1-800-BJJ-HELP
Brand new White Belt Josh Lu calls on Jake Luigi, BJJ Youtuber from "Less Impressed More Involved BJJ", and other guests for help on the path to improvement, performance, and enjoyment in the sport of Jiu Jitsu. Follow the journey!
1-800-BJJ-HELP
#183 Raymond Chou: Coaching UCSD Team, Training at Corvus, Exploring CLA, Breaking Down Berimobolos
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode I sit down with Raymond Chou (@raymondchoujj) and we talk about his experience coaching the UCSD team using CLA, our training here at Corvus, brainstorm games for berimbolos, the physics and anatomy lens of jiu jitsu, and more. Hope you enjoy!
Download Sherpa, the free AI-powered journaling app for athletes. Join the convo with Josh on Discord here.
Use the code "BJJHELP" for 50% off your first month on Jake's Outlier Database to study match footage, get links to resources, and more.
Use code “BJJHELP” at submeta.io to try your first month for only $8!
Hello? Hey Raymond, it's Josh from 1-800BJ Help. Welcome to the podcast. Oh, uh, thanks for having me. What's up? This is cool. This is the first time I'm doing an in-person podcast without the video, so it's so much less pressure, and I like it a lot better already. Um, but for those listening who don't know you, could you give a quick intro? Um, obviously we train together here at Corvus. I mean, not together because you do gi and I'm mostly no gi, but uh we cross paths often. And uh yeah, quick intro how you got into jujitsu and uh what you do for your day job, and uh we'll go from there.
SPEAKER_01Hey, what's up, everyone? My name is uh Raymond Cho. Uh my day job, I guess I'll start with my day job. I'm a mathematician, uh a traveling mathematician, I guess. I go to a lot of conferences and stuff. So I'm kind of all over the place. And right now I'm a postdoc at UC San Diego, just finishing that up. No idea what happens after. Um, how did I get into BJJ? Yeah, so like a little bit after high school, I decided I wanted to do MMA for whatever demented reason. And so I was really into getting beat up. So around then I uh I trained a lot, I did some striking, I did some grappling, a lot of wrestling, that type of stuff. And then uh when I went to grad school, so I did like this for maybe three years, and then I decided I couldn't take the head impacts anymore, and I went to grad school for five years, and it was like just I was too busy, I couldn't train, so I put it down for five years. And then the summer after grad school, I was in Korea uh doing the nomad thing, and I was like, I need to exercise. And so there was just something about jujitsu that kind of pulled me back. So I started over again. Um, I trained for a month in Korea, they gave me a blue belt, and uh yeah, it's just been the crazy wild ride since then.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you have such a unique story. We were just talking before we started recording. There's so many things we could talk about nomading. Um you also have a degree in physics? Uh yes. Uh from undergrad. Yeah. Okay. Not a PhD though. Gotcha. But still, that is a lot more physics than I have. And so we could talk about that in jujitsu. I know you're really into CLA, got to visit Greg and traveled to a lot of gyms. Oh, yeah, that was one of the that was one of the most interesting weeks of my life. Okay, yeah, we could definitely go into that as well. Um actually, man, should we talk about that week at Greg's and then go into your coaching at UCSD?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we could. Uh the two actually kind of tied together because um what happened was I was kind of just like coaching a couple athletes like on my own from the team. We'll get into that later. And then uh I was preparing for my 2025 nomad trip and I was like, where should I go? And so I just DM'd Greg, and of course he responds. He's like, Yeah, come by. And I'm like, okay. So I spent a month there in Maryland just to kind of see like how he runs things, how he does things, and then uh compare to like what I know about CLA and like the stuff that I've read. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I didn't realize you stayed there a month. Or not a month, oh, about a week. Oh, about a week. Okay, yeah. And uh I hear the I didn't get to try it too much myself, but I heard the Asian food there is not too bad.
SPEAKER_01Well, if you go to the other side, like if you cross the bridge, there is some stuff that's pretty good. There's like a Thai place that uh actually I met this dude there who's at Harvard now. Yeah. Um, he's on the Harvard BJJ team, and we spent the whole week just training together. So I got to try a couple food spots with him, but I was really broke at the time, so I was eating mainly instant ramen and protein shakes.
SPEAKER_00Nice, fueled by instant ramen and protein shape.
SPEAKER_01Fueled by instant ramen.
SPEAKER_00Um, what were your first impressions of standard jujitsu and then some of your takeaways after that?
SPEAKER_01So I kind of already knew a lot going in because I'd just seen so much of like I watched all of Greg's content that he put online. I think what was so interesting was like how little um how little was spoken and how much was more like felt. I think from the outside it might look like the coaches aren't really doing anything, but I think a lot of the um like something I noticed when Greg was running his class is he's constantly watching his athletes. And he'll say a couple things here and there. He'll pull you aside if he notices something. Um he he's really particular about his interventions, is what I noticed. But I think a lot of the value was just trying to play the games and feeling the feedback that I was getting from the other people in that room. And it's a really tough room, by the way. Like there's this, there was this like 16-year-old kid, and I just couldn't do anything to him. Like the kid's team is messed up.
SPEAKER_02That's so funny. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, me, Mike, and our other friend Chris got to spend a week there as well. And it was super fun. Um, really hard training. And uh yeah, I don't think I trained that much in a week ever before.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was doing twice a day there, and sometimes I double up at night too. It was it was exhausting.
SPEAKER_00And at that point, were you already coaching the UC San Diego team?
SPEAKER_01Or like informally, I went with them to their first like collegiate tournament in April of 2025, and that's when uh the club president was like, okay, let's try to get Raymond on the coaching staff. And yeah, so that was like a preparation, if you will.
SPEAKER_00Okay, gotcha. And then um, how long have you been coaching UCSD and what's that journey been like?
SPEAKER_01So unofficially, about a year and a half. Officially, I started in like October. Okay. So this past October, so I'd say it's been uh what's the math there? I have a degree. Seven months ish, something like that. Two quarters and a little more.
SPEAKER_00Okay, cool. Uh any like observations or learnings from that experience? I know I got to see you do it once, which was cool. Very, very cool. A lot of wrestling, a lot of live. I feel like we did an you guys did an hour of live work and then different rounds.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. How many rounds? Like five rounds. I think it's like five or six rounds.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and these kids are just going the whole time.
SPEAKER_01Because a lot of them have wrestling backgrounds. Their cardio is insane. Everyone's between 18 and 22. They're super fit. But then I think like um, we had 90-minute practices, but then now we have two hour practices, and it's just been amazing. And like a lot of people struggle at first, but there's something about being that young, their cardio just like kicks in. Like everyone's going for the whole hour. It's just an hour of games, and then like 30 minutes to 40 minutes of rounds after. It's it's insane.
SPEAKER_00Like, no, it is insane. When I was there, I was like, my jaw dropped after the hour. Like, wait, you guys are gonna do five more rounds after all of that. Um, and when you started coaching them, even unofficially, it was all CLA from the beginning.
SPEAKER_01Uh yeah, I I was really careful to mostly only do CLA with them because I figured uh some of these kids will train at other gyms as well. So they got more than enough technique. They don't really need technique from me. I felt like for me it was probably more practical to just build these little mini-games for them to play so they could like really integrate it into their game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Uh when did CLA enter your your uh the like forefront of your mind? And when did when did you convert over, I guess?
SPEAKER_01So this actually goes back to how I am as a human being. Uh I noticed I am very much like, I guess you could say I like to information max. I'm all about information maxing, as the kids say these days. But um, I like to collect as much information as I can about something. But then there was just always this really weird disconnect for me personally in my jujitsu journey where I would learn the technique from an instructor. And I'm sure like you've heard this many times here, and like all the CLA people have like similar stories, but I just couldn't get it to work on people. But then I'm like, okay, I take this a little further. It's not just I learn a technique, it's I literally sit down and I'll draw you diagrams, I'll analyze every like, because I have a degree in physics, right? And we we do this. We look at the direction of all the forces, like mechanically, what's happening. But then for some reason, I just couldn't do it live during training. And I was like, okay, there's something missing. So then um, this is actually funny. This goes back to the BJJ Mental Models podcast, but they're all these stupid memes about ecological approach. So uh I think in like November 2023, I started listening to some podcasts. And then I was like, wait, this just makes so much sense. And this kind of like matches a hunch that I started to have around that time. I was like, you know, I don't think the way we do things is representative. I don't think it's like real, to be frank. So um I read all of Rob Gray's books. I started just digging deep and going really deep down the CLA rabbit hole. And like as an academic, I love reading this stuff. Like, there was that giant constraint slide approach textbook. I didn't read the whole thing, I like skimmed it, but uh it was I was like a like a kid in a candy shop. Like, this makes so much sense. And there were all these papers to really support what was happening, so yeah, that's why I jumped on that hype train.
SPEAKER_00Okay, very cool. It fit your it fit your PhD personality and mine very well to go into all the science. And then um, we were both training at Legion at the time. Oh yeah. I think I remember like I would always see you and Andres doing a bunch of judo games after class. And then I think I heard somewhere along the way, maybe Andres mentioned me, like, dude, you gotta talk to Raymond. Like, you guys both are really interested in the CLA stuff.
SPEAKER_01He said the same thing about you.
SPEAKER_00Okay, cool. Because for me, I was not on the I don't have I'm I barely read. Like I was more just listening to every podcast I could find and then just working with Mike in the garage at my house, actually, uh, for about a year. We'd do maybe once a week, maybe twice a week sometimes, just copy Greg's games. And then I got two other guys, uh other white bells with me to do games in the garage. So that's how I started. We just play the game, and so I was like the opposite, and I didn't know any of the science or the academic, is how I got into it. That's funny. But how did you start to then apply and then um experience beyond that?
SPEAKER_01So it all went back to this like really funny conversation I had with Andres at the end of 2023. I was like, you know about this ecological approach stuff? And then um that sparked just like a bunch of locker room conversations between me and Andres. And he was like, What's it's like uh I feel like a lot of coaches would be super discouraging, but here's where Andres is the man. Like, he was just like, Yeah, no, go go try it. Like, I would grab some people um after class and just do this kind of stuff, or I would watch my own game. I'd be like, okay, what am I missing? And I would just do this instead of rounds because not everyone would stay after. And I was like, well, rounds isn't helping me get much better because I'm doing the same couple stupid things over and over again. So I would just substitute my rounds with that. And the Culture Legion, there were chill enough people that I could get this. Eventually I found a couple people with similar weight and uh body type that and skill level that I could kind of do this stuff with. So I would design all these really funny games for us to try. And of course, it was a train wreck at the start, but uh eventually I started to figure some things out. Andres was really cool too. He would stay after class with me and then we would start to lab out a lot of the funny judo stuff. He'd always be like, oh Raymond, what do you got for me this time? And then we would just have fun, like throwing each other. There were some really crazy throws that happened. Um I think uh yeah.
SPEAKER_00Luckily, neither of us got injured from it, but there were some really high amplitude throws. That's awesome that um you started just pulling people aside and then just started making up your own games. Because for a long time, I don't know how many months I was watching all this stuff and getting into this stuff. I didn't have the courage to make my own games. I was still just watching the games and then doing the games, like very much copy and paste. And I still have not made many games. Uh but um that's cool that you jumped in right into making them yourself.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah, I think it's for me, I was always like, I kind of have this feedback loop. I watch myself roll, I look at what goes wrong, and then I try to diagnose it. So for me, I had to make my own games because a CLA was kind of always this like diagnostic or not a diagnostic tool, but like a tool for improvement. And so because it's so hyper-specific to me and my own needs, I always had to design games for my own needs or the people that I was working with.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's cool. Yeah, so you looked at it in a way more um, I want to say the the word that comes to my mind is the scientific way. You're like observing like a I know you record a lot of your rounds, like you observe things and then you work backwards from there. I was just like, oh, I'm interested in this position. Let me go find back games. Like it was just so general and broad, you know. So that's cool that you went so specific uh and personalized for yourself. And that's how you kind of entered the game designing, game making art, I guess.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think this is both uh like I guess a benefit and like a disadvantage of constraints led approaches. Like the benefit is you can make it as specific as you want to the athletes, to the thing you're trying to work on. But the disadvantage is if you're trying to teach a class, it can be really hard to like create something that's relevant for everybody in that room. And so um, I would say my I have a lot more experience in designing like hyper-specific stuff. And that's been really good for my improvement as a jujitsu athlete.
SPEAKER_00So uh so then let's go back to the UCSD coaching a little bit. Um in the beginning, you know, there's I think other CLA coaches that listen to this podcast. I had a few others on, and some of the things we like to talk about is like some of those early more common challenges or mistakes that you see other people have or yourself have gone through that early few months or first year into CLA. Do you look back? Are there any lessons from there that you can help to impart for anyone kind of making this transition? There were a ton, actually.
SPEAKER_01Um, I think the first thing I want to mention is like our rules are a little different. So I can't just take something that someone else did and apply it to us because um in NCGA, the National Collegiate Grappling Association, polling guard is penalized. If you don't pull uh an attack within three seconds, like either a sweep or a submission, you actually concede two to your opponent. So we have to emphasize a lot of wrestling and a lot of takedowns and a lot of being really comfortable being on our feet. So um, and I guess ADCC also emphasizes a lot of wrestling. So maybe that wasn't the biggest issue. I would say one pitfall, two pitfalls I ran into. One, do I actually understand jujitsu enough to design these games? Um, we're working on that. And two, uh, I felt like me at the start, I would try to over-constrain to get a particular behavior to emerge. It was really hard for me to let go and be like, well, based on my understanding of physics, based on my understanding of anatomy and the rules, if these conditions are satisfied, whatever behavior is quote unquote successful or effective, and it doesn't matter how it looks, I just have to let go and be like, well, it's working. So for example, um, a lot of my guys, the way they hand fight looks nothing like how other jujitsu athletes hand fight. And this kind of drove me insane at first, but then I went in there and I tried to get an underhook on him, and I just couldn't. And it's like, it looks so silly, it looks so weird. But um, when we went to this past tournament in April, more on that later. When we went to this past tournament, it was working. Like all my guys were getting their body locks, they were getting to the back, they were getting single legs. So I guess I have to just leave it.
SPEAKER_00Like, wow. Do you remember? Uh so at the time, I and and this is actually very common, I hear a lot of coaches they want to make like a specific move or like a technique or like an approach look a certain way, and they try to constrain it too much. So at the time, if you were to go back and describe those games, was it almost like technique-based games? Or like what did those games look like versus now?
SPEAKER_01Uh so it's like I would over-constrain it, I would I would add like a losing condition that maybe wasn't relevant, that maybe wasn't actually a loss. I think um I would give too many ideas, I'd be like, well, you could try this, and then everybody would try it, but sometimes at the cost of a more effective solution. Um the way I demo things, like I'll show a really effective move, and then I just see everybody spamming that. They're not actually trying to pick up what's contextually relevant in that moment, they'll just try to do the move that I showed. So I actually kind of make it a point now to do just like something terrible that looks sloppy and doesn't actually work, so they're forced to explore. Yeah. Um, or I would keep the game so confined that there was really only one thing to do, but then they would become mentally checked out. That was the other problem. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Like it was just too narrow. Like the only way to win is to do the knee cut and to pass to it.
SPEAKER_01Or like you win if you get this one grip, but why? Why is that one grip? And then the other why is that one grip relevant? The other guy would just defend that grip like their life dependent on it. They get in these stupid, like stalled positions where there was clearly something else you could have done to achieve the objective, like passing or something like that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I uh I think it was uh Alex in a couple episodes ago on a coaching panel said when they first started, it felt like just like the games were like tug-of-war games, basically. It's like you have this position, your job is to XYZ, and then the other person, your job is to stop it. And it's just just too super narrow. One guy's pulling, one guy's pushing, basically. Uh, situation. Um, do you remember what got you out of that that phase? Because I'm sure people can get stuck there for a while and just continually do overly constrained games.
SPEAKER_01I would say my understanding of jujitsu improved, especially not even from like a oh, this is what you need to do, this is what you don't need to do, but like I would say as I learned or I tried to connect what I knew about physics and anatomy to jujitsu, my understanding of like invariant features, invariant functions of like this environment got a lot better. And so I would start to design games around that. And I would tell them, just do whatever you want. I don't care what it looks like, as long as you were achieving these things. And using that as my North Star, um, I think really helped. Especially the more I read, the more it was like, well, you could try to prescribe this hyper specific movement. And I think there is a time and place for that. But I think as we're just initially developing coordination, or um, because a lot of them it's like realistically only a couple months of experience. Like, I think I can afford to let them be a little broad in their movements. But if it's effective and it's working, like who cares? Right. That was kind of the conclusion that I settled on.
SPEAKER_00So does your understanding of math and or physics apply to that? Like uh in terms of how we solve problems? I don't I'm not my math knowledge is not super deep, but are there many ways to solve problems and and from a jiu-jitsu perspective or a coaching perspective? Uh from a oh maybe from both. Yeah, I'm curious how your your like physics and mathematics background like translated or like informed.
SPEAKER_01So my entire job is to solve puzzles, right? It is to solve problems. And so I would say from both perspectives, um, it was something that was very important. I'd be like, okay, I need to like game design ultimately is problem solving, right? You want certain things to happen. You have to think about the very specific verbal cues that you give, you have to think about the things that you show, you have to think about everybody's uh like prior contacts, like what they know about the world. You have to think about all these things and then find really specific cues to give them in a short, compressed amount of time where they're still engaged, you have to manage their cognitive load. It is a lot of things at the same time. And it's a really fun puzzle for me to solve. Like I love thinking about new games because it's just so fun, it's just so much fun.
SPEAKER_00Like I love puzzles, you know? Yeah. I can I can hear it in uh in like the passion in your voice, but also I can just get a sense of it from you just from like who you are with with your background uh and in academia. Um, man, like the other day when you were showing us those like barumbolo and crowd ride games, I was like, oh man, it's funny because with barumbolos, I always know like that's like a whole area of jujitsu that I have not gotten into or really touched. It's almost like all the people who had never gone into leg locks. That's like me for barumbolos. I just don't understand. It just seems so complex. But then when you broke it down, it um I think for the first time gave me hope that I can play those games and actually get better at that skill. Um can you give maybe some examples? Maybe that one's a little bit hard to describe over just audio, but can you give some examples of how your understanding of physics and anatomy informed some of your game design?
SPEAKER_01Ah, okay. We can actually use this barambolo example. So there were two things that went into this. The um the first one is like ultimately what is a barambolo, right? And so this one's less about physics and more just about how passing works. So if you think about mount and back control, your legs are wrapped around your opponent's waist past their knees, right? And so you could, in some sense, view barambolo as this like entire thing where you're just trying to get past someone's knee. Like you'll hear people like Mikey say, oh, okay, uh, press down on their pinky toe, sit on their big toe, force knee internal rotation or force hip internal rotation. Why, right? It's just so you can clear their knee. Because once you've cleared their knee, you are now past their knees, right? You're past their guard in some sense. So the entire um To me, Barambolo focuses on this idea. If I try to pass someone's legs by going above, well, knees bend the way that they do. So their knees are pointing towards me. That's another obstacle for me to get past. If I try to pass someone's legs going below, well, I only have to really pass the feet because the legs don't bend that way, right? You get straight to their waist, you get straight to their like center mass. So barambolo to me is about um rather than passing legs by going above or around, you go under, right? And that's why it connects so well with like stacks, with leg drags and that kind of stuff, where you're under your opponent's legs, because you really, you realistically only have to clear their feet to get to their like hips, butt, whatever. So yeah. Physics-wise, I would say, and Mikey points this out in his instructionals, uh, the rounded spine, curved spine dilemma. So when someone's spine is rounded, um, they kind of roll like a little, like a, like a like a ball, like a sphere, like a ball. Yeah. So um by controlling the space under their knees, you can stack them up and expose their lower back or their butt. John Thomas talks about this a lot in his uh barambolo videos. Oh, John Thomas is a great person to visit, by the way, if you ever go to Sweden. But um by getting chest to butt contact, I uh he says chest to lower back. I say chest to butt because it's funnier. But if you get chest to lower back contact, you can start to work your way up their back. And in fact, so many uh barambolo positions rely on this. So I try to design games about controlling the space under people's knees. You can stomp on them to lift them up. But then Mikey has this other mechanic of you drag their hips across you when their spine is flat. And this solves the uh, like that was that was Mikey's one of Mikey's big contributions among many to the bolo game, is that oh, if you just uh take a pants grip, you can punch their waist across you by shrimping under them if their spine is really like straight. But if their spine is curved, you can always stack them, right? And then there's all these details that they get into about inverting under, but honestly, if you just get in there and mess around, like you'll probably figure something out.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um I'm sure there's like a whole bunch of versions of barambola games, but if I took like, let's say, like, let's say if we brainstormed like 20 versions of barambola games, yeah. What do you think would be the most common tasks we would play around with in those games?
SPEAKER_01Either elevate their butt like off the mat by sacking them or dragging it across you to connect your upper chest to their lower back. And you see this in every single version. But you could even take a step back. That's like a that's like a I call it like a waypoint position, like an intermediate task. Really, what you're trying to do is uh become top player past their knees or make chest to back connection, right? Ultimately, that's what you're trying to do. You could view um chest to butt as an intermediate task, but ultimately those are the two things you're trying to do. So you just happen to be going under them instead of over.
SPEAKER_00Right. And then, okay, so um if we're to start there, I guess the constraint you would maybe want is you can't go over their knees or around, you have to go under.
SPEAKER_01Uh, so this was like there have been like over 40 versions of these games that we've labbed out. It's really funny. So if you constrain it that way, then there's a lot of uh you get a lot of not so representative behavior. Because if you have to go under, well, what happens when the guy just lays down and then like sticks both their legs out flat against the ground? Now you can't go under. So that's why uh you have to, and this is the puzzle. How do you keep things contextually relevant? Because if they do that, you would just get up and pass their guard. Because they're and so there was another idea, I forget which version it was, but somewhere in there, I we introduced this knees away, knees close dilemma. When someone's knees are close to their chest, and I think Mikey talks about this as well. When someone's knees are close to their chest, they're very stackable because their spine must round. When someone's knees are extended away, well, they're not stackable anymore, but you can drag them or you could come up into the space, right? Their elbow knee space opens, and so you could just come up into a pass. So playing that dilemma, I think, fixed a lot of the funny, like weird, non-representative behaviors we were getting.
SPEAKER_00Whoa, okay, that is such a good point. Um, so then uh how would you define the uh knee elbow space or like away or uh what did you say? Did you say knees away or knees?
SPEAKER_01Knees away or knees close or knees close. Knees, yeah, knees close, knees away. Okay. So if I bring my knee to my chest, like you know, those funny memes where it's like the unpassable guard because their knees are connected to their shoulders. Well, it's an unpassable guard for a reason. You have completely sealed off the uh the like hip pockets or like the knee elbow space, whatever you want to call it. You've completely sealed that off, right? But you make yourself stackable. And so, like a lot of the time what happens is you'll see people just like grab on their pants and then like flip them over into turtle, right? Because, well, they are stackable from there. Uh but then uh as you extend your knees, you open that knee elbow space, like it becomes larger and larger, and you can just find a way to put your chest in there or throw a hook in there or something of that nature.
SPEAKER_00And so would you make that a task in the game, or is it kind of like a win condition?
SPEAKER_01Or do you think that's something difficult? And this comes in how you package the game. I make that like information that they can play with. But I've noticed um, because when you're managing cognitive load, when you work with athletes, typically, sometimes I don't even say it, sometimes it's just something that's baked into the game, right? I say, if you can come up into the space, you win, or if you're able to get their backup off the mat and or get their butt up off the mat and get your chest under it, you win. Um, I think these dilemmas should be baked into the games. I've had mixed success with making them aware of these dilemmas. Like sometimes I'll mention it. Uh I'll definitely say it if people ask me after class, but I don't think I think it's good to I think people should know. I don't think it's the most relevant thing when you're telling them about the games, maybe like a passing comment, because ultimately they will be preoccupied with the tasks. Yeah. I think it's like I think that's more useful when you're designing the games themselves.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, that was one thing that made me it was hard for me to figure out was like Greg is so good at that intention attention thing. Like, like what is the goal of the game? And then where do you place your focus on the journey towards that goal? Oh yeah. Um so maybe it's something like that. Like it seems like in this example, the goal is that chest or ultimately chest to chest or chest to back past their legs, and you give them that intermediary of the chest to butt or chest to lower back, and then a way to do it, some like a path or something to focus on is knees away or knees close or something like that.
SPEAKER_01Yes. Uh that's actually a really good summary of it. I think the uh focusing on the knees close or knees away dilemma might detract from their intention. They'll start to focus on that and not really focus on the task. Yeah. So when maybe it's like if it's the fifth or sixth time you're playing this game, I might introduce that. But for the most part, I just the first time I think, just tell them the task. It's just too much, it's too much cognitive overload, yeah, in my opinion. Even for me, like I'll design these games and I'll play them myself. And if I'm thinking about the dilemma, like I'm not focused on the tasks anymore, and I I see my performance suffer, actually. Like I'll watch my own tape and then I see my performance suffer.
SPEAKER_00So uh the last game you showed us on the Varambola was like basically that starting position of like being in a T. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, can you describe that uh that game or that position?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah, sure. So if chest to butt connection is so important as uh like, and you'll see a lot of people say this, like John and Espen both say that. So why not just start there and see if you can figure out the leg configurations? Um, this was kind of based off of something that uh John Thomas had shown me where we'll work backwards, like we'll start with a twister hook and try to take the back. Okay, that's super easy, everyone can do that. Um, then we'll go one step back into wedge bolo, right? And then we'll go one step back. And I'm like, okay, well, why not just turn that into a game? But we start with that chest to butt contact so people could get to experience it. And this is where that problem solving is because it's like the thing that's so complicated about these bolo positions is well, how do you how do you get people to experience it if they've never experienced it before? So that was one thing we tried that actually had a lot of success. People would go up and fight for twister hooks immediately. They would end up in wedge bolos. It was kind of funny. I got to I got to play this game with Margo Ciccarelli actually. And yeah, like the stuff she was doing when she had that chest to butt connection was insane. I was like, oh, I've never seen this before.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, that's like her specialty.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, can you describe that game?
SPEAKER_01That that first means so one person lays on their back, and this person is the attacking player. The defending player sits on their stomach, it looks really weird, and then leans back until their shoulder blades touch the mat, right? So uh you can start with your legs extended, you could start with your legs elevated, whatever, but the bottom player gets to choose which grips they have. So, um, and I'll just show one. Like, I'll be like, oh, you could go one on the hip grip and then the other on the pants. You could go horse collar and pants. You could go, I just let them play around with different uh grip configurations just to see what happens. But if people are really struggling, I'll start them with hip grip and pants, just otherwise it's way too chaotic. And then uh what are the goals or or so? Your goals are to um either establish chest to back connection with both hooks in. And I really emphasize both hooks in because you're in such an advantageous position already, or become top player past their knees. So you should establish a chest-to-chest connection past their knees. The defending player, their goal is to simply break away and um dislodge their like, yeah, break away, face their opponent, and get both legs in front of them. That's it. Yeah. So like stand up and get away, or regard. Or even if you get to like a double pull position, if both of their feet are in front of them, facing their opponent, they've they've won.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You just want to end the game there. So they get more time in that, in that bolo-esque back taking behind the knees-esque rotating game.
SPEAKER_01Um, does it change with Nogi? Ooh, I haven't really thought much for Nogi because my understanding of the bolo is so reliant on grips. Yeah. Um I mean, I could binge on my constructional and try to design some stuff. But ultimately, I would think that it should be pretty similar. Like the invariant features don't depend that much on the grips. It just it's just like I might change the design of the game because, well, there are so few grips to work with.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Like what realistically, you have body locks, you have like yeah, it would it would be so fast-paced. Like, people would escape super quickly, if I had to guess, that I would probably have to constrain it more for the defender so that the attacker gets to explore.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. Um, let's go back to the UCSD coaching because I know that you got to watch them compete a couple times. Is there anything that was like surprising when you get to go? It's almost like you're you're running your lab, and then now you get to go see the results and like pressure test the stuff.
SPEAKER_01It's super interesting what works and what doesn't, but we have like this very uh the game I have them play is very simple like get your opponent down to their butt or to both like on all fours with at least one knee on the mat to score and then like pass, uh separate Noble from the body and get some kind of submission. That's like our ultimate game plan, right? Um what was so interesting was that they were doing stuff that looked like it really shouldn't have worked, but it worked. Like, I have these guys, they've been training only with me, actually, for like a couple months. Like, there's this one dude, uh, he's been training with me for three months. That's it. That's all the jujitsu experience he has, and he got fourth in his bracket. It was crazy, and he just hit this really funny like snatch single. I've never seen anything like it before. He just took the guy down, he held him down. Um, I have this other guy who him and his uh training partner, he pairs up with the same guy a lot, and they're always doing weird, like inverted, like crazy stuff. Like the other day I was watching him and they were both in each other's reversed close guard. Like, I don't know how this happens, but so he gets taken down and he does some reverse close guard nonsense, and I'm like, what is happening? But he won his match. I don't know, I don't know, it was it's it's pretty funny. Um when people get pins and they get control, it's like it's it looks really smooth. It's like their opponent will do something crazy, but they just react to it in real time. And I've never shown any of I've never shown them any of that stuff, you know. Like once in a while, someone will hit like a hyper-specific move that's just a little too efficient for the capacity that my students have developed. But for the most part, and I'll be yelling things like pin their shoulder blades, pin their shoulder blades, like keep their shoulders flat to the mat. I give really um concrete cues like that, and they'll just do it. And I'm like, oh yeah, that's I guess that's one way to do it, huh? Is like something I keep saying in my mind. But I just see the craziest stuff happen. And if we do lose, or if we do like get swept, or we do get our backs taken, it's just 99% of the time the intention was there. They just haven't had enough time in that position, was what I noticed.
SPEAKER_00So Yeah, it's a um that point you mentioned of having that internal thought a lot of like, oh wow, I guess that is one way to do it. That is a very um open-minded way to look at coaching. Because I think in the traditional model, coaching is I know the way, I'm gonna show you the way, right? But this is like to be constantly surprised at how students problem solve on their own. They do the craziest stuff.
SPEAKER_01It's and sometimes I just deal with the new. I literally take from them, and then I do it in my own training, and it's like, yeah, this is weirdly efficient.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's a very uh different kind of um paradigm to be in terms of the coach, like like as Andres always says, like being the guide on the side, you know, instead of like that leader at the or whatever the phrase is where you're just dictating how things should go exactly. Um how you know at Legion, it was so interesting to watch Andres start doing CLA and the whole culture of CLA. Oh, yeah, watching his transformation. Yeah, yeah. Like because I I saw it all mostly on the no-gi side. What was it like for you to watch his whole transformation on the gi side?
SPEAKER_01So it's kind of funny. I we'd been talking about this a lot, and then I went on my first nomad run uh around April 2024. So I actually didn't get to see like the transformation happen gradually, but I come back in September and I'm like, whoa, this is nice. I like this. I could I could get behind this. Like I remember um the first class I did with him that was CLA was like this Leo grip thing. And uh we had time to like give each other feedback. He was really emphasizing like staying outside of your opponent's legs. Oh, here's this wonderful grip that does that for you. And I was like, I still use the stuff that I developed during that day to this day. We barely play Leo grip games anymore, but it's like I did it once, and it's something that shows up in my training all the time. It was so much fun. I got so much better in that short period of time.
SPEAKER_00It was also challenging because um of the culture. You know, a lot of people just ask for technique or ask for to be shown things. And so I think it was tricky. And with so many different coaches and coaches coaching alongside together for some classes, I think it was just like a whole mixed bag. But uh, I just know Andres got really into the CLA stuff and wanted to do more of it.
SPEAKER_01I think there is some value to learning technique from other people, but I think the biggest trap you run into is like not being an independent thinker. Like if you're a move collector or you're like one of these people that relies on um, like if you can't think for yourself, you will always be relying on someone else. If you can't look at your own jujitsu and solve problems that are coming up, I think something's wrong. This is just my personal opinion. I'm sure I'll offend a lot of people, but whatever. Uh to quote Bruce Lee, like all learning is ultimately self-learning, right? Someone can give you something that's useful, but ultimately you have to be the one that absorbs it and applies it. And so what's great about CLA is well, this is just like iterating that super quick, right? And um uh that's not to say that other people's knowledge is completely useless. Like I think we should study those that came before us. But what's so cool about Andres is that he'll use his experience, he'll use his knowledge of these positions to kind of speed that up by helping us like shorten that search process, right? But ultimately, um, ultimately, all of us have different bodies, all of us have different like attributes. And so I think it's really cool that Andris will design these like honestly really well thought out scenarios for us to just super speed up that learning process.
SPEAKER_00Um yeah, it was it was just a dream like situation. Like then he started doing his free small group privates and then we're doing tons of them, and then now he being here at Corvus is like a lot of things. Dude, we are so spoiled here. We are so spoiled here. It's insane. We're so lucky. He's like he was obsessed for so long. And not to say that he's not now, he he's still obsessed, but like it's just it was so cool to watch his his whole evolution uh all the way down to to Corvus. Um so where where's your uh spotlight now in terms of continuing your evolution and CLA and game design and like yeah, what where's your head at these days?
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. So um I have this really big project, and uh it's kind of funny. I don't know if you know who Rob Biernacki is. Uh yes, I heard him on a couple podcasts. Yeah, so he had this like grand vision to start this like unified theory of jujitsu, and I think like a lot of my stuff is based off of what he does because it's just so well thought out. But I want to understand, um, I guess to be ambitious, all of jujitsu from this like physics, anatomy, and the rules-based lens. And so that's just something I'm slowly working through. But I don't know if it's something I can achieve before black belt. It's really hard. I would say I have like a rudimentary understanding of most of the positions, but um that's more or less my grand goal, and everything else connects to that. So through my coaching, watching how my athletes develop and change as they grow. Um, like I'll be, for example, for the longest time I thought, okay, guard passing works this way, right? And then I would see my athletes struggle and be like, okay, maybe it doesn't work the way that I thought, right? And I would just go on this deep rabbit hole trying to solve all these problems. But my ultimate goal is to just understand jujitsu as deeply as one can.
SPEAKER_00Wow. To put a physics and anatomy, like to s understand jujitsu completely through a physics and anatomy lens. Wow, very cool. What was your um have are there any inklings of like I don't know what the right word is, but uh views on jujitsu from that lens that you can share with us?
SPEAKER_01Uh here's a quick one. And uh this is kind of funny. There's this this really old video of Chris Payne talking about this when he was in this like seminar in Reykjavik, I think it was, or somewhere in Iceland. But uh all sweeps focus on one really simple principle, which is just take their center of gravity past whatever their base is. So um, if you imagine all the points a person has uh like touching the ground. So for example, when you're standing, there's two legs on the ground, right? And it makes like a really thin rectangle based on the shape of your feet or whatever. Uh, we would, in math, we call this the convex hole of something, but you take the convex hole of all the points someone makes with the ground. If your center of gravity, which is like a point somewhere two inches below your belly button for uh maybe it's a little higher for men and slightly lower for women because of how their weight distribution is, if you push this point outside their base, they must fall. Every single takedown works this way. And so, um, yeah, I've been trying to design games around that. Like, you know, maybe you pull a rope around someone's like someone's on all fours and you tie like a rope around their waist or something, you just try to get them to fall by like messing with their limbs or whatever. But um, this is the direction I've been taking my like experimental games in. For a lot of judo or like wrestling stuff, I'll be like, okay, it's all about getting the center of gravity to move past their base. Um if you have a connection to their head, like a lapel grip, that's a giant lever that helps you do this much more efficiently. Can I design games around that? That's kind of been the approach I've been doing. Because it works in my jujitsu. Like, I will look at a position, I will see someone's connections to the ground, especially like X-guard wrestle ups when I have like a pants grip or something. I will look at their connections to the ground, I will see a weak plane and I just throw them in that direction, and it's so easy to stand up, even though if the guy's like 30 pounds heavier than me. But then how do I get my students to see this? Because I have this lens, but I can't expect someone to just learn like physics and see things the same way that I do, right? So, how do I get this behavior to emerge without all of that? I guess is my current project.
SPEAKER_00Wow. Um, that would be fascinating. It feels to me, uh, just first time hearing this, like it feels to me like you may be able to come up with some really interesting cues. Yeah. Like people's um what they pay attention. Attention to could could per like perhaps could be very efficient because it's just based on this law. Like I wonder if there's cues of like pushing or pulling them through the shadow of them on the ground or through the whatever that.
SPEAKER_01I think for such a thing to work, I would need better visual representations. It's like I could give them a visual guide. Like there was this funny thing Andres is doing with the bandanas, like he'd tie a bandana to the back of your waist and it was red. No one's got a red gi, right? So it's very like jarring. It's like there, you're gonna reach for it, right? What I want to do is like I was thinking about this, I might lab this out, but it's like if you get like a really light resistance band and you put it around someone's legs, right? To the point where it like sticks to them or it doesn't, maybe just to give someone like a visual aid for like where to drive that force. Because people here, most people are pretty strong. Like they can generate a lot of force. I see a lot of force bleeding during roles, right? It's just not being used in an efficient way. So I think having some kind of a visual aid, like, oh, always push like perpendicular to one of the edges or something would really help people a lot. I I hope.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man, the that the exploration of how we use language, what that is informed by, um, and how those impact students' attentions, super fascinating. I think that's gonna be a really, really interesting to follow your journey in that exploration. I remember one time at Legion, one guy told me about I was like, I was struggling with guard for so long, and he just said, imagine like the bottom of your feet have laser beams and you just want those laser beams pointed at like the chest or whatever.
SPEAKER_01That's literally what it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I for some reason that visual, I don't know why. For me, my brain, that one clicked and it helped me so much. So yeah, I just wonder there's probably so much to be explored beyond CLA or maybe within CLA of precisely the precise language, yeah.
SPEAKER_01I've been uh it's kind of weird though, because everyone's understanding of language is a little different. And I'm not a linguist, but I do have a passing interest in linguistics. But um I found that it really depends on this person's cultural background. And that's another piece of the puzzle is how do you give these like analogies or these like visual representations that make sense to people? So I'm a very visual person. I try to just show it specifically, but then the the thing is if you do it during the demo, but that same information is not present during the game, I found it has a lot less carryover. People aren't looking for it. So there was also that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, man, it's so tricky. Um the I kind of want to talk about nomading and like what yeah, yeah. Or is there anything else that you wanted to do?
SPEAKER_01One last thing I I want to share. This will be interesting to see what other CLA coaches think about this. I play a lot of uh sometimes I'll do this. This was this is something I mainly do in one-on-ones because I just find it so valuable, but I don't really do it in a group class because it looks weird and it hasn't been labed out enough. But I'll do these exploration games, but they're not what you think. I call them statue games or like gargoyle games or whatever, but essentially one person's a statue, right? So I have them uh I'll make something really simple like separate this person's knees from their chest or separate their elbows from their chest, right? And but the defender is not allowed to move, they just have to resist whatever uh thing as hard as they possibly can, but they are not allowed to move, hence statue, right? You very quickly learn which directions a human body is strong and a human body is weak because you learn like you can pull someone's uh knees away from their chest very easily, right? Because the abdominal muscles are quite weak, whereas you cannot resist someone's like kick, right? The the posterior chain is so strong it is very difficult to resist. You learn that knees are very weak, adducting and abducting. You learn like, but instead of saying this, you just have them experience it by trying to move a fully resisting human being. This is something that helped me a lot.
SPEAKER_00Interesting. I I feel like that would be such a fun game to uh it's like an anatomy game.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, more or less.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like an anatomy class or something like that. I remember the the other day as we were brainstorming for the podcast, you were talking about uh the mount game where you're trying to pick it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, this goes back to this um like it all started with this one clip that Gordon Ryan had put up about attacking mount. He mentioned that you should go palm up and push out, right? And I was like, why? Oh, because it attacks the rotator cuff. That is the weakest direction of the shoulder girdle, right? Um, because the like elbow extension is very, or not elbow extension, but like shoulder extension is very strong, right? Your entire pecs contract. Um got your lats helping. Right. Your lats are very strong when you pull. Yeah, right. Even this like chicken wing motion is pretty strong, but this like rotational motion here, I mean, you see a lot of the guys in the gym working that, and they can really only do like 40, 50 pounds of it, right? It is a weak motion and it's the weakest motion that the shoulder has. So if you throw your whole body weight at it and you push out, yeah, of course that's gonna be strong.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. So I wonder, um, like if you go to a hyper-specific game, how do you design tasks and constraints to encourage the things that are anatomically very effective or efficient? Yeah, you know what I mean? It's very interesting because you have the outcome, but there truly are some anatomy things that you're pointing out that would kind of shortcut it's not a technique, but it's kind of like it's a principle, it's kind of tricky.
SPEAKER_01So this is where this is where um you have to be really careful because you might cross the line and say, I'm prescribing too much. But I would uh you could easily do something like, okay, have someone lay down, um, have them put their hands to their chests, and you say, your only goal here is to put their hands like on the mat somehow, right? And emphasize you have 360 degrees of directions that you can try pushing in, right? Yeah, yeah. So just try all of them real quick. Right, right, right. Yeah, find out which ones you like more. Um, because they will start to have a little bit of success when they push out and they'll converge on that signal really quick. Oh, we push out. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because there's little pieces like that everywhere in jiu-jitsu, right? That it that may be just all of jujitsu is little pieces like that.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. But then you also have to be careful because okay, why is it relevant? Why are we trying to put their hands on the mat? You have to always make sure that this is relevant within the greater context, otherwise, people won't know why they're trying to do this. But if it's shown, like Greg has, like, oh, if you pin a wrist, you can get this like funny uh gift wrap position, or you could start to walk their elbows up, then it becomes relevant. But then there's also cognitive load and memory. So it's like it's really hard to teach someone all of this.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, maybe one thing we can we can wrap up on is like the other day we were brainstorming um with Alan and and the crew games for beginners. Uh and for like, because we're looks like Corvus is gonna start their beginner program. What are your thoughts on like that population? Because you you work with a lot of people getting into jujitsu that are younger.
SPEAKER_01I think you have to strike this very fine balance of keeping them engaged, keeping it fun, keeping them safe. I would say that's probably the most important thing, right? Because if someone gets their elbow broken on day one, they're probably not coming back. But also like building them to become like solid grapplers. So um, you'll hear some people say, Oh, I would teach submissions on day one, or submission control, right? Maybe don't teach them the finish. You would hear some people say, like, oh, I'm gonna have them wrestle on day one. Ultimately, I think if you can chuck all those boxes, it's fine. It's more about your population, like your demographic. Because I think, like, for example, people here in San Diego are probably gonna be really different from people in like Korea or something, right? Um, you could expect a more like willingness to no shade on Americans, but you could in you could expect a little more willingness to commit to something difficult from if from like people in East Asia. Sorry, Americans, if this is true though. But uh, so like because if you watch how jujitsu is taught in Korea, it's like super specific techniques from day one. And there's always someone like telling you, oh, adjust these things, adjust those things, right? And some people flourish in that, some people don't. Like, I have a hard time being told what to do. I'm not gonna lie. But uh for a good program, like I wouldn't mind just being like, okay, let's teach someone how to control the armbar, right? Or how to control the back. Because, like, from uh I want someone to be engaged perspective, because they watch TV, you know, they watch MMA, they're like, Oh, this is an arm bar, this is an MMA, right? Whatever. Maybe you don't teach them how to break it, but you'll be like, Oh, yeah, if you control this, you can arm bar the guy, you know? And they get to experience that from day one, they'll have success because the tasks are really simple. Don't let their elbow come out, don't let them get to their knees. Super simple. Like, I would be what's the original question?
SPEAKER_00It was uh, yeah, no, the white belt, like where would you start the beginner program? So, yeah, no, this is exactly so.
SPEAKER_01Me personally, I would try to give them a wide variety because I really stand behind Greg's ideas of you should have him play the full game every day. Right. So maybe I would teach him like my classes go like this. So we do one, we do a couple standing situations, we do a couple pinning situations, and we do a couple guarded situations. And then I guess you could rope submissions into the pinning thing because ultimately submissions are a type of control. So yeah, I would just like kind of alternate that, go through that and try to build a coherent program around that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. I I do think um when you mentioned that, I was like, that would be very exciting for a day one. And then we started talking about maybe the real naked choke, because that's the one that I feel like everybody sees now. There's a lot of selling value. I feel like exactly yeah. Um but yeah, where to where to next? What are your goals with uh your own jujitsu with traveling, with nomading coming up here?
SPEAKER_01Well, with my own jujitsu, everyone's been trying to get me to compete, but I feel like for me to compete, my coaching would suffer, and I just need to get over that mental block that I have. Have you competed before? I have a couple times.
SPEAKER_00And you did MMA before. That's like way scarier and intense, and like I never did any matches though. It was just like the sparring was still that's intense. Like it was a lot of fun. That's like a it sounds scary.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't take those, I can't take those head impacts anymore, though. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah. But um, moving forward, I want to travel more and visit more like CLA-based gyms, um, or just to like scrap with other people and like uh I'm gonna go back to Sweden at some point this year to visit John Thomas, hopefully. Uh I'll be I'll do another nomad run and just keep training, keep getting better, keep deepening my understanding of jiu-jitsu. Very cool. And uh I'm gonna double down on coaching with UCSD. Like, I don't know if anyone knows about this. The college jiu-jitsu is slowly happening. The NCGA, the National Collegiate Grappling Association, it's getting bigger and bigger. Like the West Coast Conference, which we won by the way. Congrats, UCSD. Sick. Yeah, um, there were so many athletes there. Josh Barnett was there with like a little catch wrestling thing on the side. That was super cool. I saw some massive suplexes and then he hooked the guy after. That was hilarious. Whoa. Yeah. Um and like it's getting really big. One of our athletes actually went to the Nationals in Sacramento this past weekend and won it. Oh, sick. It was sick. I really hope that's something that gets really big. So I would put a lot of energy into just helping that grow as well. Oh, cool. Um, keep coaching my athletes, keep studying more and just keep training, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and meeting more people and exchanging ideas. Okay, awesome. Um, maybe you can leave people with um should people connect with you on Instagram if they're like happen to be in Sweden or following your travels or want to train or invite you to their CLA gym somewhere?
SPEAKER_01Don't have it's like there's like nothing on there yet, but I did make a jujits uh jujitsu specific Instagram. It's Raymond Cho, C-H-O-U, and then J J. If you want to follow me there, there's nothing on there right now, but I might start putting stuff on there after this.
SPEAKER_00Okay, very cool. Yeah, awesome. Yeah, thank you, Raymond, for coming on the show. You're welcome back anytime. I feel like we can go, we can go like so many different ways. I feel like we have so much stuff to talk about always. So yeah, thank you for for coming on and uh thank you all for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.
