Black Belt BJJ Blueprint To Become A Weapon w/ 2nd Degree Black Belt Ryan Villalobos (SSOF Ep 71)

James de Lacey2:44

And obviously with the way I guess jiu-jitsu is now, hitting with more I guess high-level competition centered around no-gi, but do you want to maybe dive into where you see I guess the current jiu-jitsu game or meta is, and where you think it is currently heading now as it evolves?

Ryan Villalobos3:09

It's very interesting because I started in 2005, and so it was very—it was radically different back then, in my opinion. It was very a lot of focus on guard, and especially the gi, obviously. It was very still in its infancy. And I mean, I know jiu-jitsu's been around for a while, but just in the past, I'd say, decade, there's been a lot of evolution in jiu-jitsu.

And I think a lot of that has to do with two or three major factors here. The first one is leg locks. I remember when I was doing leg locks, they were very taboo. I always remember a story back in the day, we'd be watching tournaments in gi, and then somebody would do a leg lock, and then the whole crowd would boo.

And people would get all mad, like leg locks were a little—they weren't—they were kind of considered a cheap move, I guess. Then that kind of started going away when people started getting understanding the effectiveness of it. So I think I can go into a little bit more about leg locks and why I think that that was the case.

And then of course wrestling. I think there's a huge infusion of wrestling now with jiu-jitsu, them going together, trying to figure out what—because pure wrestling doesn't work against pure jiu-jitsu in a way. So we have to kind of infuse those together to what works, what type of wrestling works in jiu-jitsu. But then again, even if you're a pure wrestler, you'll do fine, but you get caught by chokes and, breaking things. It's not about pinning. There's a lot more options.

We're fighting off our back. This is kind of what I always say: the essence of jiu-jitsu is essentially learning to fight off your back. That's one of the main factors. But so I would say a lot of the changes have been happening, at least in this past ten years. A lot of leg locks was the first kind of trend I started seeing.

And then once leg locks started taking off, we started seeing more no-gi, because you could start to—there were a lot of rules in gi that you couldn't do a lot of moves, like reaping and things like this are illegal, still are in a lot of places. So when you took the gi off, they were legal. So leg locks dominated for a long time, and it had to become a part of your game.

If you just avoided it—which still a lot of gyms avoid leg locks, they're quote-unquote dangerous, which they are—but it's not a reason not to train them. So are chokes. So are armbars. But a lot of gyms avoid them. But I'm not a believer in that. I think that was a big hole in jiu-jitsu for a long time.

And then of course, Judo is starting to make a bigger appearance now. We're starting to see a lot more Judo get involved, even though Judo is a big part of jiu-jitsu's history, of course. But we're starting to see a lot more mixing of Judo with wrestling and with jiu-jitsu, of course.

So top of my head, that's kind of the big things that I've seen happen with the change. And probably why there's been a lot more—that helped, I think, with bringing the popularity of no-gi to a certain degree. Of course, rules, all that as well. But I think that was probably a contributing factor from what I can see.

James de Lacey6:54

How do you see it evolving from here? Do you see leg locks still being a huge part of the game and kind of being almost like the central point, at least within competition? You see it's all leg locks now at the higher level, and very little—well, people still trying to pass guard, but not to the same extent as where it used to be when it was all guard passing or upper body submissions.

Ryan Villalobos7:21

Yeah, the leg locks really caused the problem in two different—I mean, several ways: offense and defense. When you're trying to pass, you can't just recklessly—not recklessly, but a lot of the passing we knew back in the day were completely susceptible to leg locks. Like any type of standing passing, even some pressure passing, you're going to be susceptible to leg locks. This caused a major problem.

Also, for the person on top, they can also start to apply leg locks. So this had to—you had to adjust your guard a lot, because if you just start leaving your legs out there, they're going to get caught. So I think this was another factor of one of the reasons why leg locks were somewhat considered a little taboo, because it did affect jiu-jitsu so much.

So I think with as far as leg locks concerned, I think they're going to be for the future. You're going to see a lot—I think you're going to see leg locks permanently, but I think they're part of the game now, right? You—I always tell guys, I'm like, you have to have a certain level of competence and understanding of leg locks if you're going to do jiu-jitsu. You can't avoid it. You have to have a certain level of competency with wrestling as well if you're going to do jiu-jitsu. I think it's just part of where it's going.

So I think eventually what we're going to see is some sort of—it's going to be called jiu-jitsu, but it's going to be radically different from what I started, from what I saw. And it already is. Even in MMA and things like that, you start to see some leg locks in MMA that are effective. Of course, wrestling was a big part of that, but I certainly think jiu-jitsu is evolving in that direction.

Way, just like any other sport, and we're still in the mix of the evolution, just like wrist locks and things like this that people don't really play a lot with. But I do see that things go in and out of kind of popularity. You'll see something and then it gets real popular and then everybody figures it out, but then it kind of gets part of the game. It becomes a part of it.

So it's really interesting how it is evolving. But I do see future that eventually leg locks and wrestling, even the core jiu-jitsu and judo, there will be some—and we're already seeing that at super high levels, right? You'll see a lot of judo throws, hip tosses, you see great wrestling, wrestling up from guard, you'll see guard play. I think right now it's just super heavy with wrestling because we're trying to figure out how to infuse that. You don't see a lot of guys don't want to play guard anymore. They just want to wrestle.

So I see that a lot. It's a big thing. Like back in the day, only guys would do leg locks. They wouldn't do anything else but leg locks. But I think that's the process. That's part of the process of learning and infusing it.

James de Lacey10:48

Yeah, I've been through gyms where when I was going through my white belt where you weren't allowed to do any leg locks. So before even you come to VOW, I was scared of them. You get scared when you haven't done them because all you see on TV is knees breaking and whatever else and you're like, oh, I don't want to get in these positions. But yeah, once you're exposed and comfortable to them, then it becomes a little more comfortable being in those positions and you can actually train and develop that game versus avoiding them all together just because you're a certain level.

So I'm definitely with you on that. But I wanted to know as well, because obviously you've rolled with a lot of different people, I've been around for a long time, but what do you think is separating the top 0.1% of jiu-jitsu athletes in competition versus maybe some the other competitors and other jiu-jitsu athletes?

Ryan Villalobos11:08

I think technically speaking, when I—because I've watched obviously a lot of matches over the years with jiu-jitsu concerning jiu-jitsu with high, high-level guys—there are certainly levels of jiu-jitsu players even at the highest level. There's a couple other steps above that. And of course, aside from attributes and strength levels and flexibility and how your age and all these factors that come into play, what limitations you may have, what you may not have, or what you're taking.

But I do think there's a level of—like if you watch these guys like Gordon Ryan, for example, obviously everybody knows who he is in jiu-jitsu—in some of the higher-level guys I've rolled with, there's a sense of there is such a level of comfortability and competence on almost all positions.

And so one of the hardest roles that I had, anything that I was doing, he was always positionally sound to where he didn't have to really provide a reaction to whatever move I was doing, like a major reaction. So like if I was playing guard and I was trying to play all my guards, he was—the person was always a little ahead of me positionally.

And so they didn't require much of a reaction, a big reaction, which is what I'm waiting for is to get some big reaction from me so that I can kind of capitalize on it. Because now you're on the defense and now I can be on the attack.

There is a smoothness about it that is radically different from just people you see just going. There is a time for that. Obviously there's a time for go, go, go, go, and I know that's a lot of, I think, like the Ruotolos and guys like that, the younger guys, they're just go, go, go, go, go, and this makes sense. And it's a style too in and of itself.

But I think, from my rolling and my experience observing high-level competition, you can actually notice—you can if you watch it—you'll see the guy who is typically more relaxed and more and is not moving, having to use actually these explosive movements to do things, is typically at a higher level of understanding of position, positional and timing.

And so because I always say when you get to a certain level, a lot of it is position, is understanding your position and your timing. If two black belts roll together, it's not that maybe one knows more than the other, right? Sure, that may be the case, but there's not a lot—like I haven't seen, for example, right, like position I'm like, oh, I'm blown away, what was that? Like you don't see that very often, right? But the setup may be different and the timing is really good, and that can always—that can make the difference.

So again, aside from size and all that, because if you're a 250-pound black belt, you're going to get—it's a 150-pound black belt, there's going to be an imbalance obviously because of size and strength and all that. So I think that's one of the main things that I've observed. I don't know if that's too obscure, but that was a great answer.

James de Lacey14:49

Yeah, that was a great answer.

Ryan Villalobos14:49

Yeah, more technically speaking, that's what I can see. This is why I tell a lot of guys when, especially new people, I'm like, the faster you can develop—the faster you can develop, get rid of this tension that we all have when we first start, because everything is a perceived threat, right? If I grab your arm, you tense up.

If I grab this, you tense up. You react to everything. This is what white belts do in beginners. They'll react to everything, everything that I do they're reacting to, and this is what I want, right? This is what higher-level guys want. They want you reacting because then you're not attacking, right? Then you're reacting to everything that I do.

The sooner you can get rid of that and shake that out, the sooner you can start to see much clearer because your tunnel vision is kind of your enemy in the beginning. You're going tunnel vision, you're going to be chasing things, right? And this goes on for a long time. I've actually seen black belts that have this tunnel vision. And this is a—it can be an argument to like imposing your will, being tenacious about something and imposing your will and like passing guard, go, go, go. There is an element of that that is true.

But there is also the element of there is generally always another path to be taken instead of just trying to drive through something. And what I always tell guys is like, I don't really—I try not to apply—and you'll see high-level guys do this—you don't see a lot of strength and effort being applied until a position is actually obtained, right? If I have you in an armbar position and you're defending, this is when I start to really put a lot of effort in because I have isolation of your arm, I got to the position.

This is where I'm going to start spending more energy. It's all about energy expenditure. Who's spending more energy? At least in the old school, old school was I wear you down until you get tired and then I beat you up.

But that's obviously changed now. So anyways, that's kind of my thought on that.

James de Lacey16:59

Nice. Yeah, and I know you've talked about around the leg locks, almost like leg locks and jiu-jitsu being two separate games, almost two separate sports. So expand on that a little bit.

Ryan Villalobos16:59

Yeah. So there's a famous—I hate to say there's like this famous quote—why would you ignore half the body, half the human body? I think it was Dean Lister was having a conversation with Danaher, something like that, and he was—and they were talking about leg locks. And because Dean Lister was kind of one of the first guys—not the first guy, but I think he gets a lot of credit for understanding leg locks and using them in high-level tournaments. There was a lot of other guys too. I don't want to take it from other guys.

But he was having a conversation, and Danaher was like, well, why would you ignore half the human body? Like there's two legs there. Yeah, there's two arms, but there's also two legs. But there's all the stuff you can do. And from that, that's when the leg—people started exploring more, not just from that, but this, I think, is when Danaher got a hold of it and things getting a little crazy, right?

So what I'll say is when I started studying leg locks, I was obsessed with them. And what I quickly started to understand is yes, there is a risk in the beginning, but I think this is a natural thing that happens when you really want to delve into something, especially like leg locks. You have to spend a lot of time trying to master them. What I always say is the def—

The formula for leg lock defense is very simple, right? I can give it to you in 30 seconds. This is how you get out of leg locks, right? But if you ask me to give you a formula about leg locks, it's going to be a long time for me to explain. Okay, here's the nine positions. Here's all the things you can do. Like, there's 25 submissions in this spot. There's 20. It's very complicated because it's so complicated.

This is what takes time. Not only that, but once you start to figure it out, you have to start infusing it with your own game. It can't be the only thing that you do, because they become more effective when you're using, let's say, regular jiu-jitsu, which is the top game, right? If I attack your arms, if I do an arm drag on you and you're in my guard and you post out, that leaves me open for a leg. That leaves you open for a leg lock. I can grab your leg.

So these two go hand in hand, and once you start figuring that out, then your game becomes much more complex because you just added a whole another strategy to your game rather than just attacking the upper body. You're attacking the lower body. But they're radically different to a certain degree and very similar in other fashions, of the controlling mechanisms, what you need to focus on to actually get to the position, to control the position, the different types of leverage you're going to use to attacking the legs. I mean, all these things are there.

There are some similar positions. Like inside position is key to leg locks in general, and that translates also to standup. That also translates to your regular jiu-jitsu, having inside position, underhooks and all these things. This makes sense. But again, the leg locks themselves, it's a whole another. I look at it as a whole another system, right?

We had, I remember the day we weren't doing it. We weren't doing leg locks. There was a system kind of to the upper body. Okay, you got armbar, you got triangle, you got omoplata, you got Americana, you got kimura, you got straight armbar. They all go together, right? Well, now you have leg locks with that, right? So this is a whole separate system that you have to spend a lot of time on understanding if you're going to incorporate it into your game.

So it's very complex. I mean, it's very complicated because the leglock system, because the formula is so simple to escaping leg locks or to defending leg locks or to not getting into the leg locks, to even preventing them, the system becomes more and more complex. So the system has actually gotten more complex over the years because everybody's getting better at escaping and defending. I used to tap people out five or six, seven, eight times with leg locks in one roll. Now I never do.

It's very rare that I'll get a leg lock. And maybe I'm not hyper-focused on them too, but I am. I'm very aware of them when they appear. I'm very aware. But the leg lock defense has gotten so good that it has to be, everything just has to be extremely precise, right? So anyways, I think that's kind of why I see them as kind of two different worlds, because they require so much time to understand by themselves.

James de Lacey21:48

Nice. And which you have a question from a listener here live. So if you're listening to this podcast replay, remember you can always join this live on YouTube. They're scheduled, so you know where they are. But I think this is a reference to when you mentioned that you can explain leg lock defense in 30 seconds. He's asking for the best counter to leg lock. So maybe do you have a 30-second spiel on how to get out of a leg lock?

Ryan Villalobos22:13

Here's what you do. You sum chi. Okay, no. No, the reason why I said the formula is simple is because if you understand the nine, the nine leg lock positions, we kind of break the leg locks into nine positions. There's basically leg on the inside, leg on the outside. Most, majority of the leg locks that are going to happen are going to be straight or rotational. Okay, this is in general. That's really the only two. There's slicers and things like that too. I'm oversimplifying here, but just there are a few exceptions. But it's straight or rotational.

The formula for defending is your knee line or hiding your heel. These are the two main factors of defending a leg. I can teach somebody effectively in a class, say, look, if you can clear your knee line here and show you techniques to do that, and if you can hide your heel here, then this will give you opportunity to escape.

At a minimum, it's going to make it very difficult for the other person to finish. They're going to have to do adjustments. They're going to have to, there's all these other conceptual and principles for leg locks like perpendicular rules and things like this, digging the heels and all this. This is going to be a factor.

But at that point, they're having to, they're not just, now they're in the chase, right? They're having to adjust and chase your leg now because you're properly defending most of the leg locks that are going to be applied. This is the method of escaping, and I can give you a ton of examples, right? Like the inside heel hook, you hide the heel or you free your knee, right? I mean, it's pretty simple. The knee bar, you hide your heel, open the knees, right, to free kind of the pinch on your knee.

You take any position, really, is you can hide your heel and you can free your knee. This is a simple thing to focus on, and I've seen guys do this. I've taught really, really good wrestlers, and they get caught. They'll get caught with leg locks because sometimes when you're over-aggressive, this sets up leg locks. There's a principle basically with leg locks. It says, hey, if I overcommit you and your hips are in my face, this means I have full access to your legs, right?

Wrestlers, when they first start, are typically, they will drive too hard, too fast. And if I throw you over my head and overcommit you, will have access to your legs. I've explained to these guys that do this, I'm like, hey, look, if you keep, they ask me, I keep getting caught in leg locks. I'm like, yes, because you're getting overcommitted because you're driving too hard. Don't stop driving. Keep your wrestling game.

But understand that when you start getting in these leg entanglements, there are two things you need to focus on at that point. It's not about grabbing the guy's head or trying to pin him back or something. That's not going to work. He wants you to do that. What you need to focus on is your knee line and where is your heel? Are you hiding your heel to the rib or are you just standing there trying to grab the guy's head? Because you're going to get leg locks.

So if you hyper-focus, once you are in the leg entanglement, focus on that and not counterattacking and all this other stuff, which is another element of leg locks. I can counterattack. Then you can escape. I've watched plenty of guys, just having that one conversation, they hyper-focus on it, they do that, and it's very difficult to finish them with a leg lock.

James de Lacey25:52

Nice. Comment that 30 seconds. Yeah, our original question. Post to Gareth, he says another way could be pray and hope would be another way to escape.

Ryan Villalobos25:52

Oh, got tap. That's always a, it's always a good.

James de Lacey25:52

Yeah, just don't rip.

Ryan Villalobos25:52

Oh yeah, yeah, for sure.

James de Lacey25:52

And also, we talked about as well about MMA grappling as well. Do you see, or how do you see leg locks being more prevalent within MMA? Is it something that obviously, even when you listen to some commentators, they talk about how leg locks expose you in MMA to strikes to the head, et cetera, et cetera. But you see some guys, like, gonin, the other week, had that knee bar and kind of saved himself from being kicked and punched in the head through his leg lock game. So is that, I guess, are there things that you need to change if you're transitioning your grappling game from pure jiu-jitsu to MMA?

Ryan Villalobos26:30

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the reason, like Gary Tonon and these guys, Ryan Hall even. I mean, I know he got, I think he got knocked out recently trying to go for some kind of Imanari or something. But like Gary Tonon has had success, and some other guys too have had some success with, you'll see knee bars and things like this. And knee bars is interesting because why it's effective.

But yeah, there's a lot of positions you technically would not play, just because of the vulnerability, right, of being stacked and hit in the face. I will say this. The reason I think one of the reasons why it hasn't seen the prevalency as in MMA is because the leg locks in MMA, in my opinion, there's only a handful of guys that are actually really, really good at leg locks, number one. And number two is understanding them, how, understanding which leg locks...

To implement in MMA that are actually effective. I often time I'll see this, I'll watch MMA and I'll see guys going for a leg lock or I see somebody fall for a leg lock and I'm like, "Oh my God," because as much as I love leg locks, the setup was probably not good, the technique is not being performed well. And again, I mean there's a lot going on. You're tired, getting hit in the face, all this stuff changes everything.

James de Lacey28:14

But I think that the level has not— we had there's not a lot because it's MMA, I guess. Common technical or strategic mistakes, I think we've touched on some of them already that beginners make, but maybe more the intermediate realm. So we're looking at maybe blue, purple belt kind of area. Things that you see that are common in those Jitsu athletes that are preventing them from getting better, leveling up, et cetera.

Ryan Villalobos28:14

Yeah, so it gets interesting from blue to purple, right? Because I always say I always look at purple belt as your first kind of advanced belt. I kind of subscribe to that idea because your blue belt, you kind of I look at that as— well actually, no, technically let me back that up. It used to be that way. Now it's like purple belts are like black belts 10 years ago, five years ago. Nowadays, because the game has changed so much.

This is a common problem I talk about with other black belts and other coaches, which is like, "What is— what are the— what defines the belts now?" Because it used to be a lot more clear back in the day, but now it's gotten so— I don't know, I would say advanced, but people are excelling much quicker, that this kind of changes things. Because the standard was 10 years for your black belt back in the day, and you see guys rolling at that level for five years now, which is unheard of.

That being said, there is a lot more. I think not just technique-wise, but there is another element of that that does make it black belt that I think is still takes 8 to 10 years to actually achieve. So that being said, what I would say with, as far as intermediate with blue and purples, there's a big difference between blue and purple, obviously.

I still see— let me only say this. When I look at guys for promotions, I always say like I'm not looking to see how many times you tap somebody or how many times you're getting tapped. The only time I look at that is if there's a drastic difference, like say, you're a brown belt, this blue belt keeps tapping you out every time and he's tapping all the other brown belts out. Like I'm like, "Okay, something's going on here." That doesn't happen too often.

But you can see guys accelerating much faster, and people accelerate faster than others. So this is also another factor. But I will say some of the most common things that I see for purples and blues— blues will tend to still get into these scraps, these fights. And they're just fighting, and it's interesting because it seems like that's, well yeah, that's what we're doing.

But what I will say, this when I start seeing someone and they're operating at 30% of their capacity, right, and the other person is operating at 100%, what that's telling me is that whatever technique they're using is working. Like the technique is taking rise over energies, cardio, all again, all the other attributes, strength, and all this stuff. If there's the same size— they're around the same size. Of course, size discrepancy, this will change a lot of things, as you know.

But I will say, with belt promotions, I'm really looking at how you're moving and how your timing is against other levels. Okay? So this is what I found to be somewhat of the most accurate. Because at this stage in Jiu-Jitsu, it's not about like you have a set curriculum that you have to know these X moves, because there's— I mean, there is— I mean, I don't know, there's an indefinite amount of moves, but there is a lot. Okay?

So there's a lot of— and even if you did know all the moves, there's no way you could apply them all in one role, or one— you— this is why people have certain games that they develop personally, from even from your temperament, right? Not just your natural attributes, but are you a more aggressive person or you're more of a passive person? This can also affect the way you roll as well.

So I would say that most of what I'm looking for technically is how you're actually moving against other levels. And what I mean by that is, what amount of energy are you using? If you're a purple belt, what's the amount of energy you're expending against a white belt? It should be almost none. Okay? Like I mean, I know that sounds kind of silly or ridiculous, but you shouldn't be using a ton of energy, and everything should be somewhat— even when they're going 100% and going crazy, you are in control basically, without matching their effort.

And of course this goes up because if you go to purple against a black belt, and the purple belt's going to have to increase their effort to keep up with the black belt, right? So this is a telltale sign technically speaking.

There is a level of comfortability always because Jiu-Jitsu, in my opinion, at its heart is the guard. Okay? Is developing how to— is developing your guard, because a lot of it's— it's comfortable to be on top of somebody. Okay? Even if you don't know Jiu-Jitsu, you're fine, you can breathe, everything's fine. But it's actually hard to be on bottom and be effective, right?

And the guard is, as we all know, is extremely complex. It's probably the most difficult thing to learn in Jiu-Jitsu. And everything else is very difficult as well, but the guard itself, because someone is coming towards you and you're on bottom, people tend to think of this thing as a more of a defensive position.

So the purple belt will have a competency level very high in the guard, okay? So much so that it is an attacking position. It is not a defensive position. It is actually an aggressive position to a certain degree. A lot of times I'll see purple belts rolling blue belts and they'll try to pass, pass, and then eventually the person doesn't want to pass, they'll just pull their guard. They want to play guard now because the guard's too dangerous to go into, right?

These guys— I have a lot of people do that with me. If I'm like, say, if I'm rolling against a blue or a purple or something and they play— because I'll play guard because I don't care— they'll come in, I'll start to play guard, and then they quickly realize like, "Oh man, this is like, really there's a lot of threats all over the place," so I'm going to go and pull guard and try guard because I keep getting caught in a leg lock or I keep getting caught, whatever, armbars, whatever. So if there is that skill discrepancy, it's very obvious, right?

I always encourage people to develop their guard. Okay? I know that nowadays you see, you hear the opposite: you need to be on top, you need to develop your wrestling, you need— this is what's effective and this is what works. Again, they're not wrong, there's truth to that, but again, I think we're still in a development stage.

If you go 10 years from now and all I told you was to stay on top and just make sure that you wrestle the guy and do all your stuff from top, but you don't have any guard, so then what are we doing here? Like, then I'm like, "Okay, now, now work on your guard now, now that you're black belt, work on it." This makes no sense.

So because you're going to have to spend a lot, an enormous amount of time working on it, right? So I would— it's not wrong to say to be on top and have your top game and have that be your A game, but you must develop the level of comfortability on bottom and your guard, because you will be put on bottom at some point, right? And you don't want to be in this frantic mode or scrambly mode all the time.

James de Lacey35:56

That was great. Give shout out to Phil in the— he said he's dropping in to say Sweet Science of Fighting content is some of the best. So thank you, Phil, for dropping in here.

But I want to also cover this— it's a very question, so feel free to take it where you want. But just other general Jiu-Jitsu principles that you follow, I guess, within your games. Obviously we've talked about switching between attacking upper and lower body, we've talked about hips over your head, exposing means you're exposing leg locks. What else do you have that you, I guess, that you adhere to?

Ryan Villalobos36:47

Just real quick, there's a lot of them, but essentially there's a way to look at jiu-jitsu, especially from principle-wise. The first thing that was really helpful to me is looking at everything from what I call the cross method. So if you know a move, and a lot of people don't do this, is consider the idea of the move done left, right, up, or down.

Okay, so this is extremely useful with guards. This is, and I call it the cross method because anything, any submission or any position that I'm looking at, I'm always looking to see if I go left, if I go right, if I go high, or if I go back, what this will actually produce. And in guards this is extremely useful. Like I can give you de for example, it's extremely useful, conceptually.

James de Lacey37:14

Okay, so we're back with part two. We had a few technical difficulties the other day, so we've come here to finish off a couple of questions. And we finished, I guess, part one when we were talking about jiu-jitsu training or jiu-jitsu philosophies that you I guess abide by during training, rolls, competition, etc. And we covered, for example, having the hips above your head, you can enter into the legs.

And then we started talking about the cross method, and you're talking about the cross method for regarding passing guard. And then we also had a question about the cross method as it relates to leg entanglement. Maybe we start with where you were around the guard and we can kind of expand from there and any other philosophies that pop up.

Ryan Villalobos38:10

Yeah, so the cross method is essentially considering in almost all positions North, South, East, and West, basically. As far as with leg entanglements, any type of leg entanglement you're going to get into, typically there is several directions you can go.

I'll take a basic example: Ashi garami position, everybody kind of knows that one, just a basic single leg X. If somebody's aggressive, I can push them over my head. I can reset the position technically, and even attack depending on how far they go. I could try to bring them to the left, which is the classic kind of sweep, somebody standing, or the classic belly down ankle lock. I can then try to go to the right, which would be reaping the leg. If you opted to reap the leg, you could reap the leg going that direction. And then of course going forward, which is actually very interesting because a lot of my Ashi positions, if the person's pulling away, I'll actually go forward, almost like I want to do a, I want to circle for like a knee bar, but I actually just hold on to the ankle and I slice around the leg so that my back is kind of to you, but I'm kind of sitting on you, but I finish the ankle lock that way if I was doing an ankle lock. But this is just one idea that you can kind of play with.

The other thing with leg locks is not just the cross method, but, and this is universally, I think even standup, from standup to your regular gi to your leg locks, is understanding inside position. Your leg locks has a lot of feel. See, guys that are good at leg locks, especially when you see, like, you'll see positional sparring just with legs and much of that time is just spent on pummeling legs, like trying to see whose two legs can get between the other person's two legs.

There are exceptions to that that you can pull off certain leg locks. For example, the cata de ha ankle lock, right? You can pull that off with your leg on the outside of the person. But typically you're going to see a lot of pummeling to inside position, and again, this is for most of jiu-jitsu as well.

So that would be my for leg locks, certainly with guards you can apply the same idea. Very heavy with like the de la Hivas, reverse de la Hivas, shin on shin, all this stuff. You can also apply it in passing guard, obviously. Going through someone's guard, there's a formula for passing guards to a certain degree, depending on the type of passing you're doing. There's pressure passing, you know, they're circling to try to knee slice.

So basically I kind of put the formula as you're trying to go around the leg, you're trying to go through the person's legs, or you're trying to go under the legs. Or you're trying to pin the legs, this is another method. A lot of times when I teach pinning, I'm just like, hey, pin the legs first, like a writing position. And this is another method of passing, more controlled method.

But in all of those type of passing methods, you're going to find that useful to consider all four options because it reduces the tunnel vision that you actually, beginners will usually find themselves in.

James de Lacey41:17

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think a lot of people, including myself, you get caught in the forward pressure and that's all you kind of go for. And then obviously you get into problems when you're just pressuring forward all the time instead of considering going back, going side to side, and having other options to potentially open up maybe that pressure pass or other options entering the legs or passing a different way.

Ryan Villalobos41:45

Right, and you got to consider that a lot of guards that have been developed are designed pretty much for forward pressure. Lock down, you just put a basic lock down on somebody and they just keep pressing forward and pressing forward and pressing forward, they're hurting themselves, they're kind of hurting their own leg. And this is, I can give you de la Hiva is another example. If you just get really aggressive, you can just throw somebody over your head. The guard is actually made for that more aggressive forward style type of passing. So sometimes it is in your best interest to consider different directions.

James de Lacey42:11

Yeah, for sure. Are there any other philosophies that you I guess abide by within jiu-jitsu, rolling, competition, anything like that?

Ryan Villalobos42:11

Man, there's a lot. I mean there's a lot of principles and concepts you can kind of follow. One of the big ones I always talk about, as of recently, is the importance of inside position and escapes, or even the prevention of having to escape. So if you have a very good understanding of inside position, you won't have to actually be escaping positions necessarily.

In other words, for example, if I'm in turtle and I have inside position, you don't have a body lock on me or anything, your arms, your legs can't get inside between my hip and my armpit. If you can't occupy that space, then you technically don't have much control of me, right? I can still move, I can still wrestle. But as soon as you get some sort of lace in between my hip and my armpit, then you start to get control of me. Then you can throw hooks in and then I have to start actually producing escapes.

So these are two things to consider. And I always highly encourage beginners, even advanced guys too, because you can manufacture challenges by putting yourself in bad positions. As I always encourage them to work on their defense, because work on their escapes and work on not having to escape as well. Because the sooner you get better at that, the sooner the more you're actually going to try to go for things that you normally wouldn't. You're just going to try different things because you know that you're pretty positive you can get out of most bad situations. So hyper-focusing on that is very important.

But inside position, you heard me say this over and over and over and over because it's so important in actually controlling someone. The old rule of like, position before submission, it's true, but you have to add the element of control. So you have to have position, control, submission. And so if you don't have the control, you're just kind of being sloppy typically about it and trying to rush things. So not to rush.

Framing is extremely important in jiu-jitsu, how to actually frame and develop your frames. These are very important, especially for guard situations, guard retention, and wedges and things like that. So another, just one more real quick, I can keep going, but I'll just give you one more.

James de Lacey44:36

Yeah, there's another one.

Ryan Villalobos45:07

It's called I call it the rotational method. So I say this all the time and when I teach classes, is almost any position you find yourself in, any submission, let's just take submission, any submission you find you're trying to apply, if you add a rotational element to it, it becomes tighter. And this is simply because when you're doing submissions, you're trying to create a vacuum, you're trying to eliminate as much space as you possibly can. And when you add rotation to things, it does that.

So I can give you almost all of leg locks you can apply a rotation. Knee bars, ankle locks, obviously heel hooks, compressions, I mean toe holds, all these things are, knee bar I think I already said knee bar, but they're all rotational. If you add an element of rotation to these type of submissions, they become much tighter. All your strangulations...

Strangulations, guillotines, rotation. Back strangulation, rotation. Armbar, some rotation. Triangle, rotation. In other words, what I mean is you're just turning it to make it tighter instead of this idea of pulling on things. I see a lot of people just pulling and pulling and pulling. It's not wrong by any means, but I rarely say things are wrong in jiu-jitsu. It's usually because there's a certain time for things to work depending on your development, and some things become more efficient and some things become not as efficient anymore because everybody is aware.

So that would be one thing that I probably repeat a lot, is the rotational element of jiu-jitsu to add that to all of your submissions and even control. So when I get somebody inside control, I'm always adding some sort of rotational movement to actually make it tighter.

James de Lacey46:39

Nice. And to finish this podcast, I'd love for you to touch on—I know you've mentioned a few times when you learn a new technique and maybe it doesn't work because everyone's kind of just learned it in class, or it doesn't work maybe because the level you're at. And you mention sometimes don't just abandon it because it doesn't work now, because you might come back to it later and it actually does work. It just might be where is in your development. Maybe expand a bit on that.

Ryan Villalobos47:32

Yeah, so this is a big thing I see, especially when I teach something pretty complex and people use it. I'll see it on people's faces—they use it, it doesn't work, and they're like, "Ah, that doesn't work." I mean, I did the same thing. I learned a lot of stuff in the beginning, white, blue, purple, and it just never worked.

And I always tell people sometimes you have to have a level of foundation to understand the actual setups to get to these positions. And not just the setups, but understanding the reactions you're going to get. It's kind of like if I throw an armbar, I know there's a lot of different reactions you're going to have, right? You can stack me and smash into me, you could just try to rip and turn away, you can rotate your elbow. I mean, there's so many different reactions based on the skill level of the person that I'm going against that's going to make it easy or more difficult.

So I always say don't throw things away. There's some stuff that's kind of flashy and it has its place where it works. A lot of stuff in—you put it this way—most of the things you're going to run in jiu-jitsu are somewhat relevant. If you just give me somebody who doesn't know jiu-jitsu at all, I mean, and you give me a move to do on them, I could probably do it. I could probably pull it off, I could probably pull off some sort of submission, right? If it's submission based, if I'm attacking a submission based, I could probably pull it off.

But this is not what we're talking about. We're talking about two skilled practitioners that know jiu-jitsu, especially when you both learn the same skill. Learning one thing, it's always going to be—once you learn, let's say, an armbar, you understand the steps of the armbar, you understand the mechanics of the armbar. But honestly, to actually set that armbar up, let's just say from a guard, that's probably one of the hardest things to do is armbar someone from guard. Because nobody ever pulls it off. Nobody ever pulls off an armbar from guard that first starts.

It's a very simple technique. People understand it. It's like, here, bridge, got it. Elbow goes the opposite direction, cool, got it. But it's not just that, right? You have to add—you have to have layers. This goes into the other idea just real quick to expand on that: you have to layer your submissions with—there are certain submissions that go together.

So let's say, for example, real easy one to understand is this: if I'm in my guard and I throw up an armbar, well, I also have a triangle. If I throw up a triangle, I also have an armbar. If I throw up either one of those, I can also produce an omoplata, right? I understand what that is. But I can also—so those three things go together very well. What also goes very well with those is kimura, because if I have you in a triangle I can throw you in a kimura, right?

These, if you start layering things like this, you're no longer actually chasing one submission. You're chasing six, seven submissions in one position. And so this is a better way of looking at how to attack obviously certain positions, because you won't just be focused on one idea or one submission. So layering things I talk about a lot. It's very important when doing this.

But as far as throwing things away, you're going to find that in those layers there are those positions that you probably threw away. One of the things I did when I first started, one of the first things I learned was an armbar from guard. Okay, it was like in 2005, and I learned and I was like, cool, makes sense. I never actually hit an armbar from guard ever. I never did. And I was in the gi as well, so it should be a little easier, and I never hit it.

I never hit an armbar from guard. And the reason why is because an armbar from guard, the formula for defending an armbar from guard is actually quite simple for anyone who understands it. It's posture. If you have good posture and you have good elbow alignment, then it's very difficult to pull off an armbar. So somebody who's just aware of that simple idea—and could be training for a couple months—you're not going to hit an armbar on them.

I mean, there's some people that come in, they're just big dudes, and even now I'd probably be difficult for me to hit an armbar. I have to do all this layered attacks to actually get to the armbar.

So you have to consider that a lot of times when you learn a move, there's a lot of other pieces that you're missing to make that move work. It's not that the move was just crap. Because you can see other people—you can see other people use it in competition. Like say Miragaia, right? Real flashy, crazy move. Well, you see success in it in competition.

One is because maybe the other person doesn't know leg locks very well, but probably because the person doing the Miragaia with something like that has trained that position and trained all the different responses and has a myriad of setups to that position and understands the weaknesses and the strengths completely, and understands that if it fails that it goes on something else.

This is very different than me just showing you how to do a Miragaia, let's say, or an armbar, right? So you have to consider that. And again, this goes to the whole idea of the mental part of jiu-jitsu. That the hardest part when you first start—it's not jiu-jitsu being—it's about the mental aspect of jiu-jitsu. Some people feel defeated, and you have to kind of get over that hump.

But if you take this idea that—consider the idea that just because you're not getting an armbar doesn't mean you're not getting jiu-jitsu, right? This is a very long process. It's not easy. It's a very, very long process. It's not just a resisting opponent. It's a resisting opponent with skill. And this is radically different than just somebody on the street that doesn't know anything. Well, of course you can do it to that person, right?

James de Lacey53:03

No, that's an awesome answer, and I think it's a great way to end the podcast and in part two here. But for people who want to find you, I'm going to link in the description the second Sweet Science of Fighting YouTube channel that we're going to have some breakdowns on from Ryan. We're going to get that sorted and potentially some—I guess we can call them instructional or technique content. We'll get to that at some point. But where else can listeners find you in any content that you're creating?

Ryan Villalobos53:28

I started producing some stuff on YouTube recently. We have a YouTube channel. It's just V.O.W. BJJ. I'm trying to do a couple times a week. I'm doing breakdowns of students, just my students rolling. And I'll do it all different levels. It's not just the best or the best. I actually like breaking down two white belts or a blue belt and a white belt and see where things kind of go right or where things go wrong.

So you can find some information there. We're also on Instagram. Ian runs that, a friend of mine that also does jiu-jitsu, also black belt. He also runs our Instagram. And of course our website. So there's plenty of information. But YouTube is—slowly going to start putting some more instructionals and breakdowns and things like that.

James de Lacey54:19

Nice. I'll link those all in the description for everyone too. But thanks for coming on, Ryan. I appreciate it.

Ryan Villalobos54:19

Yeah, thank you.