Defending The Pass With Concepts

When I watch videos of competitions, I tend to see a slick bottom player stifle and prevent passes with a very advanced and tricky guard that is heavily reliant on flexibility, dexterity, and control of sleeve grips. They will stick their feet between your legs, your sleeves, turn upside down, backwards, roll over their shoulder, do the splits, stack themselves, etc. I don't know how much of that I can learn, it would probably take a lifetime and due to my arthritis a lot of it is probably not practical for me, along with the average out of shape Joe walking into an academy.

I was watching Kron the other day. He is Rickson's son but his game looks very different. It's very "scrambly" as they say. But there are details that he has that are very much like his father. His guard is very ordinary when you look at it, but it's effectiveness is extraordinary. He doesn't rely on slickness or tricks to prevent the guard pass, he uses space, creates distance, gets sticky on his opponents hips with his feet, and is constantly gripping to break their posture, possibly allowing him to stand up. He is also always staying in front of them, not rolling over or giving up his back, he stays in front and he blocks all their movements and attempts to grip, when they get in too close, he frames and creates distance again. All the while attacking.

It's not even a guard all the time, because he sits up. Its more expressions of concepts. Using space, stickiness, blocking, framing, staying in front of his opponent, all to prevent his enemy from passing his defensive lines.

Concepts like that can be learned in a few months, but will be useful for a lifetime and will always be practical and applicable to any Joe walking in.

A few months back I tore my LCL and it's no longer bothering me but I have losts my lateral stability. I used to prevent guard passes with a very high effectiveness using a half spider guard game. The leg I used to weave around for the spider is the knee that snapped on me. I think over time of constantly putting it in weird angles to get the spider hook and my arthritis lead to it snapping. Without that tool, my guard is so easy to pass. Even for a white belt. I realize I used that trick as a crutch and never applied the concepts of guard pass defense. Any trick that is also at the cost of my joints is now not worth doing. Sometimes your opponents will hurt you, but your own game should do you no harm. I watch a lot of what people do in BJJ and it looks like it would hurt and they do it so much it stops hurting, that's usually the last sign before something snaps. And I know very few BJJ players who don't have bad knees.

Now instead of my body I will try to use my mind.

A Different Type Of BJJ Player

Student: Here comes Tom. He always skips class and just wants to roll.

Teacher: Yep.

Student: He only wants to roll, never drill or fix his mistakes.

Teacher: Yep.

Student: Even when he rolls he doesn't attack and does the same thing over and over and always wants to stop when he is losing. I don't understand why he's even training.

Teacher: Everyone has a different reason for training. Your goal is obviously to learn so someone like Tom confuses you. Tom's goals are different but aren't that unusual. He doesn't come in here wanting to learn as his primary reason for training. His primary reason for coming in is to have fun. He grappled and it's fun for him. Secondly he just wants to win, he likes that feeling, so he avoids everything else to just focus on the stuff that has a winner and a loser. Which is the sparring. He knows he's strong at cross side so he wants to start on cross side bottom to escape which he is good at. He wants to also then switch to cross side top where he is strongest and can dominate you.

Student: But he always taps when he's losing. He doesn't even wait to get submitted.

Teacher: Well for someone like Tom, because guys have surpassed him, he probably is just happy not to lose. He feels like its a moral victory. If you asked him if he is learning anything, he is going to say of course. But he is creating his own curriculum. He has learned how to make BJJ match his goals and needs. He's learned how to get the most fun out of BJJ and also to save his ego by tapping before he actually is in a position to get submitted. Now not losing is sort of unusual. But how many people come in here and obvious there goal is to either have fun or tap everyone as opposed to learning? It's not that uncommon.

Student: Where will he be in a few years?

Teacher: He will still be Tom. Coming in, doing his thing, probably not any better, but happy and having fun. That's of course if he hasn't already quit BJJ by then.

Natural Grappling

I am fascinated by this video. It's funny but at the same time interesting what is going on. They are both wrestling in a friendly way. The kid obviously doesn't know anything but uses his natural leverage to try to take the bear down, which he does a few times. Natural leverage meaning his height advantage which gives him added leverage to lever the bear over. The bear relies completely on instincts. Even though it is an animal that doesn't have hands like humans, or can stand forever on all hind legs, it naturally knows how to redirect its weight. Constant shifting its weight, using foot work, it never even lets his legs cross over like humans would. Constantly circling, cutting the corner, using its head to steer.

It naturally clings as I've discussed previously, always pushing the kid at angles, trying to get behind the child at every moment. When the kid does take the bear down, the bear immediately uses its hips, and angles himself either on top or pushes the kid away with its limbs and gets back to his feet. It also hip escapes backwards out and gets back on top. It also always turns toward the child, never turning his back. Whereas the child turned his back several times.

Almost all animals will stand on hind legs to fight. We start on our hind legs. It's almost impossible to hold or pin the bear because of its natural awareness of space and distance. Try holding a dog down as compared to a child.

This is why you would never really want to fight an animal. We need to be taught these lessons of physics, whereas animals know it instinctively.

The child for his part naturally understands leverage and knows how to use his weight to drag the bear down, and also knows to keep trying to get back to his feet. How many adults would know that much?

It's why children are such wonderful students.

Freezing

Sometimes people will get caught with a move and just look stupid. Caught sleeping. What was going on? Why did they just momentarily freeze or watch this happen to them? I think it's because of a lack of understanding of concepts and options. You get stuck in a position or a set up and you aren't quite sure what to do, you are going through your rollodex of moves and can't seem to find an answer quick enough and you are now tapping.

Even if you are in a position you've never been before, there are so many things that can happen when someone with 4 limbs fights another person with 4 limbs and one person is on top and one is on bottom. I think people freeze because they are looking at the move, but they don't look at the concept that is being expressed. If you just collect moves you will never be able to catch up. If you collect the few universal concepts of BJJ, wherever you end up, you won't get frozen asking yourself what to do. You will know to base, push, pull, or stand. You won't understand the move but you understand base and leverage.

For instance maybe you have never seen a certain sweep, but if you look at concept, you will know this sweep has to take you backwards at a 45 degree angle. So maybe you stagger your stance. Whenever I don't know what's going on in BJJ, I notice myself freezing for even a split second. Someone is just getting heavy and passing and sliding forward. If I focus on his hand configurations or the grips he is using to pass and get confused I may freeze and get passed. If I understand the concept that he is coming forward, I must escape by moving back. It's understanding base and leverage as opposed to seeing if I know exactly what move he's doing and the perfect counter.

Learning The Goals Early

I don't know all the goals of BJJ. I know some of them and refine them all the time. But if someone sat you down from day one and told you these are all the goals of BJJ, I wonder how quickly you could get your black belt? I think that is one reason why some people excel so quickly. Either they figure something out early or their instructor focuses their goals early.

Why Do Wrestlers Dominate MMA?

The obvious answer is, they control the position of the fight. Meaning whether the fight goes to the ground or stays standing. So they lead the dance. On top of that, they are big, masters of cutting weight. Also always hard workers who grind out fights.

Here is the other reason and the most important one. It's not that wrestling is the best style. Wrestling has the best system out of all the martial arts. All the other martial arts are martial arts trying to be a sport. Somehow caught in this no man's land. Whereas wrestling is a sport first, a legitimate one, and a martial art second. Meaning you get recruited into training early on. They have a farm system. Boxing is an Olympic sport just like wrestling, yet wrestlers will be better trained, better bread, and better athletes. Why?

Boxers don't get into a boxing club at a young age, then to an older club, small tournaments, then to a boxing program in junior high, high school, college, etc. They like BJJ or Judo, a parent signs their kid up to take lessons. Either at a private facility or with a private trainer. Which gets expensive, and becomes a huge commitment for the parent who has to keep driving them to class and pay for belts or tournaments, etc.

Wrestling is at school, it's almost every day, sometimes twice a day, its subsidized so the cost is minimal and a lot of times its free. So whether your parent wants to take you to practice or not, or you are poor or not, you can train. Even during the summer they have very cheap or free wrestling clinics.

So its a bigger pool of kids starting very young, who get weeded out to the best kids, to the best high schoolers, best college guys, then to MMA. Whereas with everyone else, its some guy who signed up to Muay Thai or BJJ when they were at the youngest 16 let's say and just trained, and no one said no to them. Unlike with wrestling, there is no rejection as long as you pay. In wrestling you may not even make the team, let alone varsity or get to wrestle in college. You never have to qualify to compete or be a member of your academy. Then you say you want to do MMA and they say okay.

Huge difference between a Judo Olympian, BJJ World Champ, to even a NCAA champion, let alone Olympic champion.

So it's not about the best style, or wrestling is the superior style. If BJJ had a farm system from little toddlers, to a middle school program, to a high school sport, college sport, Olympic sport, then it's a whole new ball game. But even in Brazil it's not like that.

It's not the style, it's the way wrestling runs its program that is so much better. Go to a wrestling tournament to see how on time they run and compare it to a BJJ tournament.

Talent Is Taught

I have a feeling we will have a new generation of instructors in BJJ. The "Talent Is Taught" generation. Who will possibly teach in a way that is more efficient, in tuned with how our brain works, that talent is not something innate or created through conditioning but through concepts and repetition. Maybe educators who decide to teach BJJ, or grad students, or just really smart people.

As there are a new wave of more athletic competitors, there will also be a new wave of more educated BJJ educators.

Types Of Hand Grips

When we clasp our hands together, people get confused and clasp in a variety of ways. Some people even interlace their fingers. So I thought about what the best grip is in another way, in evolutionary terms. What makes humans different form other animals? Their opposable thumbs. That key difference helped us with motor skills, and gave us the ability to hold and wield tools, to become the dominant species...

So what is the purpose of that kind of grip where I use my thumb? To hold something, wield something, use a tool, hold something in my hand. There is another kind of grip, called by man names, Greco grip, Gable grip, or monkey grip. Meaning clasping your hands with no thumbs. In BJJ, what is the most effective? Well what are the goals? We have no tools, we are fighting bare handed. So then the use of the thumb is a lot of times unnecessary, unless of course gripping and holding the gi which is a type of training tool. Why do they call it a monkey grip? Because monkeys want to cling, to hold on, pull things in tight. The same things a grapplers want, they want to cling, pull, hold things tight. Monkeys are the species that didn't evolve into us, because they like I said cling, even though they have opposable thumbs, but sometimes they will wield a tool like a stick.

Using your thumb lets you hold something in your hand like a hammer, or possibly your opponents wrist or collar and it helps you steer them. It's the same way you would hold a bat or a club, for wielding and moving it about. But if your goal is to cling, like around someones waist, a branch, cling to their arm for a kimura or america, then you would be better off with a monkey grip.

Just the other day I had a hard time rolling with someone who had impossibly strong grips. Grips are important, and in my theory, one of the 4 most important things in BJJ. Based on your goal, you will have to change your grip. Ask yourself, am I steering or am I clinging? Without the gi, you will hardly ever use the thumb. Try it out and see whats a stronger grip? The power of all 5 fingers together holding onto something, or the power of 4 fingers and 1 finger by itself holding on to something? That grip is as weak as the weakest link, which is the one finger (thumb) by itself. 5 fingers are better than 1.

By the way, never interlace your fingers. It's an easy way to break them.

Elbows In?

If you have been training long enough, you have heard the saying "elbows in." Or the more catchy, "elbows in you will win, elbows out you'll tap out. Now for most of us we won't hear that or figure that out until we get tapped and beat up for a long long time. And even after we learn it do we fully understand it? It's too simple and easy to say elbows in. It's not even about your elbows. It's about attachment, detachment, centered-ness, and isolation. If someone explained this to me on my first day of BJJ, my whole world would have probably changed.

So here is what it means. Things that are close to the center stay close to the center, things that are far from the center go further away from the center. Like a centrifuge. Things in close spin close to the center. Things far keep moving further out.

Now what the hell does elbows in mean? Into where? Into my hip? To my knee? There are guys who have been training forever and still don't know where to put their elbows. So let me get back to centered-ness. It's like a tree branch, a branch hanging out is easier to break then a branch that is close to the core.

So in BJJ, prying a limb or head that is close and tucked into your center is much harder than breaking a limb that is already outstretched from the center. My goal than is to open up your center, and pull your neck or limbs away from it and create a detachment, then isolate it away from your center and submit you. Your goal in not getting submitted is to keep yourself attached to your center, and prevent any of your limbs including your neck from being isolated.

Now if all you are thinking is elbows in, and don't understand centered-ness, I can mess with your balance or your legs may be far from your center, which will force you to base with your arms, then it becomes easy to take. Or I can simply take your legs, because you only thought elbows in, not get close to your center.

There are a lot of ways to attach your arms or legs to your center, turtling is one, or bringing your elbows to your hip, putting your hands to your neck, arms to your sides, etc. Things that connect to your center stay glued to your center, things detached from it move further out from it. So prying someones arm away from their sides is much different than taking an outstreched arm.

This physics theory doesn't apply to just the ground, it applies everywhere. Like in striking, when you pull your arms in, tuck your chin, your are pulling things into your center. Sometimes you will even bring your knee up as well to defend an attack, standing on one foot, creating a standing turtle. Which is how a lot of Thai fighters may block a kick they can't read. One thing about centered-ness is, you gain strength but lose stability. Its why when someone turtles it's easy to roll them around like a ball.

Now let's say someone punches, that limb is now away from the center, that means they can get hit on that side of the face. Or they are coming at you like a gorilla, swinging out wide, then they have completely pulled their arms away from their center, which makes it easier to take advantage and hit them.

This doesn't only work with your limbs, it can work with your opponent. If for instance you clinch your opponent in any variety of clinches like a plum clinch, you have now attached their head to your center. What attaches to your center stays glued to your center. Which makes it now easier to bring my knee up to my center, which can generate a lot of power and hit them in the head.

This can also work with an armbar. If I am mounted and I go back for an armbar, and try to break your grip and pull and pry with your my arms, it's a losing game. Now if I just lower myself and attach your arm to my center, then just use my arms to keep it attached to my center and not pull with it and use my center and pull my center away from you, your arm will come with me. It's based on physics and physics is hard to deny.

There is a lot of trickery in martial arts, but there's a reason the Thai kick is the standard kick in MMA. Because it relies on physics, its the most powerful way to kick. So you may know all these techniques to parry or block a kick from whatever martial arts, but the kick will kick through your hand, forearm, and all your tricks and hit you. Breaking everything in it's path. Physics can overcome any trick with brute leverage.  It's also why a boxer's punch can punch straight through a lot of hand blocking techniques from Eastern martial arts. Their techniques are based on aesthetics, flow, style. A boxer's punch is based on physics. It's the same way a machine would work. If in mechanics things work one way, why change it for the human body when the human body and machines both exist in the physical world? And every object, living or not obeys the same rules.

Now think of trying to submit a leg, which is probably more powerful than your arms. You will only be able to take it with attaching their leg to your center. Instructors will say hug the arm, or grab your own collar, or keep it tight. Those are all expressions of attaching to center. If someone just explained the power of centered-ness, man it's a total game changer for a beginner.

This can also be used in a sweep. If you mount me, I pull you down and attach you to my center, wherever I go, you go with me, wherever I point my center, which is up and over to the ground, whatever is attached is coming with me. If I take the back and attach you to my center, and cling to you, wherever you go, I go. If I try to lift your head to sneak my hand in with my arms, you won't go anywhere. If I use my arm to attach your head to my chest, then pull back using my back (my center) then your chin will lift up every time.

The applications are endless. Like if you hold a child with outstretched arms, its much harder than holding a child close in. Even though the child weighs the same. People who are close to you get closer to you over time, people who are acquaintances tend to become strangers over time. I can go on and on, it's a much longer and detailed explanation than just, elbows in. Now if you can understand this as a beginner and I guarantee other beginners won't, you can capitalize on their mistakes. You can do a move 80% wrong, but if you get the 20% of the core concept right, you will get 80% of the move.

Now in someone's closed guard, you pull everything in and tight, you will be hard to submit but you are also attached to their center so you may get swept. If you can figure out how to pull your center backwards and not rest it on them, then it doesn't matter what they do, you won't move anywhere. Like Roger Gracie's mount. He is on top of you, but not actually resting on you. He sort of hovers over you, suffocating you, like a slow mudslide. His weight is more on his knees than it is on you, so if you try to move him, only you will end up moving underneath him. That's when it gets invisible. Slight adjustments that change where my center is, where it's resting, etc. Like in a mount, if I lay flat on you, I have to base with my arms and makes it hard to submit. If I am sitting up, I can base on my knees and it frees my hands to choke. A small but powerful difference.

The Clinch

How you clinch will be based on your goals. Over/under clinch is best to control and stick to your opponents torso. Double under is best to stick to or control your opponents hips.

Kurtosis and Black Swan Events

Okay I am going to talk out of my head and if any of you are mathematicians you can surely correct me.

I want to talk about kurtosis and Black Swan events. Kurtosis in math is a probability and statistical study in variance. The basic premise is, the higher the kurtosis, more of the variance is the result of infrequent extreme deviations.

So one stock market crash will affect our economy more in the next hundred years than the little things that happen every month. Or in exercise, doing 10 pull ups is more of a work out than jogging 10 minutes. Or you can be a great parent every day with your kid, it's that one day you hit your child that marks them forever. I could probably make the same connection with getting shot, it's never happened to me but I'm certain it happens in a heart beat and it will be the one thing I remember forever and changes me.

Now the observation of this event, seeing it's impact, and the rationalization of it in hindsight is the Black Swan Theory. Black Swan meaning "a rare bird in the lands, and very like a black swan." So it means you don't see if often but when you do, you remember.

I know there are books out there that talks about constant repetition to get to some overall improvement. This is true, but this is just to keep you in the game and in pace with everyone else who is good. Sometimes those Black Swan events, those "aha!" moments will be a huge contributing factor. Or the practice is to maintain what you learned in the "aha!" moment.

For athletes, that event could be the day they competed in an obstacle course, and they are dead tired at the end and got a great work out. Then they realize wait it wasn't all that running and crawling that killed them, it was that one wall they had to climb in the middle of the course that did them in! Or that one huge hill in the middle of your run, or that heavy weight you did at the end of your work out. All the other stuff did just a little, it was that one intense moment that did it all. 80/20. The thing you did the least did the most.

For my training clients, they get huge gains, and great work outs, 40 minute of the program is just stretching and warming up. Last 5 mins is also stretching. It's that middle 15 minutes where they get all the work in.

Or in a conceptual sense, they didn't gain all that much from me teaching them the clean or snatch or kettlebell swing, it was the day I taught them the concept of periodization that changed how they viewed working out.

So in martial arts the same thing happens. I think it's the reason why some people take 15 years to get a black belt and some take 4 years. It's whether one had that Black Swan or "aha!" moment or not. And if they did, how early on they had it.

This changes the idea of needing years to get good, or all that practice or training every day. It's about efficient, less frequent but more productive training.

For me I got a lot better, by several margins when I realized what the goals of BJJ were. It was like an hour to teach it to me, yet it had more impact on me than thousands of hours of drilling. If you can isolate those moments, cultivate it, you will get more with less. Training smarter not harder. There is a saying, it's smart to be tough, but tough to be smart. Really drilling just helps me not forget that moment. But it's never mindless.

Sometimes it's good to drill for 2 hours or roll and spar for continuous days. But sometimes, if you are lucky, smart, or just in the right place, you get that one moment where someone says one thing that takes 15 seconds, but it changes everything for you.

If you can cultivate it, culminate it, arrange it, you will be a great student and teacher. Believe me, it can be arranged. Just like a surprise party or a giant prank.

It's not about how much, or how long, its normally about how intense or productive. You can work on an essay or in my case a blog for weeks, but you really get it all done in one day. Kurtosis in action. So a couple hints, goals and a deadline help.

BJJ Meeting Minutes

When you go into an official meeting, for legal reasons they will make meeting minutes. Which describes all the things that was said and that happened during the meeting. So in the minutes, you want everything said and done to be important and not to repeat.

It's the same with BJJ as far as efficiency. You don't want to have too many things on the meeting minutes, you want it to be short, concise and effective.

Like for example breaking posture and attempt an armbar. Let me break it down into a meeting minute.

1:01 Closes guard around opponent.
1:02 Grabs opponent's head and breaks posture.
1:03 Let's go of opponents head.
1:04 Grabs opponents arm.
1:05 Opens guard.
1:06 Opponent tries to stand up
1:07 Recloses guard.
1:08 Opponent postures.
1:09 Regrabs head.

I will stop here. You can see problem here. It's inefficient and a lot of repeats. Why grab the lead just to let it go for instance? Yet it happens all the time. People add extra unnecessary steps.

Here is a revised version:


1:01 Closes guard around opponent.
1:02 Grabs opponent's head and breaks posture.
1:03 Grabs opponents arm with one hand while still holding the head with the other hand.
1:04 Get perpendicular to opponent.
1:05 Opponent guard to swing leg over the head
1:06 Finish armbar.

90% of the time when someone messes up a move, its because they skipped a step or added too many steps to a move. And skipping steps or trying to remove too many steps usually ends up creating more steps. Too few steps would also be inefficient.

The key to efficiency is, it works forward or backwards. If you miss the armbar, you swing back go guard. You re-control their head and arm. If you lose that break their posture again. Work your way forward or backwards again until you get it right again.

It's like trying to scramble eggs. You take the eggs out of the freezer. You break them. Turn the heat on. You put the eggs back in the freezer. Pull out the pan. Turn the heat off. Pull the eggs back out. Scramble the eggs. Turn the heat back on. Scramble the eggs...


You could create a whole BJJ meeting minutes not just for moves you like, but for your whole game. Figure out what you naturally do by writing down everything you did in a roll or tournament match, and seeing what was necessary and unnecessary. But first you have to figure out what you want to accomplish and find the cleanest path to get there.

Break it down minute by minute, action by action.

An Encyclopedia Of Moves

Some people fancy themselves at knowing a lot of moves. Others obsess over knowing every move there is. Somehow they think that makes you better or more technical. It's a trap. Do not become an encyclopedia of moves. It's the difference between someone who is a human dictionary, and someone who is an incredible writer. The human dictionary can spell and know the definition of more words, but whatever words the writer knows, he knows well and can string along in a beautiful prose.

Grappler Vs. Grappler

When we fabricate our Jiu Jitsu style, sometimes we forget why we got into the class in the first place. To defend ourselves. We get so used to the winning thing, tapping thing, the ego thing that we create a style made to defeat other grapplers. It's like a predator that is really adept at killing other predators, not so much in dealing with killing prey.

For instance, with hand positioning and body positioning, a lot of guys will place themselves in a position where they are hard to submit, but not hard to hit. In real life how often are you going to be fending off a D'arce choke? Most like you will have to fend off strikes and gouges. But you have an awesome D'arce defense, a skill that is almost useless in self defense.

In MMA sometimes you will see where a superior grappler fights someone and once it hits the ground, the superior grappler will obviously win. A lot of times that doesn't happen though. A lot of factors goes into that, rules, stand up, time limits, but also style. That superior grappler is really good at not getting submitted and going for submissions. Not so good at not getting hit and going for submissions while getting hit. He will beat another fighter who is also a grappler, but may come up short against someone who likes to hit a lot. His style is adapted to fighting off grapplers, fighting off kimuras and ankle locks. Against some muscle-bound meat head, you will not be fighting off any kimuras or ankle locks.

I have seen techniques such as rubber guard fail in BJJ and submission grappling tournaments, yet work well in MMA. It's design was to fend off strikes, not so much defeat a grappler. Or maybe that was not the original intent but that's what it's better at. Whereas using wrist control and throwing up triangles may work well in submission grappling but not so well in MMA.

Not to say you shouldn't be able to do both. A complete style would be a style that works against everyone, not just for specific instances. A style that won't beat every grappler, or every striker, but beats 80% of most opponents. As opposed to a style that strictly beats grapplers, that only represents 20% of opponents. Or a style that only beats strikers, who also represent 20%.

Maybe in a submission grappling match lets say, Marcello Garcia taps Rickson Gracie. But in MMA, if they both fought the same 10 opponents, my conjecture is Rickson beats more opponents than Marcello does. So how do you define better grappler?

The BJJ Business Model

In business whenever you want to create a successful business, you create a business plan and model it after an already proven business. I think the same type of strategy can be applied to your own personal Jiu Jitsu. You can see what resources you already have, what strengths you already have, what you have available, what you don't, what you would like to accomplish and at what level, then seek out already existing BJJ players with similar strengths and weakness and read and watch what they have done. You can't just watch video, you must also read and listen to their interviews or possibly even read their books.

From there you rework your BJJ business plan, catering for all it's strengths, hedging the weaknesses, and figure out how to capitalize on strengths and keep pulling your model back to where you are strongest. That could mean figuring out what positions are best for you, and figuring out how to keep pulling (or luring) your opponent into those strongest areas, instead of trying to just react and flow with them. Calculate all their efforts to disrupt you into your game plan. This isn't just related to how you roll, but how you train, how often you train, where you train, who you train with, how often you split training with exercise or work, what cross training needs to be done, training composition (drilling/learning/rolling/positional training), etc.

Less thought you put into this, less control you have over your own progress.