Force Multipliers

If you’ve never seen Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, it’s a bit like what happens in a competitive amateur wrestling match, but with notably different objectives. In most matches, the folks are wearing the uniforms (the gi), but there are lots of matches without the gi, too. Either way, jiu jitsu is jiu jitsu, and the basic principles of leverage are at play.

One way to win a match is to get the other person in an armbar, like I’m doing in this picture below:

My partner is defending his arm by keeping me from straightening it, so I’m in the middle of showing our students how to break the grip and get this submission.

When you are able to straighten out their arm, the idea is to maximize your leverage, so that you can apply all of your force to threatening to hyperextend their elbow joint.

I’m fond of telling people that jiu jitsu is far from fair. We don’t like equal contests at all! In fact, we seek to create the most unfair contest we can, but only in a particular area. With the armbar, we want to use our entire body against just one poor limb.

And, we want to amplify that force so that our efforts are made many times more effective. When I armbar someone, I’m squeezing my knees together, focusing all of the energy from my hips and abdomen into that one vulnerable joint. This is one type of force multiplier.

We’re probably all familiar with force multipliers from our daily life. Some of the most obvious and noteworthy examples come from the world of simple machines like levers and pullies, from which jiu jitsu draws a lot of its language and conceptual inspiration.

These unpretentious tools have made work vastly easier for human beings for millennia. By combining different types of these simple machines like inclined planes, wheels, and pullies, our ancient ancestors built impressive structures that wouldn’t have been possible with brute human force.

Instead of a small difference, a force multiplier gives you some multiple of the original force back. One person could lift a stone ten times heavier with the use of these contraptions, and with jiu jitsu, I can apply very little force and multiply it by concentrating it at the right place.

So far, I’ve talked about the physical concept of a force multiplier, but the concept and phrase can also be metaphorical. In the military, advanced surveillance and reconnaissance is one very obvious way this can manifest. By knowing exactly where the enemy is and how they are defending themselves, a well informed force can quickly overwhelm what might otherwise be an even match for them.

Similarly, advanced weaponry can multiply a fighting force’s effectiveness by ten times or more. Remember Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court?

I think my laptop is a kind of force multiplier. I sit down every day to think about things and to learn about the world, and I get to interact with other people, quickly access research done by others, and put it all together in a manner that delights me instead of frustrating me.

My hands do a lot of the thinking for me, too. They can find the letters just as my brain is forming the next word, and I’d swear they get ahead of my mind some of the time. From my laptop, I’m able to write and publish here every day, always making sure the information I put out there is accurate. I learn about something I want to understand, and then I get to share that with thoughtful folks who will then talk about the thing with me.

Similarly, when you leave a comment here, I’m multiplying my own intellect and adding additional perspectives, so we’re helping to make one another smarter.

If my description of an armbar piqued your curiosity, you’re welcome to go and check out BJJ Path. This is an ongoing project I started in 2018, designed to catalog all the jiu jitsu in my brain. It’s also bigger than just me—lots of our instructors and students use the platform and contribute to it, and there’s no paywall:

And, thank you, dear reader, for helping me multiply my force today!