1. “BJJ is an art and science which looks to use a combination of tactical and mechanical advantage to focus a very high percentage of my strength against a very low percentage of my opponents strength at a critical point on their body such that were I to exert my strength upon that critical point they could no longer continue to fight."

   —Danagher

2. “Practice analytically, perform intuitively.”

   —David Perell

3. The Shannon Number $10^{120}$ represents the lower bound on the number of possible games of chess, which is greater than the number of atoms in the observable universe. There are a greater number of possible rolls in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu as it is a much higher-dimensional space.

4. In the mathematics of high dimensional spaces, brute force searching for solutions does not work. To make progress you need understanding from first principles and intuition to build proofs. Two humans engaged in combat is a sort of high-dimensional space where brute force searching for dominant positions won’t work—especially when you’re less athletic than your opponent. Don’t scramble.

5. BJJ is also like chess insofar as it is theoretically possible to memorize lines, from openings to end-games. To memorize anything, use spaced repetition. But if you learn BJJ through memorisation of technique-oriented practice alone then you won’t know what to do when your opponent deviates from the lines. Knowledge solely of techniques, removed from principles, is only a proxy for a real understanding. When we apply optimization pressure to a proxy it breaks down, per Goodhart’s Law. In BJJ the optimization pressure is our training partner or opponent doing something unexpected. What do you do then? What happens when the optimizer finds the corner cases where your moves no longer work?

6. If you can’t do it slow, you can’t do it fast.

7. Smooth is fast.

8. If your opponent/training partner never takes your back, you’re not practicing escapes enough.

9. You should start drilling the technique under realistic conditions sooner than you’re comfortable with. “You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That’s what makes you ready” (Flora Rheta Schreiber)

10. “If you want a clean house, invite people over.” —Sean McLure

    1. In his advice to graduate students, Manuel Blum tells this story about Umesh Vazirani: “I once asked UMESH VAZIRANI how he was able, as an undergraduate at MIT, to take 6 courses each and every semester. He said that he knew he didn't have the time to work out his answers the hard way. He had to find a shortcut. You see, Umesh understood that problems often have short clever solutions.”
    2. Urgency and opposition are the great filters.
    3. Get into a rut early.

The most important lessons I’ve learned in BJJ (and elsewhere) are illegible: they cannot be reduced to explicit statements. Yet aphorisms, like poetry & lyrics, have the mysterious property of ringing true as soon as they are heard only to become truer in time. Emerson said everyone would be a poet if their intellectual digestion were perfect.

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By the way, if you haven’t tried BJJ, you should! Sam Harris’s essay on the joy of drowning inspired me, maybe it will inspire you too.

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