Henry Akins was on the Chewjitsu podcast a couple months ago and I finally got around to listening. Here, he talks about the basics:

You know, people want to try the latest and greatest all the time. And they see this guy doing this, move, this guy, doing this move. When you know, they don’t even know how to do a trap and roll effectively.

I mean, I think one of the reasons why this happens a lot of times too, is I think there’s a lot of subtleties in the fundamental techniques that, um, people are not aware of and are not being taught and are not being shown. And it’s not because people are trying to hide it. I think it’s just, people just have never spent enough time on it to really master it and know it to that level.

I mean, again, how many, how many blue belts you, you know, how to do an arm, pull guard, arm drag, and take the back and do a bow and arrow choke? How many blue belts can do that against Bucecha?

What is the difference? What is the difference there? It’s, it’s obviously there’s so much sensitivity. There’s so much subtleties that he’s doing. There’s different, tiny little things that he’s doing that at the high level, people can sometimes see which the blue belt, even though, you know, those techniques, it’s, it’s very rough.

Right. Um, and so that’s the thing for me, I think. Um, and just, if you look at all the other sports, you can never practice the basics and the fundamentals enough. I mean, ask Mayweather if he still practices his jab. Kobe Bryant was showing up to practice two hours before the rest of the team and he would shoot free-throws for two hours.

He’d be dripping wet, running drills by himself, doing layups and doing different drills. So look at, look at what the greats do, look at all the guys that are the best, you know, the goats, the guys that are, you know, you have, you have world champions, guys that like get to the world championship levels, and then you have guys that kind of go beyond that, right?

Like the Rogers. You know, I forget what year it was in the world where he mounted and choked everybody from the mount, like nine right. Yeah. And I think it was cross collar most, I think most of the chokes cross collar, I think maybe he got an Ezekiel once or twice, but mounted everyone, finished everyone from the mount, like super basic jiu-jitsu so, um, you know, guys, you know what’s coming after you see happened to two or three guys, but you can’t stop it.

And that was one of the things that Rickson would constantly do, is a lot of days he would say, okay, what, like one of the trainings he would do very frequently, we start rolling. What do you want me to catch you with? Uh, armlock, OK. Right arm or left arm? So, you know, what’s coming and you just can’t stop it. Right. What do you want me to catch you with?

Oh, triangle choke. Okay. Boom. He would do it. Omoplata. Which arm? Right or left? So, I mean, if you can, if, if, if you’re to the level where you can basically call out the submission against any world champion black belt and do it, that’s that shows like, that’s the level that you can get to, right. That level of mastery.

The full episode on YouTube is here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfi7TxlyAVs