Plateaus in Jiujitsu/ Breaking Confirmation Bias

Joshua Citrak: Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Jiu Jitsu couples therapy. Therapy is in session and today we're going to get comfortable being uncomfortable for real by asking a couple of hard questions. Starting off with who are you avoiding in the training room? Who are you avoiding rolling with, training with, maybe even interacting with? Do you feel like you've reached a plateau where you're not getting any better? ⁓ Or do you feel like maybe your coach is coaching you on things that you don't think is legit? You think that I have my game, why is my coach pushing me to do something else? That's right. And if you answer that, telling yourself the story of, well, this person goes too hard or that person's too strong or whatever, that might be confirmation bias and we're going to talk about it on today's show. But first in this podcast, we discuss training together as a couple, being a martial arts family life as an older jujitsu athlete, proper mindset mindset and perspective and so much more. ⁓ what we're, we don't cover on this, ⁓ are like delving into move sets or dissecting matches or Talking about the drama going on in the jujitsu world, although we do reserve the right to talk about it every once in a while, but that's not primarily what this is about. That's right. Confirmation bias, Susan. So what is it? Confirmation bias is something that we're all familiar with, and maybe you just haven't had it defined. ⁓ It's your brain's filtering system for being able to not have to take in the 11 to 40 million things, bits of information that we're bombarded with. And we filter it down to maybe 40 to 50 bits per second. And what you filter, what your brain filters out comes from what you grew up with in childhood or what your general mindset is. Yeah, you're, essentially your brain is trying to prove you right, which is a lot easier. than trying to examine tons of critical and maybe worthless information, ⁓ which is very energy intensive and just easier to conform to kind of your pre-built assumptions, I guess, right? Yeah. So if you're one of those people that always, you know, people that are always looking on the bright side of things and good things happen to them, and they're always talking about the good things that happen to them and how You know, they're so happy and all this stuff. It's because they have programmed their mind or their mind was programmed to see the good things and to filter out all of the negative things. I'm sure we all know that person. Well, everything is super negative. Right. I mean, Schopenhauer, the the German philosopher said it, you know, the world is will and representation, meaning what we what our biases are is what we see. And it can be positive. can see, you know, look to see the better, the golden, the silver lining and things or whatever, but it also can be negative. But when we're talking about learning a skill, improving on something, confirmation bias is probably inherently a detriment to learning and improving a skill such as jujitsu. Sure. takes will. and it takes mindfulness to be able to question your assumptions. So confirmation bias can be overcome. So if you're that negative person who only sees all the negative stuff that happens, you can actually train yourself to start filtering out the negative and start seeing the positive. can train our own minds by asking continually to question, what are my assumptions that I'm making here? That's right. And I think it's very easy to start to fall into that in Jiu-Jitsu because you start to develop your game. know, or even let's back it up even before that. You're a white belt who knows nothing. And so therefore you just have to trust whatever is coming your way. And that's kind of where the confirmation bias starts, especially if you stick with the team long enough that first of all, you don't know to question. And then secondly, you're kind of ingrained in this political ⁓ clique ecosystem. And so you know not to question or maybe not even you can't even see the politics. so therefore you really are sunk into a confirmation bias. What could that be in jujitsu? Well, when I roll, I always pull guard. ⁓ it's was that yeah, so so that's who I am. I'm a guard puller and every time that I roll guard is my a game. My guard is my a game and ⁓ and you confirm that bias because people can't pass your guard, you know that it's and then when they do it's just because they're Yeah, well, really good. Are they surprised you or they did something different or yeah, and we'll talk about kind of assessing the data in training in a minute. But I think it's just you're you're making assumptions about. ⁓ Your own abilities and ⁓ where you are in jujitsu, where you're good and where you're not. ⁓ Basically, you're just reinforcing. evidence that supports your identity. I'm a guard puller. I train at, you know, Carlson Gracie. You know, this is who I am. I'm defined myself. And I think that you to certain extent, you have to define who you are, right? Because then you're nothing but holding firm to those beliefs is kind of what we're talking about here. ⁓ I don't know if there's anything that you would like to to add to that? Well, I think to in the realm of confirmation bias and identity, I think that it goes into like, you know, we're dealing with this a lot right now in the jujitsu world where there are some defining teams that have always been held at the pinnacle. They can do no wrong. This is or even just individual jujitsu athletes or individual jujitsu athletes. Like they are the goat, do no wrong and you have this picture of them and it's very, very hard to start challenging assumptions of, gosh, maybe they're not a nice person or, you know, that's kind of on the negative side, but. I mean, we say it on the podcast all the time, just because your Jiu-Jitsu is very good doesn't say anything else about the rest of your life. And that's where this bias comes in, we kind of, where we project onto, well, this athlete, this team, they're so good, so therefore they must be moral, righteous, ethical. Right. We put a whole framework, we put a whole framework of assumptions around this team. And then it's really, really difficult to start challenging those and start potentially breaking those assumptions. That's right. So in jujitsu, we have the saying, we're comfortable being uncomfortable. And I kind of want to poke some holes in this because after you've been doing jujitsu a year, three years, something like that, uncomfortable really isn't part of the equation anymore. Right. You really stop being uncomfortable. because it's now a normal part of your world to be rolling around on a mat with somebody putting pressure on you and sweating in your mouth. ⁓ That's right. And, you know, and we kind of fall into our own patterns as well. Like, well, I avoid white belts or beginners or spazzy people or strong people or, you know, this person might hurt me or make me look bad. all this, so we start to have all these defense mechanisms. But no, we still go to class and we roll. We train, but we only train with this slice of people. And so we have this comfort zone within a sport that is admittedly very uncomfortable to practice. I think that you mentioned, I avoid this person because they're going to make me look bad. I don't think that that's the normal thing that we have in our head. think that we, and the whole realm of confirmation bias and not challenging our assumptions is that we make internal assumptions that we don't question. We say things that are gonna protect us and that are gonna protect our ego. don't, I 100 % am this person. I think that we all are this person, but I really am this person. I'm not going to roll with that person because they're going to hurt me. I'm not going to roll with that person because they only use muscles. I'm not going to roll that person because they just smashed the crap out of me. And that is my story. That's my narrative. asking another level as to what my actual assumptions are, what is protecting me? How am I protecting myself from making those blanket statements? ⁓ This is where we can start. If you've been training jujitsu long enough that you are comfortable being on the mats, now let's take another level of making ourselves uncomfortable. Why are you really avoiding that person? Yeah. Well, it's important to to kind of frame that and like. Yes, you are going to class, you are rolling our training, but you're training a jujitsu or you're not training jujitsu, you're training a version of Jujitsu that agrees with you. Right. avoiding all these uncomfortable scenarios, avoiding just losses on the mats, or I just don't like that person. And all these can be valid reasons to not train with someone. I want to be 100 % clear. For sure. That person really can be somebody who hurts people. And that's totally valid. But again, we're challenging the assumptions because, ⁓ that I got my ankle twisted when I rolled with that person because they kind of spazzed and that person just hurts people. now that's my whole story. That's that's one data set. You know, and there could be maybe that you're telling yourself that story because it sucks to get injured. And maybe that made you mad. You didn't feel like they were respectful enough to you or whatever. But we're This is, you know, I was doing some reading on the theory of mind, which is how we understand how other people think. And we really throw it out the window with confirmation bias because we put our own thoughts onto other people like, you know, that person hurts me. They're therefore they are spazzy, maybe malicious and all these things. When in reality, Maybe they just moved wrong. Maybe they had a lingering injury that they were worried was going to get hurt. Could be a whole, a whole menagerie of things that are actually going on. And yet to protect my ego, to stay in my comfort zone, to not be challenged in who I am as a, I'm a brown belt and I don't lose to blue belts kind of thing. This kind of thing is very, very, very real. This whole thing is a reminder of why first impressions are so vital because People that you meet make a whole slew of assumptions about you based on the first time they meet you. And if you were looking at your phone when they walked into a room and you didn't look up until they sat next to you and then you noticed that they were there, they could have impression of you that, you're just, you're in your own world. You only look at your phone. you don't pay attention to new people, you're not friendly and all this stuff, where as maybe you were reading an email about a friend who died or something. I mean, that's kind of extreme, but there could be a very, very good and logical reason for you to have been looking at your phone and being engrossed in that before recognizing that somebody's there. The same thing goes for first roles in jujitsu. If you roll with somebody, the very first time and they spaz out or they just lose balance or some rando other thing happens, that impression goes in your mind and it's either if you ever roll with them again, when you do roll with them, you're gonna roll in a different way and you're gonna be collecting data on to match what that first impression was. instead of totally challenging what those assumptions are and looking for other data. That's right. It costs an order of magnitude more to change someone's first impression. then in the meantime, you're looking for that reaffirmation of what you think this person is. And for some people, it's very hard to even ever change. their mind on someone. no matter what that person does. that's probably not a topic for this podcast, but it's just something that's there. so when ⁓ we're kind of chilling in our comfort zone, we're training with our BFFs and we're laughing and whatever, we get some roles in with our kind of training group and whatever. one of the things that I see happen and you know, it's hard to know that we're coming from this, from we've been all of these things. I am all of these things. Maybe not all at once, but that's where I kind of get off when people are like, who are you? We've all experienced these things. if you're someone who has it, or like I've never done that, I've always, God bless you. that you're definitely more Christ-like than the rest of us because we've made all these mistakes before. And one of the big ones, I think, is misinterpreting the results of, say, a competition or just an evening training, whether that be with wins and losses or success of a, you know, my A game type thing. We tend to internalize wins and externalize losses. So if I lose, it's because they're stronger, faster, spazzy. ⁓ yeah. And if I win, it's because my technique was superior. My A-game is better. And then we just move on. Yeah. And that's data collection for the next time. So. All right, you're pumping in bad data into your database. Right, right, exactly. So I mean, admittedly, I will say, when I say this is me, this is therapy for me and my game right now is working through confirmation bias. so instead of rolling with somebody and maybe they, I got smashed by them for five minutes. That in my head is telling me, okay, they're always only going to smash me. I'm not going to roll with them anymore because I don't get to play my game. I don't get to do stuff because they're just going to smash me. In reality, why am I wary? Just because I don't want to be smashed or maybe it's because I feel like gosh, I've been training for 12 years. Maybe I shouldn't have gotten myself into the position of being smashed. Maybe this person is challenging what I know about Jiu-Jitsu. Maybe this person is challenging the skill that I actually have in Jiu-Jitsu. And it's the same thing for any strong player. So they just muscle through, they just do that, this and that. Maybe the reality is that they're challenging the fact that I don't have as much control as I think I should. So this is kind of what I'm talking about of challenging yourself and your own assumptions based on things that you're collecting data on. if you don't challenge those assumptions, that any time you watch that person rolling, you're only going to collect the data that fits your narrative. You're not going to collect the data of the time that they let somebody work and they sat up or the time that, you know, somebody else was able to control them. And then there's some other scenario going on. You're going to make up all of these reasons in your head to fit your narrative instead of concentrating on what it could possibly be. And that's a really good point. You know, you mentioned it. Letting someone else work. And I have definitely kind of swung back and forth on this topic many times from someone who's like, I know I'm taking what I can take. I'm not letting you work to no, let's let's work. I'll put you in the position of whatever move that we learned today. Let's see if you actually paid attention during class and then come back again. No, you can't give, you know, these groups of people any quarter. you've got to just smash them and then to swing back again to be like, no, well, we all get better together. And if they can challenge me in a way, then I need to adapt to that. What causes the swing do you think? I guess that's a good question. I think. I guess it depends on my attitude towards. training in general and maybe the partners specifically. I think that it's really easy for me that once I, know, someone hurts me and I'm like, you know what? I was letting you work and that was my bad, it fooled me once, shame on me, but I'm not giving you anything anymore to like when I'm feeling very healthy and you know, I'm in a room where I feel like I trust people and Yeah, I'll let you work or this is a person that I know is wow. I'm watching her. She's improving so quickly. And so yeah, let's see what you got. Let me see if if if you can challenge me if you can if you can make me really, you know, kind of get get a little nervous there. And they both have their merits, but I think that that having to swung back and forth so many times that I can see the perspective of ⁓ of both viewpoints that we are all trying to get better together as a team and it's up to all of us to allow the rest of us to work. But if I'm someone who I allowed you to work and you caught me, know, you can see how an ego would start to kind of kick in the gear that, ⁓ no, never again, never again. So that's just my point of view. Never gonna let that person work again because they caught me. Hmm, you know or you know, ⁓ you know never gonna let that person again because I saw coach watching and You know, maybe I'm working on back escapes letting people take my back and then he watches that and then he's got his own or she Have their own like she's you know, Joshua got his back taken like nine times today. Hmm Well, maybe I'm working on back escapes, you know like Like this somebody else is gathering data on their confirmation bias. Yeah, you know, we'll kind of get into like the group confirmation bias versus individual in a second. But that that that's a weird line to to walk like, am I going to let this person work and in turn improve the entire gym? Or am I going to dominate them? Or, you know, Otherwise stymie them From I think that we're doing I think that that's actually a whole other podcast because that is engaging definite ego, right and So the the whole idea for confirmation bias and the way that I think we're talking about it is to not worry about other people's confirmation bias of you because you can't control what other people think about you. You can only control what you think about yourself and what you think about other people. Well, we're even getting 3D chess into it. You I am trying to control what I think other people are thinking about me. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Coach is watching and I just got my back taken again, even though I'm working on back escapes. Yeah. Yeah. We're not improving. Yeah, we're not improving jujitsu and there's that is the heart of what I really wanted to talk about with confirmation bias because ⁓ you One of the things that will stall you out in progressing Is all of these thought processes i'm not going to roll with that person because I mean ⁓ give your litany of excuses as to why you're not going to. And it's all about the other person. The other person is too big, they're too intense, they're too spazzy, they're too this and that, putting it on the other person. Whereas instead of reflecting on why you think that about that person, is that real or is it really something about yourself that you don't wanna face? By rolling with that person. I mean, that's the theory of mind stuff that we talked about earlier, but I think, you know, where if I can define where you're going with this, you're talking about the inevitable, dreaded plateau. ⁓ I don't feel like I'm getting any better. I'm training at, you know, four or five times a week. I'm rolling. I'm doing all this. I'm working out all that kind of thing. And I'm not getting any better. And I think that, you know, this is where ⁓ switching things up, maybe training in different ways. ⁓ maybe this is, you know, heterodox in your gym where you start like, you know, I can remember I got really, really into no-gi a long time ago, and we were primarily a gym. And, you know, I was, you know, good naturedly, but chastised, like, why are you no-gi all the time? Why, why always rolling no-gi? I just liked it and it helped my gi game. But I had to challenge that if I just said, ⁓ this is the way that we do it at this school. We're a gi school. ⁓ that, I would have just kind of felt in that plateau. Another way that you can do that is you just follow what your coach says. You know, you can get pretty decent at Jiu-Jitsu if all you do is listen to your coach, if he or she actually knows Jiu-Jitsu. But you're gonna plateau and you're gonna be lost because you've never thought about it for yourself, you've never examined critically what you're doing. And is that because you are? believing that well coach knows best everything that coach says is the correct thing to do and so my my assumption is okay, I I just listen to the coach because if I Do anything because I'm not I'm not I think it can come from there for sure I mean, it's kind of like what we said at beginning of the podcast you get indoctrinated into this confirmation bias where You come in as a know nothing white belt and you just got to listen to the group thing. And then it just becomes rote, like not rote, but ⁓ habituated in you. This is our group thing. And then I just do what coach says because coach knows best. I think it could also just come from a laziness. Like I don't want to do the hard work. I don't want to put myself in the difficult positions. I'm just going to do this. I'm going to do what I'm going to do what I've got to do what I tells me to do and what what I'm good at in that subset. ⁓ It's interesting that analogy of The starting out of the gym and having that group think form your in gym confirmation bias Analogous to you growing up and your parents Seeing it showing you what your confirmation biases are. Are you somebody who's going to be looking at the the roses and how beautiful they look and how great they smell. Are you going to look at the rain coming down from the sky as, it always rains on me instead of, ⁓ it's raining to nourish this beautiful flower. And the different ways of seeing things is that you can be informed by that group. Think is your, and we all know those gems that were like, that gym, those are the cheaters over there. that's the gym that will always try to pull something on you, or that's the gym that X, Y, and Z. Remember when it was, I don't want to say popular, but it was a thing where people would try to cover your mouth during a roll, like in a competition. I saw that in a few competitions. That just irritates the ground. Pinch your nose and stuff. Yeah, so rude. But anyway, I was just thinking about the good old days. ⁓ Yeah, I mean the the plateau is gonna come for all of us It's just how we address that plateau. Are we prepared to? Do an uncomfortable thing are we impaired? ⁓ Are we? prepared to actually really get uncomfortable and this more than physically uncomfortable, ⁓ I'm rolling for the first time, I'm going to jujitsu class for the first time, which arguably is incredibly uncomfortable, but it's uncomfortable in a very different way than challenging your assumptions and your ego. Especially because you're like, well, I've been doing jujitsu for three years. I'm tapping out white belts, tapping out blue belts. Maybe you catch a purple belt now and then. I've got this. I don't know everything, but I'm pretty good at it. Again, I've been there. I've been there thinking, eh, I kind of got my stuff together. You know, this is where the plateau is where, you know, your bias kind of runs out of easy wins where I'm killing it, I'm killing it. And then all of a sudden you're not for whatever reason. You were injured. You took time off. stop going to the gym to work out, to lift weights, whatever life got in the way. And then the plateau hits and you're like, man, I just don't feel like I'm, huh. Well, a plateau also will hit when you, and again, this is me that I'm talking about, when you go to the gym and you only train with the same training partner. Sure. Because you've made up stories about all of the other training partners and why you, won't roll with them where it really for me every time it came down to my own ego that person challenges me in a way that I don't want to be challenged. That's right. That's right. And that kind of fits into another way we've kind of danced around it and a few times about a group bias a group confirmation bias that happens in gyms where As a gym we believe this, know those signs that people put outside their house in our house We believe love is love science is true. Like all the Every gym has that sign in front of it. It's just implicit We you know in this gym, we believe this and then you kind of subdivide that into We're say we're the competitors. Yeah. And, know, hey, we're over here. We're the hobbyist, man. You know, no, we're all with those guys. They're they're too strong. They're, you know, they're always going too hard. And so we just fit into this comfort zone. What we're talking about is that, you know, this confirmation bias is at its heart comfort. It's our human need for comfort. and will fall into that unless we're very diligent. I'm just a hobbyist now. You know, I just, you know, come in and roll a little bit, spend half the time of open matches talking. Okay. Again, there's no judgments. That's fine. But you're probably not going to progress as fast. Or at all. Or at all. But that's fine. But if you want to improve, if you want to get better or even worse, if you come playing. I don't feel like I'm getting I don't know what I'm doing. Yeah, that. Okay, well, let's examine your routine. I always roll with the same four to five people. ⁓ I never come to the key classes. I, ⁓ you know, I do these sequences, pulling guard, like I said at the beginning, or, you know, play bottom. ⁓ okay, well, let's do all opposite of that. Yeah. Then let's see if you're getting better. Again, this is where the being comfortable, being comfortable, being uncomfortable. It's not the physicality of it anymore. In jujitsu, we've been smashed, we've been tapped out, you know, we've been defeated, we've been victorious, all these things. This is just habit now. Uncomfortable is habit now. Right. Now we need to be mentally uncomfortable. need to, holy shit, my God. Man, my side control scapes suck. They suck. Why? Because I don't know how to shrimp, right? I don't know how to frame. And it could be because you're never even getting there. I I say this all the time. Oh, the best way to get out of side control is to not be there in the first place. do everything I can to not be in that that position but the reality is somebody's gonna get me there somebody's gonna get me there and I and I have to work out of that unless I tell myself ⁓ that person got me there one time I'm never rolling with that person again because I have this again it's story in my head it's funny you know just as kind of we don't discuss techniques too much but One of the things that I've found to be very helpful about avoiding getting into side control is just to go bottom north, south, and frame, and then just wait for them to come around and then be able to slip a knee in and reguard. So that's my tip for people who hate side control. ⁓ but yeah. So what are some things that We can do, yeah, something. Yeah, just want to wrap up that section is that before we go on to how we fix this is that, you know, Jujitsu, you have to ask yourself, are you training or are you just rehearsing things that you know already work? Ask yourself that question and then we'll see where we are at the end of day. But yeah, let's talk about how we get out of this. how we start seeing the politics, how we start recognizing the plateaus and ⁓ concretely assessing our performance on the mats with actual unbiased data and how do we challenge ourselves in training to get into that uncomfortable zone. Right. I think that the first The very first thing is. Are you interested in doing this? I admittedly my my My story to myself for, ⁓ my gosh, for I don't know how long is that. And this is still true, that I just, like playing the game. I don't like going hard. I just want to play. And so therefore people that won't just play with me, meaning be very technical and all this stuff, I don't smash me. I just won't roll with them. But the reality is that I do want to make my jujitsu better. And so I need to start questioning my assumptions and correcting my narrative. Right. So if you are not interested in updating your narrative and you just want to continue to have fun and be playful and be your hobbyist and you don't really care that much about plateaus, by all means, don't worry about this. and move on, just continue on doing that. That's totally fine. Enjoy being a 10 year purple belt. Yeah, like they're just going to, you know, true to, you know, someone who had his purple belt for an extremely long time. As did I. ⁓ I think that the first question that you ask yourself, the simplest way to start moving ahead is think about your gym and think about the people who you aren't training with. and then really start questioning your assumptions. Right. Maybe you look for, I don't know, one role an evening, one role a week with someone that you would normally avoid. With that person. You know, and be assertful, you know, hey, do you want to roll? Rather than just kind of like hoping that someone Yeah, you know, go seek out that person that you get thrown into the mix. Otherwise, in everything in jujitsu, you have to be assertive. You can't be passive when it comes to training partners, even if you're trying to pick the one where, yeah, you think you lose, you might get hurt, all this stuff again, all with consideration for where you are in jujitsu. Right. There's no judgments by us as to if if you want to you know, just kind of totally fine. There's a time and a place for cruising. There's a time and a place for all that. But one of the things that I would say is that once you start that protocol of rolling with more uncomfortable people, that then you start assessing in a more open-minded way, a more, you know, grounded in reality, like what's working and what didn't. Okay, so okay, I caught that person. I caught that person. Right? And then when you lose it's like, well, you know, they, you know, they're so strong. Right. No, no, no, no, no. Let's say what worked. Well, maybe they made a mistake and you recognized it. Maybe you made a mistake and they recognize it. Things like that. Where we're really assessing in a much more truthful way of where what happened. Well, the other thing. As part of this, you were mentioning before how, maybe I'm working on back escapes. And so I'm getting my back taken so I can work on the escapes. Have the peace of mind, that's the wrong way to say it. Have the... cognitive awareness that that person that you're trained with might be doing the same thing. They might be working on something. And so instead of saying, ⁓ I caught them or they made a mistake in exactly saying what you're saying, instead of framing it that way, framing it as what worked and what happened in the role and instead of framing it as, ⁓ I did this or they did that. Internal internalizing wins and externalizing losses. It's kind of like ⁓ modern day American capitalism. Like we internalize ⁓ profits and then externalize losses. Losses have nothing to do with me. Nope. And did you have anything more to say on that? I think that that's a great way to think about it. Yeah, I do. We kind of talked about it, putting our own thoughts onto other people's motivations in the training room is probably, we should probably not do that. But to just add on to what you were saying about, you know, working on back controls or mount escapes or whatever, that I firmly believe that you should be doing that. At least part of, you know, we did a podcast on my 333 system. You know, you work on something for three days a week, three days a week for three weeks and then come back to it three months later. Work on, you know, getting out of Mount your Mount escape. And don't just work on it with your regular training partners work on it. Really big blue belt. Yeah. The 250 pound corn fed boy. work on it with him. If you can get out of that guy's mouth, okay, you've got something. And if you're not, if you're, it's not working, well, we need to re-examine why. And here's another thing to work on. So we've been talking about working on technique with the person who you're dreading. It's a good thing to work on your mindset as well. Again, questioning. Why don't I want to train with this person? So reframing it something negative into something. Self. That has to do with yourself instead of having to do with them, so reframe. ⁓ that person is spazzy and goes too fast. So I don't want to roll with them instead. Why don't I want to roll with them? Well, because. I have a really hard time controlling them. That's right. That is something that then you need to work on mentally as well as physically. So now you're working on two fronts. You're not just working on technique, but you're actually working on a mindset as well. I want to be better at controlling somebody, but I also am realizing that, yeah, that that is there. mean, how many times do people say Jiu Jitsu is a mental game and yet no one trains? mental aspect of jujitsu. Yeah. And there's so much, there's so much to it. We, we all just revert to ego and it just becomes animal fight. It's exactly, exactly. ⁓ where the very best jujitsu players that I've ever worked with all play that mental game. And I'm sure that they're still they still have an ego in there too, because everybody does. It's impossible not to. But these are the people who are much more open, don't, when they're working on something, they don't get bummed out when people catch them on it because they're working on it. And ⁓ yeah. Right. I'd say, you know, just to wrap it up, my last point, and this isn't my own idea. We were talking before the podcast and I was telling Susan that I heard long, long, time ago, know, 10 more years ago, I was watching a video by Keenan Cornelius, who at that time, he, the time that he's explaining, he wasn't a purple belt then, but he was explaining when he was a purple belt training with Lloyd Ervin, JT Torres and all that, ⁓ that he was developing his lapel guard. and he purposely made himself not play it for weeks at a time. So that's his A game. That's the thing that he's known for now. That's his bread and butter. That's his fame and fortune. And he would purposely not do it. Why? Well, for number one, he had the wherewithal to understand that it's pretty annoying to always roll with someone who's playing lapelguard. And... Number two is that he also wanted to expand his game beyond lapel guard and continue on the holistic journey of jujitsu. And so I've done this for my entire career where I have certain things that I really, really feel like I'm pretty good at. And I'll purposely not play that sometimes I'll forget that I'm good at them. Like I go so that I'm like, I used to be good at something. What was it? And I'll go back to it and I'll be like, oh, okay, I'm okay at this now, but I haven't seen it in so long, but like, oh, now I gotta work on this again. your A game up on the shelf for a couple weeks of the month. Play around with other stuff. I'm not saying that don't play it. And I'm definitely not saying if you're going to a competition, don't do it. But what I'm saying is if you, because you'll see yourself in a role. Maybe you're starting to lose. Maybe you're not in control, as Susan said, and you're gonna wanna, ⁓ Kimura Trap, it's right there. You you're gonna wanna hit your A game again because, ⁓ no, no, I'm losing now. Okay, these are where to bring it full circle. That's where plateaus happen. Kimura Trap is great, there's, you know, tons of ways out of it too. Yeah, and question your assumption about why this person can't beat you in a meaningless round in a meaningless round on a yeah, exactly. But that's all I got for today, Susan. Any closing thoughts? ⁓ I hope that this was helpful. I know that it is helpful for me now going back into the gym and really. Thinking about what my. Confirmation biases are and and really questioning your assumptions. It's my my dad's favorite quote ever from some boss that he had at work is Well, what are your assumptions? Right on it's a great question. All right, everybody therapy is out of session It I hope you enjoyed it new episodes come out every Monday, follow us on social media ⁓ and the like and we really appreciate it. ⁓ If there are any mindset thoughts that that you guys want us to talk about and cover in having to do with jiu-jitsu, please let us know. Yeah, that's right. All right, everybody. We'll see you next time. See you.