Feynman on the mats
I was reading Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces this morning.
The following passage made me think about jiu jitsu:
What is this law of gravitation? It is that every object in the universe attracts every other object with a force which for any two bodies is proportional to the mass of each and varies inversely as the square of the distance between them ... we add the fact that an object responds to a force by accelerating in the direction of the force by an amount that is inversely proportional to the mass of the object
On the mats, there is an instinctual ‘gravitational pull’ to meet one’s opponent’s force or pressure with equal resistance. It leads to exhaustion.
The art1 is recognizing that the force—say, your opponent pushing along a vector—creates an exploitable structure that can be redirected or rotated around.
Distance matters too. It must be managed for technique to deliver mechanical leverage.
There’s a relationship with mass as well. Smaller practitioners who can create rotational force around joints by turning in a tight radius can overcome larger opponents who rely on linear strength.2
I’ve never thought about this before.
I fit more in the ‘linear strength’ category than the ‘turn in a tight radius’ one.
That said, my favorite technique is to allow my opponent to chase an arm bar, execute a leg grab escape, rotate into to side control, smash their carotid with my shoulder while setting up a head-and-arm-choke, transition to mount, dismount to the opposite side, and then finish with their own shoulder crushing their carotid. A blend of technique and strength.
I don’t expect to be thinking about this the next time I’m on the mats.3
But I do appreciate how BJJ provides a way of concretizing fundamental principles of physics.
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