TLDR; 10/10 would recommend.
Seek out Wim Deputter at Brasa Belgium (Leuven) if you have the opportunity.

Long version, unloading my brain, a bit unstructured, some words are verbatim Wim’s words, others are my reactions.
Read on for thoughts on Connection, frames, body qualities, loading your weight, breathing, etc.

Notes on a 2h private session with Wim my son and I that we booked in October. I was traveling and Beltchecker would not let me post earlier - DDOS Attack Suspicion…^^

Why do some people feel so different?
Same set-up, same techniques learned from the same coach, yet some feel like you can easily create space and wiggle out or simply off balance, while with others it is infinitely tighter, more snug, increasingly no wiggle room as your body cannot rotate anywhere, or they just feel immovable.

The answer is in things like Wim teaches, or rather can teach when it’s 1 on 1, as he mentioned that for group classes it just doesn’t scale.

Background :
I’ve met people who displayed very strong body qualities, without really being able to deconstruct what they do; it’s second nature after years of training.
Wim is not only on a path of constant self-improvement and discovery of the depths of grappling as most of us are, but also puts emphasis on deconstructing how it works and how to teach and transmit. He also teaches kids, which is a great way to ask yourself what is essential, combined with his 20+ years of experience and 650+ matches and it makes for an awesome teacher.

I’ve been a fan of Wim’s style and teaching since I first saw him on BJJ Globetrotters, then found out that he was the source for Priit’s “Baby Bridge” and “Hawking”, which lead to me to follow his great and criminally under-followed YouTube Channel, and then get some of his BJJ Fanatics videos

I got:
- Mirroring principle and the baby bridge
- Back defense and being offensive
- Endgame Finishers

After spending time 1 on 1 with Wim, I now want to get this one too :
The Hidden & essential mechanics of pressure passing

I had already met Wim once, and incorporated some of his methods into my Jiu Jitsu prior to taking a private, so this was a perfect opportunity to fine-tune and delve deeper.

The overwhelming majority of BJJ instructionals focus on the the what and how of techniques, extremely rarely on how it should feel, or how to develop the correct habits, economy of motion, precision, connection and all that good stuff. I’ve seen Ryan Hall and Xande Ribeiro emphasizing the importance of what it should feel like, some of the SBG guys too for sure, but it’s clearly not the default approach, and for good reason as it is hard to convey other than in person.


When booking a time slot, I specifically told Wim that I was most interested in :
- Form Tension
- Frames
- Mirroring Principle
- His teaching methodology, since I enjoy teaching.

Actual session :
1) Extremely Precise Feedback
Wim was really generous with his time, explanations and hands-on feedback.

He’s extremely precise in his feedback, which is an amazing quality.
I cannot stress this point enough; having partners or a coach able to give high-quality precise feedback has to be the most powerful shortcut to learning, ceteris paribus.

Of course it sadly cannot scale to a group class.

One way Wim does it is to encourage the one being coached to freeze the position, go back one-click, and adjust one thing at a time.
The purpose is to focus on only one variable at a time, it makes all the sense in the world but requires the proper mindset and patience from both the coach and the student.

2) “In the end it’s all the same”.
Standing, weight distribution, spine straight or curved, hip hinges in or out, elbows in or out, shoulders opened or closed, rotation, pivots. It’s just that the possible combinations of those “basic movements” quickly explode.

Wim says that he doesn’t like to name “techniques” too much, because it can lead people to have a limited or reductive awareness of what the moves and underlying principles are.

To get a bit philosophical, it reminded me of this quote I love from Aldous Huxley : “Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which he has been born - the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience, the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things.”

Perhaps it’s the old distinction of steps-based teaching vs principles-based teaching.
Here’s a fish vs here’s how to fish.
(If you light a man on fire, he’ll be warm for the rest of his life)

Techniques are just expressions of principles he reflects, “in the end it’s all the same” he often says, and I see glimpses of it… it’s all connected, the devil is in the details of actually making it work ^^

We are all in different phases of our journeys into martial arts in general and BJJ specifically. Being 48 I’m drawn to the the slow and inexorable jiu jitsu rather than the explosive scrambles. Aggressive and explosive jiu jitsu can 100% get you taps and wins, I just love the slow control leading to submission ideal, not getting out of breath while solving the kinetic puzzles.

We can get subs or positional advances opportunistically or methodically. Either capitalizing on a partner’s mistake, or purposefully seeking and imposing superior positions. I think that Wim’s game is actually good for both, because either’s he’s in a very sound defensive positions, constantly monitoring for openings or mistakes to quickly turn into offense, and when he’s into offense he has a beautiful way of increasing compression everywhere.

3) Offense and Defense are the same.
Another great insight from Wim about offense and defense being the same is roughly that wherever we are, our next goal is to improve control and position. If we’re in offense, we improve towards a submission, if we’re in defense, we improve towards not getting submitted and escaping, but it’s all the same; we are in a given position, and it must get better, via all the tools we have of hinges and rotations and connection to increase or escape pressure.

4) Tangent on pressure/compression;
Wim had us do interesting exercises on how to increase pressure, for RNC and Achilles Lock, one element at a time.
Hands, shoulder, spine, hips, breath.

Wim stresses the need to get slack out of the opponent’s joints and increase compression, but in at least 4 separate ways (which eventually need to be done together);
- secure and compress, without moving anything else
- breathe in (keep what you have), breather out (take more) << repeat if necessary
- bring in the stronger core muscles, back muscles
- add in rotation or extension

Wim puts emphasis on breathing, saying it’s the first thing he tries to fix, and a great way to check and tell people that they’re doing something wrong.

5) Teaching methodology
Wim has an interesting way to fine-tune those, but you need to be really open and blank state as a student.

Perhaps a typical correction would be :
“Stop, freeze”
“Back 1 click”
“Here, adjust, rotate your elbows” - “no, the other way, good”
“Right shoulder back”
“Look over your right shoulder”

If the student tries to “reset” or change position, it brings multiple variables into play, and the “teachable moment” is gone.

There was that precise position that needed correction, you need to be able to recreate that exact spot to be able to correct it.

The focus on the importance of feedback reminded me of some of the Ryan Hall teaching methods.
The way Wim reminded me to not let any power leak to the wrong spot, to focus it all on the soft tissue in katagatame for example reminded me of the Marcelo Garcia teaches the north south choke.

Re:teaching children, I saw him instruct his little girl to go into animal-named positions : “Bear!” ( a strong wrestler-like stance), Turtle (Elbows well protected). I don’t remember them all, I think “Dog!” was used for a downward dog like shaking off someone on your back. Keep it playful with the kids. Simple games; start on your belly, training partner must put your shoulders to the mat.

These notes don’t fully do justice to it all, but that’s it for now, take it with a grain of salt and as a conversation starter^^

Towards the end Wim rolled with my 18 y/o son - who has been training since he’s 11 - for a nice 7min.

Wim is a wonderful teacher, I highly recommend you seeking him out if you have a chance!
I also trained with some of his blackbelts in a Gym in Brussels (Rise BJJ in Waterloo) and they were great too, the true sign of an excellent teacher is to have excellent students.

Cheers,

Gerald
Moving to south of France for a few weeks (Saint-Raphael, Saint-Tropez, Nice, Monaco)
still looking for nice folks to train with near the lovely Mediterranean Sea :)

(Edit: I found a few places to Train in Cogolin, Saint-Raphael, and Monaco, that might be another post)


Fix the breath first

Learning must be safe and fun for people to stay in.

Worst position.: back on the floor, both shoulders pinned.
Healthy as a consequence of spending hours learning skills.


Shanon’s number
10^120 game-tree complexity of chess
Similar idea for the game-tree complexity of jiu-jitsu

Talking about trees, my current mental model is :

Branches : the myriads variations on techniques
Trunk : the technical fundamentals of BJJ (highest percentage submissions and key positions)
Roots : the biomechanics fundamentals? the hard-to-teach fundamentals of how the body works, manipulating your CoG, relaxed frames, stickiness in the limbs, etc.

All aspects are fun to work on for me

BJJ is a never-ending puzzle
It’s not that fun to get crushed,
it’s fun to find the way out