Jiujitology: Framing, Hooking and the "Always/Never" Question
Private Lesson Notes on Guard Retention
Summary of Today’s Email + Some Housekeeping Things
Today’s newsletter is influenced by a private lesson last week on guard retention. Here’s the summary:
Decision making can be hard. You need a set of rules to lay the foundation before you operate in the grey area.
The difference between framing, hooking and what it has to do with the “always/never” hypothetical
Operating in the “grey area” of jiu-jitsu
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I think back to a Danaher podcast with Lex Friedman.
In this podcast, Lex asks John if he thinks an AI robot will ever be good enough to beat Gordon. If I recall correctly, John says something about how yes, theoretically it could beat Gordon BUT there are a lot of aspects to jiu-jitsu that one simply cannot program into a machine.
Makes sense… There are a lot of things I “feel” in training that I don’t think can be programmed into a machine but the more I learn about machines and AI, I’m starting to think John is wrong.
In any case, John gives the example of breaking a “cardinal rule” in jiu-jitsu: turning one’s back. There are instances where you have to expose your back. I see how it can be difficult to program this but in some respects, I also think that one rule could be:
Expose your back to avoid the late stage guard pass
With the caveat of
Only if you’re comfortable with your back/turtle escapes AND you’re ok risking your back to avoid side control.
Now, I don’t know the first thing about programming languages to try and put the above into python or C++ or Java or whatever, but you get the idea.
Yes, it’s generally good to not expose your back. Yes, you also have to expose your back sometimes depending on various factors.
So, how do you decide when to expose your back?
How do you decide when to break these “cardinal rules” of jiu-jitsu?
These dilemmas can be tricky and the truth is, you won’t know without a LOT of experience… and I mean A LOT.
In a lesson recently, I had a student who was getting his guard passed more than it should. He mentioned his later stage retention was fine, but his training partners were very easily getting to that later stage. He was missing something in that first tier when an opponent is creating the angle to pass, getting passed the ankles.
I put him through some light positional training to see what his issue was. Alas, I found it.
This student enjoys playing X Guard, Butterfly and Single Leg X. As such, his legs are programmed to always try to hook from the guard position instead of frame.
If you don’t see the problem with this, I’ll explain a little further.
But first, a quick note on the nature of hooks and frames.
Consider your body has two ways of wedging against a training partner. You can “hook” or “frame”. In other words, you can wedge to keep an opponent close (by controlling distance away from you) and you can wedge to keep an opponent far from you (by controlling the distance towards you).
IF
You’re constantly programmed to hook, you will always keep an opponent from moving away from you. On the other hand, if you’re constantly programmed to frame, you will always keep your opponent from getting close to you.
Now, is either right? is either wrong?
I can tell you that there are times to hook instead of frame. How do I know? I feel it.
But, what if you don’t know?
Enter the “Always/Never” Hypothetical
Decision making can be hard.
Hard decisions can be even harder to make.
You don’t always have all the information so most of our decisions everyday are really just bets or assumptions that something will or won’t play out.
I remember reading a Jean Paul Sartre book on existentialism and he wrote a line that stood out. Paraphrased:
“A man acts for all men”.
In other words, if a man acts, he acts as if all men should act this way.
If a man is kind, he then believes that it is ok that everyone acts with kindness. If a man is violent, then he believes that it is ok that everyone acts with violence.
I use this in my own leadership.
What if I act in XYZ way towards ABC person? Then I have to act XYZ way towards everyone.
This is of course an over-simplification for leadership purposes so I’ll explain more in the context of decision making.
When I have tough decisions to make, and I don’t know the answer, I ask myself “Would I rather always do XYZ? or would I rather never do XYZ? If the answer is “always”, I do it. if I fail, I learn from that failure and troubleshoot the nuance.
If the answer is “always” and I do it and I succeed, then I continue doing XYZ until it fails. If it fails, I troubleshoot the nuance.
Get the idea?
If you ask now, when is it ok to turn your back and you don’t know, ask yourself “would I rather always or never expose my back?”
Err on the side of never exposing your back and when it fails, explore and troubleshoot the nuance.
So what does this always/never have to do with guard retention?
Glad you asked.
For my student (and coincidentally another one, also a purple belt the following week), I asked him the pros and cons of framing versus hooking.
Framing → Keeps someone away
Hooking → Keeps someone close
If the nature of a guard pass is to get chest to chest or chest to back, then the nature of a guard pass suggests that a guard passer always needs to get closer.
If your hooks keep someone close, does this help the guard passer reach their goal?
If your frames keep someone away, does this help a guard passer achieve their goal?
The answer, overly simplified is Yes to the first and No to the second. Hooks always get a guard passer closer to the goal.
So would you rather ALWAYS frame or ALWAYS HOOK?
The simple answer is always frame.
So, is hooking wrong? No. I hook a LOT when the time is right but if I’m on the verge of getting my guard passed, I err on the side of framing. I frame first then figure out when my hooks are appropriate.
If I’m going to make a mistake, I want to make a mistake doing the thing that’s fundamentally sound (keeping someone away in guard retention and not exposing my back, as examples) and only with time and experience and a lot of mistakes, experiment with things that are not fundamentally sound.
Make sense?
Hope this post was helpful.
If you want some more video help with framing and hooking, scroll down towards the end.
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To recap some housekeeping stuff:
I’ll be resuming billing within a week. You’ll have another notice on Monday when I send out another free email
The price will be reduced from $16.97 to $5.
The format will go back to its original format: Notes from my private lessons. Every Friday, you’ll get emails highlighting some important concepts that I guarantee will be worth the $5/month. $1.25 for every email that improves your training? No-brainer.
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Here’s the video to supplement this newsletter