Ep. 379: Position Series: The 90/90, feat. Rob Biernacki

Hey, everybody. Before we get started this week, I just want to let you know we released

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called Mindset for Betas. It's an amazing resource that breaks down a new way to build a

resilient Jujitsu mindset. It's part of BGJ Mental Models Premium. I will spare you the

full sales pitch because you can try it for free. Just go to BGJ Mental Models.com

slash beta. I will give you a free month. You can check out the course and if you decide

that, it's not worth your money, you can cancel. You won't have to pay a cent. I've already

been told by subscribers that this is the most valuable piece of Jujitsu content they've

ever received, so I hope you like it too.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to BGJ Mental Models Episode 379. I am Steve Kwan and BGJ Mental

Models is your guide to a conceptual and intelligent Jujitsu approach and I back again with

the Vancouver Island goat. I've got Robert Nackie. Rob my friend. How are you doing, man?

Oh, man. Any time somebody asks me that, I'm like, do I do the autism thing and answer

very honestly or do I mask super hard? I'm doing great, Steve. How are you? Well, you know

what? I think given what's going on in the world today, I think most people probably

have some shared degree of answer or trauma around that, but from a Jujitsu standpoint, Rob,

maybe let's downscope here. How are you doing, man? I know you got a seminar coming up or

seminar tour coming up rather in Europe. Before we get into the topic today, did you want

to just quickly talk about that and then we can talk some shop about Jujitsu? Yeah, let's

get some business out of the way. I am heading to Europe in April, also heading back to

Europe again in September in April. I will be in mostly in Germany, but also in Switzerland

in Bosnia. So I'm doing a camp in Switzerland and the lovely ski town of Verbia. It's a ski

slash BJJ camp. So you can learn some Jujitsu from me and learn some or do some skiing with

someone other than me because I'm way too fucking old to ski and do Jujitsu on the same

day. But I will be teaching I think five or six sessions over the course of three days.

Leg locks and back attacks is the theme for that one. Yeah. So Verbia, Switzerland, mountain

top team is our affiliate over there. So I'll be hanging out with Dougie and the crew for

a few days. And then I'm off to Germany for a bit. I've got a camp in Heidelberg with

Team Choco and Heidelberg. And I've got a camp with Team Lorien and Alex in Munich, CLA

camp. I'm teaching jointly with Cal Jones, who's a judo guy and a fantastic CLA based instructor.

So this is a constraints led approach camp where I will be handling the Jujitsu side and

Cal will be handling the judo side. So I'll be over there. And in between those camps,

I'm doing a seminar in Berlin and a seminar. The seminar in Berlin is a bear hug BJJ.

And I'm doing one more seminar in Bosnia and Bagnoluca, I believe with a Gavran BJJ.

So yeah, if you want to check me out on this particular visit to Europe, I know a couple

of those camps are sold out. I know there's definitely tickets available for the Heidelberg

camp, but I know you can get tickets to the individual seminars. But yeah, check all that

stuff out. Look on my Instagram, island top team, if you want any more information on that.

Nice. Well, I will put the link in the show notes to your Instagram. People should be

following you if they aren't already. So go follow Rob on Instagram, especially if you

want to get up to date info on where he's going to be for seminars, how you can get there

as well. It's funny. You mentioned Cal Jones. I actually just got off a recording with him

about an hour ago. Oh, no kidding. Yeah. So his episode is going to go live right before

this one, the week before. So you're going to get a Jones Bernacchi sandwich there, people

who are into CLA and concepts are going to be very, very thrilled. But Rob, there you

are. Yeah. Jones Bernacchi sandwich on air and then a Jones Bernacchi sandwich in person

in Munich and April. Well, let's get into the topic here today, Rob. You had a position

that you specifically wanted to talk about because I think you mentioned you've got an

upcoming module on this for BJJ concepts. I will turn it over to you though. Why don't you tell

us what we're talking about today? Yeah. So what we're going to talk about the 90 90 position,

which unsurprisingly is a leg lock position is all the one number followed by another number

positions tend to be, although this is more of a position that we use as a defensive approach

to leg locking. So if you're familiar with, you know, 50, 50 or 80, 20 or 90, 10 or whatever,

like these nomenclatures we tend to use for leg entanglements tend to come from the perspective

of I am a leg locker. I am looking to break your leg arms and I will use some form of numerical

entanglement to do so. Whereas this is in reference to a position that we put our body in

in the capacity as a defender of leg locks whose primary interest is not just defending and

fleeing a leg entanglement because there's a whole bunch of stuff that you can do to get yourself,

like to extricate yourself from leg entanglements, but a lot of the positions that people take when

they respond to leg entanglements with a very purely defensive approach tend to leave you a very

or at least somewhat vulnerable to follow up sweeps, backtakes or passes and do not permit you

to go on counteroffense. Whereas this 90 90 position puts you in a very strong counter leg locking

scenario, but especially a very strong like crushing the other person and getting to counter

backtakes like bolo type stuff and especially passing in dominant positions. So this is a configuration

you need to be familiar with if you're intending to defend leg locks aggressively stay in the pocket,

try to turn your opponent's leg lock attack into your own offense and conversely as a leg locker,

if you are not capable of dealing with the 90 90 position that your defender throws at you,

you're going to be pretty far behind the curve and you're going to be vulnerable to what we've

referred to in the past as being that like leg lock or bust person who you go for leg lock and if

it doesn't work out, you're kind of fucked. Yeah, I love how all of these positions, as you mentioned,

they all have numbers and I don't know why all of the leg lock positions have numeric values.

This one is especially annoying to me because it doesn't even add up to 100, you know,

at least with things like 70 30 and 90 10, at least my, you know, my OCD brain is okay with it because

it lines up with 100, why is this called the 90 90 and most importantly, why doesn't it add up to

100 Rob, you need to answer this for me. Absolutely. So this is just like if you're familiar with any

amount of stretching, so like yoga, Pilates and just like general stretching the people do, there's

a position called the 90 90, which is like a 90 90 stretch where you display your legs apart in like

90 degree angles forward and backward. And now so that's all we're referring to. So this 90 90

position is a position that you will have to go to when your hips are on the mat and your

partner has attacked your legs to like the very least to hide your heel, but also to give you the

possibility to then build base. So the 90 90 position, both when you are parallel to the floor,

but also when you build up and you are then perpendicular to the floor. So in both of those

planes, we will be using that sort of 90 90 configuration. So if you were to be like let's say you

had me in like the saddle or the 411, I would turn away from the leg that's entangled. So if my

right leg is entangled, I would turn to my left, throwing this 90 90 shape to hide my heel. And then

I might build up into base into this 90 90 shape, which if you picture like the, some people use

the term Captain Morgan where you're like putting one foot up on a barrel kind of thing where if you,

so if you had one knee down and then one foot up as you build up into base, you would now be resembling

that same 90 90 configuration. So it's just the reason it doesn't add up to 100 degrees is because

the full range of motion, well whether we talk about it all mathematically, geometrically,

isn't 100 degrees. It's in all 360 degrees. So we're just using the 90 90 to reflect like the

degrees between your knee pit and your femur and your utibia. Understood. Got it. And you would

describe this to me earlier as being kind of akin to a pigeon pose. So what it looks like is if I

want to put myself into the 90 90 position on my right hip, right. My right knee would be, you know,

bent at a 90 degree angle so that my heel would be like drawn towards me. My knee would be pointed

away from me on my right side on my right hip like in. So my right knee would be in front of me.

And then my left knee would be out behind me. So I'd be let's say turning towards my right hip.

I'd be leaning forward so that my weight would be going on to my right knee. And as long as my leg

is bent at roughly a 90 degree angle, I have some good stability from that. And then my right leg

will be bent behind me or like out to the side and behind me so that my right heel to my left heel.

My left leg would be going out behind me. My left knee would be going out behind beside me.

My left heel would be going behind me. So that I've got a like an L shape with my leg in front of me

and an L shape with my leg behind me. And they're complementing each other. So it's like an L

towards my hip on one side and an L towards my hip on the other side with the the heels being

about as far away as they can be in that configuration. Got it. Now what is the history of

this position in Jiu Jitsu? What kind of led you to realize that this is solving a problem that

needs to be solved for and isn't being solved for in any other way. And I mean that leads into

like how does this fit into the ecosystem of leg lock positions and when you would use this?

You mentioned it's primarily defensive. But like how did we get to the point? Yeah, well I mean

I think it's the initial 90 90 position is pretty much standard. It's what everyone does at a high

level to defend leg locks. Like if you are looking to hide your heel you're going to establish a 90 90

configuration because that 90 90 configuration turns your heel against your partner's body in a

way that makes digging a heel hook like very difficult to achieve. All right. So we are hiding our

heel with the 90 90 and you can throw the 90 90. So this is where we get it like we can get pretty

rabid holy with it. You can throw the 90 90 at your partner depending on the format of the

leg entanglement either to both sides or only to one side. So the simplest way to think of it is

if I am finding myself in what's usually referred to as a straight leg entanglement and straight

doesn't mean like what people say straight ankle lock. Not necessarily referring to the configuration

of the ankle. It's just straight leg entanglement are the ones where the person doing the attacking

is positioned in between the legs of the person being attacked and then cross leg entanglement

that are where the attacker is outside of the legs of the person being attacked. So like a saddle

or a 50 50 would be a cross leg entanglement a standard ashi or single leg X or outside ashi

would be a straight leg entanglement where you are inside of your partner's guard. So if you are

in a straight leg entanglement you can throw the 90 90 depending on what's happening to either hip

and still get some results. If you're in a cross leg entanglement you have to throw the 90 90

turning away from the entangled leg because if you turn into it you are exposing your heel. Just

to clarify if you were to throw the 90 90 to the other side if you're in a straight leg entanglement

you are also exposing the heel it's just you're also then able to build yourself up into base

in a way that makes knee slipping very easy or I should say simple not easy whereas in the cross

leg entanglement you're making knee slipping a lot harder and you're exposing your heel. So if you're

outside of the if your partner is attacking you from a cross leg entanglement you will throw the

90 90 turning away from them. If your partner is in a straight leg entanglement you can choose

depending on the circumstance to throw the 90 90 to either side. Got it. Now of course the trick

with leg locks is because there is this I think you once called it a Cambrian explosion of techniques

and positions that are being brought into play here it can be very difficult for people to keep

all of this stuff in their head at once. I find as someone who does you know trains primarily in

the key I don't immerse myself in this culture as much and so it can be hard to keep track of all

of this. I just want to confirm and clarify if people wanted a visual companion of this I think

you'd mentioned you're putting stuff like this on BJJ concepts so people will be able to see soon

exactly what you're talking about correct. Absolutely yeah there's a full module on the 90 90 position

that's coming to BJJ concepts shortly. When I teach leg lock seminars which I can kind of cover

quite a variety of topics in my seminars but leg locks definitely one of the most popular.

Primarily say over the last couple of years what I've been working with is just regardless of the

level in the room we work everyone towards the point where they are able to effectively use the 90

90 position to defend which thereby causes the attacker to have to learn how to defeat the 90 90

position because for my money if you are a leg locker and you don't have the ability to contend with

like somebody who is proficient at using this 90 90 defense format you're pretty much behind the

curve so like I think it's a whether you're not interested in leg locks at all as an attacker or

you are very interested in becoming you know as good as you can be at finishing with leg locks even

in the current meta where leg lock defense is leveled up if you don't have training partners or

you yourself are not familiar with how to use the 90 90 you're probably not dealing with the best

level of leg lock defense you're probably dealing with people who are you know fleeing to some degree

extending their legs just trying to clear their knee rolling spinning running away that kind of

stuff kicking you in the butt that sort of thing where all they're interested in is just getting

their legs the hell away from you the 90 90 allows you to stay in the pocket stay within leg

entanglements in a way that makes it very difficult for someone to attack effectively and then

allows you to clear the knee to the degree that you need to to then go on offense interesting or not

clear it at all and counter within the leg entanglements interesting I like that because that is one

challenge of of training leg locks the greatest defense against leg locks is to just not let them

do that right and to just be completely avoidance but the problem then is you're also avoiding

skill development opportunities exactly yeah so I think this is a really cool approach here so you

talked earlier about like the captain Morgan I also use that terminology of course one of the

the best ways to defend against leg locks is to build base and height like you talked about maybe

explain this like how does this all fit together and what would it look like if you were to use this

as a defensive option to prevent people from just heel hooking you right away yeah so I mean the

first thing is going to involve is just assuming that you have had your hips put to the mat you

assume this 90 90 position in the interest of first hiding your heel and then enabling you to

start to put a significant amount of weight on the leg that's being attacked like what we want to

do is build to a base where our partner is having a really hard time creating a strong lever control

on our leg like if you work backwards from what does somebody need the leg lock you they need some

form of lever control at the very minimum they need some immobilization of the hip they need some

wedging at the knee and they need to control the lever that they are attacking if they can't even

control the lever that they are attacking then they're going to have a really hard time getting

anything working so if we can put our leg into a position where while we build base we are safe

from being vulnerable to a dig to create heel exposure or to somebody being able to strongly

wrap an over hook ankle lock grip in a way where they could hyper extend your ankle because we're

no longer in a meta where heel hooks are the primary form of attack there are a lot of very

effective ankle locks nowadays but those ankle locks do require a pretty strong lever control so

if we can weight our leg in a way where our partner cannot create that lever control while we

build into base and then while we're building into base we now have the ability to if we're in

this strong 90 90 position where we've gone from parallel to the mats in 90 90 and now we're

perpendicular to the mats were upright we can start to bring our hips directly over our partner's

hips and that's when we assume that kind of captain Morgan position now we're no longer like

fully 90 90 now we're more 90 with one leg and we get more to like 45 degrees ish with our

leg that's being attacked because we're trying to sit our hips onto our partner's hips and thereby

create the angle where our knee passes our partner's thighs at which point we shouldn't really be

vulnerable especially to heel hooks but even to ankle locks at this point and then we can start

deciding how we're going to counter attack we refer to this by the way in the 90 90 module we

refer to this as the asked to ask position for those Requiem for dream fans out there as our

mutual friend Margot Chikarelli once told me Rob jujitsu is all about butts and she's absolutely

right like asked a body distance is a key metric when it comes to how effective your jujitsu is you

want to have your ass as close to your opponent pretty much at all times in this case as close to your

opponent's ass as possible that's true that's true now I want to get into some specifics here

about like what you can do from this position but maybe before we do I am well aware of how

challenging it can be to have a bunch of information dumped on someone who's brand new to this stuff

so something that you have always been especially good at is figuring out an icebreaker game like

here's something that we can do a game that we can play kind of like a fuck your jujitsu thing

as you would call it that at least gives people a comfort zone I know our mutual friend I

Joshua went with talks about this a lot as well when you drop someone into a new system the first

thing to do is to give them a simple game that's easy to understand that they can play so they can

build comfort and confidence and then you can start layering on the rest yeah so we just do our like

our legs spaghetti with this and we do the legs that there's several variants of legs spaghetti so

we have mutual offense we've got mutual offense with back takes mutual offense with passing but

the most basic version is offense defense and so we would do a round of offense defense where

attacker gets to just pull you into a leg entanglement and from that leg entanglement you were then

trying to defend now normally with offense defense what we go for is you allow because we're more

using it to try to develop offense to some degree we instruct the defender to allow the attacker to

kind of get as far as they can before you start defending so basically you defend as late as

possible if we're trying to develop the 90 90 we don't really want to do that so we would instruct

our partner to just be like okay as soon as the attacker gets a wedge above the knee closer to the

hip you are now free to start trying to establish this 90 90 position you're going to try to build

and you're going to try to free your knee and your partner is just going to try to hold onto that knee

or try to get a an over hook ankle lock grip or try to get a heel exposure if they successfully

get a heel exposure and your knee is inside of their thighs we reset and we start again if they

successfully get a strong ankle lock grip your knee is inside of their thighs and especially if

they can put you back down while you're trying to build up to the perpendicular version of the 90 90

then we just they've they've won or we continue going and then if you're able to build up to the 90 90

extraction knees squish their hips then you've won we can reset we can start again got it so just

to reiterate and confirm it sounds like you're saying the basis of the game is once your opponent

gets to a place where they have control of your knee that's when you start playing with the 90 90

if we're talking about skill development right yeah because if you start throwing the 90 90 before

somebody even gets you in a leg entanglement you'll just get right out of there you'll just get

right out there exactly yeah I mean I've talked about this many times the signal that you're about

to enter into a vacation to leg lock stand is your opponent has control of your knee that's

basically when all of the stuff starts to go into that system and a very common mistake when people

are practicing leg locks is they will just bail right away before the opponent even gets that

control if a person grabs your ankle and you're immediately just diving right into your A-game

leg lock escapes yeah it's gonna work but you're not getting the benefit of training from a realistic

place where you're actually in danger well yeah and there's actually more to it than that which is to

say if your A-game leg lock escape is to bail the fuck out of there the second someone touches

your foot or your toe then you frankly your A-game sucks donkey balls because you're responding to

the like very initial stages of an attack with what is more appropriately done as a mid to late stage

defense like if you're dropping to your hips turning away and fleeing the second somebody touches

your legs you know good luck to you you're never gonna pass the guard of a leg locker and more

often than not actually what will happen is you will get swept by leg lockers and worse than that you

will get your back taken or you will get your guard passed by leg lockers because you're preemptive

response to somebody touching your legs is to turn and yank your knee the other way which basically

just exposes your back your hips the backs of your knees really like everything that a good

back attacker wrestle up specialist passer all of the things that those people need to create that

form of offense on you you're giving them that by over defending the leg entanglement so like it's

super easy to over defend leg entanglement by just throwing your hips to the mat turning away

and running but that shit only works on leg lock or bust people it doesn't work on people with

good follow ups it's been a while since we've talked about this terminology i've got some things

i want to ask you about but before we do do you want to explain what is meant by leg lock or

bust because i love that framing yeah so you've got a type of grappler that you know used to be

more common if you with you go back like five to eight years you could be a leg lock or bust

grappler and get pretty tremendous results like if you just knew proper wedging and breaking

mechanics in 2017 you could show up to any local tournament you know as a blue belt probably

and just he'll hook brown and black belts that just were not familiar were not up to date on this

stuff so there's a period of time where the leg locking game the offense that was available but not

that well known if you discovered it and you were competing against the majority of people who hadn't

you just had a free ticket to a win and like any advanced division in a naga or a grappling

industries or whatever if you just showed up with this stuff you could literally know nothing else

like you could have dog shit sweeps dog shit passing no top game and you're no upper body

attacks from the guard you could have a very like funneled game of like sit to your butt play

butterfly single egg x you know reap four leaven etc etc 50 50 area you can just do that stuff

and you could beat a lot of people and if you ran into somebody who had a similar game and we're

just conversant enough with the defense that they could negate what you were doing and then they

just got on top and passed you then you had nothing and there are a lot of people like that were

like the only option they have to win is they're going to try to leg lock you they're going to go

for the leg lock they're going to wrap your leg up and as you are defending by building base and

crushing them they are still trying to leg lock you and that's the number one you know dead giveaway

of a leg lock or bust player is like as you build base and start to under hook them and smash them

and sprawl free of their leg entanglement are they still trying to maintain the grip on your leg

and still just trying to leg lock you or are they recognizing that hey this first attempt didn't

work out I should get back to a lever control and get back on top or at the very least I should bail

back to a solid guard structure and prevent myself from getting fucked up with you know a backtake

or an arm triangle or whatever which is very very common like you'll see people just getting their

knees smashed there's they're getting underhooked or they're getting claw ride like done to them

and they're still just hugging the leg desperately trying to attack so that's when we say leg lock

or bust that's what we're referring to yeah exactly now you know there's a few techniques

in jujitsu that I would consider to be almost like a a skill check where they are basically as close

to a guaranteed win as you can get if your opponent doesn't know how to defend and it's not just

leg locks I mean I would say guillotine's for example are a skill check like that if you are sparring

against someone who doesn't know how to defend a guillotine it's pretty much a guaranteed win

however most people know how to defend a guillotine at least some degree with leg locks there was

a time period and I remember this time period where if someone knew even just how to do a basic

heel hook they could win every single time when my daughter was born I took a year and a half off

of jujitsu and that was around the time when the leg lock explosion really took off and I remember

coming back and seeing all of this stuff that had evolved while I was gone and there was a period

of a few weeks there where I was getting just massacred by every blue belt in the gym because they

had very rudimentary knowledge about how to execute these techniques and I had effectively no knowledge

about how to defend against them but as soon as you start building that knowledge then again it becomes

a little bit more difficult and that's when you get into these nuances about the game I also really

liked what you talked about regarding how if people are just trying to bail and run at the first

width of a leg lock attempt or even a leg entanglement that's a sign that they're going right to

the late stage defenses another mutual friend of ours Jeff Shaw has famously said that in jujitsu

you've got early stage defenses late stage defenses and oh shit defenses and I love thinking about

things in terms of these different phases because as you get deeper into trouble you're going to have

to start using defenses that might come with a little bit more risk because the situation is much

much more dire for you the challenge especially with beginners is they get hyper fixated on the

late stage and the oh shit stage defenses and I get that because you naturally draw your attention to

where the trouble is if I want to know how to escape a triangle choke I'm probably going to be

thinking about what do I do when this thing is fully locked in and I start getting desperate what's

the the late stage oh shit thing I can do to escape that however as kirtos oceander once said you

fucked up a long time ago you would have been better off preventing that from happening with an

earlier stage defense whereas many beginners when they think of how to escape they will be thinking

about okay what do I do if I'm two seconds away from tapping realistically you need to have levels

of defense some of which you apply earlier and bailing and running is best suited as a pretty

late stage defense right because as you said it exposes your back it allows the person sometimes to

get underneath you it's not always the greatest option maybe talk about that nuance and kind of

how you teach this in and layer in those levels of defense and how that ties into the 90 90 yeah so

actually it's an interesting point about that like late stage defense versus early stage defense

thing which is that I actually find that there's a basically like a flip that happens with that idea

in when it comes to leg locks because people will look for late stage defense for stuff like you

mentioned like arm bars and triangles and even like re naked jokes and all that kind of stuff

because those things tend to come from you know fairly dominant positions and so we've separated

the idea of like defending an arm bar from the mount by just not letting yourself get mounted

from the idea of defending an arm bar from the mount by like oh he got you in the arm bar

and then I'm gonna start defending the arm bar whereas we don't really do that as much in leg locking

and kind of you know kind of rightly so which is like there's a defense for a heel hook

itself is by definition really fucking late stage versus a defense for an outside ashi or a you

know a saddle is more of a defense to a position is just we don't tend to think of it that way as

much we tend to think of it as being like oh yeah it's a it's a leg lock defense yeah but there's

the position itself which you can have somebody in a leg entanglement and be like really really

far away from actually threatening to break their leg and until you understand that distinction

and until you understand that you should defend the submissions as though they're submissions

and defend the positions as though they're positions until you understand that distinction

you will tend to over react and you will defend the positions as though they're submissions

and do that oh shit running away kind of defense does does that make sense yes yes definitely

definitely so what the 90 90 is is it's a way of being in the position recognizing that it's a

position but not fleeing as though you're in a submission it's a way of putting yourself in a

situation where you've somewhat neutralized the position itself and now you can stay within the

position building up your base degrading your partner's base and alignment and then like elect

to counter attack from within that position so and I think that the the reason we have this dichotomy

is we're just a lot more comfortable with just because of the the far greater level of exposure

and familiarity we're a lot more comfortable you know being in the pocket if somebody goes to

arm bar you from the guard you'll grab your biceps you'll do the figure four thing when your arms

and you'll like you'll try to squish them you'll try to pull your arm out so that you can pass

their guard rather than being like oh god it's an arm bar and then like falling over and flipping

around and trying to yank your elbow clear whereas with leg locks because of the the stigma and the

propaganda that came back in the day where if all of somebody just touched your foot your leg was

going to explode people are not spent anywhere near the same amount of time just getting comfortable

within positions that aren't actually all that dangerous and knowing how much time they have

before they actually have to tap because of certain amounts of laxity in the joints and like

you know heel slipping and ability to weight the leg and all that so like as you get more and more

familiar with these positions you start to recognize that they're their positions just like any

other and you know it's like if you have a kimura on me but I've got my hand glued to my belt or

my my shorts in front of my body you've got a long way to go before you're gonna hurt my shoulder

with a kimura it's the kind of the same thing with the leg entaglement as you gain more familiarity

with it you should be able to be like oh well I'm in I'm in standard ashi or single leg X from

the top like who fucking cares it's not that big a deal right but if you're not familiar with that

you're like oh my god I'm in whatever origami ashi salami I got a run from this like if that's

your level of familiarity you're gonna overreact so just gaining more perspective on what is a leg

entanglement versus what is a like strong submission on the legs and understanding the distinction

between the two and when you can just use the 90 90 to keep yourself a lot closer to the edge of

just that position where you are safe but they think they can attack you and just knowing how to

dismantle their offense from there is what we're aiming for got it now I want to dig into something

you mentioned earlier in this chat and honestly we might wind up just saying the same thing twice

which is okay I think that for this particular topic a bit of repetition helps but you would

talked about the difference between how this applies and what you can do when you're in a straight

leg entanglement versus a cross leg entanglement could you maybe expand a bit on that just to give

people an idea of front technical standpoint how you would play this differently in both of those

cases yeah absolutely so like let's say you've got me in you know single leg extender dashy you

are on your left hip you are attacking my right leg I'm kind of on my right hip I can choose based

on the circumstances whether I'm going to go 90 90 towards my right hip and try to put my right

knee on the ground hiding my heel and building my base directly over top of you rather than turning

away from you so like in the case where you don't have good heel exposure and especially if I've

got fairly flexible hips I can build up towards the knee of my leg that's being attacked I can throw

the 90 90 my right leg will bend my right knee will become my post and I will push off of my left foot

to drive my weight up onto you your I'll be trying to get rid of your left foot off of my hip I might

need my hand to do it but more likely than not as I build up into the 90 90 your foot will just slip

off and then all that's remaining between us is your right shin and knee and if you are still just

holding on to my leg and not framing me at all I will probably grab your head I'll probably break

your posture pretty badly with my right arm and I might use my left arm at that point to try to force

your knee a little bit out of my way and I can start to build up and basically threaten to pass

your guard or I can hop all the way over to the other side like over your left leg while controlling

your right ankle and then start to free myself maybe build up into the mount I could maybe even

almost plotter you from there like there are a bunch of counter attacks that I can throw at you

conversely if either my flexibility doesn't permit this or you've done a good job at initiating a

either a heel exposure or a reap then I would just throw the 90 90 to my left hip I would build up

onto my left knee even while you are exposing my heel I would build up onto my left knee look to turn

put my right knee on the ground and keep your legs separated while I build up into that captain

Morgan position and back my hips up over top of yours preventing you from generating the force

you need to create any breaking mechanics like effective breaking on my heel and at that point

I would start to concern myself with whether or not to slip my knee so that I could either depending

on your leg configuration I could junior lock you from there which is an inside heel hook done on

your reaping leg or I could complete the extraction of my knee and either start back stepping with my

posted leg the captain Morgan leg and going into like a scissor wedge backtake or just keep spinning

around into a guard pass so that would be for a straight leg entanglement that's what would be

what I would do versus for a cross leg entanglement I'm literally just going if you're entangling my

right leg I'm going to turn to my left throw that 90 position hide my heel build base clear my

knee get my hips on top of yours god so it sounds like in a straight leg configuration you have

that great option of being able to crowd the person and get hips over hips and basically compress

them and squish them so that their movement is kind of killed yes but in the other position you're

trying to do the same thing you're trying to gain that hip height so that you can compress your

partner from there as well it's just you have to turn away and take some weight off of them

before you build your base up and then put the weight back on them so there's a little bit of a

race for hip height there to make the position effective right now you had talked earlier about

how one of the great things about the 90 90 is that it's not just about defense but that it can be

used to transition into offense and you gave some examples just now about techniques that can work

that you can use offensively from this position I'd love to hear you maybe expand on that what are

the most common counters and attacks that you would deploy from the 90 90 right so I mean the number

one attack from the 90 90 if you want to be like slick is just getting to a scissor wedge backtake

or some form of bolo or crab ride assuming that we can clear our knee and even if we can't fully

clear our knee as long as we our foot is in a safe position while our knee is still on our on the

other side of our partners or our opponent's thighs we can simply like move ourselves around the

axis of their femur and drop our knee as a our free leg knee as a wedge in between their thigh and

the ribcage and start rolling for the back or rolling to the crab ride or rolling to the leg

drag situation so that's probably the number one threat like you will see people kind of allow

a reap or an especially an outside ashy and then spin into this this wedging backtake that's kind

of the number one threat in particular from any of the the straight leg entanglements and with the cross

leg entanglements it's a little bit of a matter of just like building up and then kind of swapping

your legs so that you can go into that same thing you kind of force a straight leg entanglement

reap version of it and then you can roll into the same attack if you're not as slick if you're not

as well developed with those things then we're more looking to just complete the the spin

and just pass our partners guard or at least put them on a a strong like guard retention cycle

and then if you're quite conversant with counter leg locks the two primary counter leg locks

there become the junior lock in the straight leg entanglements and things like toe holds against

cross leg entanglements got it and it sounds like if I understand correctly one of the strategies

that you can use here is if a person has a cross ankle configuration you can use the 90 90 to

get their leg back into a straight ankle configuration which you might find a bit more easier

to defend an attack from is that correct yeah you can awesome and then just to follow up on that

in case you aren't going to ask this question there is a vulnerability to using the 90 90 exclusively

just like there's a vulnerability to any what you would call universal defense right so like

if people aren't familiar with the term universal defense the the term should make it obvious but

it's basically you do one thing to defend all attacks right so like in boxing the universal defense

tends to look like like earmuffs right like where you just bring your gloves up to your temples and

tuck your elbows in and you just let somebody kind of peter out their attack by blasting at your

your gloves in your forms which you know works lovely if you've got headgear and 16 ounce gloves

not so great a defense if you're talking about like MMA gloves or you know let alone bare knuckle

like that's an artifice of the equipment right where because you're not allowed to kick somebody

in the balls you're not allowed to leg kick them because we're only attacking certain things

if you just shell up and use that as a universal defense you can be circumstantially effective

but it's a terrible way to build all of your defense around that one approach so you know a universal

defense oftentimes for people looks like I'll just glue my elbows to my sides and you're not going

to get my arm away from my body you're not going to get an underhook and it's like cool I hope you

like my shin on your neck because you can't just do that and you did so although a lot of people do

we use the term taking your ball and going home right like isometric contraction is not a defense

for everything it's you know like just just shutting down and going into the fetal position

is not a great defense in jujitsu there's a reason that like babies can do it that's why it's called

the fetal position right like it's not an intelligent way of moving but god damn if a lot of people

don't just think that like all you got to do to defend stuff in jujitsu is like oh you've mounted me

let me glue my arms to my torso to prevent you from like moving them hey what if we allowed punching

or what if we're in the gui and I can grab your collar or or like just shit like that just

immediately breaks a universal defense so when people start using the 90 90 one of the things

they default to is it's just like if I can get my hips over your hips and just stay there and do

nothing then I'm good and I just want to caution people against that because the more sophisticated

leg lockers are now realizing that that while the 90 90 configuration defends almost all

leg locks it's really really bad for defending calf slicers so if you just throw the 90 90 and let's

say I go to hit you with a reap and you spin to the 90 90 and you put your butt over mine

there's a really simple adjustment I can make and especially if I can anticipate that you're

gonna do that and I can start to threaten you with a calf slicer where if you've committed fully

to keeping your hips close to mine finishing a calf slicer requires your hips to be close to mine

if I can body lock you and I get that calf slicer position from behind you're in a lot of trouble

so if once you learn the 90 90 and are conversant with it as a method of defending you know most of the

panoply of leg lock attacks you then have to develop a really strong awareness of how to defend

the transition to calf slicer attacks while you are playing the 90 90 which is a bit of a different

I see I see now you talked briefly there about the key and I always love asking this question

because there's a lot of folks myself included who primarily train in the key many of these

positions they you know their bread and butter is a no key application but even in the key

sometimes despite the rule changes and the differences there could still be benefits to playing them

do you think this position has any utility in the kimono oh absolutely it's it has tremendous

utility for defending straight ankle locks and it has tremendous utility for dealing with the 50-50

position which is less of a leg locking position and more of a lapel sweeping position in the key

but the fact of the matter is if you are proficient and building to the 90 90 and untangling your

legs from there against the 50-50 in no key it'll work really well for you in the key and it's great

for defending like knee bar type positions like the 411 and the saddle the way that it's played in

the key because people can't even try to heal hook you so you know it's a hell of a lot easier to hide

my heel from something that's not even a threat and just understanding how to move yourself into the

90 90 you can actually in the key start to throw the 90 90 to the other side in a way that you

wouldn't do in no key because you would just be leaving a heel hook vulnerable right so like

I could try to throw the 90 90 in the other direction and spin myself around the axis of your hips

on top in the key which I would recommend like strongly against ever doing that in no key got it

awesome well this is a really fantastic chat Rob but I know that we can talk endlessly about this

is there anything specifically that you want to add or get into which we didn't cover here any

other specific things that people need to know before they start deploying this stuff nothing I

can think of you know obviously check out the module when you get a chance I've probably got

some leg lock seminars on the bgj concepts YouTube channel that involve this topic because I put

a fair number of the seminars that I do up on there for free so yeah like if you if you want more

information on it I've definitely put some stuff out there about it you know paid and unpaid

and if you want to learn any of this stuff again like hit up those seminars and at some point we

should bring up my second seminar tour in September I mean at one point I should just come on and

just like give you my itinerary for the next two years you know I'll be in Australia and Asia in

2027 so like I'm booking for 2028 so yeah well we can do that for sure I will put links to again your

social is probably the best place for people to follow you if they want to stay abreast of what

you're up to so I will put a link there yeah especially since I'm kind of like I've reduced my

role at the at my home club here at island top team in Nanaimo we've even separated the the

social media accounts so like island top team is just my personal Instagram account nowadays an

island top team bjj is the school account so if you want just like info about the club and classes

and tournament results and celebrating our students and all the cool shit that they do that

stuff's all gonna go down on island top team bjj if you're interested in like what am I kind of

personally doing with any competing any seminar tours you know maybe what's going on with my

cars and that kind of shit we don't where am I gonna be living where in the world is Rob Bernacchi

then island top team is the place to go and then bjj concepts is the Instagram for online academy

so any stuff about new modules sales that are coming up that kind of shit that's all taking place

on bjj concepts nice well I will throw links to both your gyms and your Instagram plus bjj

concepts from the show notes there is one last thing I wanted to ask you though before we tied

this up Rob just broad strokes and I guess it's related to the topic here with 1990 being a thing

that that you're advocating for now where do you see the leg lock game and meta changing how is

this position changed the future of leg lock evolution and what do you see coming in the near

future that you think is going to be the next top thing well I mean I think one way in which this

position has changed the meta is that you can no longer be a like standard pathway leg lockers so

I think a lot of gyles uses the terms proximal control and distal control I originally use the terms

like standard pathway and reverse pathway but basically there are kind of two overall methods to

to gaining a strong leg lock finish you know one is that you attach to primarily the like the

femur as close to the hip as possible you know you get a strong leg entanglement like a classic

leg entanglement like a fifty-fifty like a saddle four eleven standard actually whatever and then you

work your way back to the end of the lever and then you've got the you know the distal control

the reverse pathway where you attach yourself basically at the ankle joint without any strong

entanglement above the knee or near the hip and you work your way towards that afterwards and so

with the ninety ninety does a great job of is defeating the standard pathway the proximal control

stuff so we're already seeing the evolution towards some of the more reverse pathway distal control

stuff where if I know that anytime I put you into you know a more conventional leg entanglement you

just gonna build to a ninety ninety on me and start squishing my hips you know one of the ways I

might go about attacking you is I'm just I'm really gonna try to get a good grip around your ankle

and try to control the end of the lever and try to just prevent you from building to that ninety

ninety make you stay on your hips for longer and or if you're gonna go to the ninety ninety make

you stay in the grounded ninety ninety where your parallel to the mats rather than perpendicular to

the mats and if I can keep you there I can keep you from going on that counter cycle where you're

simultaneously defending the position and then going on your own offense so you're already seeing

a lot more of that stuff with just like different varieties of leg attacks that work on the secondary

leg different varieties of leg attacks that work more on like seizing a grip of the ankle and the

foot stuff like the locky lock or the wards lock that are even though there's still a little bit more

on the primary leg they make building to that ninety ninety position so difficult because you're not

trying to have an attachment at the knee and then work to manipulate the foot for heel exposure

you're manipulating and controlling the foot to create the configuration for the attack which makes

the ninety ninety position harder to get you so we're already in one element of like a subsequent

meta cycle maybe because like I didn't invent the ninety ninety it's not new it's just an approach

in a terminology that I want people to be familiar with like if you're gonna defend leg locks you

kind of have to know it yeah I love that I would actually like to do a follow up chat with you

specifically about that philosophy at some point I find this fascinating the idea of when you're

trying to secure someone's limb do you start at the end of the lever like they're wrist and

their ankle and then work their way up towards the torso or do you start at the torso which means

the shoulder or the hip and then progressively try to isolate the rest of the limb like in this

case it would be the knee and the ankles kind of do you start from out and move in or in and then

move out the answer is yes but I mean if we're still on track to do that leg locking for

imbecils that's definitely something we can discuss in that series I would love to do that I

mean I am definitely an imbecile when it comes to this stuff so we're probably going to be

shooting some more content on this but in the meantime like I said I'll put links to Rob stuff

in the show notes specifically if this ninety ninety stuff intrigues you it sounds like there's

going to be upcoming content on BJJ concepts that you can look out there so again link in the show

notes I will also put links to our stuff everything we make lives at BJJ mental models calm I think

most people know our focus primarily audio but not exclusively the podcast itself many episodes

they get to the point with concepts much faster in our newsletter are all completely free and I'll

worth your time and if you want to level up with us BJJ mental models premium is the world's largest

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as well it is how we fund this and keep it ad free so everything we make both premium and

free stuff is at BJJ mental models calm I will put that plus links to Rob stuff in the show notes

but Rob as always my friend thank you so much for doing this man really appreciate it and have

a good trip man I'm excited to see how your seminar tour goes good trips plural trips

thank you it's really always a pleasure chatting with you Steve I appreciate you buddy

you too my friend and thanks to the listeners as well you are also appreciated and we will talk

to you soon see you then