but his jujitsu, you know, it’s like, maybe purple belt level, you know, like, he may have gotten that belt because he won the fight. Sure. It’s amazing. He used his jujitsu skills to a certain extent, but you know, it’s another, it’s another angle from which jujitsu can get watered down, right? It’s just like, you don’t you don’t want it to become like McDo Joe deal, you know? Because there’s that thread as well.

5:40 – John Lawrence
I agree. And I want to be clear, because I think sometimes what happens is, you’ll get older black belts, who sort of aged out of the age out of jujitsu in terms of like what they can do with their students. And then it’s like a sour grapes scenario where they’re like, why don’t like all this new school stuff? I don’t you know, this, this wouldn’t. It always turns into, like, this wouldn’t work in a fight. And I think I think a lot of those complaints come from a place of ego, rather than a place of like, I feel like I’ve got a very clear, I’ve got a very clear understanding of what I think is wrong and why I think it’s wrong. It’s not just like, the new 25 year old purple belt keeps getting cute bolo into my back in the gym. I mean that that to be clear that is happening. I’m glad that I have students who can do that. But it’s not why I want to see the rules change. I want to see the rules change because I think in maybe over the course of the next decade, Jujitsu in mixed martial arts, and by extension, with Joe Rogan, and Jaco could become totally irrelevant, because Rogan and Jaco only have credibility because of their to the UFC or the their connection to combat, if that makes sense. And I think I think jujitsu keeps going the way that it’s going. purely in terms of the rules, I think you’re going to see it really get even, it’s going to be less relevant in MMA than it is today. When you watch fights with friends, you will hear people say like, you know, you just don’t see as much jujitsu anymore. You don’t see as many submissions anymore. Like what’s, you know, what’s going on? And I think there’s some good reasons behind that.

7:12 – Edgar OtraVez
So you make a lot of good points.

7:15 – John Lawrence
I’m not sure I did. I don’t

7:17 – Edgar OtraVez
know for sure. But no, but like, the, the point that you made about, there’s a weird place that we’re in, right. jujitsu has so much ability in terms of progress. There’s so many things like people keep coming up with new moves, right? So there’s so much growth possibility there and for jujitsu instructor to be stuck in the same place. Because they’ve like you said, age data, Jujitsu or whatever, and they don’t want to learn any of the new school stuff. That’s not a place that you go to for growth, you know, that’s jujitsu is gonna get an antiquated there’s always going to be moves that are going to continue to work, right. But there’s going to be new stuff that you got to learn in order in order to like the fence. If you never see me beating bolo. I think we said this before. If you ever seen a beating bolo, and you can’t defend against it, that’s a problem. Right? But also, like, there’s going to be new stuff made. How can you come up with new techniques to stay in the spirit of what we’re talking about here? In terms of like, keeping true to, I guess, the self defense routes? Is that what we’re trying to stick to?

8:18 – John Lawrence
I think it’s pretty simple. I think you could make some maybe not so obvious rule changes, but for me, it doesn’t come down to techniques. It comes down to incentives, what jujitsu athletes are incentivized to do. Like, I still want jiu jitsu competitions to exist. I love jujitsu competitions. And I, I don’t want to compete in MMA because I’m just too soft for that, man. I don’t, I don’t want to get punched in the face, you know, but I but I do. I do love the competitive spirit of a good jujitsu Super Fight or a good jujitsu tournament. And I don’t want that to go away. So I think what you need to do is you need to change the incentives that the athletes have, rather than like focus, like we can’t solve it now, at an instructor level, like I can’t because I could force or convince everyone at my school to do the type of jujitsu that I want. But I have students who want to compete and travel and do jujitsu in other places. And I want them to have the relevant skill sets. So the incentive structure needs to change from the top. And so maybe just as an opening topic, I’ll give you my I told you before the podcast, I’ve started writing, like a loose rule set that I think would help over the course of many years take jujitsu back toward its MMA roots, but still make it so it can be a fun competitive sport as it stands by itself. You know, the first thing that I would propose is that people are not allowed to pull guard without penalty. I’m talking about a real penalty. So So my thought is you award two points for whoever gains first top position. I don’t care how it happens. A person is still allowed to pull guard, if they’re that confident in their guard. But you’re going to be a two point deficit. I think this is going to incentivize people to obviously, like work their takedowns harder. But it’s also going to incentivize people to, if they pull guard have a truly assertive guard, where they’re not just going to pull and sort of burn X amount of minutes off the clock, we can talk about the match times a little bit as well. But they’re going to pull guard and they’re going to have a very clear idea of what they want to do once they pull because they’re down to points already. Yeah. And then as that translates to what I care about a lot to MMA, obviously being on top and MMA is better. You can you can you can have a debate about jujitsu, is it better to be on the bottom or be on top with sort of mens rea, also, athletes are competing against each other. But in MMA it’s just plain better to be on top because you can punch the other person in the head. So my first my first proposed rule change two points for first opposition. I don’t care how it happens. Also, you

11:03 – Edgar OtraVez
don’t care how it happens. I was going to ask a clarifying question in that respect, too, because I believe in IBJJF, if you pull guard in such a way, if they touch your leg, the other guy gets. Yeah, you get two points. That’s a takedown.

11:18 – John Lawrence
Yeah. So let’s say that you and I are having a match. And as you’re going to pull, guard my fingertips, touch your knee, that’s too for me. Yeah, it’s because you know, they don’t want me to pick up a single leg and then have you fake pull guard to avoid being taken down. So they’ve built that rule. But again, like, with the rule, I’m proposing, like it’s a non issue, it could be a real takedown, or it could be a guard pole, or whatever. But I don’t care how you got on top, or how you got on the bottom after three seconds of stabilization. The person on top is awarded two points. Okay, that’s one thing I’d like to see. Now, the pushback I’ve had on this and I’ve had plenty is, well, you’re just going to see a bunch of people stalling out from the feet, like you’re just going to see a bunch of people, you know, like doing some some really shitty geeky wrestling, basically. And I would say I would say that’s a possible danger. It’s a possible but but necessary evil. But I also think you need to, you need to let the sport like evolve for a little bit and kind of see, kind of see how it looks. Because this, I think it’s necessary, I think it’s important. And I also really believe that two points is a big deal. A lot of these athletes. And takedowns are important to the point where I when I first wrote this, I’ve since watched the back, but I had three points for first top position instead of two. So conceivably, you could take the person down, get swept and still be winning the match. You know what I mean?

12:39 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, though, what do you think about in terms of like, the constant takedowns, the repeated takedown, so they they take you down? You get two points, you stand up? So you get DQ there? Or what do you suppose so that’s so

12:51 – John Lawrence
again, like, I just look at how it relates to MMA, like, would you want to take somebody down? And then let them back up? So you can see you can take them down again and score more? No, of course not like it’s the incentive. It’s the incentive issue, again, like my incentive is to take you down and keep you on the bottom. So I can punch you in the face. That’s that’s the incentive. So in jujitsu, they don’t let they don’t you can’t do that. Now. You can’t take people down and let them up. Now, you could take somebody down and like, let them get up. But if they stay seated, then disengaging is is penalized up to the person on top. So you know, do I think it’s perfect. I know I don’t I see the point where people would say that you’re going to see some sort of garbage wrestling. But in some of these, like 30 minute, 40 minutes submission only matches, these guys are still shooting for takedowns. Because they want to be on top, they want to score in the eyes of the judges. And some of this will get ironed out later on when I tell you about some of the other rule sets that I kind of like and then I kind of don’t like

13:50 – Edgar OtraVez
I agree with that statement that you said that you need a little time you throw you throw that out there, you let it soak a little bit, you let people kind of figure it out. Nobody wants to be a boring fighter. Right. So I mean, I would like to think that the incentive, at least for me, like I wouldn’t want anybody booing me, because, you know, I’m stalling. You know, nobody. Nobody wants to be that guy. At least most people don’t.

14:15 – John Lawrence
Two points for first opposition. If we’re talking about a tournament ruleset where there’s points, and I am a fan of points for reasons we can we can talk about but yeah, I think that’s that’s one simple change, where if you institute that, I think the jujitsu athletes you see an MMA and 10 years are going to look totally different. As opposed to the judges who might put out now you know, these guys who go to IBJJF tournaments and they don’t have a takedown to their name. We are not going to funnel these athletes in MMA. You know, what does it mean for MMA, which is the sport that feeds us, so many students and so many athletes will say I’m worried about it.

14:51 – Edgar OtraVez
So So you got two points for takedown. What would be the next

14:54 – John Lawrence
set for first half position to be clear,

14:57 – Edgar OtraVez
first top position.

14:59 – John Lawrence
Yeah, so like So like, so like, if you pull, I still get two.

15:02 – Edgar OtraVez
Okay. Yeah. So like, if you managed to get up to get up again, like for whatever reason the bottom guy stands up or however, and you shoot again, you still get two points. Right? You get it? Yeah,

15:14 – John Lawrence
absolutely. Yeah. So maybe first top position, and then subsequently, second, third and fourth opposition. Okay. But yeah, anything I would, I would change that to say anything initiated from the feet, where I end up on top and you end up on the bottom, no matter how crazy the scramble whatever I mean, that’s my two.

15:32 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. Okay. Yeah, that’s, that’s really nice and simple. It’s simple.

15:36 – John Lawrence
And then you don’t get into these weird situations where the ref has to, like, figure out if there was a pole, or if somebody should have gotten the advantage for almost grabbing the back and that scramble it. So that’s just to straight up. So it makes the reference here as well.

15:49 – Edgar OtraVez
Do you have advantages in your rule system that you’re talking about? I would

15:53 – John Lawrence
say like if you put a gun to my head and said, decide now, I would say no advantages. I’m kind of agnostic about that. I mean, I think let’s just say no, let’s keep it simple and say no, for now.

16:02 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I’ve never understood the advantages. It’s, it’s always been kind of like a fuzzy deal. For me. It’s just like I won because the advantage what

16:10 – John Lawrence
it’s, it’s subjective. It’s, I mean, it’s basically like helping the referee score a referee’s decision. That’s basically what they’re doing. Okay, you know what I mean? Like, that’s how I’ve always looked at it, it’s like, if it’s, if there are no points, and it’s too close to call, the ref at least has like track of near movements on the board, so they can make like an informed referee’s decision. That’s how I’ve always looked at it.

16:33 – Edgar OtraVez
Okay. You know, that’s, again, conceptually makes it easier to kind of think about when it comes to, you know, scoring these things.

16:41 – John Lawrence
But it’s, again, it’s gamble, you see some sort of garbage wins, based on advantages sometimes, like where there’s one guy who’s clearly, clearly just a better grappler. But out of circumstance, the other person has that advantage. They kind of hold on to the end that it does does happen.

17:00 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, yeah. So. So what are the next set of points? So like?

17:06 – John Lawrence
Yeah. So I think I think the other one that some organizations have half right, is, I would like to see two points, honestly, two points minimum, for any strong submission attempt. Okay. Now, of course, you get into an area of subjectivity here. But I think, I think you know what I’m talking about. So let’s say that, you know, I amount, I go into the spiderweb position, and then I straighten my opponent’s arm out completely. The points are, where they have to initiate an intelligent defense, so that they hitchhike out. And then they come on top of my closed guard. At minimum, I should score two points for that. Because I almost ended the bench, you know, yeah. In anybody who would try to argue against that, you would have to tell me why. You get two points for popping up to me on the belly for three seconds. But you don’t get two points for having somebody in a denture right submission that they escape.

18:12 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I like that. Because it’s similar to the folkstyle wrestling ruleset. Because if you pin somebody, and you show the back to the mat, you get what is it two points or something and then you get another point when you get when you actually score the pin or whatever. But like, he gives a count, right? So like your you expose the back and he throws I think, like a three count. I forget any I forget. But like, it’s similar to that respect is like you made a legit attempt at submitting the guy. And he’s, you know, he’s skilled enough to get out. Yeah, I agree with that. I think that’s a great idea. Because you can have a match where it’s just, the guy is just attempting, he’s just throwing these these submissions on, but then he ends up in a compromised position, or maybe not a compromised position, but not like, for example, the example that you gave, he’s on, he’s on top, he goes, he pulls for the Eagles for that armbar. And when he leans back, the guy ends up you know, in his guard now, he’s not on top anymore. But he had he mean, in a legit attempt that, you know, yeah, in a real fight. If you want to think about it in a real fight, if you did a legit attempt, and the guy warmed out of it, his arms gonna hurt a little bit, you know, especially if you really got a good and he just was strong and pulled it pulled out or whatever. Sometimes they hyperextend there’s damage there. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Two points.

19:35 – John Lawrence
potential for damage, but that again, for me, it all comes back to to incentives. We want to incentivize people to really sharpen their submission skills. And with the current rule set, actually Nagas got this right. I will do believe that Naga will award you points for strong submission attempts. I’m almost positive about that. They do change the rules from time to time so I’m not sure that’s current but I know for sure that they will do And that for a while, when I get my athletes ready for a competition in the sort of Camp leading up to it, I obviously want people to get submissions, we have a very good submission rate when we go to competitions, but a lot of the prep is based around scoring based around just being positionally wise. And so the incentive for me to like, teach everybody how to throw up a triangle or an arm lock from the closed guard, two weeks leading up to the competition is not there. Because not only do you not score for it, but if you fuck it up, you’re going to get scored on, right. Yeah. So I think like, if you say, you know, say, really beat it up, let’s say three points for a strong submission, you know, then you’re in the close guard position, maybe you’re, maybe it’s a tie score, you’re not sure who’s gonna win the decision. And you go, you know what I’m gonna throw this triangle up, I’m gonna close it out here, like, now, here’s what happens. I throw up a triangle on you. It’s close. It’s good. But you hit that little wrestler shrug by you pass my guard. How many you score, you scored three. But I scored three. So it’s a wash, you see what I’m saying? So it makes it would make those moments more active and more aggressive. I’m going to throw my triangle up. Because even if you do slip out, as long as as long as I put it on you, there’s going to be no movement in the score. After you pass my guard. I got three from my attempt. You got three for your pass, and we are where we are. Yeah, you know, it’s just all incentives for me. That’s, that’s all it is.

21:34 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I think that’s awesome. Um, for the record,

21:36 – John Lawrence
I’m not totally sure it’s awesome. It’s just, I’ve been, I’ve been studying so much jujitsu and watching all these matches with all these different rule sets the point where I got to be like, what were the rules in this match that I’m studying right now? Like, what can they do? And it’s just so segmented, and it’s so on unified? And I’m just like, yeah, it just feels very disorganized.

21:58 – Edgar OtraVez
It’s, I don’t know how you’re gonna get away with get away from that. Because there’s so many different organizations, and everybody thinks that their rule sets the best, right? So

22:08 – John Lawrence
I can’t really, I can’t imagine that they think that they really think that

22:12 – Edgar OtraVez
I don’t know, I would like to think Well, they probably they probably like maybe they do have a understanding that okay, my rule set isn’t the best, but I’m not gonna do what he’s doing. I’m gonna do what I’m doing. Right? Even though they’re gonna take some of the things that other people do, like, you know, a lot, everybody, you know, follows the IBJJF to a certain extent, but then they’re like, Oh, well, I don’t like this rule. And that change it? Yeah. You’re right, you’re right about that, you know, but uh, and then there’s people who just like, like we’ve said before, just throw all that out. So going back to I find all this very interesting, because you make me want to, like put together a tournament, but not that I would.

22:47 – John Lawrence
I just doesn’t know. That’s precisely what I aim to do. That not that I’m going to change anything worldwide. I’m not but yeah, I just, I think it’d be cool to put on some type of competition is some type of fight card. But then again, people try to do this, they try to put these five cards together. And then I go, what’s the rule set? And I go, you know, they’ll tell me what the rule says. And I’m like

23:14 – Edgar OtraVez
well, I mean, it’s just like the you know, all these other combat sports, it’s boxing, this kickboxing there’s Muay Thai, there’s always, you know, and then like, Oh, you’re in Japan, you can’t elbow or something, right? It’s just like, why you can’t, you can’t elbow is like, Yeah, you can’t, you can only do this or whatever. And, like, I think one of the weird things not to veer off topic, but like the Muay Thai rule set right now, as they score heavily for the people who do the all the tripping and stuff. So you still love you see a lot more like of the tripping and the throwing, then you used to, I don’t know, 20 years ago, and I was just like, what happened? Like, why? You know, also, there’s other cool things that they incentivize the elbows and knees and stuff, and strong kicks, and yeah, those those things are, you know, high on the list, but, you know, some of these people, they’ll, they won’t, you know, they won’t engage with you in the clinch, they’ll just throw you and, you know, they did get favorable scoring for that. Okay, so, this is, like more examples of people gaming the system. But

24:21 – John Lawrence
again, I just, I just think you have to, you just have to, you have to center everything around a set of incentives, you know, awarding takedowns heavily. And, you know, like going after submissions. I mean, why, why are wrestlers doing so? Well, in MMA? It’s because the incentives, the incentives and high level wrestling, they’re, they’re just congruent with the incentives and mixed martial arts, right? In wrestling, you want to get on top and you want to control position that just works so well for a fight. You know, I mean, it works so well. Now, if you got a wrestler who’s never seen submissions before, they’re gonna get tapped, you know, and we’ve seen that they do get tapped. I just I I think jujitsu should just look a lot more like wrestling. And it could, if we just change the incentives, we change the points in the real structure a little bit, then you’re basically going to have, you know, you’re basically going to have like submission wrestling. Yeah, I don’t know, I just, as you can see, my thoughts on this are not like, totally fully formed in a lot of ways. But I just, I worry with, with some of the rule sets that I see and some of the styles that I see that our sport is going to look like point karate in, like 10 or 20 years, you know what I mean? Yeah, long, long, long term. Not not right. Not right, just yet. Yeah.

25:36 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. So I agree, I’m afraid of that, too. I’m afraid of all the things that come with that point, karate make Dojo stuff, because you’re gonna have watered down black belts and techniques, and you’re gonna have, you know, you’re gonna have a weird scoring system for tournaments. It’s just gonna, it’s gonna be very odd. But I mean, maybe that’s what people were saying 20 years ago, and, and, you know, Jujitsu still seems to be doing fine, you got some, you got plenty of wacky players that can do really crazy stuff at high levels. But it’s still you know, I don’t think it’s gotten that bad. I would like to think that in a self defense situation, because again, this is what we’re talking about, a little bit, that someone would not pull guard, you know, God forbid, someone tries to pull guard, you will all see the memes where the guys try to pull guard in a self defense situation. It’s funny, but God forbid that they gotten so used to pulling guard that in in the middle of a fight, they, they without thinking pull guard, and then they get horribly smashed,

26:39 – John Lawrence
I would, I would just I would say that I’m really not even this might sound kind of wacky, but I’m really not even concerned about somebody pulling guard in MMA or in a self defense situation, as long as they’re as long as they’re training. And the incentives are sort of all lined up for the aggression of a fight. Like what you don’t want as you don’t want somebody to pull guard and then do this, sort of this this style, with some of these longer formats, where it’s a lot of waiting on the bottom and a lot of setting up and a lot of wearing the person down on top, basically from a punching distance. So you have like, you have these open guard styles, where you’ve got daily even reverse daily Hiva which could absolutely work in a fight, if they’re trained properly. And the timing is right. But you’ll you’ll see people just I mean, so if anybody wants a frame of reference for what I’m babbling about, check out check out mica gal Val and Tyra tulo, and you’ll you’ll see, you’ll see the type of back and forth guard pass and guard play style that I’m talking about. that would that would just never really translate to MMA. And it’s not the techniques that they’re doing. It’s more it’s like the distance at which they’re doing them and the pace at which they’re doing it. Like I think I think a bear and bullets to the back or a kiss the dragon like reverse daily Hiva spin. Those movements can absolutely work in a fight but not the way that they’re currently like paced out. And some of these matches, you know, like, you have a 30 minute at submission only match, which I think is absolute trash, just garbage. I mean, you have to be a psycho to watch that for a half hour. I really I really if I if I’m not sounding like I hate it. Just let me just say again, I just really hate it. I mean, it’s, you know, that that match, respect to those guys do. They’re incredible athletes, but that matches 20 minutes of, you know, awful wrestling, and then maybe another 10 minutes of this, just sort of.

28:54 – Edgar OtraVez
So you have there’s a couple of things I wanted to like you were riffing on that. I want to kind of jump

28:58 – John Lawrence
this Yeah, right in here a little bit. Yeah.

29:01 – Edgar OtraVez
But like, you are talking about, like a top heavy game with the wrestling. I know. Isn’t that exactly what you’re looking for? Because one of the beauties about jujitsu is that the guy in the bottom can still attack the guy in the bottom, given the right position. Can can, you know, put the person in the guard and then try submission attempt right. But yeah, but like the the incentive for wrestlers is to like you said have a top heavy game. There’s all these pinning positions from the top you get scoring, you’re scoring for those pending positions. So the guy on the bottom doesn’t really get any kind of score unless he gets out from under the neath of the guy and then makes his own attempts at pinning and taking down and all that other stuff. But we’re

29:46 – John Lawrence
saying we’re saying just be clear in sport jujitsu are in

29:49 – Edgar OtraVez
regular folk style wrestling, just to be exact. Oh, sure. Sure. So it’s a top heavy game. There’s no incentive for the guy in the bottom to to do any kind of attacks because they’re isn’t any attacks in the system, the only way they can score is if they come up on top and make their own submissions or make their own attempts at pinning, chant takedowns and stuff like that in jujitsu, the guy in the bottom can still win, you can throw up a triangle, you throw an armbar, from the guard, whatever. You know, so like, like, you wouldn’t incentivize any of the attacks on the bottom then, other than submission attempts?

30:25 – John Lawrence
No, no, I definitely would, I guess what I’m saying is, so my rule set, my rule set, just the idea of say, like, first top position, if you like. So let’s say let’s say these are the rules, and you’ve got a competition coming up and you, you’re going to pull guard, like, you’re gonna say, Fuck that, too, I’m gonna give it up, because my guard is so good. And I’m just, I’m just gonna go win anyway. So like, you have to think about, like, what your training has to look like them. Given that incentive structure. And given those rules, you training has to be hyper aggressive, very sweep and very submission oriented, you know, sweep, so you can get on top and score. You know, remember when you if you sweep from closed guard, it’s two points for your sleep, but often four points for the mound position, if and when you land there. And then if you land in a guard position, you’ve got all these, these incentives to pass the legs so you can score additionally. But like, you just won’t have you know, like, I’m sure you’ve rolled with guys before, where they, they’re in bottom closed guard, and then this person who probably means well, that drives me insane, we’ll put like one hand behind their head like this. And then they’ll kind of like play a little cross sleeve game a little bit here, maybe they’ll put both hands behind their head for a second, you don’t see that my training room, because I would be livid. If I saw people doing that. Not just because of the fact that you know, this is sort of a lazy judges who have it sit like this with both both hands folded behind your head. But if I have a blue belt, in my top close guard, and that blue belt sits up, for more than a second, my brain goes, this guy could be hitting you in the face right now. Like this guy could be punched in the face right now. Not only that, but also a person who’s sitting up with full posture is much, much, much, much harder to attack than somebody who you’ve broken down to the crown of the head. Yeah. So no, I think I think this I think this rule set docking people to points for about a position it’s going to make it’s going to let fire under under people’s assets to sweep and submit be be highly aggressive with with their attacks. That’s how I would approach it. As somebody I do love guard is somebody who loves guard, if I was going to pull, understanding that I was going to I was going to be down to points, man, I’m like, I’m gonna have a motor down there. You know, it’s not gonna be there’s gonna be no casual training from bottom closed guard or bottom, whatever guard because the incentive structures out there.

32:47 – Edgar OtraVez
I want to ask, I don’t want to again, like I want to keep going on the point system that you’re creating. Later, Lego leaves. One of the things I wanted to ask you is combat jujitsu, Eddie Bravo’s combat jujitsu nonsense, or I shouldn’t call it. I don’t want to call it nonsense. But sometimes I see stuff. And I’m like, I don’t know if that’s jujitsu anymore. But I take that back. I don’t mean nonsense. But like, what do you think of that? Like that? Cool, man. Yeah, he’s trying. No, no, I’m apologizing that Eddie Bravo because he listens to his podcast. Anyway.

33:26 – John Lawrence
I’m sure he’ll let you know. He does. I

33:27 – Edgar OtraVez
know. So I see,

33:30 – John Lawrence
I see where you’re going. I see you going? I think you’re you’re about to make a good point. Go ahead.

33:35 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. So like, you know, the whole reason for combat jujitsu is so that it keeps the guy in the bottom working? Right? Or everybody’s working? Right. You don’t want to sit there. But it’s also to create opportunity for more submissions. Right. That was, that’s part of what he was saying. The other thing is, too, is is like, it makes it a little more realistic, because there’s the danger of being smacked. Right? Because that’s what they’re doing. They’re just smacking each other. Do you like that rule system? I personally don’t like them. Because yeah, I’ve seen those guys. Like, not really smack each other. They they’re basically punching each other. And at that point, it’s just like, it’s MMA. You know? Right. It’s not jujitsu. And as fun as that is, because it looks hella fun. I more than once wanted to kind of participate in that kind of ruleset. Yeah, but it’s, it’s different. It’s, you’re

34:32 – John Lawrence
just kind of, you’re still gonna, you’re still gonna get a concussion? Yeah. No, you mean you said it. It’s it’s just MMA with sort of a modified fist is really what it is. And then obviously, you can’t I believe the rule is you can’t strike until you’re until you’re on the ground. Right? Wow. Yeah. So from the feet you’re not allowed at least last I was aware of the rule set you you’re not allowed to strike from the feet. It’s basically wrestling on the feet and then once somebody’s ass the mat, those palm strikes are allowed But, and I would just say go ahead and look at the dynamics of what happens in the ground during one of those matches versus what happens on the ground during like a 30 minute submission only match, it’s going to look like two totally different things. And if I had to decide which set of athletes to put into the UFC course it would be at ease, you know, combat jiu jitsu athletes, because they just they have a totally different set of incentives. They have a totally different set of fears, dangers, and you know, I mean, yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s a no brainer for me now, do I? Do I enjoy that event? No. I mean, I just watched him. I don’t know. I don’t know why I would watch that. You know what I mean? No, I would just watch mixed martial arts. Yeah, I’d say do I want to watch? Do I want to watch kickboxing you where you can’t? You know, you can’t wrestle and you can’t take people down? No, I’ll just watch MMA. For me, like, for me, everything goes back to MMA. You know what I mean? I do have a soft spot for jujitsu. But like I said, I want to see, I still want to see jujitsu do really well in MMA, and I still want Rogan to send me new students. So

36:10 – Edgar OtraVez
yeah, I you know, one another juicy nugget to bring that up. I don’t think I’ve ever watched the whole fight all the way through one of those combat jujitsu things I always try to you just turn on UFC. That’s why Yeah, I think so that makes sense. I see it. I see it coming through, like my stream or whatever. And I’m like, Oh, that’s interesting. None of it ever makes me think, oh, you know, I should look their fight up. You know, I always look at it. I’m like, oh, that’s crazy. You know,

36:37 – John Lawrence
you go. That’s interesting, but not that interesting. That’s what you that’s what you’re doing,

36:41 – Edgar OtraVez
basically. Yeah, I think it’s wild. And you know, but I’m like, you know, they’re just smacking each other for the whole round, you know, because that’s what it seems like to me. And again, I’m probably really uneducated in terms of the combat the combat jujitsu strategy, but I just see dude, getting on top and then smacking someone and I’m like, Oh, this, you know, like you said, I’ll just watch MMA.

37:05 – John Lawrence
I have my students once or once or twice a year. And it’s not enough, because people, it really is an eye opener. But we’ll pull out. I’ve got a giant tub of MMA training gloves, we pull it will pull the gloves out and explain to everybody like, Look, we’re not even going to be hitting into their heart, like these gloves, your way, these gloves. So you don’t accidentally cut somebody with your knuckles. Like, that’s the only I’m not pulling these gloves out. So you guys can hate each other hearts. You’re literally just tapping each other in the forehead with these gloves. And the rounds are two minutes, two minutes long, oftentimes, because people just can’t even handle more than two minutes. But it’s it’s obvious. Which guards styles favor strikes and play a different guard style where they’re like, wow, you know, I have they basically say like, I have some terrible habits. You know, I have some really bad habits that need to patch up. My idea of like, distance management is totally whacked out. It’s interesting to see people react about

38:03 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I like I liked that idea. You know, there’s, I’ve been at schools where they do that, they’ll throw on the gloves and be like, Hey, okay, let’s let’s make it entertaining to the year. Everybody go ahead and pop each other. i It really does change the way you look at it. Because, yeah, you’re right. There’s people develop bad habits, or sometimes people as good habits as they may have don’t realize, oh, you know, I have a hole here. You know, there’s something here that I shouldn’t be doing that I didn’t realize it was making me open for an attack in this fashion. And it could, you know, make a lot of difference in terms of actual, you know, again, self defense, not that we’re talking about exactly that anymore. But so going back to the new hurricane tournament, what what would you call the child? First off?

38:46 – John Lawrence
Oh, I have no idea. I don’t know, I don’t think I’ve ever really want to want to run a tournament. So not much as I would like to sort of pay tribute to what I think was sort of the best format for grappling, which is like, fight to win Pro, vintage fight to win Pro. I’m saying that because I’ve I’ve heard that they’ve changed some of the rules. I don’t know if that’s true, but fight to win Pro, like pre COVID, when they were sort of traveling the country, I would like to do something like that I would like to do where there’s a where there’s like an actual eight to 10 Match card, where you’ve got athletes of various weights and various skill levels, you have three judges, and then you have a reasonable time limit. You know, like I said, these these 20 3040 minute matches, I just think I think some of the jujitsu displayed in that long of a time frame is just, it’s just, it just doesn’t look like anything that resembles combat in certain circumstances. I mean, you could, you can, you could lay on the bottom and on bottom mount for five minutes and just get your breath back. If you’re exhausted. Just tuck your elbows in, hide your neck, you know, especially if it’s an ogee it’s hard to maybe move from there and you can just kind of recover for a few minutes while a person is sitting on top of you. That drives me crazy. So you know, like Yeah, 3g It is maybe an eight minute time window, which is good if you really want to stretch out and go to 10. But I mean, you can really get, you can get a good idea of who’s better in eight minutes. I think five is short. Five is definitely too short. You know, people are just sort of getting getting going around the 45 minute mark, eight 910 minutes is good. And, yeah, I mean, I just think I think I’d like to have a fight card like that where there aren’t even any points. Yeah, and it’s just three judges. And those three judges conceivably would be brown or black belts, people who have a lot of experience watching jujitsu, and those three people decide who the better grappler was during those eight 910 minutes. Very rare that I’ve that I’ve seen that go the wrong way. It’s very rare that you see anybody sort of game that I mean, it’s almost always the better grappler in that time period, who gets the gets the decision? least that’s what I find. I’m sure there’s cases where that, you know, that didn’t happen.

40:51 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I’m sure that that’ll happen. Because I mean, Judge judging, as you see in the UFC, sometimes gets screwy, even boxing and all this stuff. You. There’s always bad decisions, that happens. Sure, but but when that happens, usually the the people involved weren’t really, you know, practitioners or really understood the sport that they’re judging, which makes me nuts. But like, what you’re proposing is that you have actual skilled judges, blackbelt judges, judging the thing. And I think that so long as that is in place, and done correctly, I think that’s a great idea. Because I, one of my worries would be all you have. And of course, you watch for this, you know, but Oh, this guy, he’s affiliated to that guy who’s affiliated that guy, and that guy is his fighter, and he’s up there, and he’s judging. So like, there is a conflict of interest there. I would like to think that they’ll all that is handled. But you know, even in this bigger organizations, that is not always handled correctly, but

41:52 – John Lawrence
you get into some subjectivity, for sure there. And if we were going to do an event, I would make it so that at least for the first event, we have none of my athletes participating, just so we could do like a proof of concept. You know what I mean?

42:06 – Edgar OtraVez
You wouldn’t have just any of your students participate now? No,

42:09 – John Lawrence
because because of the conflict of interest and the bias that you’ve you highlighted there, you know, just for the first one, the proof of concept, just to prove that we could put on just a simple, well executed bet. Yeah, I would say, which is I would just leave off all hurricane students, because, you know, I’d be a judge conceivably or referee and, you know, maybe a couple of a couple of guys would rough. Yeah, you know, just to show that it can be done, and that it’s worth doing. Yeah, and this is mostly for fun. I mean, I mean, Mike just snapped where I make my money. So, ya know, speak for, for the love of the game, you know?

42:40 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. And I like what you’re talking about. I think it’s cool. It makes things easier, even for the fighter, the fighter doesn’t have to think about like, oh, do I? Did I score a point there? Am I doing this? Right? Should I, I got to do this. And in that particular scenario, the guy all he has to do is win. Right?

42:56 – John Lawrence
Yeah. And think about, like, if you’re participating in one of those tournaments, I mean, just think about like, think about your, your incentives, I mean, what are the judges looking for from the feet, they’re probably looking for some nice, beautiful takedowns, you know, or, if you are going to pull guard, like you’re, you’re really, you don’t have the luxury of time to sit and just noodle around. I mean, if you have a seven or eight minute window, you’re gonna sit and you’re gonna get right to work with some really impressive submission attempts. Some sweep attempts you get on top, you try to pass, but both the athletes in that situation are incentivized to just do the best grappling that they can possibly do. You know, given their their skill set. This might sound goofy, but I would even normalize ties, like a tie, because nobody wants to tie right. And so you get into these, nobody wants to tie so

43:50 – Edgar OtraVez
like, when you’re talking about tying, you’re talking about like when they stand up and they clinch the gravity. Oh, no, no, no,

43:56 – John Lawrence
no, I’m talking about a tie score. I’m talking about all tie score, okay, so So in fights when pro just as an example, maybe to clarify my point, they can raise a blue flag or a red flag, you know, give whatever color athlete, I would create a third option where you do not raise a flag. So if you have two judges, they don’t raise their flags because they’re like neither these idiots did anything. Then that makes the athletes look really bad. It’s basically like a double dq, you know, so and then also like if it was the case that both both athletes were just in a flurry I’ve seen these that fight to win pro where it’s like, Man, I don’t know who won this guy went for a step back I went for a sub this dude hit a takedown this guy had a crazy sweep to an almost back take. It’s like, you don’t want somebody to walk away with an L in a match. That’s not even like we should be able to say like, Man that was so goddamn close. Let’s just like let’s just give these guys the respect of sale you get you guys neutralize each other. You know, I think that should be normalized and like if the fans don’t like it, it’s like, come on like you want them have to just guess.

45:02 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. And then no matter when it’s close, no matter who wins everybody, someone’s going to be pissed off. Like, everybody’s gonna be like, Oh, no, that’s not how I saw it. And that’s always the case when it comes when it’s really close like that.

45:16 – John Lawrence
I just think like, I would just say that I just think we need to, I think the organization’s the biggest organizations in the world right now. Look at the IBJJF look at EBI, look at fight to win. They need to step back and really need to go like what? Like what type of grappling like, do we want to incentivize? What do we want it to look like? Ken? How should our rules be written based on that vision? And I just don’t know, if a lot of organizations are doing that. Now, the IBJJF they got a little scared by all of these other organizations, normalizing leg locks and heel hooks, you know, you’ve got ADCC, it’s where it’s like, nobody really gave a shit, who won the NoGi worlds anymore. Because that person was not really the NoGi world champion. They weren’t like they were the NoGi World Champion minus leg locks. And so under that pressure under that incentive of like, look, we want to be recognized as the organization that’s got the best know you rapidly athletes, they finally, after so many years, normalize and legalize, reaps and heel hooks in all these leg entanglements that I think should be normalized in the sport at nearly all levels. They did it, you know, but they did it under tremendous pressure of just basically becoming irrelevant. You know, they didn’t do it for the love of the game, and maybe leads to a different topic. You want to talk about leg locks last time. It’s kind of the perfect segue. I would like to see the REAP and the heel hook introduced in the ghee at various levels. I mentioned this before you kind of like cackle that me a little bit.

46:49 – Edgar OtraVez
I thought it was I still think it’s a little nuts only because you can’t slip out as, but I mean, like I said before, like you can’t slip out of it. Because there’s so much drag the pants the can’t slip out. So you got to cap, you got to tap? Exactly. Yeah, you know, I thought about that, too. It’s just like, you know, it’s just, yeah, you just teach people to learn how to deal with it. And the only way you’re gonna learn is exposure, right? So you put it in the training room, and you tell people to be careful and and you do that. But one thing that I picked up, and you kind of alluded to a little bit are pretty much pointed out, the last time we spoke was when it comes to leg locks, you want to give people slow, or just in general, you want to give people a slow tap, you hold on to the position, you let them know what’s coming, and they kneel, if they can’t get out, they tap and if they manage to get out and you knew you had it, it’s fine. Yeah, you still have a partner. One of the things I learned about training like locks was, if you don’t have a good leg entanglement, you shouldn’t be trying for the submission. If the guy is kind of loose in your entanglement, you throw double outside Aashi or whatever. And your you got these guys tangled up, and they’re standing up, you did a bad job of holding on the legs. That doesn’t mean you’re in a position to throw on the leg. That’s that’s just, I think what happened, especially with some of the people I was training, I thought I could get out. And he was attacking. So while I was trying to get out, he attacked and pop my knee. I think if he would have held on to me and made a pretty evident I wasn’t gonna get out. And then throughout Lee Hill hook, I would have tapped, that wouldn’t happen. And that’s pretty much what you’re saying about making sure you give them an opportunity to tap. What are other little ideas that you do in terms of like training leg locks,

48:45 – John Lawrence
in terms of like safety or safety? Yeah, I think that’s really the big one. And that seems to get harder for people, the more competitive the round gets. So if I’m going against, you know, somebody who’s really, really built, let’s just say below my level where I can, I can pretty much do what I want. It’s very easy for me to give that person a free account, because I don’t have a lot of skin in the game in terms of like, I really want to beat this guy and feel really competitive. My ego does not get brought into the picture, right? Where you see guys get hurt more, I think is when both people want to win very badly. Then you see that three count, turn into a very, very, very quick three out of three. Yeah, exactly. And again, like the, I think the ego injures people more than anything, I’m just finding that to be true insurance for the long road train. So if I’m going against a purple belt or brown belt or another black belt, and I’m rolling competitively, which you should not always do, we’ll talk about that a little bit. I I still really do my best to give to give those guys a three. I was running with a purple belt the other day, and I got him in a knee bar. It was dead to rights. I had it like it was straight leg locked in. But I did my usual like I’m going to finish this on a very controlled gradient. And he put a bend in his knee and moved out of the position. That’s just a moment that you have to, you just have to accept that that’s going to happen if you train this way. And again, it just comes down to ego, like, how bad do you want to tap this person? Versus how, how much do you care about keeping them safe. And those two things are always at odd. The bigger and bigger, the more and more the ego gets brought into the role, you know, but I feel like I’ve I’ve exercised that mode of training enough to where like, I really don’t care anymore. When you guys leave my my slow submission. When I go to a tournament, I’ll take it as fast as I want. You know, I’m not trying to hurt anybody. But I’m also trying to decisively win the match when I get to submission training room. I’m just not that I’m not that way.

50:45 – Edgar OtraVez
So when it comes to so like, when you’re getting ready for competition, do you still keep that mindset? Because I could see that relaxed mindset easily be kept. When you’re just training? offseason I guess you can call it when you’re not when you’re not in tournament mode. I would I would think that it would be a little harder to keep that in focus when you’re when you’re getting ready for a tournament.

51:10 – John Lawrence
So I would say if it’s a choke, you know, you’re not really going to injure anybody by squeezing a choke a little harder and faster. Right generally speaking, so the chokes you can seal it, you can pretty much train it for clip. If it’s something like like a major joint, like a knee or a you know, an ankle or shoulder like a strong Cumorah Yeah, this is just like a rule. I don’t care if like the up and coming Bluebell wiggles out of my arm lock because I was giving him a long time to escape. Like, I just don’t, I don’t care. It’s like trying to knock people out in boxing sparring. Found a boxing gym. I would never try to knock anybody out. I’m not trying to get my partner’s brain damage. But I would just you would just have to flip that that switch when you go into a match? Yeah.

51:50 – Edgar OtraVez
And there are gyms were guys getting knocked out or do used to be I don’t know if it’s like that anymore. But there was a time where people would be like, Okay, we’re training for fights, we’re knocking each other up. Yeah,

52:00 – John Lawrence
I don’t think that’s I don’t think it’s wise. But I’ve never done that type of flight training. So I wouldn’t even speak to it, I can say it’s like training with grappling, it seems that you can, you can leave that piece out that I’m going to finish this arm lock as fast as possible on my training partner, I feel like you can leave that that piece up, you can still be you can still be a very complete complete grappler when you when you get to the competition. Yeah. And I would also say that I would break, I break submissions down into into two categories. I’ve never, maybe another coach has done this by a different name. But I’ve got so two sets. One is submissions, which would be a nice like an armlock from a very controlled spider web, and triangle choke from the closed guard and user submissions. And then you’ve got these, this other set of finishes that I would consider catches, catches, for me would be any submission that is time based in terms of its control to so let’s say that I’m standing in your open guard and I don’t control your hip. I don’t control your knee line. But I grab a heel hook grip on your foot and I twist it faster than you can roll with it. Right? I’m still going to injure you, I’m still going to put you in enough discomfort or pain where you have to tap. But it’s to me that’s a catch because it’s time based because if I did it slowly, you would have time to roll effortlessly with it and then ultimately out of it. Certain wrist locks fall into this category. Do you understand the concept though?

53:33 – Edgar OtraVez
Absolutely. I forget the name of the grappler Sanchez something was sparring once with with an MMA guy. And the guy was just trying I can’t remember his guy’s name. Anyway, this guy was standing with this MMA guy, they had like a little bit of a beef. I guess they were joking. And they got a little heated between them. And he got some kind of like over hook and then cranked his arm and I know exactly what I’m talking about. Yeah, yeah. And so do you know the name of the guys that I’m talking about?

54:00 – John Lawrence
What you’re talking about is the technique I mean, you’re talking about is the old school over the over hook bent shoulder lock like the the Frank Mir lock that he did against I think Trey Telamon where you basically over hooking the person at the elbow and then you’re internally rotating your arm so there are twists out like this, like a like, like a hello motion. Most famously, John Jones did that to Glover to Shara is and I believe their title fight he did it up against the cage. And again, you can see how time based this movement is because the way he did it to club into Glover was a quick jerk and immediately tore something in Glover’s shoulder or elbow. Now in the training room, this movement is very difficult to execute because if you do it slow enough, the person can usually sort of wizard down. Maybe that’s the wrong terminology. It can basically rotate their arm down and turn it and they can turn that that bat lock into their own underhook. So if you do Slowly, which I do all the time I catch these from standing a lot, the guy tries to punch in like a shallow underhook on me, I’ll hit that marillac from standing all the time. But I lose it nearly every time I execute it almost every time. Because I’m giving the person a long three count a long time to tap, and I’m making eye contact the whole time. So I have it locked. And I’m looking at your face. I’m looking for a wince. If guys, if guys wins, often let it go. Because the winds comes right before the pop. You know what I mean? And I’m like, I’m not, I can tell when I’ve almost got you and I don’t need it to be final because I don’t give a shit. I mean,

55:38 – Edgar OtraVez
the way you say it is is like I’m looking at you while I’m doing this. I’m like, You’re intimidating them as you’re cranking them.

55:47 – John Lawrence
But let me tell you why. Let me tell you why that one particular sticks in my memory. My brother came in to train with me one time, and he’s like, he’s been training with me on and off for like 15 years. It’s like, never got a blue belt or anything. But he like he knows enough to like, you know, handle himself, but also like very competitive, very athletic. And he he punched underhook on me. And I hit him with that. And it’s my brother, so I gave him like a five count. You know? He this motherfucker. He poker faced me. And he poker face me. And then all of a sudden I hear something that’s like a curtain ripping. And I was like, I go, I’m like, Hey, I’m like, yo, yo, yo. And he’s like, he’s like, he’s like, he’s like, that was weird. He’s like, I don’t know. He’s like, it didn’t really hurt. I go do I go? Yeah, I go. I was watching your face. And I was. And I was going really, really, really slow. And I didn’t think that was even hurting you yet? Yeah, he was Pokerface. Me. Yeah. And he like he couldn’t move his arm right for six months after that. You know what I mean? It’s like now. So now like now that one like I lose that one every time I train. Now, because I take it so slow.

56:54 – Edgar OtraVez
What did your parents say to you about that? Or we didn’t

56:57 – John Lawrence
bring that up. But I felt really bad about that.

57:02 – Edgar OtraVez
Oh, man, that really sucks, man, man, and it’s a brother to right. So it’s a

57:07 – John Lawrence
surprise to him saying I was not like, it was not like Big Brother syndrome, where I was trying to go hard. Like, I always take care of him when we train. You know what I mean? Like, but it was just one of those things where it’s like that stuck in my mind. Like, dude, I never hurt people in the gym. I’m not the guy who ever hurts anybody. But I heard him because like, I just thought he had more slack than he had. But he just was doing such a good job of like, not letting on hurting. I was like, Okay, well, shit.

57:34 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, this is one of the reasons why I’ve let go of of submissions to is just like, Okay, this is weird. You’re so rubbery. You kind of creepy with this. You know, like, I’ve talked about that. Yeah, I’m gonna let this go. You scaring me? Yeah. It shouldn’t be this flexible.

57:48 – John Lawrence
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So no, just to bring it all full circle. No, I just think I think giving people I don’t think leg locks are actually as dangerous as people used to paint them historically. I think a lot of that like, Oh, it’s so date, like a lot of the old school Brazilian guys. So dangerous, very dangerous. Like, I think sometimes you guys have a little bit of ego about the fact that like, somebody’s just grabbing your foot and tapping you out. It’s really not that dangerous. Like, for reasons I don’t totally understand that you don’t feel like it’s a valid submission and you’re not tapping to it as readily as you should. But I don’t really think they’re that I don’t think they’re any more as dangerous as some of the upper body locks that we have the Kimora as the Americana has some of the Omoplata I mean, Jesus Christ, you’ve got all of their body weight, latched on to your elbow, Cranky on your shoulder, you don’t think that’s dangerous? Yeah. Yeah, I don’t get it seems dangerous.

58:43 – Edgar OtraVez
I think a lot of it is more of what we’re talking about in terms of, oh, you know, they don’t want to learn something new. And when they see this, they don’t know how to deal with it. And people get hurt. And they don’t understand how to defend it. They can’t teach the students and rather than learn something new, they say, Oh, well, don’t don’t learn that. That’s yeah. Dangerous. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. And so it just makes things worse, right? Because now you have a whole you have your students go into these competitions with people who are practicing these things. And that’s how people get hurt now, but I think, especially nowadays, that has really, really changed. I think there was a mentality at one point where learning from multiple sources was condemned. That

59:26 – John Lawrence
has taught Sure, sure, sure. Yeah, that’s, yeah, that’s dead. Yeah,

59:31 – Edgar OtraVez
I like to think it is there’s still some people who hold on to that a little bit. I’ve seen for the most part, I like to think that that what we’re talking about is dead.

59:43 – John Lawrence
I was saying that I think it’s more important now than ever to have like, like a centralized, you know, teacher instructor because of the just ridiculous ocean of knowledge out there. It’s almost like, I think for awhile, people were like, Oh, you’re not going to need jiu jitsu schools anymore, because you could just learn from due to, but come to find that learning from YouTube is, is nearly impossible, because there’s just there’s so much garbage mixed in with so much good content that you need somebody to like, sort of put the curriculum together like that out what’s good and what’s not. It’s actually made my job, I think more important and more relevant than than it was years ago.

1:00:22 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, I think that’s a great point. Because one of the things that I thought about in terms of that statement where you don’t need jujitsu schools anymore. I said, I always said, No, you still need a body to practice with, you still need the contact, you still need to know how these things feel like and sure you know how to throw on you know, a triangle, but you don’t know how to you don’t know what it feels like you don’t know when you have it. You know, that takes time that takes practice, you need a fellow practitioner to help you learn it. But I never thought about the aspect that you’re talking about. You need someone to kind of call them knowledge and put it in a usable format for everyone to use and learn that it does make your job way more important, because there is a lot of shit out there. There’s a lot of stuff out there.

1:01:05 – John Lawrence
Oceans, there’s oceans upon oceans. I mean, you could just you could totally get lost. Yeah.

1:01:11 – Edgar OtraVez
Jesus Christ. So when you put a curriculum together, do you are you thinking like, is this going to make my students well rounded? Or am I teaching my game?

1:01:22 – John Lawrence
Yeah, right. Both. I don’t think you can get away from teaching your game people tend to teach what they do best. You know, I mean, but the advantage I have is that I’ve got, I’ve got four other four other adult class instructors, main instructors, who have very different styles than me. Chris is one of our black belt instructors. And he’s just as an example, he’s primarily a kneeling passer, he passes low on both knees. I can’t think of a single pass. I teach from both knees. Aside from being like top closed guard, we break the guard open, but I’m, I’m a standing passer. And most of modern jujitsu is standing passes, but he doesn’t really acceptable job passing through his knees. So my students get an infusion of his style. And then we’ve got Darla who probably has the she’s probably got most similar style to me, and got Travis who is very much like, on the cutting edge, modern of the modern of the modern. So people will get, you know, the they’ll get that Style Infusion. And then Dan Sweeney, who’s another one of our black belts, who he tends to go down on to go down in these, these basically like, micro positional rabbit holes. He gets like hyper focus, and his hyper focus over the past couple of years has been wrestling, you know, wrestle, I think wrestling, high school didn’t wrestle in college, but he’s one of the best wrestlers I’ve ever trained with, just because of his, you know, his match study, and his his ability to like break down techniques and change the techniques. And then there’s me, where yeah, I’ve got my game, and I’m not really exceptional anywhere. I’m just I’ve been described as, like, good everywhere, you know, I don’t like have, I don’t have any weak spots, and just kind of well rounded. So all those students get access to like, all these different styles. And I think that’s part of what part of what makes what we do work. You know, it’s just like all these, don’t try to make the instructors do what I do. And I will try to make them show what I show like, I give them a ton a ton of leeway to just like kind of express themselves. And I think it works.

1:03:26 – Edgar OtraVez
I think it’s fantastic. Because I mean, you need different looks from from your instructors. And the fact that you have so many well informed and talented instructors to give all the students a well rounded experience. That’s fantastic, man. Because I mean, there is That danger, right? If you have one instructor, you just you’re just teaching the same thing over and over again, you know, even if they learn something new, it’s not going to be as a well rounded game as someone with multiple instructors at the school. That’s a great point.

1:03:57 – John Lawrence
Yeah, I agree. So big question is, when are we going to get you back up here with train?

1:04:02 – Edgar OtraVez
Oh, dude. So I’ve been talking to Rick because I gotta I’m gonna run over there first. So I’ll probably go to Rick’s sometime in June, in the middle of June, which is we’re in June now, aren’t we? Okay, so, one more day, one more day. So, somewhere in the middle of June, I’m gonna head over the Rick’s and then I’m thinking about July. So if you got if you got time for me in July, I’ll head on

1:04:30 – John Lawrence
over there. That’d be that’d be busy. Yeah, that’d be cool. Cool.

1:04:33 – Edgar OtraVez
I just want to make sure that I don’t interrupt any of your training or anything.

1:04:37 – John Lawrence
Oh, man. There’s no There’s no interrupting. I’m definitely on a sort of like mellow point in my training right now. Because we had that we had Chicago open a couple weeks ago. And then we had a took my team to grappling industries this past weekend, or I’m losing track of time. The reason I’m losing track of time is because my wife, she just had her knee replaced. Yeah, and so I’m sort of grounded for a little while. So like my training has been like definitely a lot more a lot more casual. Try not to get hurt trying to put myself in bad positions because like she’s, you know, she’s kind of like limping around the house and I can’t be limping around the house at the same time. So like, I’ve been trying to like, really, really be safe. But yeah, so yeah, so I’m just kind of in a chill spot for a couple months while she recovers.

1:05:20 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, that would really suck if both of you guys are hobbling around and on crutches and stuff that they would win.

1:05:27 – John Lawrence
Yeah, dude. Yeah, I’m trying to try to avoid that. Once she’s like, kind of like in a more stable place. I’ll start thinking about kind of ramping up my training, again, training a little harder. Maybe putting some competitions on the schedule. But yeah, for right now. I mean, I’m just I’m just home teaching for the next couple of months. Like I’m not I’m not going anywhere. I’m not doing anything. So. Okay, cool.

1:05:47 – Edgar OtraVez
Cool. Well, I’m sorry to hear about your wife. And her surgery.

1:05:51 – John Lawrence
Yeah, no, she’s chip should be alright. She just she’s had a few. You know, she got she got she got hit by a garbage truck when she was like, I think she was like, 19 or 20. Yeah, she’s like an orthopedic case study. Like she’s had a ton of surgeries. On her legs. Yeah. So it’s a bummer. But yeah, we’re getting through this one. So knee replacement this time, which they’re supposed to be pretty fantastic. The knee replacements are just what I’ve heard, but also, apparently it’s very, very, the rehab sucks, which I’m witnessing that right now. So

1:06:22 – Edgar OtraVez
how long does she have to go through the rehab?

1:06:26 – John Lawrence
I’d say it’s tough because all the timelines are really for, like older people, you know, people who are in their 70s and 80s 90s, getting their knees replaced. I mean, she’s young. She’s like, 4043. And, you know, for somebody like her, I mean, I think it’d be a lot faster. Somebody’s younger. Yeah. So well, hopefully a couple months.

1:06:47 – Edgar OtraVez
Jesus, this that’s, that’s one of the things that I’m super afraid of, it’s something that can happen, you get your leg tangled up, or you step the wrong way you pop your knee, I’ve seen it at tournaments, guys get, trying to go in for throws and then breaking their own leg or whatever in the process, or that whole getting another leg surgery because I’ve got a couple of myself getting on another leg surgery now being on your feet for maybe another six months to a year. It’s just rockin sucks.

1:07:14 – John Lawrence
I think you can really mitigate, like, 90% of injuries by training with people you trust, like, you know, I mean, you can you can train with savages, but savages that you know, are going to like, not hurt you. Because they want to win so bad. That’s number one, like training with people that you that you trust to, you know, to not hurt you. That’s that’s big. But again, the ego. I mean, I think of all the times over the years where like something Something popped or something gets strained. Where I did it, like I basically did it to myself, where I was, I was trying to get away too much. I was fighting too hard. I was I was I was resisting when it was already over, you know, most of the most of the injuries I’ve had were that. And then the other injuries were, you know, when I was kind of training with people who were just a little too excited to be rolling with me, and they shoved me in the head or elbow, knee and elbow, elbow me in the nose. And that’s most of what it is. You know, I

1:08:13 – Edgar OtraVez
tend to leg.

1:08:15 – John Lawrence
People say jujitsu kills the ego. Bullshit. is bullshit. No, it doesn’t.

1:08:22 – Edgar OtraVez
It doesn’t it really doesn’t it. You have to keep that sucker in check the whole time, because it’ll pop up, at least for me, like, my ego will get in my way. And I hate it. I hate it when when I am because sometimes I feel like oh, you know, I just embarrassed myself. I just made an acid myself. I heard this person or I hurt myself. Or I did something really silly. And if I just were a little more chill, this wouldn’t happen, you know. So the other

1:08:51 – John Lawrence
side of that is like you like you just tap early. And you lose. And then you get into this whole thing of you don’t want this person to think that they got you. You know, you know exactly what I’m talking about.

1:09:04 – Edgar OtraVez
Right? Yeah, I know.

1:09:08 – John Lawrence
And I was talking to one of the instructors about this the other day, we’re talking about how I don’t, I think you can, I think you can people say like don’t spar every day or don’t spar every time you train. And I actually think that you can, especially at a certain level, but I definitely don’t spar competitively every single time and the instructor was talking to us like how do you like how do you do that? Like you know this this guy like rules well against any passenger guard or he like sweeps you or against you in like a leg lock or something like he thinks he got you. I’m like, I am like yeah, you know? Yeah, they they think they got me or maybe they don’t just not developing the skill of not giving a shit what the person thought about it is like that’s really that’s really the big thing. Yeah, two weeks out from a tournament a week out from a tournament. I’m trying to beat everybody. I’m you know, I’m trying to beat everyone but right now some rounds or some days I’ll try to beat everybody and then other Other times it’s a roll light. Or sometimes you roll moderate, you know, it’s I get tapped out all the time. I get my guard passed all the time. I get beat all the time. And I do I feel compelled to tell the people that I’m not really at full clip. I do feel compelled to tell them that. Yeah. Do I tell them that? No, I don’t because like, you just you have to just that again, it’s it’s all ego. Yeah, it’s it’s not like if you try to win every round every day, every week, every year. You’re just not You’re not going to make it through this sport for a long time.

1:10:37 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah. Also, like, what do you what are you doing to like, oh, yeah, you got me, but you didn’t get me. You know, this is like, everybody’s like, all right. All right, buddy, whatever. Like, come on, man. Like, I wasn’t rolling it full clip. So like, even you trying to explain it doesn’t make you look good, right, like, so you just gotta let it go. You got the right approach. You know,

1:10:57 – John Lawrence
it’s another thing where sometimes people are so good that it’s like, if you tried as hard as you could, you’d beat them. But if you explore new positions, even if you’re trying hard, if you start exploring new positions, they’ll get you know, and again, like, as an instructor, as an athlete, like that just has to be okay. You don’t need to let everybody know how hard you’re going all the time. You know, it’s not a healthy weight train, it will lead to injury, it’ll lead to overtraining. It’ll lead to bad habits mentally, to thing I think we’re we’re probably all working on.

1:11:27 – Edgar OtraVez
So yeah, for sure. Absolutely. It’s funny that you bring this up because I something in my head. I was rolling with this guy. He got an armbar like he I did something silly. I should have been doing a better job. He got an armbar he was like a white belt. Right? He got an armbar he pulled it out. And I’m like, Okay, you got me you want and legit. He legit got me. Like, I didn’t see it coming. He caught me armbar you one white belt. Good job, right. So I stand up. And he goes, he lets go the arm and he goes, yes. Yeah,

1:12:01 – John Lawrence
sure, sure.

1:12:02 – Edgar OtraVez
And I was like, oh, fuck you, man. You know, just like, we’ll go again.

1:12:08 – John Lawrence
Yeah, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I understood

1:12:13 – Edgar OtraVez
before. Yeah. And I’m like, Come on, man. Like, first of all, this is you know, like, yeah, I was trying hard. Don’t get me wrong. I was trying. But you know, this is not the competition. This is not this is not a competition. This is the training room, but whatever, dude, whatever, you know, but he was like, Yes, he did. He was like, so proud of himself, you know, but Sure, sure. Like, he’s a white belt, right? Who wouldn’t be super proud of themselves being a white belt typing out the purple belt, right? Yeah, sure. Yeah. It’s, it’s like, could have could I have fought it? I don’t know. Maybe, you know, I didn’t care too, you know, at the moment, but now, like, when I tapped, I was like, fuck, I should have hitchhiked, I should have done this. I should have done that. I shouldn’t I shouldn’t have gave him the wind.

1:12:56 – John Lawrence
I think he I think he did the right thing. I would also say, you know, there’s another side of the coin too. You’ve got a black belts, old school guys who are very, very, very big on keeping it playful all the time. And I think that’s also a mistake. I think you need period, I think you need these periods of preparation in a peaking intensity. And I think people often emphasize that too much. You know, this is like, this is very pervasive now like David Goggins Jocko, which is like, nobody cares. Try harder. You run into a wall run through the fucking wall. And I’m like, Yeah, I don’t know about all that. Yeah, but you do, but you need it. Like, it’s just like weightlifting, like you need periodization. Right now, my team’s coming off this grappling industries tournament, they did really well. And the first week back, I go, guys, like we’ve been so structured, we’ve had this whole five to six weeks mapped out. Tonight, we’re just going to warm up the roll. And tonight when you roll, I want you guys to like, feel free to explore new positions, put yourself in some unfamiliar territory. Don’t focus so much on beating your partner tonight is about like developing new skills, exploring new positions, having fun and abandoning that a game that we’ve been sharpening for six weeks. Because that six weeks that was the peak repeat before a competition. Now, you have to periodized now you have to like mellow out for a little while, sort of like, let the brain and the nervous system in the body reset a little bit. But to say that you should like never roll hard or never roll competitively and always keep it playful. This is also bullshit. You know, like, this is not, that’s not good training, you need to peak, you need to mellow need to ramp back up, you need to peak, you need to mellow you have to be on a training cycle, a very organized like, intentional training cycle.

1:14:43 – Edgar OtraVez
I 100% agree with that. It’s kind of how I always trained you know, even without thinking about it,

1:14:50 – John Lawrence
because Oh, that’s good. Good for you, man.

1:14:52 – Edgar OtraVez
I mean, it’s just, you know, I always kept it playful, but this is from you know, just, you know, training in the martial arts. As I was 16, you know that there was always this idea of periodization. In past podcasts, I asked you about periodization. And it was always something that was part of my training and never really thought about it is just it just kind of happened because it was always like, okay, we’re sparring. And this is just regular sparring. And then there is, now there’s, there’s more room for for competition. And this is a new level than that it’s a higher level, it’s a lot more intense than that. Yeah. I 100% agree, because you need to keep it interesting, right. And if you keep it at a high level, you’re just gonna burn people out, people are just gonna get sick of training like that all the time. It’s too much, allowing them to relax and have fun and do silly things during you know, during training. This is, I think, keeps things interesting.

1:15:52 – John Lawrence
I agree. I would also, I will also admit that, that probably blew through black brown belt training at Vianna Brothers in Chicago, man. I mean, every practice I showed up to was like, competition night. I mean, I’m like, I was thinking all these guys, like, you’re gonna be okay, I’m gonna, I’m gonna beat him tonight. Like this guy tonight. And I gotta beat this guy tonight. And when I roll with him, like, I want to make sure I didn’t roll too hard with everybody else. Because I want to have enough gas to really put the nail on this student’s coffin like, and then when, when I wouldn’t like when I when I would prep, when I would practice poorly, where I would get tapped out, it would bother me until the next time I saw that person, then I’m trying to get it back, you know? And for all the things that that Pedro and Daniel did, right. And they did a lot of stuff, right? Those guys were very supportive of that, at least at the time. They were very supportive of that mentality of that, like go to war, every single practice mentality. I mean, maybe they wouldn’t tell you that that’s what they advocated. But like in practice, that’s precisely what it was. It was go to war. Every Monday practice, every Tuesday practice, every Wednesday practice, every Saturday, competition practice would go to war. And I got injured, so often, just just like, just insisting that I had to win all the time. And like, for me, that was about as smart as like, doing like Max benchpress, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday? Yeah, it makes about that much sense to train that way. You know, it sounds hardcore and romantic, that stuff, but it is not wise. You know?

1:17:37 – Edgar OtraVez
No, it’s not. I mean, will you level up? Yeah, I believe you would level up pretty fast, pretty good. But like, yeah, at the expense of your body, right. So

1:17:47 – John Lawrence
I think you I think you level up fat faster, through a combination of drilling, specific training and sparring. If you give me 20 training hours in the week, say, just for round numbers. And you’re like, This group’s gonna spar for 20 of those hours. This group over here is just going to do like, light drills for 20 hours. And then this group in the middle is going to like, you know, spread, spread it across drilling, specific training and sparring. I’m taking that middle group every single time, regardless of like, who accumulates injuries, like that’s, that’s how you get good.

1:18:19 – Edgar OtraVez
Yeah, no, but like, how many guys How many guys would actually take the first group where they just spar all the time.

1:18:28 – John Lawrence
That’s why you that’s why you have a coach who you who you listen to what they tell you. Yeah. And like that, for me is key. Like, if I have athletes who just listen to what I tell them to do, I will invest in those people. But I’m not. I’m not overbearing. If I say like, look, it’s it’s open that do what you want to do spar, if you want to spar drill, if you want to drill, I’ll gravitate toward the guys who split their time, between specific training, drilling and sparring, because they’re actually listening to what I suggested. They’re actually like putting faith in me as a coach, as opposed to like, just doing what they want to do. You know what I mean? Yeah, that’s important to see, like, people make the investment in you, as a coach, you make the investment back in math, other people who are just like doing their own thing and like, what, okay, I mean, like, I’m not gonna treat you shitty, but like, do your own thing. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna give you the bare minimum. You know?

1:19:17 – Edgar OtraVez
What I mean? Why go to an instructor if you’re not going to respect what they’re teaching, right?

1:19:22 – John Lawrence
You say you say that. But I mean, I’ve had the same discussion with my with my strength and conditioning coach, where it’s like, why would why would somebody comes to you? This very well credited very experienced strength and conditioning coach, why would they come to you and then try to write their own prescription for the week, read on your nose? Like, why would they do that? And neither of us have an answer to that. We’re just like, I don’t know. But people seem to do that. You know,

1:19:49 – Edgar OtraVez
it’s more of the eagle talk, I think, but I just pay you a compliment, because I know you like these. I was talking to my wife. And I say, oh, you know, John, On this John that has us like, you know, he’s in Cleveland. And she’s like, we’re not moving to Cleveland. So then you can practice jujitsu. I’m like, oh, let’s do it. Like, it would be great if I could live in Cleveland, and then maybe part of the week, come home, you know, and it’s

1:20:15 – John Lawrence
cost of living is so low here, man.

1:20:19 – Edgar OtraVez
Bye wife was like you, we are not moving to Cleveland. My whole family is here.

1:20:25 – John Lawrence
It’s like, it’s like Chicago with no traffic. What it is,

1:20:28 – Edgar OtraVez
Oh, that’s wonderful, man. Because I like Chicago. I like the cityscape. I like the city. I don’t like all the people. There’s a lot of people here,

1:20:39 – John Lawrence
Dude, when I roll through there, like for the open, and I’m driving, I’m driving like 94. And it’s backed up for as far as the eye can see. I’m like, This is not real. Like this. How did how did I? How did I live in this environment? For as long as I lived here? Like this is insane. Yeah, it was in traffic for two hours. And it’s like, yeah, it’s a normal,

1:21:00 – Edgar OtraVez
dude. Yeah, it takes me an hour and a half from here to work and downtown.

1:21:05 – John Lawrence
That is ridiculous.

1:21:07 – Edgar OtraVez
If I were to drive to to Vianna brothers, it would be anywhere between one hour to I mean and one hour 45 to two hours. That’s and that’s like in traffic. Like if there was no traffic, it probably take me an hour, maybe less. That’s insane. Yeah. But like, it’s because there isn’t a straight route there. I would have to come all the way down from the southwest suburbs, around the city and into, you know, down now down North, but

1:21:36 – John Lawrence
to drive time is real. You got to do what you got to do. You know? Yeah,

1:21:40 – Edgar OtraVez
yeah. It’s yeah, you got to do what you got to do. So anything you want to mention before we we cut out?

1:21:48 – John Lawrence
No, man. I always I mean, anytime I remember I was just trying to give a shout out to to the people who are for teaching at my school, again, like the main instructors, Travis Anderson. Darla said the check Dan Sweeney Crispin, as he, I would just say that, I definitely could not run the school the way that we do without them. And we always just get compliments about like, how, just how good the teaching staff is, and they just really make the gym what it is. So I just always like to give them a shout out when I can.

1:22:21 – Edgar OtraVez
That’s awesome. And I’ll make sure to put them in the description too, so that they get tagged stuff. And they get a little visibility from there. All right, man. Well, thanks so much for coming on the show, man and talking jujitsu again with me. Are you interested in doing one? anytime soon?

1:22:36 – John Lawrence
Yeah, yeah, for sure. I’ll try to brainstorm a little bit for some hot topics. I feel like I’ve I feel like I’ve retreaded the rules. Many, many times. I should probably lay off that a little bit. Yeah, man. I’m, like I said, I can I can talk to you too, you know, for a very long time. So this this, this flew by?

1:22:55 – Edgar OtraVez
We’ll do it again soon. Okay. All right, man. Thanks so much.

The music you’re listening to is titled Ultron by Vaughn mercy, Lord, and you can find that over at Epidemic Sound. And should you decide to go over to Epidemic Sound, make sure you use my referral link in the description so that they know that I sent you. So yeah, man, as always, John dropping knowledge. I hope to see him soon out there in Cleveland, because he’s got an amazing facility. And he’s a great instructor. If you happen to live in Cleveland, I would highly advise you go to John, because he is a great instructor. He really thinks about jujitsu. And as you heard in the podcast, he does a lot to kind of create a well rounded curriculum for his students. I really, really recommend you go over to Hurrican Jiu Jitsu. He has a great staff. I’ve met all those people. He talks about for all the names that he called out in the show, I will have links for them in the description, Darla Travis and everybody else on his team. I’ll put all those links in the description so that you can find those guys and follow him on Instagram. Now, if you want to follow John on Instagram, he’s great to follow. You can find him on Instagram under the name hurricane JJ. If you want to take a look at his website, Hurricane jj.com. There you’ll find everything you need to know about his school and him. He’s a great instructor and a great student of jujitsu. Now, if you want to follow me, Edgar OtraVez. You can find me on Instagram under the name Edgar OtraVez. And you can follow the show on Instagram under the name, the flow roll. And if you like what you heard, and you want more, make sure you go over to our website, the flow row podcast.com. There you’ll find a complete catalogue of all our episodes and like I said earlier in the show, I also have a section where you can find all the podcasts that I have done so far around the subject of jujitsu. It’s all jujitsu related podcast, all the episodes I’ve done having to do with the subject of jujitsu. Make sure you Like Subscribe, Comment and Share wherever you get your podcasts at. And press all the buttons that make the podcast Gods Happy thank you so much for listening to this Edgar OtraVez Thank you, John for coming on the show. I will see you soon. This is Edgar OtraVez Behave yourselves laters


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